I missed last week, so these are actually kind of drying out. I’m contemplating moving the round ups to Mondays.

The Problem with Positive Thinking from Seth Godin

Tribes author, Seth Godin, offers an intriguing insight about the role of positive and negative thought in the human experience. If positive thinking increases self confidence, which in turn improves performance, who do intelligent people partake in negative thought? Godin proposes that negative thinking feels good, that it “soothes our pain, or eases our embarrassment… protects us and lowers expectations“. The truth of it being that positive thinking is actually difficult, and requires effort, but it’s worth it.

Woman Refuses To Pay Off Bank Of America Credit Card at The Huffington Post

Ann Minch of Red Bluff, California is taking a stand. After the Bank of America repeatedly raised her interest rate up to a whopping 30%, Minch says she will no longer pay. She has carried a moderate balance on this credit card for years, and has always made at least the minimum payment on time. Following a layoff, she called the creditor to negotiate more reasonable terms, to which she got a big fat “No”. Minch has sinced closed her cheqing and savings accounts with the Bank of America, and, despite the future repercusions on her credit rating, refuses to pay the credit card bill any more, in the name of standing up for what is right! More power to you Ann Minch! My hopes are that more people join you to fight this massive goliath, as it’s a fight worth winning.

Cure all Running Injuries (and Pain) with One Simple Fix….Barefoot Running at Fitness Spotlight

I have seen many endorsements for those crazy Vibram Five Finger ‘shoes’ all about the intertubes, and I didn’t get why people were endorsing them, until now.  Mike O’Donnell pulls together a wide range of evidence that running has never been the cause of all those runner’s knees, but it’s actually the running shoes! Being designed to protect our feet from the crewl ground, sneakers have long been making our feet weak, causing us to run incorrectly! I’m going to have to try Vibram Five Fingers out – any excuse to go to MEC really.

Google’s Data Liberation Front

I was completely dependent on Gmail. When they had an outage for a few hours a couple of weeks back I could do nothing except go a little banana sandwich from not being able to access my email: my data! Google has started the Data Liberation Front to empower it’s users with respect to their data that Google manages for them. If you want to know how to get you emails out of gmail, your documents out of Google docs, or your site statistics out of Analytics, this is the place to go to figure out how.

Bootstrapping

I’ve mentioned previously that I am, at least currently, a one-woman operation here at List Central. I am positive that I can build List Central into something that can sustain itself. The initial costs are are coming out of my pocket, thus, I am keeping the costs to a minimum until the point comes when List Central can afford more with the income it generates. In time, I want to see List Central grow into a larger business that employs talented people, until then, I’m bootstrapping it!

What is bootstrapping you ask? Bootstrapping is a “self-sustaining process that proceeds without external help” [Wikipedia April 20th, 2009]

In The Bootstrapper’s Bible Seth Godin outlines The Bootstrapper’s Manifesto and provides a road map for first time bootstrappers. Ready Godin’s e-book was a real turning point for me and List Central, as I got real excitement and motivation from it’s digital pages. The Bootstrapper’s Bible helped me by:

• Showed me that I was far from alone in my quest
• Gave me valuable tools to help me meet my goals
• Inspired me with confidence
• Convinced me to be persistent through the many challenges of bootstrapping a new business
• Told me the name for what I was doing: Bootstrapping!

Free copies of Seth Godin’s e-book “The Bootstrapper’s Bible” are still available, so grab yourself a copy while you still can!