I am planning to write a book.  I know, that seems overly ambitious, doesn't it?  On the plus side, the outline was done several years ago for a proposed set of mentor workshops. On the minus side, I had planned to start this effort two months ago and yet it sits untouched.

What kind of book is it?  Well, mostly it is going to be a 'how to' for the average Joe who wants to start his (or her) own business. But rather than rehash the same old tired rhetoric, I want to approach this from an entirely different perspective.

I don't want to give the whole thing away, but the power of our minds will figure prominently.  All too often people defeat themselves by allowing negativity or destructive (or even paralyzing) thoughts to permeate their consciousness.

Why is it that human beings seem to focus on the part of our brain that wants to inhibit our personal growth?  We worry, we fret, we conjure up all kinds of disastrous scenarios and worst of all, we make assumptions about the actions of others.

We have no earthly idea what someone else is thinking or planning.  And all too often we find our assumptions are incorrect, but long before we determine the fallacy of our thoughts we've already wasted an exorbitant amount of time worrying, fretting and making more assumptions.  It is a truly vicious cycle.

Have you ever tried to quiet your mind?  That's a slick trick.  Meditation is intended to do just that - silence the chatter that is ever present.  Personally, I have difficulty with meditation but understand its value and thus am attempting to master the process. 

However, it is possible to quiet your mind without meditation.  Hypnosis has been known to work and you can also work to consciously shut off the noise.  When you can quiet your mind, you'll find a deep calm and tranquility come over you.  It is such a relief not to have all that noise clanging around - especially when it's the negative chatter you stop. 

Better still, if you can consciously recognize when you're making assumptions and STOP that... you'll find your life improving enormously.

I can't adequately express how much better your life will be if you can make that one small change - stop making assumptions.  Already this past month I deleted numerous emails before hitting 'send' because they were based on assumptions rather than fact.

I'm simply waiting to see if the other party (or parties as the case may be) will contact me about whatever it is they're thinking.  If they don't, well, then the issue(s) most likely wasn't important.

Can you imagine how wonderful the world would be if we all ended up halting the assumption making process?  In many cases we'd never address a particular issue at all and then, glory be!, then we've avoided potential conflict, potential misunderstandings and the ever present potential for hurt feelings.  Wouldn't that be fantastic?

There are several keys to success and happiness in this life.  Two of them are to stop making assumptions and to ignore (stop or otherwise limit) your brain chatter.

These keys sound simple, but each is a challenging task.  However, like everything worth having in life, the benefit far outweighs the effort. That's a bit like the book writing ambition:  It is going to take a herculean effort, but in the end to actually have a book published will be an amazing accomplishment.

For some reason, we've been on a calendar kick lately, wondering about the significance of varying calendar events or how the calendar came into being. 

According to the Roman calendar which was allegedly created by Romulus when Rome was founded around 753 BC, the first month of the year was Martius, which is now known as March.  The total year lasted for 304 days. An additional number of winter days, reckoned between the end of December and the beginning of the following March, were not assigned to any month.

The actual months at the time were:

Later of course, and in way too much confusion to go into here, the calendar changed multiple times until it settled to where it is today, with January as the first month.  March is the month when Winter ends and Spring begins. 

The onset of Spring in the Northern half of the world is usually March 21^st when the sun is directly over the equator.

March is also the month when the animals end their hibernation and many plants come to life again. The sap flows in the trees, and the buds begin to show up. Bears, woodchucks, and chipmunks leave their hibernating spots.  It's all very Disney-esque.

Just for fun, here are some notable dates in March history:

Mar 1 - Ohio became the 17^th State, 1803

Mar 2 - Texas declared its independence from Mexico, 1836

Mar 3 - Inventor Alexander Graham Bell born 1847

Mar 4 - Knute Rockne, American football coach born 1888

Mar 5 - Joseph Stalin, Soviet dictator died 1953

Mar 6 - Michelangelo, Artist, born 1475

Mar 7 - Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone 1876

Mar 8 - The first car race was held in Daytona, 1936

Mar 9 - The Merrimack (aka the Virginia) fought the Monitor, 1862

Mar 10 - The first Ford Mustang is manufactured for release in April, 1964

Mar 11 - Levi's Jeans add Bellbottoms in support of the Hippie culture, 1969

Mar 12 - Juliet Low founded the Girl Scout movement in America, 1912

Mar 13 - A 6.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey kills 500 and leaves 50,000 homeless, 1992

Mar 14 - Albert Einstein, German Physicist born 1879

Mar 15 - Julius Caesar assassinated 44 BC

Mar 16 - US Military Academy founded at West Point, NY 1802

Mar 17 - St. Patrick's Day

Mar 18 - Soviet Cosmonaut Lt. Col. Alexi Leonov is the first man to walk in space, 1965

Mar 19 - Congress approves Daylight Savings Time, 1918

Mar 20 - 60,000 Viet Minh troops surround (and ultimately defeat) 17,000 French troops in Vietnam, 1954

Mar 21 - Alcatraz (aka, The Rock) closes, 1963

Mar 22 - Martin Luther King Jr convicted of violating boycott rules after successfully organizing a boycott of all buses in Montgomery AL, 1956

Mar 23 - Patrick Henry declared, "Give me Liberty or Give me Death", 1775

Mar 24 - The Exxon Valdez runs aground and spills over 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, 1989

Mar 25 - British parliament abolishes slave trade, 1807

Mar 26 - 'Funny Girl' starring Barbara Streisand opens on Broadway, 1964

Mar 27 - Mount St. Helens erupts, 1980

Mar 28 - Two of Turkey's largest cities, Constantinople and Angora, change their names to Istanbul and Ankara respectively, 1930

Mar 29 - Cy Young, Baseball player born 1867

Mar 30 - Amendment 15 to the US Constitution, stating that a person cannot be denied the ballot because of race or color, 1870

Mar 31 - The Dalai Lama enters India and is granted asylum after the Chinese repress the Tibetan rebellion in Lhasa, 1959