So much of our culture defines ‘success’ as how much we have: cars, a home, and especially work. While being financially successful gives us comfort and security, the question is, at the end of the day, at the end of the decade, or at the end of our lives can we look back and smile?

‘What do you do?’ is almost always the first question we’re asked or we ask. What if we we’re asked ‘Are you happy?’ … What if WE asked that … to everyone? Well, to our new business client they might look at us askance and take their business elsewhere, but isn’t that ultimately what we’re providing? Not ‘happiness’ but a successful product that furthers their lives or business?

What if you thought ‘Are you happy?’ to yourself, in relation to your clients, and around your loved ones? Meaning ‘givers gain’ … what can you give to yourself today, and others, that will feel successful, a 5 minute walk in the middle of the afternoon to clear your mind, a thank you call to a business associate, or a simple phone call to someone you care about.

Take a nap? What are you nuts?

The benefits of napping are many and varied, NASA and Harvard studies say a nap can increase productivity by up to 34 percent. Researchers from the University of Haifa did research on napping and long term memory function. They taught two groups a specific task with a series of steps. They then let one group stay awake and the other group had a 90 minute nap time. Not surprisingly, the group who took naps improved when they went back later in the evening to complete the same task. The group that did not nap, showed no improvement.

Balance and success in life can be very simple. What if you left a few minutes extra on that next daytime drive and parked your car three blocks from home or work … and strolled there? What if you called your spouse and ordered take out?

My guess is that like me, bringing the ‘simple things’ into your life are something you could stand more of … because at the end of the day while we live a very abundant life are we able to smile about some of the things we’ve done today? Who will you be nice to today? Put yourself at the top of that list!

A few easy steps to attempt a repair: (1) make sure the printer is powered on and plugged into your computer since that can be a simple fix. (2) If you can find the manual (or google the manual) and learn how to print a “test page” this might tell you if the printer is working properly. (3) And/or try powering off the printer and the computer and powering them both back on.

(4) Or is it the printer? Are there any red lights on the printer? Is the printer flashing any lights? This might indicate that it’s a problem with the printer and the manual can help you decode what the printer is blinking at you about.

(5) Larger Fix: Try going to the Apple menu (upper left hand corner of your screen) –> system preferences –> printing or print & fax. Then: (a) Click on the problem printer and click the minus – sign, then (b) click the plus + sign and see if the printer is listed and attempt to re-add the printer.

Restart your machine and keep your fingers crossed. Usually most printing problems are the “drivers” which a geek can easily re-install. If you feel brave ask me about deleting preference files!

More on the topic:

• Can’t cc yourself with Gmail/POP
• Try “Recent Mode” to maybe get those CC’d emails
• Gmail Help Discussion: Send email to Self

Mailman (usually provided for free with a cPanel backend control panel on Unix hosting) does a good job with mailing lists. This is one-to-all email, not necessarily a newsletter that everyone in the group can use. Pretty simple software, but it works well.

Here’s a quick video showing how to add a new member to a list or remover an existing member from a list. Click image to left to view video.

FAQ about our mailing lists

Q: If I send an email to a list from my personal email (ilovekittycats@yahoo.com), will it go to the list?
A: No. That would then let anyone (joespammer@yahoo.com) to email us all also.

Q: So what if I want to send from my personal email address?
A: Send Bradley an email with the personal address you’d like to use and I’ll put it on the “white list.”

Overview of the dashboard stats and then deeper statistics provided by the wordpress.com stats plugin. Quickly go over the different areas of the stats (Referrers, Top Posts & Pages, Search Engine Terms, Clicks, and Incoming Links) and then a bit of analysis of the keywords. Finally, a very brief example of how to put those keywords to use in a particular post using the All-in-One SEO plugin.

Need to update your password, email address, phone number, business name or other contact information on our BNI Embarcadero website? Here’s how. Click image to left to view video.

You can easily update your contact information by logging into WordPress. You can click on your name in the upper right or in the left sidebar find Profile and under that click on Your Profile. Change your email address, website URL, brief description, and password. Find Your Extended Profile to change custom fields such as Business Phone, Business Name, Cell Phone, etc. Remember to click Save or Update when you’re done, then check out the Member Roster page and see if it’s accurate.

1. Search: do a search (upper right) for, say, the last name of the person you’d like to give a testimonial to. If that doesn’t find them, try their company name.
2. Scroll: once you’ve found their company description (maybe you found other articles they’ve written on this site), scroll down to the comments area.
3. Say: type in your name, email, website, and your testimonial. If you want to get fancy, you can log in first (with your user name and password), but it’s not necessary.
4. Submit: click submit!

In this way, we can spread our testimonials beyond just our membership. Here’s one I just wrote up for Heather Stoneman.

Pamela Rosin and Andreas Schwerte have been using this technique to hold onto their raving review from Yelp — before Yelp periodically deletes them.

• Add an event in WordPress

That link will take you to the Likoma site where you can watch the video.