“The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have.” ~Norman Vincent Peale

Where I am physically right now is certainly related to where I’ve been. Where I am physically right now is a simple eight pounds lighter than I was fourteen days ago. Where I am physically right now is more flexible and energetic than I was.

Where I am physically right now, however, is not driven by where I’ve been, but where I want to go. While many times perspective comes in the form of the retrospective, requiring some prior experience around which to quantify a current existence, my perspective is driven prospectively and there is a man out there that is vibrant and active in every aspect of life. There is a lot of work to shape the current man into that that vision and I am certain that I am on the right path.

One of the things that I had created as a roadblock has been food. I love food. It is amazing to me the different blends of flavors and quality of ingredients that are available. When I encounter a dish that is new and creative, I tend to indulge. I have learned that my definition of indulge mainly centered around selfishly engulfing every last morsel available so that I knew that I had enjoyed all there was to enjoy. I am focusing my mind away from that definition to focus more on the sense of savoring the experience. Here I will enjoy what I love about food and truly appreciate the essence of it while providing a balance for my palate and my body.

This need rings ever true in a video that was recently introduced to me. It is Jamie Oliver’s wish for our world and I certainly agree with everything he has to say. I am committed to creating a long life for myself and will do what I can to help those around me focus on a healthy life. Below, is Jamie’s wish. Enjoy the video when you get a chance:

“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.” ~Andrew Lloyd Wright

It is the tenth day of my quest toward a fitter version of me. I have found that I can’t perform every single task presented to me in fully perfect form at a maximum level of repetition with an impressive amount of resistance. This is good because I now have a challenge, something upon which I will improve.

I have also found that through maintaining an image of my future self in my mind, I do not have the battle of “will power” that I had been plagued to encounter in my previous efforts to improve my health. I have not simply decided to lose some weight as was a previous fault. I have decided to enjoy life to its fullest for years to come and the vision in my mind that describes joy requires a body that can handle the rigors of time. I am persisting in my mind an image that will be fulfilled.

I had come to realize that my days were spent focused on a career that I love and am enjoying beyond any dream that I had as a child. The nights were focused on eating dinner, watching television, surfing the internet, and going to bed. This is not a cycle that has much life balance to it at all and it was starting to wear on me in a way that I had never conceived of before. The only way that I can describe it is by stating it in a completely exaggerated and blunt fashion… I felt like I was getting dumb.

I realized that I needed focus. I needed to commit to improving my life. I needed challenge. This need has found life in two different movements in my personal (by that I mean not completely career oriented) endeavors.

First, after years of pondering at the behest of my wife, I invested in a new flute. That’s right! I studied flute in my formative years and throughout college, but following the receipt of my bachelor of music in music education, I laid no more focus on it. From that purchase to this post, I have now had three flute lessons. It is a bit frustrating to be sure. I fully expected to be able to play full force right out of the gate but now am realizing that there is some very specific muscle development that has to occur not to mention that there are some bad habits regarding playing that I need to unlearn. While frustrating, it is also very fulfilling and I am excited to continue learning and improving.

Second, I am finally focusing on health. Sure, maybe I just acquired a fad, but I think that there is more to this in the long run. I picked up P90X and am committed to make the program a regular part of my life. I’ll be honest… it really sucks right now, but it’s all in my mind and I know from experience that I can absolutely refocus my mind and I will be successful.

So amongst other posts to happen in the future, I hope to relay some of my experiences to you, not as a method for teaching you flute or helping you lose weight, but as a platform to make sure everyone understands the importance of having something in your life that you are always trying to work on… for yourself.

I have previously written about the beginnings of an addiction to Twitter, my fascination with a social media virtual meetup, and the application of social media engagement to assist entrepreneurial success.  At Quicken Loans, we utilize twitter and other social media venues as a part of our marketing strategies and client service.  We have quite a few stories regaling our abilities to help clients through our process successfully.  I think that it is amazing that companies are out there listening and willing to take action when needed.

I recently had a series of events transpire that started off as a simple complaint and turned into a fabulous outcome.  It is this one story that I will reveal to you in some detail so that we can see the power of social customer service on a person to person level.

About a month ago, I headed out of the house to enjoy my day.  On my list of things to do were:

• Get a good cup of coffee
• Get the oil changed in my car
• Walk around the Ann Arbor Art Fair.

To obtain my coffee, I decided to head to a Biggby Coffee that is right around the corner from my house.  I like their coffee and I like to support Michigan businesses when I have the choice.  As I was waiting in line, I opened my wallet to get out some cash and was enthralled by the fact that I had a fully stamped Biggby Coffee card which now entitles me to a free drink.  I presented the card to the barista and asked for a large coffee.  She looked at the card and proceeded to tell me that Biggby had changed over to electronic cards and that there was nothing that she could do to help me use the card.  I was taken aback and continued pushing the matter with increasing levels of frustration that I am sure was made evident by my voice and actions.  The barista told me that the switch happened in January which made me even angrier because I had certainly been in there since that point in time getting my card stamped on each visit.  With no resolution in sight, I gave up the quest for coffee and headed off to the oil change and art fair.

While at the art fair, I came across Espresso Royale and realized that I needed to get my caffeine fix before my body decided to enter withdrawal and throw a headache into high gear.  Still steamed about my previous experience, I told their barista the story.  I purchased a small coffee and the gentleman handed me a large cup as a simple token.  This made my day better, but I still felt a little betrayed.

The more and more that I thought about it, I remembered that the CEO of Biggby has an account on Twitter.  I always enjoyed reading his little posts and wondered if the world of social client service had spread beyond Quicken Loans.  I decided to engage in a dialogue with BiggbyBob:

FROM ME: @BiggbyBob I got denied at biggby today. Went in with a fully stamped paper card and they couldn’t help me ’cause they switched to electronic 1:29 PM Jul 18th

FROM ME: @BiggbyBob – Told espresso royale what happened – payed for a small and they gave me a large… small effort – long time reward. 1:32 PM Jul 18th

Then… we wait:

FROM BIGGBYBOB: @stuartmdavis Hey Stuart , I can help you with your paper card. Sorry about your visit. Denied shouldn’t B in our language @T_C_B 7:38 AM Jul 19th

BiggyBob has gone down the right path.  He has now looped in T_C_B who is the VP of Operations at Biggby Coffee.

FROM T_C_B: @stuartmdavis drop me an email with what happend at [email removed] and we will get you taken care of for sure! SORRY! 7:10 PM Jul 19th

From this point on, Biggby Coffee did everything right to keep me as a customer.  I sent the email, T_C_B responded back, we came to an appropriate resolution and all was well with the caffeinated world.

Now, this post isn’t meant to encourage the masses to solve your difficult situations over Twitter.  Neither is it meant to convince you to go out and simply FIND a problem to solve in this matter.  This was a personal experiment and I was pleased by the results.  There are indeed other companies out there in the social media sphere that are using this “stuff” for both fun and business. Coffee is a simple thing and I could have simply coughed up the money to get a cup of joe the first time around. Client relationships, however, are not always simple. We all need to listen and have a high sense of awareness. Somewhere out there is a client that simply wants to be heard.  Sometimes a resolution is had simply by acknowledging a client and offering to listen to them, not simply hear them, but listen to them. I know that my friends still ask me what this Twitter thing is all about. “Relationships” is one key answer to that question.

So… are you listening?  Truly listening?

Last week I found myself cleaning my kitchen in preparation to entertain guests for dinner.  The laundry room is unfortunately part of the kitchen in that the fridge is right next to the laundry dryer and the microwave is right next to the washing machine.  Thus, when I say I am cleaning the kitchen and as part of such cleaning the kitchen floor, I am ipso facto cleaning the laundry room floor.

Generally this is not much of an issue, except we recently purchased a large discount-chain bottle of laundry detergent.  This is one of those that has the button to let you pour the detergent so that you don’t have to wrestle a twenty pound bottle all of the time.  The problem this time around is that there seems to be a tiny annoying leak such that the front of the dryer (upon which the bottle rests) and the floor beneath the dryer have a bit of soap collecting.  To compound the problem, the soap has been drying a little bit over time, not so much that it is actually dry, but enough that you can’t simply wipe it away.

Here is where the paradox lies… laundry detergent is meant to clean things, yet in its current semi-dry state there is no good way to clean up the soap.

Option 1:  Since the soap is only semi-dry, and we know that soap moves a lot better when it’s wet, grab a damp cloth or paper towel and wipe while rehydrating the soap.  The problem here is the water and scrubbing action now cause the soap to spread around and to start foaming up.  This solution seems to be going no where good.

Option 2:  Since the soap is semi-dry and this acting like stuborn putty, maybe we can scrape at it.  Sure – scrape away and wind up with big clumps of disgusting soap.  I mean really!  How can soap be disgusting? Let’s forget about the Fight Club references. It’s meant to clean things so it must be clean.

So I ask you, how do you best clean up soap?

On one occasion, I came across this tweet from Robert Scobel informing everyone that he was transmitting a video feed from his cell phone camera live to qik so that anyone could listen in to the party.  Not only was I watching a live feed of people sitting around a bar table in San Antonio, but I was able to interact with them via chat and get near immediate responses via the feed.  I must be getting old because this was a bit shocking to me and it all started with a twitter tweet.

Alternatively, I have found myself responding to someone’s tweet on twitter while communicating with them via an instant messaging platform.  All the while, this person was simply sitting at the other end of the office building at which I work.  In the end, and after finally realizing what I was doing, I got up and walked over and started to talk.  Yup – verbal communication face to face.  Amazing.

I’m kind of curious what else I am going to run into.