From: http://ping.fm/n47Qd

“To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I’ve ever written.”

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.

5. Pay off your credit cards every month.

6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.

8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.

12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God never blinks.

16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.

18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.

19. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.

20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.

24. The most important sex organ is the brain.

25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.

26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ‘In five years, will this matter?’

27. Always choose life.

28. Forgive everyone everything.

29. What other people think of you is none of your business.

30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

33. Believe in miracles.

34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.

35. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

36. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.

37. Your children get only one childhood.

38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.

41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

42. The best is yet to come.

43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

44. Yield.

45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.”

Friends are the family that we choose for ourselves.

Here are the links:

www.Facebook.com huge social networking site!

www.InsideFacebook.com tips and more about Facebook, it’s history and where it’s going.

www.FacebookAdvice.com tips on how to effectively use your Facebook page.

www.delicious.com social bookmarks (web based bookmarks that you share with others and they share with you)

www.linkedin.com social/business networking site. More of a resume posting tool than anything but still good to have. You can update your status here and incorporate your blog feeds and more.

www.Ziggs.com like linkedin but not as popular yet, although has great tools and alerts you when someone “searches” for you on google

www.Ping.fm syndication site for posting status updates to multiple different social networking sites and blogs

http://ping.fm/E8oji Outlook plug in for Facebook

http://ping.fm/gvpnc outlook plugin for twitter posting

www.Twitter.com microblogging site

www.TweetBeep.com a tool for being alerted when someone “tweets” to you directly or with your name in their tweet (or any keywords you wish to be alerted to, kind of like Google alerts)

www.twitter.alltop.com resource page for twitter tools and associated sites

http://ping.fm/8i9ms twitter toolbar for your browser with built in tools, tips and more

http://tweetburner.com twitter browser plugin for sharing and tracking your “tweets”

www.twittercoaches.com life coaches on twitter that will send you daily messages for a positive mental attitude. I highly recommend!

http://brightkit.com allows you to manage multiple twitter accounts, have multiple “authors or posters” per account, and have pre-scheduled tweets go out from multiple accounts (kind of like a drip campaign)

http://ping.fm/1u5mv great tool for finding out what people are talking about on twitter

http://www.twellow.com a tweet directory of sorts. you can post your profile in categories here

http://ping.fm/haCi2 post to twitter with your voice from your phone by calling a number and speaking your tweet

http://ping.fm/fZdIH for when you want to post more than 140 characters on twitter

http://ping.fm/FQytl just plain cool, no matter how you slice it! I love that the government is finally embracing technology to stay in touch with the public. They’re using YouTube too, in case you didn’t know.

http://tweetwasters.com find out how much time you spend on twitter

http://ping.fm/DWlhA a twitter group for real estate agents (you can just go to www.twittgroups.com if you like and search for which ever group you’d like to join/follow/start)

http://ping.fm/bF9ac custom twitter backgrounds/wallpaper for fun or self promotion

http://ping.fm/frKsA works like a drip campaign for twitter, also lets you auto follow your followers back, instantly sends a tweet to your followers, and sends you a daily tally of your direct tweets

http://twitterment.com a search engine for twitter

http://ping.fm/ZtKDp another search engine for twitter

http://bit.ly a URL shortener for posting links in twitter without exceeding the 140 character limit. Works great for the curiosity approach for your followers as well. Gets them to click the link because they can’t see where it leads. There is also a browser plugin you can drag and drop for easy use

http://budurl.com another URL shortener

www.tinyurl.com another URL shortener, this one I use the most because I can convert a site to a short url just by right clicking and selecting “create tiny url”, then the link is already on my “clipboard” for me to post to twitter/facebook or wherever

http://ping.fm/4Y5rV find out how you can improve your Twitter account by get “graded”

http://ping.fm/1t28i find out how you can improve your Facebook account by get “graded”

http://twitpic.com allows you to share photos via twitter

http://ping.fm/KHdNw user and topic search tool for twitter

http://twitterholic.com the best tool for finding power users of twitter to follow and learn from, and possibly share with, if they follow you back

www.twitxr.com great tool that allows you to share pictures from your mobile phone and automatically publish them on social networks and photosharing sites, tell your friends where you are and what you are doing and automatically add your location to your pictures and status updates.

http://ping.fm/LAZP9 awesome desktop software for twitter. Very handy. You can make groups of your favorite followers, use a tag cloud to find out what’s popular at the moment, keep track of your direct messages, and stay up on your twitter feed/who your following without having to constantly refresh your browser.

http://www.utterli.com another socialnetworking site kind of like twitter but more advanced. Here’s a tip: there is a Facebook application for this you can add to your Facebook page. You can also cross post to other sites with this site/tool. There is a great video on the site that tells you how you can use this.

http://hellotxt.com this is another social networking “tool” that is pretty cool. You can update your status and read your friends’ status across all main microblogging and social networks all at once. You can even share photos, videos and music from here and cross post to other sites as well.

http://friendfeed.com another social networking site that cross posts to other social sites such as twitter and facebook. Also, you can set this site up so if you use Delicious social bookmarks, and you bookmark a site (pending you have it set up to share) a link will be posted to friendfeed of the site you just bookmarked and then cross posted to facebook and twitter (or wherever else). This is a great way to share websites you like with others. I use it all of the time.

http://ping.fm/PdwiJ Profilactic is a social media aggregator/lifestreaming service that pulls together just about everything you and your friends create online. It supports 190 social sites by default; however, you can add as many custom sites as you’d like. It also integrate seamlessly with WordPress, so you can add a lifestream to your blog.

www.socialtoo.com social survey tool

www.Yammer.com This is pretty cool. It’s like Twitter but for private use within your company, and it’s free. There is an iPhone application and a desktop application too!

http://www.viddyou.com a social video posting site

http://vimeo.com another social video posting site

www.jingproject.com I’m sure you may have heard of this one but it’s great, it’s free and it’s an awesome tool for “showing someone how to do something or asking how to do something” by capturing your screen and microphone and allowing you to email a link to the captured video to a friend within minutes (or save and share on YouTube! for tutorials or something like that)

www.tubemogul.com syndication site for posting a video to multiple sites all at one time through this one portal site

http://www.eyejot.com a great way to stay in touch with your database via email (video email that is) and it’s free. They even have a browser plugin for easy use.

since I’m kind of covering video here I’ll throw in a link to a site that covers some great tips on producing good videos: http://ping.fm/5ZXh7

http://ping.fm/aH6Eg a site/tool that is a portal window into your email inbox and multiple social networking sites all in one place

www.Fuser.com combined “inbox” for your email, facebook messages, myspace messages and twitter messages

http://www.ning.com a site to create your own social networks!

http://www.twine.com a site/tool you can use to stay up on things you’re interested in.

http://www.squidoo.com another very popular social networking tool. You build a “lens” to promote what you’re into and then promote it. You can actually make money with these too. Lot’s of people build these and then post links to them on twitter. You can incorporate Google adsense into it as well, I believe. Here are some examples http://ping.fm/Phlantwitterapps and http://ping.fm/uPYnNUseTwitter

www.myspace.com another huge social networking tool that I have a page on but tend to stay away from because my personal opinion is that it’s more for the youth generation and not for business/adult users. Just my take.

OK, I think that’s more than enough to be overwhelmed at this point. The trick is to start with the basics.

1. Create Facebook and Twitter accounts (at least)

2. Start getting used to using each of those and update your bio’s and contact info

3. Start “friending” and “following” people you admire, like, trust, respect and want to learn from

4. Actually USE these great tools. Don’t be afraid. If your kids can do it, I’m sure you’ll be fine!

5. Pick one additional tool per week to learn and incorporate (unless you can handle more)

6. Search YouTube for tutorials on Facebook and Twitter, or anything you want to learn!!!

I hope this helps and you are at least a little less intimidated with social networking.

Oh, and last but least, “friend” and “follow” ME!!!! I’d be happy to help you in any way I can and I’d love to be your friend too!

Regards,

Clay Edwards
Rooftop Lending
Branch Manager
1-888-9-ROOFTOP
clay@rooftoplending.com
www.RooftopLending.com (my website)
www.ClayEdwards.com (my blog)
www.twitter.com/clayedwards
www.linkedin.com/in/clayedwards
www.delicious.com/clayaedwards
http://ping.fm/eGbpH

Click on the link just below the image below to see the article. My quote is highlighted on the 3rd page.

foreclosurereport-i-was-published-in-highlighted

-By Brian Rodgers

This quote is so true for me. I’ve heard, and even said, that hindsight is 20/20, but it’s really a skewed vision based on what previous decisions we’ve made to get us to that moment of reflection.

Have you had a “defining moment” or vision of clarity, or even a little bit of doubt lately? Comment below and tell me YOUR story.