Stories - FD Thornton

You'd think after 290 posts, I'd run out of stuff to say. But truth be told, that's one of the few things I'd probably never have to worry about. My mind's always racing, I realize that sounds a bit ironic coming from someone who expounds the virtues of mindfulness, yet here I am.  I've spent the past number of days working on building my business and studying the various products. I've tried on a number of occasions to create a new post, but no matter what I put down it just didn't sound right.  It's interesting how the mind sometimes can seem so laser focused and at other times wandering from one thought to the next. But I don't really want to focus my post so much on sharpening our "focus", as much as, presenting the idea of daydreaming.  While focus and clarity can create heightened awareness in the moment. There are times when there is value in allowing yourself to daydream and be unfocused. I believe it ...

Each and every one of us has something about ourselves we’d love to change. Rather it’s our lack of athletic skills or the fact that we are too fat, there’s always something about ourselves we hate. Recently I’ve been finding myself focusing on my own faults, but not in the way you may think. In my life the biggest crippler of my confidence, my outlook, and my self-worth has been my self-criticism. What I have been trying to learn is that my type of self-criticism is not helpful, but downright destructive.  What I learned is that the traditional berating I suffered through as a child and young adult, carries over into adulthood. The sad part is this current berating doesn’t come so much from others as it does my own self. And that this same abuse I cowered under as a child I find myself doing to the ones I now love. It’s a maddening cycle of abuse that can last generations.  My focus today is more on the understanding that this cycle can be broken, but to do that we must...

In my last post I wrote about my mental issues and my desire to not let those problems create a road block in my life. While suffering from agoraphobia brought on by panic disorder, I’m determined not to let not let them be an excuse. My finest example of doing this was going back to school and finishing my degree programs. While you can say, but you did that online and at home, I would reply yes that’s true. But honestly I still had many difficulties and anxiety to overcome, just ask my advisors.  When Harvard Risk Management gave me the opportunity to sell their services, I more than realized the challenges even a “normal” agent would face. Still I accepted the challenge knowing full well the struggles I’d have. To sit here and tell you it’s been hard would be an understatement. Over the course of time I since starting this position, I’ve had more than my share of disappointment and downright fear. Not just in the rejections I’ve received, but also from the fear of not being ...

Until recently I kept my mental suffering to myself, not even my children really knew of my true diagnoses. My family and friends knew I had “health issues”. But the true sources of my problems were buried deep within myself. Only my dear wife and a few medical people knew the truth.  I suffer from panic disorder reach feeds into my chronic anxiety that has feed my problems with isolation and agoraphobia. You might think that’s a lot of shit and frankly it is, but what happens is one feeds the other. So you may have a panic attack that feeds the anxiety of having another, that feeds into your isolation, you get the picture.  Where and when did this all start, you may ask. That answer would surprise you, simply because I hung around a lot of people at the beginning and no one was the wiser. You see, for many years I masked the illness with various medications. They mostly helped but during that time they helped at a price. The price was mostly losing a good part of who I ...

If you can’t think of anything good to say, then keep your mouth shut . When you think about it, that really sage advice, it’s just too bad I never took it. It is the combination of two pieces of advice given to me by my grandmothers.  Mind you, my two grandmas were pretty different individuals. Grandma Thornton was a quiet and reserved southern woman always putting her family first, a real throwback to the moms of the depression era.  My Grandma Geiger on the other hand, raised a family during the War and on into the post war years of the 50’s and 60’s. She was a bit louder, a bit more urban, a chain smoker for many years, and never one without a word to say.  The advice they had given about being a good listener and keeping my mouth shut were two solid pieces of advice, it’s just putting that advice to work has escaped me over the years. Maybe the thing I should ask myself is, why remember that advice anyway if you're not going to h...

I’m not one to do a lot of planning when I write. I usually take the time I put in front of the screen and “go with it”. You can call it creative or you can call it lazy, I just think of it as my MO or Modus Operandi. (Hey, I watch CSI.) My real thought today is about distractions. Recently out of necessity I bought a new smartphone. I was perfectly happy with a landline and my ancient cellphone, but my kids and my clients live in the age of smartphones and instant communication. So just like Clint said, “You improvise. You adapt. You Overcome.” So while I do enjoy technology and the many convinces it gives us. With those convinces it can put out many distractions. I noticed this morning while enjoying my morning cup of coffee on the porch, my phone kept buzzing every few seconds announcing every email and notice headed my way. While mail and news can be important, 99% of the time these things can be looked at a set time, not instantly. I suppose my rant today, if anythi...

Drinking the kool-aid is a term that was born out of the tragedy of the Jonestown massacre of the late seventies. It has been used since then to describe people who believe a lie told to them by others no matter how absurd. Recently I was reading a post on the Internet that was saying individuals that work in sales were very much drinking the kool-aid. Because in most cases salespeople have to create results in order to be successful. And that making a living that way was nothing more than a pipe dream.  While I'm not going to deny that sales is a profession that requires great communication skills and a healthy degree of self confidence. To sit here and type out that all sales positions are a pipe dream and the profession of fools, is missing the point. That most aall business people are sales people in one form or another. That not all sales persons are under-handed and will do or say anything for the deal. The reality is sales can be a challenging and rewarding career you...

It’s so easy for us to say positive words and affirmations about what we are going to do. It is a totally different thing to back-up those affirmations with action. The thing I’ve fear most about affirmations or positive thinking is the disappointment it creates within me when my goals aren’t met, making me feel like a hypocrite when I fail. A few years ago I read a book by Oliver Burkeman titled, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking . What drew me to this book was the title and a series of articles Burkeman wrote for the New York Times . The book itself isn’t so much a slam against positive thinking, but an honest look at now action, words, and reality don’t always give us the result we desire. Burkeman proposes a more balanced approach to looking at life and living to our fullest potential. Understanding that while affirmations and positive thinking are important, we also realize not everything works in our favor. That instead of allowing the ...

With this new business venture I've been working with, twice a week they have training calls. One is held Monday morning and another on Thursday evening. To be honest my schedule has been a bit unpredictable so I have missed a few live calls. But Harvard records the calls and uploads them rather quickly to the associate website so you listen at anytime.   I mention this because my focus today is on the statement "it's so easy" . Since HRMC puts these training calls online, it makes it so easy not to miss them. But my real focus isn't the successful stuff as much as how we as individuals make it so easy for ourselves to fail. Much like my preacher father-in-law would say, "I may have one finger pointing at you, but there's four pointing back at me."  I cannot tell you the right way without preaching at myself.  Too many times in our lives we've talked a good game. But when it comes to putting our boots on the ground we fail. Now I'm...

It's been a few days since I last posted. It seems when you commit yourself to a new project, that project wants to hog all your free time. But that's alright at the moment, just as long as I see some reward at the end. But isn't that the way it's suppose to be, you're rewarded for hard work?  Being the certified cynic that I am, you would think I'd say, "not always, sometimes hard work isn't rewarded." But while that can be true in a monetary sense, if you look at life as "teaching moments" . Then you can give yourself a reward for even the failures you experience.  You can look at this as some sad daily affirmation or poorly worded "hang on there" poster in a lifeless cube farm. Still as I get older I'm learning life can't always be treated with a cynical eye. There are genuine moments of good over bad but it's up to us to find them. Today is a good example of this, I started this post without a single clue ...