Winter SOULstice 2010 Weeks 1 and 2

Winter SOULstice 2010

Weeks 1 & 2; December 21 January 3
Optimizers Program; I have devised a way to 1) think (use imagination), 2) plan and 3) execute my intentions in order to pursue my dreams. We all do #1, some of us get to #2, and some of us even get to #3, but we fail to keep doing it. The program is simply a way to measure my own key performance numbers and follow my progress. This blog is also a way to show how my progress is moving along and to describe the unique lifestyle that is for a foreigner living in Japan. I wish to share these experiences and my progress with you. The program is becoming a monster and I will eventually publish all my reasoning and results but the reasoning will also be revealed here.

Maximum Points Available for two weeks:
50 points per day x 14 days = 700 points
The intention is between 500 and 550 points, below is how I fared on those intentions.















Weeks 1 and 2



Week 1 and 2: Overall 88% 437/495 Points
Weeks 1 and 2 were quite interesting. As I spent a great deal of time creating a bigger version of this program, I also had a few days of holiday time where nothing was accomplished in some of the foundations. This should be looked at in advance when setting goals for certain foundations i.e. exercise and economic. 88% is quite good but it might be a good idea to lessen my goal in points so that I can reach those limits and move ahead as the program progresses.





















Above is a graphical representation of the first two weeks of my program in terms of percentage of maximum 50 points per day, the two lower areas were due to a couple night out and Christmas and New Years holidays.

Economic Weeks 1-2 96% 95.5/100 Points
Stabilizing: I have been doing very well with this, unfortunately it is due to low funds but it is still teaching me some humbling values. Be grateful for what you have. Be hungry to move ahead!

Moving Ahead: This has all been about planning and getting on track, most of the plans have been laid, I plan on finishing all plans by the end of this weekend and the background work to get them off the ground. It is now time to start pushing ahead with the plans and be open for changes to the plan but to keep pushing forward. We have some ambitious goals and now is the time to show ourselves what we are made of.

Optimizers: This has been the bulk of my time, as I can’t move forward without a plan, re-doing this program has helped me become extremely organized. The next 75 days will tell if it has been worth it. I have decided to go back to what originally made me so successful, that is to decide overall what my intentions are for the entire 90 days, then bring those intentions into weekly and daily actions, this is with money, my body and health, my connection to family, friends and the universe as well as my studies. I now sit back looking at a massive spreadsheet which by the time I am done may prove to be the beginning or may have to be completely re-written, however for now I am starting to increase focus and should be able do some real good in the next 3 months.

Temple: Week 1 - 2 85% 89/105 Points
Fitness: Well the first week was a bit of a write off but the 2nd week proved to be quite good. I worked out as planned for the week with the exception of one day. The problem remains to find new interesting exercise routines which can be done at home with no or minimal weights. Any ideas send me an email positiveattraction@gmail.com

Nutrition: Again with the holidays and all the traditional foods all over the place this was tough to follow. The program is now becoming a monster again and as I want to have every single meal planned and prepared for the next 28 days this will take more time to develop. Anyone have any great food ideas please let me know by dropping an idea below.

Environment: Wow, this has been quite successful, while we didn’t get the full house cleaning done, I believe that if I follow the plan as I have laid out we should have all the house cleaning projects handled by the end of the month and when we come up for our next monthly organizing we can start to manage other bigger tasks such as all the home ownership documents, making the wedding albums and filing and organizing all our personal life files. For now though these will have to wait.

The following are the tunes that will push me through my exercises, please let me know of any great tunes for exercising or what motivates you.

Music List
Under Pressure - Queen & David Bowie
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow - Rooney
Another Way To Die - Jack White & Alicia Keys
Mississippi Queen - Mountain
Somebody To Love - Jefferson Airplane
Be Aggressive - Faith No More
I Believe in Miracles - Eddie Vedder/Zeke
Fix You (Remix) - Coldplay
Dream On - Aerosmith
When the Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin
Sweet Emotion - AeroSmith
I Believe I Can Fly - R.Kelly
New York, New York - Frank Sinatra & Tony Bennet
Who Wants To Live Forever - Queen
Should I Stay Or Should I Go - The Clash
Bachman Turner Overdrive - Taking Care of Business
Hey You Bachman - Turner Overdrive
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet - BTO
Shes So High - Tal Bachman

Mind: Week 1 - 2 74% 67/90 Points
Relatively weak as I didn’t do as much studying and still have not cracked the Japanese textbooks. These intentions simply must get stronger and will do so as the routines of the main new business become more established and I can easily set aside 30 minutes.

Connect: Weeks 1 - 2 91% 109/120 Points
This was again the true strength for me, of course during the holidays this should be. While the graph shows lower numbers for some foundations, this can be forgiven as it is one of the time of the year where we should be mainly thinking about our family, friends and community.

The next year will see me increase my intentions to connect to family but will also see renewed emphasis with the Tokai Japan Canada Society (TJCS) and Santa & Friends Japan – Nagoya with another great volunteer idea that actually gets me quite excited thinking about but it will have to wait.

Spirit: Weeks 1 – 2 87% 96/110 Points
Quite good, this is also key to continue to get up at 5:30 am and sit in the pose to meditate properly as well as continue to have a feeling of gratitude every day, this should never be a chore but a good part of my day.

Business:

GDI Exports: GDI Colin
With a new year come the promise of a fresh start and a chance to do what we wanted to originally. That is, we aim to actually provide what the customer wants, we aim to do this in an open and transparent way, we want everyone to know what we are up to, we will only succeed in this business our way if we can show the customers what they need to know, how much we are actually charging them and for what. This business is unfortunately soiled by sad and untrustworthy people, I have seen it and heard it. Our customers will receive what they deserve. Honest and clear communications and a true understanding of what they will receive.

We created a new mission which reflects our personal missions and our professional goals, that is in order to satisfy our clients with the best products and service in the industry we will: provide the Best vehicles, with Transparent pricing, and Open and sincere service. By Best vehicles we aim to only go after cars that we know will bring a smile to the new owners, cars, trucks and machinery that is in great condition and will bring no headaches (through higher quality rankings and lower mileage), this only makes sense as a business that is aiming for long term sustainability, we want to make our customers happy, this will bring them back, I think this is so obvious yet is so missed by so many. The newer idea of Transparent pricing aims to show our customers that they will always get the price that they expect, there will be no surprises and everything they are paying for can be explained and is understood. We stand by our cars and know the owners will be more pleased with the results. Our cars will re-sell faster, because they are good, but they also won’t come back to the re-seller as the quality will keep your customers happy with their new purchase.

President Hedden, (James) Ms. Kitamura and myself are also happy to offer Open and sincere service, this of course sounds easy, yet why is it so many businesses really don’t offer open service? We want you to understand what is happening and what step of the process we are in to provide you peace of mind, this is crucial as you may be trusting our business from a different continent and the only way for you to trust us in the beginning is for us to go out of our way so you understand who we are and how we aim to help you.

Lastly, As we do move toward the new year and a new beginning , I felt you should understand where James and I met and how we came to be in business together. We both joined our local Canada friends in Japan group otherwise known as the Tokai (region in Japan) Japan Canada Society (TJCS) back in 2004 and 2005, I started as a founding member and James joined a year later. WE both ended up becoming Co-chairs of the Social committee and to shorten the story we both fed offer each other and we started to really succeed and making things happen. We applied this synergy to the business committee this last year and we hope to continue building on our successes, please have a look around the TJCS website and you may see for yourself what we have been up to. http://www.tjcs.jp) James was also busy creating a Christmas present giveaway to orphaned children in the Nagoya region. This was recently a huge success as the mayor of Nagoya can attest, his newly named Santa & Friends – Nagoya group delivered 269 presents to children with no parents this past December 21. Please have a look at our fanpage (Santa & Friends – Nagoya http://bit.ly/7sI5BA ) on facebook or the blog http://www.nagoyaorphans.blogspot.com

All in all we have built a business around our volunteer activities, someone I respect once said ‘You get out of it what you put into it’ with that mantra our success with these volunteer endeavors gave us tremendous planning and preparation experience and helped us create the new look GDI that will push forward in a down economy by building networks with people who want to be treated well, and look for good service and can expect it.

We are looking forward to a new year and a year where the customer will have more to choose from, as they should, the power is with the customer where it belongs and the winners in this economy will be those who can serve these educated consumers, we want to serve you in this way, and we will all look back on this 2010 as the year it began to change for the better.

Humble and Best regards,
Colin Walker
Sales Representative
GDI Exports

Mission Statement:
GDI Exports / GDI Car Exports mission is to provide you the Best vehicles and machines through Transparent pricing with Open, and sincere service.
Only the best products are pursued on behalf of our clientele through low mileage, Japan standardized testing and in-house best practices. Our transparent pricing comes to you as part of our ongoing initiative to be honest about our operations and who we are. First-class service is our team commitment, we promise to be open and honest and go beyond your expectations, and we aspire to give back to our community as part of our work responsibilities.
BTO Standards Always! Our #1 Goal is to make the purchase and delivery of great vehicles and machines stress free! Guaranteed!

Making progress and the next step will be reaching out to all those interested in earning more income with high quality vehicles by importing into your home country or if you live here we can assist you in exporting vehicles to your family and friends.

Email: colin.walker@gdicarexports.com
Website: www.gdicarexports.com
Blog: http://www.gdicolin.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/gdicolin


Power English:
A slow end of the year has actually forced us to put more effort into this for the beginning of the year, we have a few new plans that are moving ahead and I will be teaching English in various ways for those who would like to learn more about our new plans please send me an email or check out Power English:

Website: http://www.powerenglish.jp/
Email: positiveattraction@gmail.com

The Optimizers: The program is simple, but takes time to understand how to implement. The current program was started on December 21: Winter SOULstice 2010.
I will be going it alone and will keep you posted, the program needs to be refined and simplified before I publish how to do it, please keep watching and I will let you know how it is going.
Email me at positiveattraction@gmail.com

Week 7 and 8 Optimizers Update

Week 7 and 8; November 3 – November 15
Optimizers Program; The program is simple in nature, yet difficult to explain. I have devised a way to 1) think, 2) plan and 3) execute my intentions in order to pursue my dreams. It is simply a way to measure my own key performance numbers and follow my progress. This blog is also a way to show how my progress is moving along and to describe the unique lifestyle that is for a foreigner living in Japan. I wish to share these experiences and my progress with you.

Maximum Points Available:
Overall 74% 384.6/520 Points

2 Week Pt Totals 2 Week Goals %Goal Reached
88 110 80% Economic
78 85 92% Exercise
84 85 99% Nutrition
57 55 104% Cleaning
87.6 110 80% Temple
47 100 47% Mind
89 120 74% Spirit
110 100 110% Connect
37 20 185% Dropping the Ball

384.6 520 74% Total

Economic 80% 88/110 Points
Stabilizing: Quite a good couple weeks as I practiced bringing only 500 yen per day to spend, I prepared my own lunches and food to eat as well as bottles of water. A few days of overspending, this was a great reminder that I have to continue to be disciplined and follow the approach.

Moving Ahead: The main focus here was the exporting business and some god discussions on English training. The next two weeks will be critical as far as the next six months go. I have thinking of plans, the next focus for weeks 9 and 10 shall be utilizing time in the evening to prepare and plan for the week and the next day. This is so critical and so easy but as well so easily not done. The results you see are completely correlated to how well you plan, and execute your ideas.

Optimizers: Very little was accomplished here as my main business concepts have to take priority. I plan to meet people in the next two weeks to move this program ahead.

Temple: 80% 87.6/110 Points
Not bad, as far as nutrition and exercise goes I still maintained some decent effort. It is now evident that this Optimizers semester has proved to be mainly sustaining effort. I must start to look to the next Optimizers; Winter SOULstice and begin preparing a simplified but more encompassing plan to pursue and track my intentions. There shall be no more smoking from week 9. Nothing more needs to be said on this. With the potential news from my wife this next week I must prepare my body to be as healthy as possible for one more very important reason, the rest being the fact that I want to enjoy the last half of my life without serious health complications due to my treating my body like a punching bag for the last 15 years.

Mind: 47% 47/100 Points
I have been very bad with this. I need to keep pushing myself to learn more about Social Media, Japanese and my author ambitions. The main key here is to write down the plans for the next day and follow them. On the bright side I have found a new application which should make it much easier to study on the fly! http://www.Smart.fm No more excuses. Now is the time to improve my knowledge.

Connect: 110% 110/100 Points
This has always been my strongest foundation and still is. I need to start writing to reconnect to all of my contacts. I just need to again write one or more friends and family every day. Fantastic event was held by our TJCS (Tokai Japan Canada Society) business committee which was blogged previously.


Spirit: 74% 89/120 Points
While not perfect, I have found that most days I can sit calmly and reach deep meditative levels without too much focus. This level of calmness is great for inspiration and helps me find some peace in difficult times. Of note, when I do this effectively it can often bring those days of stress into focus and I often get right back to work shortly after meditation.


GDI Exports: GDI Colin
Japanese Car Quality Reason #1: Monozukuri

Ever wonder why Japanese quality has come to the forefront with so many industries in the last few decades? So did I, this is one reason why I have decided to join James Hedden in our quest to export high quality Japanese built cars and high quality foreign vehicles and machinery which were used here in Japan. The first factor of this success was actually highlighted (an previously posted through the GDI Colin blog) with our latest installment of the Tokai Japan Canada Society Canada Means Business events. Our team successfully pulled off another event with Ron Haigh from Toyota giving an extremely valuable presentation about how Toyota has become a global leader in one of the worlds largest industries. Toyota continues to move ahead on a global scale simply by taking a scientific approach to business management and manufacturing. Japanese quality comes from many different techniques but two that stand out are ‘monozukuri’ and ‘kaizen’. Monozukuri is the concept of building products which actually benefit society which is of course primarily the customer, the second one ‘kaizen’, being the obsessive passion for improving the processes that go into any product. In our case with GDI Exports we are slowly moving towards a consistent inward look at how we can offer high quality cars, trucks, heavy machinery and equipment with an efficient and optimized customer service experience. Our website should see significant changes soon as we aim to narrow our focus on high quality vehicles and equipment. Have any questions? Send me an email or have a look at our website for more information.
colin.walker@gdicarexports.com
www.gdicarexports.com

For our future endeavours we will plan on creating a mission statement, followed by a detailed plan on how I will make this mission statement possible. With the mission statement and the detailed plan I will execute the work needed to move ahead and establish key performance indicators (KPI) that show how progress is moving along and allow for improvement to be made to the process. This is where I believe the western business professionals have lost focus. With the emphasis on individuality there is little focus on the overall team and how to improve things continuously, with these improvements come a disciplined approach using effective meetings and action plans. This approach is not as interesting as instinctual management, this may be true to some extent however when you are talking about building business you need to Think, Plan and Act of course, but you also need to rely on data and your KPI to understand your environment and analyze how to best move forward. Intuition is exciting but data and analyzing metrics is the only way to build a successful business. Time will tell if this theory actually will provide the fruit I have been looking for. I am convinced and will be able to tell more within my planned six months timeline which ends in March 2010. Now it is time to really lay the foundations with my friend and co-worker James Hedden to see of we can effectively Think, Plan and Act our way to sustained wealth. Again I am convinced it will come only from plotting our strategic plan, and measuring our progress. Stay tuned for more updates on our quest, and send us an email if you want to learn more about importing used cars or equipment to your locale!

colin.walker@gdicarexports.com

Aurora English Comments:
No action here, he nest two weeks I hope to create the action plans moving forward.

The Optimizers: The program is simple, yet takes time to understand how to implement. I am planning on having the next full program start on December 21: Winter SOULstice 2010. It will be a full team based commitment and will be limited to ten members of which 6 should be in the Nagoya area. Please send me a note if you know you are ready to challenge yourself like never before. 90 days, maximum 50 points a day, minimum points you get per day is up to you!

Email me at positiveattraction@gmail.com

October 5 - 11 - 240 points

October 5 - 11

Economic
Stabilizing:
I have really scraped the bottom of the barrel and in the process I think the silver lining is again learning and reminding myself of the value of the dollar. While having little money could hurt the pride and I am treating it as a sort of cleansing, a reminder of how I really want to be and a reminder in support of my own abundance and moving my family to a more safe economic reality. Interestingly enough, while there is of course concern, but there is a feeling of confidence that if I stay on this path I will see the improvement in my personal economic reality. This is such an integral part of the entire process, that is to prepare to move ahead you have to get your house in order and know the reasons why you spent more than you needed to.

Moving Ahead:
This has been solid in effort and the lesson here which would be referred to in the GDI Exports and Power English sections in a separate blog, however again the main lessons learned here are that you must refine your dream, envision it, and most importantly create the action plan towards that dream, then let no one or no obstacle stand in the way. Keep pushing. So I will. I learned a great lesson from a famous Japanese businessman and entrepreneur this weekend on our trip to Mie prefecture.

Mikimoto Pearl Island (Japanese Pearl Divers)
Here we stayed at the town of Toba and we decided to check out the island called Mikimoto Pearl Island on Sunday. This island while not a cheap attraction, also not overly expensive, was the ‘pearl in the haystack’. Overall I would rate the museum and the attractions as the best I have seen in Japan as a foreigner. There was plenty of English guidance on display walls and the story of Kokichi Mikimoto is a really intriguing one. It is a testament to remaining strong to your vision and believing in yourself and to push through setbacks that would throw any good man off his tracks. Some interesting concepts from him was that he believed in international experience and also believed that he should be Bold and explore outside his region in Japan and internationally. He also stayed true to his passion, which was pearls, even when WWII has opportunities a plenty for an enterprising businessman, he stayed true to his vision, i.e. ‘Pearls don’t fight back’ and stayed out of the war business. This museum is a must for any foreign visitor and will hopefully fill you with a renewed fighting spirit and a new respect for another business and political icon of the Meiji period.




GDI Exports:
Looking forward to continuing to learn the processes involved here. As mentioned in my promises to myself are that I will enjoy the process of building a business with a friend, keep your eyes on the prize.

Power English Comments:
Had some good classes from Wednesday to Friday, some good people and I forgot how much I enjoy teaching adults English. They are motivated to learn and generally enjoy the conversation. They key is that each individual comes to class for a different reason so it is a good idea to give each student what they are after while maintaining a good flow to conversation and a learning point. This is quite possible with a maximum of six students.

Optimizers:
Moving along with this program, just have time to update it every few days. This next week should be better.
Up to 240 points and hope to equal or better that score in the next week.

Temple:
Great week with a few runs and a DVD workout.

Mind:
Some great movement on this foundation as listening to various podcasts and reading has again become a key part of the day.

Connect:
Home: Had a fantastic trip to Mie prefecture on the 10th ad 11th . Communications has also been god with family and has allowed this foundation to stay on top.

TJCS: Looking to get cracking on our latest event and finally build the website as planned. Hope to have the final preparations for the event done by the 18th and the website content plan approved by WSI Consultant Bruce. The event will be November 5th and will have Mr. Ron Haigh from Toyota as the guest speaker. More on this soon.

Santa Japan
I hope to also finalize the facebook page and have the invitations sent out by Sunday. Full steam ahead with helping on this initiative.

Volunteer/Community
I will seriously begin to look at my idea for the rail tacks near my house shortly after we deliver the final Canada Means Business Event in early November.


Spirit:
Some great meditative time, need to continue making this important, it is such a valuable part of the day, great energy and some great thoughts come when you can just be still and relax. The power of this cannot be understated.