Kindle e-book sale starts May 1

Beginning on May 1,  the Kindle edition of The Pursuit of Passion is on sale for as little as 99 cents!  The sale lasts a week, and the price goes up gradually as the week goes by, so now is the time to grab one for your Kindle!  Go here to get your e-book on sale:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=pursuit%20of%20passion%20kahn   or here:
http://pursuitofpassionbooks.com

Passion Party #510 - Build A Circus or Build A Library?

Do you pray at the Temple of Knowledge

     or the Temple of Entertainment?

Is my purpose to entertain or to teach?

Our life is short and full of pain

so I will build a tent of wonder, magic and humor

filled with acts of physical dexterity.

Its purpose will be to bring joy to children

and to their families.

A circus is a place of humanity,

of financial and emotional exchange.

Our life is short and full of pain

so I will build a great library

I will bring people together to study and learn

from mankind's accumulated knowledge.

Organized knowledge is power and

a library is a lasting gift.

Its purpose will be to bring literature and wisdom to children

and to their families.

A library is a place of humanity,

of education and philosophical exchange.

So, given the choice,

would you build a circus or a library?

Passion Party #509 - If I Had All The Money I Want

Desire is not limitless

I can only eat so much chocolate cake before it spoils my birthday.

 

 So it is with money.

I love having money

I love knowing that every day there is enough money in my checking account to cover my expenses.

 I love he thought that

I control my income level and

I choose to make enough money for an abundant life

Every month I am able to set aside 30% of my income for savings and paying taxes

Life is good.

 

The purpose of my wealth is not to make more wealth

but to buy me freedom.

Freedom to do what I want as I get older

Freedom to travel and see my kids thrive and grow.

My current goal is a million dollars in the bank - this feels substantial.

And then the new challenge of not spending all of it before I die will arise.

 

Whether your goal is $100,000 or $100,000,000

it is all relative

it is just extra zeros

the important thing is to know that there is enough

and this, my friend, is an inside job.

 

http://passionparty09.blogspot.com/

Passion Party #508 - The Passover Egg

The story is told this time of year

 in Jewish households around the world.

A story of freedom and redemption,

of a God that speaks directly to man

and causes miracles as well as hardship.

A vengeful God that in the end

takes away the life of one Egyptian generation

so that a new generation of Jews

can have freedom to search for a new land.

 

The story is told in symbol and song,

with a plate filled with items that, the book tells us,

represent the Pascal Lamb, the mortar used to build bricks,

the bitterness of slavery,

and Spring vegetables dipped in the tears of life.

 

But what of the egg?

The egg sits on the Seder plate, with nary a mention in the story.

 

This symbol of rebirth, of fertility,

is the unspoken connection to our Pagan past.

The Jews believe in one God,

but the holiday traditions still speak to the rituals

of celebrating and acknowledging the seasons.

It is no coincidence that the Festival of Lights falls near the Winter Solstice

nor is it an accident that Passover takes place during the full moon

around the time of the Spring Equinox.

 

The egg does not fit in the Haggadah;

It precedes the story

It is what came first

It is the new beginning

the new birth of the world

our connection to our primordial past

and a chance for us to make a better life in the future.

Passion Party #507 - Change and Progress

Just when I think I have it figured out, everything changes.

It happens all the time

 and is a constant fact of life.

The question is

what do you do when change occurs?

 How do you react to the new landscape, the new guidelines, the new mailman, the new pay structure?

Change happens automatically.

Progress is a choice.

I can choose to move forward

I can choose to grow

I can decide to grab the new rule book and learn it

or I can decide to write my own rule book, and see what happens

Whatever happens, I know that once I have it all figured out, everything will change

and then I will more choices.

http://pursuitofpassionbooks.com

Passion Party #506 - Ethics Vs. Values

You can round up all the investment bankers, all the C-Suite executives

 and all the Wharton and Harvard MBA Students

and teach them Ethics

and it will make no difference.

What makes a difference is the person's Values.

 

Ethics is a defined as a philosophy of systematizing and recommending concepts of right and wrong.

 

Values are what you deem important to your life,

the actions you are willing to take because they gives meaning to your life.

Just knowing right from wrong does not solve the problem;

sometimes people discover doing the wrong thing is best if their values are selfish or greedy.

The US Army has core values:

loyalty - duty - selfless service - integrity

Our constitution has core values:

life - liberty - the pursuit of happiness

My business has core values:

integrity - professionalism - caring - teamwork - stewardship

 

Find your core values, and the ethics will follow.

 

Passion Party #505: Not-So-Dumb Phone

I live in a prehistoric age

when there wasn't an "app" for that,

there was a nap for that.

 

I have an old-fashioned "flip phone",

one of those clam-shell jobs

that doesn't break when I drop it on the ground.

 

I can call people.

They can call me.

They can even text me now (I finally agreed to spend $5 a month so I can connect with modern people that type into their phones instead of using their voice.)

I even text back - one or two words usually.

 

People get mad at me if I don't respond when they email me while I am in a car, or in the elevator, or at night.

They just have to wait a little bit.

Patience, they say, is a virtue.

 

Now we are learning the downside of

always being connected.

There is an aphorism: "When something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product."

The GPS on your smart phone not only tells you where the nearest pizza place is,

it tells data brokers that you like to eat pizza.

It tells Google and Facebook to push pizza ads your way.

If you choose, your phone will now know

when you sleep, how you sleep, when you wake up, where you are, what you are doing.

 

It may all be harmless

but it sounds a bit too much like "1984".

Do you remember that?

It is something they used to call a "book" by George Orwell.

 

Right now I am happy to have a phone

that is just a "dumb phone".