Week 5

     I'm back blogger world to share with you week 5 of my Link Year adventure! This mystery monday we had an amazing challenge. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the game bigger or better, but here is how you play: you take an item and you go anywhere and ask anyone if you could trade your item for an item of theirs that is bigger or better. Well, some dude from the land of maple syrup, Canada, played bigger or better and took a red paperclip and eventually traded up for a house. So we got into our dinner groups and were given a red paperclip and was told that whoever got the most valuable item after two hours and 30 minutes would get Sonic happy hour. Naturally, my group won. Now on to the substance of the week. Adam Donyes spoke on Tuesday about time management. This really brought to the forefront things I have been contemplating, such as finding time for applying for jobs, working on musical production and exposing how much free time I really have. That talk really benefitted me and will benefit me for years to come. On Wednesday, Adam Martin talked about finances. I have the blessing of having my father work in the financial world and he has shared lots of financial knowledge and wisdom with me, so even though the talk was very valuable for most people, most of the items spoken in the lecture were things I already knew. Though, the lecture might have been repetitive, he shared a resource that is great for keeping track of your spending and financial habits, www.mint.com. This is an online resource that links with your online banking and basically categorizes your spending, so you can modify or see how well you are doing managing your finances. Today was definitely the most challenging day, because Adam Donyes talked about managing self. It was challenging because he subliminally forced us to look at our inner self and see what needed growth and what needed pruning. Myself, I am not the most disciplined person and discipline is the main ingredient for self management, this became really evident during the talk today. The latter half of Proverbs 6:23 says, "... and the corrections of discipline are the way to life,". This really impacted me because I not only have I seen proof of discipline working great things in my life but scripture supports it, and this has given me great motivation to be more disciplined, and that's awesome. In conclusion, this week was full of good tips to help manage myself in a way honoring to God and one of the main ingredients for doing this is discipline. So I challenge you, if things are not going the way you are planning, honestly ask yourself, where are you spending your time, finances, and self? If everything is in check, great, keep it up, if not, discipline yourself, it works.