Travis Hellstrom's Blog, page 4

#52 Seeing the best in people

The entrepreneurs I know have a way of seeing the best in people.

They focus on the good, they see people’s strengths and personality types, and realize that we all express love differently. They also help people see their own potential and celebrate it.

They surround themselves with people they love and create awesome things together.

It’s easy to get started seeing the best in people. Here are a few tips:

Take a step back, relax and breathe
Think about two people you are grateful for in your life
Reflect on the qualities you really love about them
Consider sending them a little thank you text, email or note
Reflect on one person per day you’re grateful for and tell them

We all love being appreciated.

And each of us can be that appreciative person any day.

 

This is #52 in my positive and upbeat series  100 Things Entrepreneurs Love  where I remember little awesome reasons why I love being an entrepreneur.

#33 Having a nice slow morning with coffee

I love having one of those mornings where I can take it easy, slow it down a little bit and have a nice conversation over coffee.

They are the kind of mornings that are worth waking up early for.

The sun still creeps up over the trees outside, the house is quiet, and the calm of the morning air lets me breathe a little bit easier.

Whether I head over to a coffee shop or just sit in my favorite chair at home, having a nice slow morning with coffee is one of those things I love.

 

This is #33 in my new slow and steady series  100 Awesome Things for Entrepreneurs  where I remember little awesome reasons why I love being an entrepreneur.

#44 Finding Awesome Deals at Thrift Shops

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.” Ernest Hemingway

 

Being an entrepreneur means you have learned how to be… creative… financially.

Enter the thrift shop!

Literally. Come on in, let’s hang out.

Need a home office? Check out this cool desk and office chair!

Need a little coffee table for those early morning creative sessions? Look at this little gem!

A couch for hanging out? Done. Who do we know who has a truck…

A day will come when you can trade up and re-donate that fluffy monster back to the fiery chasm from whence it came.

But in the meantime, thank goodness for thrift shops.

Bonus Points: When someone says, “Wow, nice couch. How much was it?” They are never going to believe you. And yes, the ottoman came with it for free.

 

This is #44 in my new super nerdy series  100 Awesome Things for Entrepreneurs  where I remember little awesome reasons why I love being an entrepreneur.

Why You Should Know Your Love Languages

Everyone speaks different languages to communicate love.

Unfortunately, we don’t always take the time to understand what language we are speaking.

The key is to be fluent in the language of the people you care about.

In The 5 Love Languages (which has sold over 8 million copies) Gary Chapman suggests that there are five ways to express love: acts of service, physical touch, quality time, receiving gifts and words of affirmation.

Each of us has a different favorite language and combination of which are most important to us.

As Gary says, “If your friend or spouses’s language is quality time, you can wash her car and take out the trash every week, but she will not feel loved until you sit across from her, linger over a cup of coffee, and look into her eyes.”

The chances are good that your friend or spouse’s primary language is not your language. It is important not only to speak their love language, but also to listen in that language. Translate for yourself so that you can receive their expressions of love to you.

Do yourself a favor and take a few minutes to becoming bilingual to communicate love more effectively in your life. Visit this link to 5lovelanguages.com and take the test at the top to understand what means the most to you.

It has helped me tremendously in my relationships and I actually recommend all of my clients and colleagues take it as well so that we understand each other that much better.

And it’s one more awesome tool to have in your entrepreneurial toolkit too!

 

This is #20 in my new series  100 Awesome Things for Entrepreneurs  where I remember little awesome reasons why I love being an entrepreneur.

#20 Knowing Your Love Languages

Everyone speaks different languages to communicate love.

Unfortunately, we don’t always take the time to understand what language we are speaking.

The key is to be fluent in the language of the people you care about.

In The 5 Love Languages (which has sold over 8 million copies) Gary Chapman suggests that there are five ways to express love: acts of service, physical touch, quality time, receiving gifts and words of affirmation.

Each of us has a different favorite language and combination of which are most important to us.

As Gary says, “If your friend or spouses’s language is quality time, you can wash her car and take out the trash every week, but she will not feel loved until you sit across from her, linger over a cup of coffee, and look into her eyes.”

The chances are good that your friend or spouse’s primary language is not your language. It is important not only to speak their love language, but also to listen in that language. Translate for yourself so that you can receive their expressions of love to you.

Do yourself a favor and take a few minutes to becoming bilingual to communicate love more effectively in your life. Visit this link to 5lovelanguages.com and take the test at the top to understand what means the most to you.

It has helped me tremendously in my relationships and I actually recommend all of my clients and colleagues take it as well so that we understand each other that much better.

And it’s one more awesome tool to have in your entrepreneurial toolkit too!

 

This is #20 in my new series  100 Awesome Things for Entrepreneurs  where I remember little awesome reasons why I love being an entrepreneur.

#22 Working with People You Love

It’s fun having a meeting coming up and thinking, “Oh wow, I get to talk to this person!” and you’re getting paid to do it. What!

As an entrepreneur you get to work with who you want to work with, so if you’re smart you work with people you love. It makes the days fly by and it’s also a recipe for some pretty sweet testimonials too.

Maybe they are fun or funny, energetic or crazy, full of great ideas or the kind of person who really treats you well. Or maybe they are all of those things. Whatever they are, they are your clients, your colleagues and the people who make you love being an entrepreneur.

 

This is #22 in my new, fun, tubular series  100 Awesome Things for Entrepreneurs  where I remember little awesome reasons why I love being an entrepreneur.

#2 Completely Open Days

That feeling you get when you look at your schedule for tomorrow and it’s completely open.

Wait, that can’t be right.

Oh, yes it can.

Sometimes it’s by design, other times it feels like it’s just lucky. Either way it’s open and you can do whatever you want.

Being an entrepreneur means you can have completely open days, with no scheduled events, calls, meetings or obligations, and that can be totally okay.

It’s one of the things I love about being an entrepreneur.

 

This is #2 in my new, fun, random series  100 Awesome Things for Entrepreneurs  where I remember little awesome reasons why I love being an entrepreneur.

#16 Knowing Your Personality Type

I’m a big fan of the Myers Briggs test and its ability to help me understand myself and others better. I’ve taken it several times in the past 15 years and always it really enjoyable and interesting.

I’ve also changed my personality type which has been fascinating. I was an ISTJ in high school and college, an INTJ in Peace Corps and I’m an INFJ now.

By better understanding my personality, I’ve not only made sense of what I am going through at different times in my life, I’ve also been able to attract things into my career and personal life that are a better fit for what I want.

I’ve taken a lot of tests, but here is my favorite one.

Also once you take it (bonus points!) you’ll be able to see which character you are in Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Marvel Comics and more, which is always fun. You might be surprised who you are!

 

 




This is #16 in my new series 100 Awesome Things for Entrepreneurs where I remember little awesome reasons why I love being an entrepreneur.

5 Smart Things To Do When You Don’t Know What To Do

I have gotten a lot of wonderful responses to my recent post on how I’m finding my voice again. If you haven’t read it, it’s right over here.

A lot of former Peace Corps Volunteers in particular said they felt like the article was written personally for them; I was telling their story by telling mine.

I hear you loud and clear. And thank you. That wasn’t an easy piece for me to write, but I want to go further and keep writing more like it. So here we are.

What do we do when we don’t know what the hell has happened and who we are anymore?

As I mentioned before, there are four things that I’ve done recently that have really helped me find my voice (exercising, really sharing, being inspired and getting myself out there), but it has been a rollercoaster. There are good weeks when I feel like I’m making progress, and bad weeks when I feel like I’m slipping backward down a snowy hill. It’s cold, lonely, depressing and scary.

So what do I do when I feel like the real me (the me I was most proud of and excited to see every day) feels years away? What do I do when it all seems so damn confusing and unnecessarily complex?

I’ve been chipping away at it.

Piece by piece, I’ve been trying to knock off the dirt and scrape off the muck that has covered up the treasure of who I know I can be.

It hasn’t happened all at once, but it’s been getting better.

Here are five more things that have helped me uncover who I really want to be. These are complementary to the four voice-finding suggestions I made before and help answer the question “What do I do when I don’t know what in the world I’m doing?”

1. Hang Out with Energy-Givers. There are certain people out there who are givers: they give energy, love, support and excitement to those around them. They are generous and sweet, fun and exciting, and (not surprisingly) people love being near them. You deserve to be around those people. How? The price of being around people like that is that you need to be a giver too. Think of who you know that meets that description and think on what you could give to them. Could you send them a compliment, a nice thank you email, an actual thank you note, a book they might like, a small package in the mail, take them out to coffee, buy them lunch or take them on a hike? I have done every single one of those things at least once in the last month and it’s always worked out great. You may have noticed they are listed in increasing complexity and price. Pick one that feels comfortable for you right now.

2. Trek Out Into The Wilderness. I mean this quite literally – I’m hiking out into the woods. Tuesday morning I hiked into a forest and hung out in a cabin. This morning I went on a two hour hike before 9am. It’s not easy waking up early, but awesome has a price. Pay the price and you gain admission to clarity, fun and feeling a whole lot better. I got more done in an hour in that cabin than I had done in the past two months on an important project. Pretty crazy. It’s amazing what some fresh grass, tall trees and a lack of wifi can accomplish. Whatever wilderness looks like for you, getting out into it might be just what the doctor ordered.

3. Get a Fruit Basket. We started some new snack systems in our house and they are working great. Inspired by my wonderful friend Bonnie, we have a jar full of healthy snacks like trail mix and granola bars, and on our table we have a big bowl of fresh fruit of every kind. That combined with smoothies (simple & easy to make) give me very little excuse to eat badly. I can literally stick my hand out and grab something healthy. I feel better, I’m not hungry much at all, and my energy is going through the roof.

4. Think of “Get To”, Not “Have To”. This is a mental game and I want to thank Wade for reminding of me how important this is. It’s easy to fall into the trap of I Have To. But the truth is, I Get To. Everything is a choice and an opportunity. I Get To work on this project for a client I love. I Get To go on a hike if I want to and get healthier to boot. Have To makes me feel like a victim. Get To makes me feel like an adventurer. Every day, a little more than yesterday, I’m choosing Get To.

5. Take Responsibility for Every Area of Your Life. Brace yourself, this one is a doozy. The happiest people I have ever met believe they are responsible for what goes on inside their head and how they live day in and day out. I also know the happiest times in my life were when I had a peaceful mind and I was living, day in and day out, according to my values and who I really wanted to be. The way there is taking responsibility. I took responsibility for what was in my head (meditation helped a lot) and I made choices that allowed me to deal with whatever came my way. I couldn’t control the weather, but I could bring an umbrella. I couldn’t control how people treated me, but I could control how I reacted. I couldn’t control how people act, but I could choose to be around them or not. The list goes on but it starts with this: take responsibility for every area of your life. Thank you Evan, Bob and Jonathan for the conversations that solidified this for me.

So there they are, five not-so-secret ingredients to a happier and healthier life. Ounce by ounce, as the weight sloughs off, I’m feeling more like the person I used to be. And with a little bit of hustle and hope, ounce by ounce, each of these strategies is helping me replace that weight with muscle and strength to create the kind of life I can be proud of.

Thank you all for your kind words and your encouragement, whether on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or email. It means the world to me and I love keeping the conversation going.

Thank you all from the bottom of my (slightly less fatty) heart.

How to Lose 100 Pounds Playing Video Games

A little inspiration for today. This story comes from a gentleman nicknamed Kane. You can see his whole story in just two pictures.

The Summary

By changing one simple thing that he loved (playing video games) into a more healthy activity, he lost over 100 pounds in one year. You can read the whole story here.

The Bike

Tunga and I thought it would be fun to try it out, so we ordered one over a year ago. It’s a simple bike and we love it.

I keep it downstairs right next to my office and use it when I’m on phone calls, watching movies, reading, watching a class online or pretty much anytime I would otherwise be sitting. That combined with my standing desk means, even though I work at home, I’m not sitting very much. Which is a good thing since sitting too much may just kill you.

If you are interested in the bike, you can find it here.