#3 The Beginning of A New Chapter

Thank you all for your feedback and support on my previous newsletters. If you have not read them you can read them here. The last two weeks were mostly introductory in nature and I learned a lot from the feedback that I received.

I am excited because this week I am starting a photography course at Niagara County Community College. About 3 years ago I bought a camera to begin taking photos as a hobby. Even though the iPhone takes great photos its easy to look past them when you’re doing other things on your phone. So I bought a Canon Rebel T7, and began my journey. I enjoy expressing myself in various creative mediums and also learning about new technology and programs so digital photography seemed like a natural progression that was bound to happen sooner or later. I also did photography the old fashioned way in high school which was a fulfilling experience as well. Maybe when I’m super rich I will have a dark room and make photos the old fashioned way just because I am super rich and I can. And then my photos will sell for absurd amounts of money and I will donate 99% of it to the less fortunate for photography lessons. That would be something wouldn’t it be? And then you guys could be like hey I was one of Pat’s first subscribers I was there from the beginning! Wow that would be awesome? People will come to my website and they won’t want to leave!

On a more serious not I’m excited to see my ideas come to life. I am also enjoying writing these newsletters because it gives me an opportunity to stick to something each week that will help me in the long run while also connecting with people who I will work with perhaps in the future. If you want to see my photos you can see them on my Instagram page until I dedicate a full area of my website to my photography. If you are interested in being a subject of my photography send me a message there. I will also post one on each newsletter going forward! I am getting close to 50 subscribers which is great. If you are reading this on LinkedIn please do me a favor and click here to subscribe to my mailing list on my website which is where these newsletters will primarily be located.

With the month of January almost behind us, now is a good time to reflect on how our year is progressing. A lot of people choose to set goals at the beginning of the year (which I do) and at the end of the year when they look back maybe they have not achieved everything they had hoped to achieve. Something that has helped me to create goals is a simple framework that I have learned from an old seminar by Earl Shoaff. The short version of it is that people do not often get what they want because they don’t decide what they want with specification and detail. He goes on to explain how we should go about viewing ourselves like farmers and our goals like seed we plant to harvest later. He also goes on to say how people have trouble accepting the good that comes to them and by simply saying thank you we can begin to accept our blessings rather than push them away. If you’d like to listen to the audio version you can listen to it below. The title is a little bit misleading, it says how to become a millionaire but he's not specifically talking about that in the seminar, its more about goal setting and visualizing success than anything. If you do listen to it let me know what you think in the comments!

Also If you have any audiobooks or videos that you would like to share with me feel free to leave them in the comments or send me an email. One thing I would like to get back into the habit of doing is reading on a regular basis rather it be for enjoyment or to learn.