Without realizing it, posting my weekly gratitude article gives me a much needed kick in the pants, especially if I’m feeling a downward spiral, which happens every once in a while - hey, I’m just a regular guy here!  It reminds me over and over again of what I’m blessed with, single-handedly taking the focus off what I don’t have or want.  It serves to keep the giving and receiving lubricated throughout the blogosphere.  Hopefully it gives you the kick in the pants too!  (Photo Credit:  labutle)

This week’s gratitude goes to:

Other writers/bloggers with useful and interesting information:

Chrissy over at The Executive Assistant’s Toolbox wrote a great article, “Gratitude Kick in the Pants“ about how she also admits falling into the downward spiral once in a while and uses gratitude as a tool to climb back out.  

Chris Melton wrote an excellent post about what it’s like to be an entrepreneur in “The Joys and Frustrations of Being an Entrepreneur.”  I particularly liked how he describes the journey as if you were careening down the mountainside at 90 mph with one headlight out.  If you have your own business or you want to have one, this is for you.

Tina Su touched on a subject that appear on many people’s top five things they fear the most in Your Guide to Conquer Fear of Public Speaking.  Even as an experienced speaker that I am, I found myself enjoying this article because it served as a reminder of some of the things I learned when I first started public speaking.   And yes, even after hundreds, maybe thousands of presentations that I’ve given, I still get the nilly-willies before going on stage but the moment I open my mouth, it miraculously vanishes and I go into the “zone.”  But I have to get through the nilly-willies first!  Thanks Tina for a suburb article.

This one is a tribute to my fifth grade teacher who long ago who shouted out the three most important words, THAT’S RIGHT, STEPHEN!, causing a thunderous ripple effect that continues to influence all that I have done and will do in the future.  Joel listed 5 Top Character Traits of Great Teachers that described Mrs. Jordan to a “T.”  For those of you wondering what happened that day in her class, you can read about it at Three Words……

Readers, Visitors and Subscribers to Adversity University:

Because I’m VERY grateful to the AU community for participating via heartfelt and value-added comments, I made a couple of changes and additions that you might have already noticed this past week. 

First, I added a new feature, “Comment Champs,” giving the most active commentators both name and link-back recognition (assuming they have a website to link back to - -not everyone has one and in those cases, their names are still listed but without a linkback).  This feature automatically resets back to zero at the beginning of every month to give newly active commentators a chance to shine in the spotlight.   

Second, I upgraded the “Most Recent Comments” sidebar to do three things.  One, was to add a short excerpt of recent comments along with a link-back to the commentator’s site (again, assuming he/she has one).  Two, was to take my comments out of the picture because the focus is on YOU, not me.  And three, if you’re not the most frequent commentator, at least, for the time being, you’re the most recent commentator!  Everybody wins!  :)

Update as of 11/30/07:

After much research, I’ve added a third plug-in this morning that will go largely unnoticed because it works behind-the-scenes.  It rewards you (the commentators) even more by giving proper linkback juice towards whatever URL you put in the URL box when filling out the comment form. 

Up to this point, while other readers and visitors were able to visit your site by clicking onto your name in the comment section, because of the “no-follow” coding that came standard with Wordpress, those links were not being given proper Google or Technorati linkback juice.  In other words, even though anyone could click on to the commentator’s name and be led to his/her site, because of the “no-follow” coding, those links did not count as far as Google and Technorati were concerned.  But thanks to this plug-in, every time you leave a comment and fill in the URL box, your site will automatically improve its ranking on Google and Technorati.  How’s that for more link love?  Aren’t I a nice, grateful guy or what?!?!?

If none of this makes any sense to you (it took me a while to understand it myself), feel free to fill out the contact form for more information.  Otherwise don’t worry, just know that I’m giving you more link love than ever everytime you leave a valid and value-added comment with the URL box filled in (that means putting your heart and soul into your comments and not one liners like “Great post!” or “Very interesting!”  Please be more substantive than that!). 

For those of you who have Wordpress blogs, here are the three plug-ins I’ve been talking about:

1. Top Commentators
2. Recent Comments
3. Semiologic DoFollow

If you liked this post and you want to be notified of the next one, subscribe via Email or Full Text RSS Feed. I would love to have you as part of the community!

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