MEET YOUR AUTHOR A DAWN AT THE TORONTO REFERENCE LIBRARY

Canadian Financial Author Ahmed Dawn at the Toronto Reference Library

First Published: ADawnJournal.com : June 5, 2009

The Spring 2009 Toronto Small Press Book Fair will take place at the Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge St. (Closest major intersection: Yonge Street and Bloor Street. Located one block north of Bloor Street on the east side of Yonge Street; Public Transit: TTC subway station: Yonge. Walk to library north on Yonge Street) Toronto, ON, M4W 2G8. From 9am-5pm on Sat, June 13, 2009.

I will be participating in this event. For the first time in Toronto Small Press 22-year history, the TORONTO REFERENCE LIBRARY has agreed to host the 2009 Toronto Small Press Book Fair. This is a great opportunity to meet Canadian authors under one roof. Just stop by to say Hi. Hope to see you there.

The Toronto Small Press Group meets twice a year, and I always participate in these fairs. I will be posting video clips and pictures of The Spring 2009 Toronto Small Press Book Fair later on. Don’t forget to check out The Toronto Small Press Group website.

How to Strengthen Your Willpower

Strengthen Your Willpower

Willpower is what keeps you disciplined. It is that voice in your head that tells you not to have that big dessert and instead to go for a walk. It is what tells you to get moving towards your goals and to stay away from things that may deter from bettering yourself. If you are going to venture on the road towards personal development, then you need to consider strengthening your willpower. No different than working your muscles, when you keep your willpower strong, it stays strong and the stronger your willpower is, the better off you will be to reach your personal development goals.

1. When your mind tells you that you don’t need to do something, do the exact opposite. Your mind is acting like a child so just use reverse psychology and do what you know is right for you.

2. Look at when your willpower is the strongest and then focus on using your willpower during that time of day. If you find your willpower is stronger in the morning, then focus on your goals during that time of day. Otherwise it could be an exercise in futility if you try to focus on your willpower at night.

3. Willpower has a lot to do with patience and delayed gratification. Instead of getting what you want now, you wait and hope that the outcome later is better. Well, you can strengthen your willpower by making yourself wait. If you bought yourself a video game, you will want to play it right away. Instead, put it next to the television where you can see it and do not play it for five hours. Then, once that time has passed you can play it. You can do the same with a piece of cake and a 15 minute egg timer.

4. One of the most important things you can do when you are building up your willpower is to step out of your comfort zone. Your comfort zone is where you want to stay because you like it, but to push yourself, you need to step out of your comfort zone. If you are shy, start talking to random people. If you are selfish, start lending a hand at charities. You will be surprised by how much this can help you when you are trying to build your willpower.

5. Remember the carrot and stick approach. Think about the goal you have in mind and how great it will be to reach that goal. Use the goal to fuel your willpower to stay on track and before you know it you will have reached your goal and strengthened your willpower at the same time.

Willpower is very important when you are trying to better yourself, and that is why you need to keep it strong by constantly working with it. If you do not work with it, you will not have strong willpower and you will not reach your goals. Do not underestimate the power of willpower in your quest for personal development.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com. This article originally published on the above website on Nov 5, 2010.

Canadian Financial Blogs

Financial Blogs In Canada

First Published: June 7, 2009 ADawnJournal.com

It is time to present a list of Canadian Financial Blogs for my readers. There are many (probably too many) blogs out there these days—not all of them worth mentioning. In search of blogs that can be mentioned here, I have set some standard criteria to follow. Each blog needs to go through these filters, thus providing you with only quality writing and a pleasant reading experience.

Here are the filters for the ADJ litmus test:

·   The blog must have its own domain name. Free hosted blogs are simply not professional and lose credibility. You can’t simply expect to be taken seriously if you are on a free hosted site.

·   The blog must be three months old.

·   The blog must not have too much time lags between posts.

·   The blog must present original, vibrant, timely and timeless content.

·   I am featuring only English language and family-friendly blogs.

·   Blogs with low Google PageRank may not be approved but will be given special consideration to be listed.

This post is going to be updated from time to time to add dynamic, promising new blogs. If you come across a blog that you would like me to add, send me an email via my contact page or write a comment underneath this post.

I will be using sites’ own descriptions to describe these sites. For example, A Dawn Journal would appear as: A Dawn Journal – A blog on Personal Finance, Investing, Entrepreneurship, and More. Sites will be listed in alphabetical order – this puts A Dawn Journal on the top spot. Let’s begin our list.

Canadian Financial Blogs – The List

A Dawn Journal – A blog on Personal Finance, Investing, Entrepreneurship, and More.

Canadian Capitalist – A personal finance blog to help Canadians navigate their way through the alphabet soup of financial acronyms: RRSPs, RESPs, TFSAs, mutual funds and ETFs

Canadian Personal Finance Blog – Personal Finances and Consumer Concerns, essays, stories, examples and how to articles with a distinctly Canadian Point of View

Canada Personal Finance Website – A personal finance website written in simple and understandable terms from a Canadian perspective.

Four Pillars – Investing and personal finance

The Dividend Guy – One Guy’s Journey to Passive Income Through Dividend Investing

The Financial Blogger – Got Money?

Thicken My Wallet – Everything to do with thickening your wallet

Million Dollar Journey – The Making of a Millionaire – A Canadian Personal Finance Blog. Daily topics include The Smith Manoeuvre, RRSP, Canadian discount brokerages, Questrade, early retirement and book reviews

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative – A mainly Canadian economics blog

Where Does All My Money Go – Where Does All My Money Go

NB – I will be adding more sites slowly

Hobbiton Movie Set: The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit Trilogies

New Zealand Travel Blog: Part 5

New Zealand Travel Blog: Part 1

New Zealand Travel Blog: Part 2

New Zealand Travel Blog: Part 3

New Zealand Travel Blog: Part 4

The humongous and spectacular 1250-acre farmland outside Matamata is where The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit Trilogies’ filming took place. Producers discovered the Alexander farm in 1998 and set construction started in 1999.

To create 39 Hobbit Holes, materials such as timber, ply, and polystyrene were used. I was astonished when our tour guide told us that the oak tree that overlooks Bag End is actually an artificial tree. To make this happen, an oak tree was brought in from Matamata and artificial leaves from Taiwan were individually wired onto the tree.

Later on, the tree was rebuilt for the Hobbit Trilogy in 2009. The whole structure of the tree was artificial this time, made of steel and silicon. You can’t even tell the tree is not real if no one tells you.

The Mill and the double arch bridge were made using scaffolding, ply, and polystyrene. Rushes were cut to make the thatch for the roofs of the Green Dragon Inn and The Mill.

The whole movie set structures were made to become permanent and only require maintenance to keep them nice. It took 2 years to finish the full project.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy took 3 months to film starting December 1999. The Hobbit Trilogy took only 12 days starting October 2011. There were 400 people on site at its peak.

There are lots of frogs in the ponds. During filming, the frogs were so noisy that Peter Jackson instructed employees to catch and move them to the next farm. Somehow they kept coming back, so they had to be moved again and again. After filming was completed, all of them were brought back.

How To Self-Manage Yourself

The Concept of Self-Management

Can you manage yourself? When you talk to yourself, do you listen? These may seem like odd questions but they have some very important answers to them. It all comes down to self-management, which involves being able to manage and control who you are. If you are trying to stay away from fast food to lose weight, but find yourself constantly going to a fast food restaurant, then you are not managing yourself or practicing self-management. Self-management turns you into your own manager. You tell yourself what to do and you do that.

So, what does self-management do for you in your life and what does it involve? Well, put simply self-management will turn you into a doer, rather than a sayer, and involves setting goals for yourself and sticking to those goals. You need to have discipline and will power to self manage and reach your goals, but if you follow these tips, you can do just that.

1. Decide what goals you want to have for your life. They can be anything from losing weight to starting a business, but make sure your goals are something you can achieve.

2. Be specific with your goals. Instead of saying you want to make money with a small business in the first three years, decide how much money you want to make. Being self-managed means being specific to what you want. Managers are specific to employees, and you should be to yourself.

3. Put a chart up somewhere so you can see your progress to your goals. This will both motivate and keep you on track. When you see that you are losing weight, you will be motivated to lose more. If you are not losing weight because you are not exercising, looking at that chart will get you back towards your goals.

4. When an employee does something right, they get rewarded by the manager. The same should happen to you when you have success; reward yourself. If you lose 10 pounds, go to a movie. If your business reaches a goal you set, treat yourself to something. It is up to you but make sure your reward is not counter-productive to your goal.

5. You should place post-it notes around your house with your goals written on them. This will not only keep you constantly reminded about your goals, but it will help you stay on track and motivated. You will see those goals and feel guilty for not reaching or trying for them. As a result, you will get back on the track to reaching your goals and that will make you feel better. Then when you reach a goal, you can remove the post-it note, which in itself will create a great feeling of accomplishment.

When you are trying to better yourself you need to become a manager for yourself. You need to become a person who can order you what to do. You are the manager and the employee, so make sure you stay on track with your goals to bettering yourself.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com. This article originally published on the above website on Oct 28, 2010.