Horeb International

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It is 2013. I love the New Year because of what it means – a new beginning. The New Year is a clean slate and it provides the opportunity to improve upon the previous year. It also provides another chance to make those New Year resolutions and the determination to stick by them this time. We all start each New Year with good intentions but struggle reach our goals. This doesn’t dissuade most people from making New Year resolutions. I find that I need targets to motivate me to improve and grow personally and professionally. 2013 is a big year for me and my family and I am determined to seize and maximise it. My 2013 mantra is ‘less is more’.

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This blog post focuses on the leadership differences between the first two kings of Israel. The Israelites went to Prophet Samuel to demand a king to rule over them. They wanted a king like other gentile kings. God was not pleased with their request but he honoured it by giving the people the leader they wanted – Saul.

A question I get asked a lot is how do I generate ideas for the blog? What is my creative process? I have been thinking about this over the last couple of weeks. The research I did for a work presentation on ‘attention’ helped me come up with the creative loop I go through in developing my blog and presentation content. I hope you will find the phases outlined below useful in creating your own content.

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A thought occurred to me during a church service a few weeks ago. It was on how easy it is to miss great opportunities because they don’t match our expectations. Great opportunities sometimes come disguised and don’t always have great packaging. It was the story of Jesus and the religious authorities of his time that got me thinking about the human tendency to miss disguised opportunities because of our biases.

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I watched the Indian cricketer, Cheteshwar Pujara, on Sky Sports get his first test century against New Zealand about an hour ago. He was obviously delighted and so were the partisan Indian spectators who were rooting for him. A century which is hundred runs in cricket is rare. It takes patience, perseverance, skill, discipline, mental concentration, will-power and sometime good fortune to bat a hundred runs in cricket. This is the reason why it is a celebrated landmark as both sets of supporters applaud the batsman who accomplishes this feat.

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I have been thinking about information overload for a couple of weeks now because I am planning to do a presentation on it soon. Thinking about how I consume information and how to avoid getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount I encounter on a daily basis. This is a problem that I believe most regular users of the internet encounter because we live in an information-rich world.

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I have spent the last week moving my site from WordPress.com to WordPress.org. It hasn’t been a smooth transition as advertised online. What is the difference between the two platforms? Well, imagine both of them are two cars; WordPress.com would be the automatic car while WordPress.org is the manual version. Why then did I make the move from an automatic car to a manual or ‘stick’ car?

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“Why do you blog?” I was asked this weekend during a phone call. I provided a reason but upon reflection, there are actually five reasons why I blog. They may help those of you who want to start blogging as well as those who are struggling with their blogs and want to be more consistent. Blogging has provided the platform for anyone in the 21^st century to become both an author and a publisher in the digital space.

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I saw a dirty blue sock on my way to the train station today. It laid on the granite bridge step beside the river near the University. It looked lonely and lost. I wondered how it got there. Where was the other sock? Was the owner looking for it or even cared? If this sock had a mouth, I bet it would have an interesting story to tell about itself and its journey to this granite bridge step. All these questions about this blue sock made me realise that everything and everyone has a story to tell.

There is so much competing for our attention in the marketplace that companies are willing to be controversial in order to differentiate themselves from their rivals and get our attention. Have you seen the new Dr Pepper Ten video advert? Check out the video below if you haven’t seen it.