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Bob Love’s childhood in rural Louisiana wasn’t easy. He ran away from an abusive father at age 8, then lived with his grandmother as the youngest of the 16 children and grandchildren she was raising in her tiny home. They were poor. And on top of everything, young Bob stuttered—sometimes so severely that he couldn’t articulate a single word.

To help him escape children’s vicious taunts and the generally bleak outlook of the family’s situation, Bob’s grandmother suggested this antidote: Get a dream and hang on to it.

So the boy fantasized about being a basketball star. His initial setup required some resourcefulness: a coat hanger stapled to his grandmother’s house for the basket, and a sock stuffed with grass and other socks for the ball. But he took his dream seriously and hung on to it until, against all odds, he became a three-time NBA All-Star. Love played 11 seasons—eight of them with the Bulls, where he ranked second on their all-time scoring list with 12,623 points. And then the dream came to an abrupt halt. Love hurt his back and after surgery his doctors told him his playing days were over.

Not only did Love’s career leave him; so did his ability to walk properly, and so did his wife (taking with her nearly everything they owned). The only thing that remained with Love was his stutter, and a refusal to give up.

He learned to live around his back pain, but his stutter prevented him from getting anything but menial jobs. He finally landed a position bussing tables for $4.45 an hour at a Nordstrom restaurant. And instead of children taunting him about his stutter, he heard a new breed of unintentionally hurtful remarks from customers: “Hey, that’s Bob Love! He used to be a great basketball player. What a shame.”

But just as he’d done as a boy, Love persevered. He decided that if he was going to be a busboy, he was going to be the best one around. His diligence paid off when one of Nordstrom’s owners took an interest in his career development. John Nordstrom paid for Love’s speech therapy, a move that cleared the path for the former basketball star’s second climb to success—this time toward the unlikely position of company spokesperson. Then the Bulls organization caught wind of Love’s new skills and called him with the offer to be their director of community affairs, which he accepted.

Today the former stutterer and NBA All-Star is one of the top motivational speakers on the circuit. He gives hundreds of speeches and presentations each year, many of them to teens about the importance of education and overcoming adversity. He encourages others to rewrite their life stories by telling them how he rewrote his own. How does he do it? It’s easy—he just speaks from his heart.

“All my life I dreamed and prayed to be able to communicate normally with people. I would have given up everything else in my life to do it.”
—Bob Love

Express Gratitude, Renew Your Faith, Take Action

ok, Stephen Pierce rocks! - he has made a post at his DTAlpha Talk Back Blog about what Napoleon Hill believed to be the greatest asset - FAITH. Make your decision today, renew your faith. This decision alone will allow you to use applied faith for the attainment of whatever you desire in life.

About Applied Faith from the Napoleon Hill Foundation website

• Faith is awareness of, belief in, and harmonizing with the universal powers.
• Faith is a state of mind which must be active not passive, to be useful in achieving lasting success.
• Close the door to fear behind you and you will quickly see the door of faith open before you.
• Fear is nothing more than a state of mind, which is subject to your own direction and control.
• Faith will not bring you what you desire, but it will show you the way to go after it for yourself.

Instructions For Life…

• Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
• When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
• Follow the three R’s:  Respect for self, Respect for others and Responsibility for all your actions.
•  Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
• Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
• Don’t let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
• When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
• Spend some time alone every day.
• Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
• Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
• Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
• A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
• In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
• Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
• Be gentle with the earth.
• Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
• Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
• Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
• Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

Traffic Machines - SEO Software & Free Website Visitors System

 Bishop Anders, search engine genius, has created 26 little traffic machines that are making folks lots of money and driving floods of free, tragted traffic to their websites and affiliate pages. This program is worthy of a second look and he also offers up a boat load of bonus material.

Here’s what some of the people who are using their software are saying:

"This will create a tsunami of traffic and subscribers!" - Rick Macaulay

"Ran it through the software once and now the site gets hits every day." - Wallace Schempp

"More unique visitors in one day than in 6 months using traditional methods!" - Sky Benson

"…a few days later I started to see more traffic hitting my websites and more comments left on my blogs!" - Marc Sibille

"Within 2 months they were all on the front page of all the major search engines for many different keywords." - Floyd King

"It gets me listed in minutes. I use this software to launch every campaign." - Clifton Boston

"I have never had as much success with any other software as I have with yours. In just one day I managed to make 2 sales of a big ticket item" - Patrick Bankay

"This software is revolutionary in how fast it got my websites ranked in the major search engines!" - Lamar Owens

"Using your software I was able to double my views almost overnight!" - Marcus

Be sure to check it out at www.trafficmachines.com

Wired Magazine’s Free! Article is clever and thought provoking! The article says that all markets will go to free as marginal costs of creating the service fall to zero, zilch, nada. 

Wired Magazine Says… 

The rise of "freeconomics" is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web. Just as Moore’s law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. Which is to say, the trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero.

Read  >>> Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business and  the share with us any examples of "free business" showing up in your life.

What can we learn from the terrible news coming out of Big Spring, Texas today?

It makes me wonder about oil refinery safety and begs the question…What can businesses (especially oil refineries) do to prevent incidents like this from happening?

Although there are still plenty of questions left unanswered about what caused the the Big Spring, Texas oil refinery explosion, it is clear that the potential for significant loss to business and life occurs through fires in the workplace every year. Some past examples like; Abbeystead, HMS Glasgow and BP Grangemouth can’t be ignored. Although it appears as though this recent explosion in Big Spring, Texas did not result in a signifcant loss of life, What if it wasn’t a holiday, how many more workers would have been injured?

Whether large or small, fire causes personal suffering, damage to facilities, communities, equipment and buildings, and loss of business. There are two excellent books for business owners and risk managers to consider. The first book is written by Norman Thompson, Fire Hazards in Industry. It is suitable for those with little or no experience in fire safety and empowers staff to begin developing their own fire risk assessment. The second book, Handbook of Fire & Explosion Protection Engineering Principles for Oil, Gas, Chemical, & Related Facilities is more of a handbook but has decent content specifically related to those in the oil, gas and chemical plants.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of those effected by the Big Spring, Texas explosion.

Related Oil Refinery Explosion Articles

OAOA - Big Spring explosion

Associated Press - Explosion at Texas Oil Refinery Hurts 1

KFDM News - Explosion at Big Spring Refinery Felt Miles Away

Recommended Reading

Largest Ever Beef Recall - Linked with School Lunches

The Depertment of Agriculture issued the largest ever beef recall in the United States, determining that 143 million pounds of beef was unfit for human consumption because of inspection violations. In the released statement by Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer, he said, “Because the cattle did not receive complete and proper inspection FSIS has determined them to be unfit for human food and the company is conducting a recall.” The beef products that were recalled ar stated to come from the Westland, King Meat Co., Regal and Hallmark Meat Packing Labels.

The Los Angeles Times reported…

It was not immediately clear where the meat products are, but the USDA said that some Westland meat products were purchased for federal food and nutrition programs. The agency placed a Jan. 30 hold on all Westland products in federal outlets, including the National School Lunch Program, the Emergency Food Assistance Program and the Food Assistance Program on Indian Reservations, USDA officials said Sunday. 

So what does this all mean to you and waht can you do to protect yourself now and in the future?

• Grow Your Own.
• Try to Eat Seasonally 
• Join a CSA and spend some time on this site http://www.eatwild.org to find farmers in your area. 
• Andrew Weil M.D. recommends eating only organic beef. See Worried About Mad Cow Disease? 
• Check out this great video about diet, the environment and animal cruelty.

Related News Articles

The following products are subject to recall. They include boxes. of mechanically tenderized steaks and ground beef of varying weights. …
www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/Recall_023_2007_Release.pdf

A company voluntarily has recalled nearly 96000 pounds of ground beef products after two people were sickened, possibly by E. coli bacteria, …
www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/health/chi-beef_26nov26,1,3441512.story

A California meat supplier once again expanded a beef recall Saturday to include a total of 5.7 million pounds of both fresh and frozen …
www.foxbusiness.com/latest-news/article/beef-recall-expands-57-million-pounds-e-coli_279916_1.html

Stephen Pierce just outlined the 3 ways to make money online. The video is only seven minutes long but definitely worth viewing - if only to serve as a reminder about keeping things simple and focusing on already proven ways to make money online.

In this video Stephen Pierce covers the following strategies:

• Pay Per Click
• Pay Per Lead
• Pay Per Sale

All effective strategies in their own right but when you combine them into one - that’s when you have the opportunity to earn real money online.

Check out the 3 Ways To Make Money Online - by Stephen Pierce

Those with bad credit often know exactly why they have it. Sometimes it is something that they did on their own, and other times it happens because they had a twist of fate that changed everything, and this meant problems with money. Whatever the reasons for credit problems, there are always times when people may think it would be best to get a loan to cover things. This might even help rebuild credit if it is done right, but those thinking of getting something like bad credit personal loans should think it over before they sign up.

There are some people that do offer bad credit personal loans to those who need them, but there are still some that should not do this. If you are in debt, there is a reason for it. It might be that you don’t make a lot, but there are other reasons. Some don’t know how to limit spending, and some have had a medical issue or even a death in the family that has messed up their finances. Divorce is a common reason for bad credit, and that sometimes can not be helped.

Whatever the case is for you, think about what it really means to take out bad credit personal loans. If you haven’t thought about and tried to correct the problems that got you into debt in the first place, these might not be a good idea just yet. Instead, you might want to put off a bad credit personal loan for a few months until you can see your spending habits for what they are. If this is something that you have thought about, then perhaps you are ready to get one of these loans.

You are going to pay a higher interest rate with bad credit personal loans, but if you want to rebuild your credit, or you have an emergency that you just can’t pay for any other way, this might be your only option. They can be great for a family in debt if they are paid back in a timely manner, but should never be taken lightly. When you contact someone about bad credit personal loans, discuss all of your options so that you get the very best loan for your situation. Get a loan if you need one, but if you don’t do anything to make your situation with debt and spending any better, you aren’t doing yourself any favors.

What Did You Have for Breakfast Today?

A study has found that those who eat whole-grain cereal seven or more times per week were 28 percent less likely to develop heart failure over the course of the study. Those who ate the cereal two to six times per week were 22 percent less likely to experience heart failure, and those who ate whole-grain cereal just once per week were 14 percent less likely to experience heart failure.

 In a Physicians’ Health Study, of the 10,469 physicians reporting cereal consumption, 8,266 (79 percent) ate whole-grain cereal. Twenty-one percent, or 2,203, reported eating refined cereal.

Among those who reported eating whole grain cereal, 35 percent ate the cereal seven or more times per week, 39 percent reported two to six times per week and 26 percent reported once per week. The research was conducted from 1982 to 2006.

“The significant health benefits of whole-grain cereal are not just for kids, but also for adults,” said Luc Djousse, lead author of the study and assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Aging at Brigham & Women’s Health Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “A whole-grain, high-fiber breakfast may lower blood pressure and cholesterol and prevent heart attacks.”