Leapanity

Do you remember the TV show “Quantum Leap”? The series was about a scientist called Sam who found himself lost in time after a botched experiment. He would find himself in the body of another person on each of his time travels and have to put right somebody else’s wrong in order for him to “leap”. Each of his leaps takes him into another body, but Sam always holds on to the hope that his next leap will return him home.

Throughout the journey the only person who knew Sam’s identity was Al; a hologram who only Sam could see. Al would deliver Sam the news of what he was probably there to do in order to make his leap.

To me, this show was a metaphor for life – well, my life at least! You see, like Sam, who is chasing his goal of returning home, I am always chasing my own personal goals. Sam would always stay focused on his one goal of returning home and this is what kept him going week after week to taking the actions he needed to make his leaps (some may call them milestones). When Al would inform him the likely action he needed to take he would do it, even though he knew that sometimes Al could be wrong and he would not leap. To Sam, the reward of leaping and possibly returning home was far greater than any mistake that could be made along the way.

And here we hit my stumbling block. Imagine Al as a metaphor for the sub-conscious part of the brain. He is informing me that there is a 78% chance I need to take an action right now… but we are only a few minutes in to this episode in my life and this won’t sell to the audience. They want my character to suffer and overcome adversity before he makes that leap. The audience is my belief system.

A belief system is a series of beliefs one follows that govern the way they lead their life. They can be great and help people achieve wonderful things in their lives, but they can also put up barriers that prevent people from reaching their goals. For me, my belief system has always been that things shouldn’t come so easy. That I should have to work hard for them; to “pay my dues”. Dues to who? I know how stupid this sounds when I write it down and I laugh out loud as I read it to myself. So it is today I unveil my new belief system. Something I call leapanity.

What is leapanity?

Leapanity is the realisation that rewards do sometimes come easy and that this is okay. A commitment to taking action as soon as the opportunity presents itself. The opportunity to enjoy being “in the moment”. Sharing the positive energy earned with others. Enjoying the constant reward of positive energy being returned to you.

So there you have it. I have just redefined the way I live my life in 5 sentences. And for those who were fans of Quantum Leap, I know Sam never did return home. But imagine what his journey would have been like if he never had the belief to hold on to!

Top 5 Internet Domain Name Tips

I am very experienced in all things related to Internet domain names – you know, those things that take you to a home page of a website? leebenning.com is a domain name, so is facebook.com and bbc.co.uk. I was asked by someone starting a new job as an E-Marketing Manager to provide my top 5 tips on domain names and have decided to share them with you.

1) Always try to secure the .com version of a domain and your country code version (.co.uk for UK) as a minimum.

Firefox web browser still defaults to the .com if you type a domain name without the extension (try typing “www.sony” in the firefox address bar). You could also be losing out on type-in traffic, and if this page goes to a ppc landing page, you could end up paying for the visitors clicking through to your site (or worse, they visit the link to a competitor site).

2) Register as many variations of your primary domain name as possible

This includes typing errors (I’m sure Fox would like to own www.myspase.com), number/abbreviation translation (Phones4u.co.uk could also do with owning phones4you.co.uk and phonesforyou.co.uk) and singular/plural (mysinglefriend.com could be losing visitors from not owning mysinglefriends.com).

3) Try to avoid domain names with hyphens (unless you also own the version without hyphens)!

Think of word-of-mouth and imagine if Myspace was located at www.my-space.com, or Facebook was at www.face-book.com and they didn’t own the domain without the hyphen. A LOT of lost visitors I think (and phishing attempts!).

4) Register as many generic domain names as you can

If there are any domains in your industry still freely available I would register them. I used to run a british wrestling website called www.1stopwrestling.co.uk – I also own the domains britishwrestling.co.uk and wrestlingtraining.co.uk and redirected these to my main site. Generic domain names can make you seem like an authority in that industry so even if all you do is a 301 redirect to your main site, you cut off a competitor’s ability to capitalise on the use of them (plus you may get a bit of type-in traffic). British Gas use www.house.co.uk on a lot of their promotional literature, which redirects to www.britishgas.co.uk. As generic domains are usually descriptive of the product/service they are being used for there are almost never any Trade Mark issues.

5) This may sound simple, but always ensure you have CNAME records for www, ww, wwww and w on your DNS server (if you don’t have your own DNS server, most domain registrars allow you to edit the DNS settings).

By having these CNAME (sometimes called ‘Alias’) records, you make sure if someone were to type ww.yoursitename.com, or wwww.yoursitename.com they still end up on your site. May seem like a little thing but if people miss one of the ‘w”s and get a server error message they won’t always notice that they have made a typing error and could visit a competitor site instead.

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It Was A Good Day (And It Only Took A Screw To Make Me Realise)

“Just waking up in the morning gotta thank God
I don’t know but today seems kinda odd
No barking from the dog, no smog
And momma cooked a breakfast with no hog”

(Ice Cube – “It Was A Good Day”)

The above lyrics were bouncing around in my head on Sunday as I threaded the first screw into my desk. You know those days when everything just goes “right” and then there’s that moment that sums up the great day you have had? Well this was mine.

<<Back Story>>
I had been having a very productive week both at home and at work – the ‘Life/Work’ balance was reeking of excellence (more on ‘Life/Work’ vs. ‘Work/Life’ in a future post) and my joy level was at an 11. I had set myself a challenge to keep my energy levels high and ride out this 11 for as long as possible. My outlook for the week was simply this:

“Every obstacle is a challenge – and challenges are FUN!”

With that outlook, all it was going to take to keep my 11 was perpective: There are no problems, only obstacles challenges – and they just add to the fun.

So at the weekend I visited my parents as seeing the family is guaranteed to keep the joy level high. I spent Sunday clearing some of my old things out of my parents’ garage and decided I would bring my old desk back home with me. On the 35 mile drive back I kept convinving myself that I had the screws that hold the desk together in my tool box at home. Without the screws, the desk would be useless and would mean driving another 35 miles back to my parents’ house to see if I could find them.

When I got back to home I made three trips up and down the stairs, back and forth to the car, carrying my things up to my flat.  I then checked the toolbox and the screws were not in there (they were a special type of screw) and being a Sunday, I had about an hour before the shops closed to get back in my car and use some guess work at the hardware store. Of course, there was a huge selection of screws and none of them looked like the ones my desk used. I made a quick judgement on what I thought would fit anyway and drove back home.

As I looked at my desk in pieces against the wall, I was quietly whispering (so the neighbours wouldn’t hear and think I’m a bit odd), “Please work” as I began piecing the desk together. As the first screw threaded in, Ice Cube’s ‘dope’ (that means they were good) lyrics echoed in my head and by the time I tightened the last screw I was humming the tune and picturing myself bouncing around town in a low-rider – it doesn’t get much better than this!

It was also at that time I realised why I was humming (and by now, also rapping and doing the ‘West Coast’ sign with my hand) – Ice Cube’s “It Was A Good Day” is my ‘happy tune’. It’s the song in my head every time I have a rrreally great day. This was the lightbulb moment for me (ting!); some moments may be insignificant on their own, but when when viewed in context they can represent something much larger than the moment itself.

It’s amazing the power a little screw can have.