Gratitude For My Friends, My Online Gratitude Journal # 24

It’s a bit early for my regular Gratitude Journal posting day, but I’m writing it anyway.  Because I have a lot to say.

Get inspired by The Quote Effect

First is about Davina Haisell’s new eBook The Quote Effect.  This is a beautiful compilation of inspirational quotes made by 33 bloggers (yes . . . including yours sincerely).  It’s done very nicely with pretty pictures and introduction to each blogs.  And it’s free.

Thank you, Davina, for your great work!

My eBook Stop Craving Sugar!

Next is about my own eBook Stop Craving Sugar! A lot of people have helped me edit and promote this eBook.  (The link takes you to the dedicated sales page where you can read some of the testimonials.)

I really love this eBook myself.  I’ve put in a lot of thoughts, research, and my heart into this eBook.  It addresses the tricky and baffling problem of sugar cravings not just with the nutritional understanding but with the mental, emotional, and spiritual understanding.  The nutritional part is well written, but the real glory is in the spiritual part toward the end.  It’s written so beautifully that I myself get moved every time I read it.  And I’ve read it at least 30 times by now.  (That’s what takes to perfect the editing, you know.)

Please check it out.  I also offer affiliate programs to promote this eBook, so if you know someone who blogs about healthy eating or personal development in general who may be interested, please let me know.  Thank you.

New tagline for Yes to Me

I just keep updating my tagline for this blog.  I know.  Because I keep growing.  Yes to Me started as a way to share my adventures as a new entrepreneur.  I soon realized that, in order to achieve success as entrepreneur, we need the foundation of healthy spirituality within us.  So Yes to Me became more and more about spirituality.  The tagline got officially updated last November to “Spiritual Healing and Growth for Greater Success”.

With the recent realization about light ascension, I’m updating the tagline to “Lightworkers’ Empowerment & Ascension”  The issue of ascension is still widely unexplored, and I’m learning more and more each day as I work in the Akashic Records.  So stay tuned!

I also updated my greeting on the sidebar and About page.  Please celebrate the continual rebirth of this blog and myself (which I think is the critical part of light ascension) ^_^

My question for you

If you can start your life anew today, who do you choose to be?  I’m not asking you if you want to be Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt.  I’m asking you the qualities you desire for yourself and for your life.

And what does that new you choose to do today?

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action.  Because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.  If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.  The world will not have it.  It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it compares with other expressions.  It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.” — Martha Graham

Today I am grateful for my freedom and for the coming spring.  I’m grateful for my spiritual gifts as well as the gifts of others they bring to this world.

My Online Gratitude Journal 100th Post Edition #21

I’m writing this post with great gratitude to all my readers, subscribers, commenters and fellow bloggers.   This is the 100th post on Yes to Me!  I’ve been posting about twice weekly and this blog is now 11 months old. Celebrate with me ^_^

I have a few news to share with you, too. (Photo by Mr. Greenjeans)

Daily inspiration by Twitter

During the holidays, I became a Twitter convert.  Twitter is like a huge party.  Everyone is talking (tweeting).  You can tweet back at someone using @ or DM (direct mailing).  You can repeat what someone said by RT (retweeting).  All in 140 characters or less.  I’m from Japan, the country of haiku. This is my kind of play.

So I started my Daily Tweet Service.  Follow me, and you get daily <inspiration> by Twitter.  It’s like newsletter, but shorter and sweeter.

Here is one of my <inspiration> tweets that got Rted:

<inspiration> What you have to say about someone is more about you, not that person. Are you using kind words?

Due to the nature of Twitter, you also get sneak views of my personal life, like the fact I went to dentist on Tuesday;) and I met a new friend from Facebook on Wednesday.  Well, what to say – if you are not interested in this part, just check the <inspiration> tweets.

And if you want to learn more about how to utilize Twitter, I highly recommend Probloggers’ Twitip.  This is where I learned the fun of twittering.

New program to help you develop intuition

I’m also launching a new program to help you develop intuition.  I hope you can sense my excitement in the description on that page.  I really think this is the neatest program I have to offer.  You learn how to develop your intuition experientially by getting coached for six weeks – but the real coach is not me, it’s your own Spirit Guides!  They coach you through me.

Further, because your Spirit Guides want to help you so much to improve your life, this coaching also brings real changes in your life.  I mean, if that is what you want for yourself.

I’ve been working on pilot programs and everything seems to work great.  Please do check that page Develop Intuition.  At the very least, you will learn what intuition really is.  (Have you ever wondered about it?)

As you can most likely see and feel, time is changing – big time.  The social system that you have taken for granted as “safe and secure” is no longer so.  Something new is coming to take shape.  Despite all the depressing news, I believe this new change is something wonderful.  It’s just destruction must precede creation.

Because a lot of the existing knowledge is coming to crumbles, intuition is your strongest and best guidance.  Learn to listen to your intuition and learn to trust and act on your intuition.

Further readings:

Todd at We The Change just wrote an interesting post related to this:
How To Deal With Life In Tough Times

And, Ariel at You Are Truly Loved just published my interview on intuition and Spirit Guides.

My upcoming eBook

On this Yes to Me blog, we talk about spirituality.  I sincerely believe spiritual healing and growth is the foundation of worldly success.  This success includes success as entrepreneur, but that is not all.  It’s all kinds of success, in your personal life, relationships, career, finance, and health.

The one challenge of this blog is some people may not see the connection of spirituality and success quickly.  Well, helping them see this unification is the main objective of this blog, but I also want to reach these people, especially those who are having specific challenges in their lives, more directly.

So I’ve been writing my first eBook.  I will introduce it when all the editing it done, but I can say it’s about eating healthy and mindfully.

Today I’m grateful for friends, new and old.  I’m even grateful for the rain (just keep the river safe from flooding, though. . .) I’m grateful for this adventure called life.

Are there any topics you’d like me to write about on this blog?  I will certainly do my best ^_^  Please let me know in the comment!

5 Signs Of A Small Blog That Is Ready To Grow

(Photo by Kaptain Krispy Kreme)

When you leave comments as a way to market your own blog . . .

In my last post Know, Like, Trust: Three Steps To Winning The Business, I emphasized the importance of working on the process of being known. It’s such a basic step, yet it’s quite obvious that many businesses fail on this first step of marketing. How many businesses go out of business before they ever get attention of substantial number of potential customers? Forget about the quality of your products and services for just a moment, if nobody knows about it, it doesn’t matter to them.

In the online world, this translates into getting attention of new readers. And one of the tried-and-true approach is to comment and / or guest blog on other blogs.

James the “handsome debonair king of the blogosphere” wrote in this post that it’s better to comment on smaller blogs. He insists that the ROI (return of investment) is higher with smaller blogs. Kind of like investing in small cap stocks. It’s an interesting strategy.

Not all small blogs are created equal, though . . .

I sort of agree with him. There is a point in investing in growing small businesses rather than in large cap blue chips. The “sort of” is inserted there, however, because I don’t think all small businesses or blogs are created equal. There are small blogs that are going to stay small and silently disappear and small blogs that are ready to grow big. Two different animals even if the current subscribers number are the same.

Can we spot promising small blogs that are going to grow big? Like stock investment, there is no guarantee, but I think there are signs that indicate that a blog owner knows what he or she is doing. Look for these signs and find great small blogs to comment.

1. There is About page with contact info.
As I discussed in Are You Afraid Of Expressing Yourself In Business?, people like people. Further, if the blogger is hiding out, do you think they are responsible for their writing? I don’t like dealing with nameless someone, and I bet many people feel the same.

2. The blogger responds to comments.
Maybe things are different for A-list blogger who gets 100 comments for every post. For everyone else, it serves to treat the visitors right. Not ignoring the people who spent their precious time to write their comment is really just the first step. I usually don’t return to blogs that ignored me before, and again, I’m betting many people feel the same.

3. There are outgoing links.
We don’t live in the vacuum. Bloggers who send out link loves know they will be reciprocated. (Well, most of the time.) Further, it shows the blogger goes out and do some learning or marketing by reading other blogs, which is important for growth.

4. Unique contents that deliver value.
We are tired of rehashed content. (Except this extraordinary one) Unique content is fun to read, and it attracts incoming links. But I’m putting this at #4 because there are certain limitations to uniqueness (whereas the aforementioned three are actionable for anyone willing to put their effort in). I mean, I’m pretty well read and it’s very seldom that I come across with something that is so new to me. What I’d like to see is a fresh angle, a personal flavor. Of course, if you can offer something that I never heard of, that will be wonderful — it reminds me there are more to explore in life.

Needless to say, please present the great contents in a neat way that doesn’t take more than 15 seconds to figure out what this blog is all about . . .

5. Big Bonus Point: You’ve seen the blogger at other parties – I mean, at other blogs. This means the blogger is working on the marketing.

Do you know of other signs to spot a growing blog? Some secrets to success? Whisper me. . .

Further reading: King James is currently writing a series of posts on the art of guest posting. The first post of the series is here.

More reading: The best way to comment is to find the blog you really enjoy and comment for the joy of having conversation with the blog author. Cath Lawson just published a terrific post on this — I could not explain better.

If you like this article, you might enjoy my eBook on spiritual entrepreneurship. Click here for free, immediate download