The STU-PENDOUS BLOG!

How do you start your day? Do you jump out of bed? Do you get up and go running? Do you grab a giant hot coffee? Do you live for the moment? Do you have a reason to get out of bed?

That’s the key… having a reason to get up each day. Do you have a goal in mind to make your day amazing? I try and get up every day early,  between 4:15 and 4:30 am. Some people think I am crazy… here is the thing, I have more energy then 90% of the people around me! Some of these people get 7-10 hours of slumber per night. 

We spend so much time sleeping, waiting in line, watching TV, reading trash in the line at the store. We lose out on living. If you simply get up just a couple of hours earlier every day you add (honestly) years to your life!! Get up and live, the key to being successful is to find out that reason to get up. Is it to create a life of true magnificence? Do you want to create a better life for you and your children. Do you want to get up and practice the wrist shot in driveway to increase your chance at the NHL? You decide… in the over used, but effective, words of Nike… Just Do It!

Oh by the way it’s 5:37 am and I am listening to my I-Pod and checking my email… My day has already been on the go for over an hour, love it!!!

To those that are using the journals from our camp or have been keeping a journal since you have read my blogs, here is a new feature in each of my BLOGS… a journal question.

“What could you do with an extra 2 hours every single day?” Post your answers and write them in your journals!

Today’s pic is of Courtney and Richard at morning dip at our camp… how do you atart your day?

For more information on YLCC (we still have one session left) or on STU! Saunders speaking goto www.ylcc.com or call us 705-326-2433!

Just a quick note to say that I am SO busy! Camp is in full swing and the campers are coming back week after week. Parents always ask me what do we do to make such massive change in their children in such a short period of time?

The answer is simple… our staff and the environment. Our staff are fantastic and the camp setting allows kids to be themselves. The counsellors, are young and energetic, they are not perfect and they don’t have any letters behind their names. What they don’t have in experience they make up for in passion!

It makes it easy for kids to want to change, not into someone different people, but into the people that they really are. Once you find something to be passionate about you can do anything. I want to say thank you so much to the staff of our camp. You are amazing!

For more information on how you or your children can be part of YLCC goto www.ylcc.com or call us at 705-326-2433.

So the other day I am reading an article called “$20 Million in Publicity for $300″ in the Toronto Star. The story in short, talks about an experiment that was done using Mentos (the mint) and Diet Coke. Basically what happens is that when you drop mentos in a 2 litre bottle of pop the Diet Coke reacts incredibly fast and explodes out of the top of the bottle.

The attention that has been drawn to both Diet Coke and Mentos is incredible and the cost of the experiment was a tiny $300. I could write my entire blog about the amazing, ingenious, creative marketing that has had a massive surge in Diet Coke and Mentos sales, but I will not. It is truly brilliant and needs to be recognized for that fact!

What my blog is about actually happend hours later when I arrived back to my camp. I was having dinner with my two youngest children Emily and Matthew, we were eating, laughing and recapping our day. When it hit me… I can create memories right now… ones that will last forever.

So… the three of us jumped into my truck and drove to the grocery store. We purchased 34 bottles of Diet Coke and 5 packs of Mentos (I have sinced learned you need way more Mentos). We then rushed to the dollar store and bought matching goggles and rain hats.

Arriving back at camp we set up our 34 bottles of pop on the baseball field, we put on our very tight fitting goggles and our hats. A crowd of about 40 campers and staff gathered… with a small count in, we started dropping in the Mentos. The magic started happening… laughter, joy and… memories.  Don’t wait to create joy… the “experiment” did not go as well as it did on the internet…  but the memories will never get better. Thanks Diet Coke!

Today’s pic(s) first time ever for two in one BLOG, come from that night. One is of the explosions and one is from afterwards… the smiles say it all!

For more information on YLCC or Stu Saunders Speaking goto www.ylcc.com

Just a quick note to say hello to all of my readers and the the first couple of 100 campers from YLCC! Session 1 and Session 2 have been fantastic. The vibe of our new revised program has been outstanding. I am excited to be changing some lives.

I wanted to post an email I received from a mom of one of our campers… I am going to leave out the name of the camper. We had some rough spots during the week with some staffing. We struggled through those down times and now we are moving forward.

After a tough meeting with staff on Sunday morning I read them this email… it made all of them smile, some tear up a little. Please never stop believing that you can make a difference… you can. Every day, every moment, every single chance you have. Live BIG!

Here is the email…

Dear Stu and YLCC Staff,

Our son arrived home today, totally thrilled and excited about the week he had spent with you.  I send you this note in thanks for the wonderful experience he’s lived….he can’t stop talking about it!!  We are so happy to see this side of him:  pride for his achievements, joy for his encounters, happiness for the natural peace he’s found within himself all thanks to you!  This means so much to him and to us as parents.  he has always had barriers to overcome:  learning disabilities, social adaptations, fear of heights and new challenges. 

Sincerely,
A Parent of happy camper!

Thank you for the a reminder of why I do what I do… Joy. Today’s pic is from YLCC Session 2, check out www.phillyd.com for more of his great pics! We are very excited about summer camp, almost as much as these guys!

For more information on YLCC Summer Camp Programs or STU! check out www.ylcc.com

I am blessed so much, every day. I sometimes have to pinch myself. Sure, there are times that I wish I could change this or that, maybe a have little more of something, maybe a little less. The fact is when you come right down to it, I have SO much. I have an incredible place to live, I have wonderful friends and a staff, which makes me, smile and laugh each day. I have children that when I see them, bring me energy, love, hugs and joy. My health is pretty good; I just finished another 5 km run this morning breaking my record from a couple of days ago… 23 minutes! My life is truly blessed.

At our camp (www.ylcc.com) we have a Leaders In Training (LIT) program. One of their big activities that they do during their two week stay is called “Leave Your Mark!” This year we gave them three projects to choose from, they chose to create two new gardens at the entrance of our camp. They called many local garden shops, landscapers and grocery stores looking for donations. What surprised me were the two different responses that they received, a few offered help, a flat of flowers, some stepping stones a shrub or two. The sad part is many more of them said no without even listening or asking any questions, some even hung up on our campers.

“Be the kindest person you can be and the world will come to you!”

- Stu Saunders

I have lived by this quote for a while now, not my whole life but for about the last year. The rewards have been incredible… my spirit and energy are way up. I enjoy my job more; in fact I sometimes forget that it is a job. I have yet to see the rewards of being mean or angry, we as individuals need to find ways to find new and innovative ways to be kind. Don’t be so kind that you become almost fake, that is the key to what we call Balance Based Leadership ™ find your balance, lead your day and realize that we are all blessed. If you are reading this BLOG you are already more blessed then millions that will never even experience what the World Wide Web has to offer.

Take a moment to discover what it is that you are blessed with. In your journal (Don’t have one? Buy one, create one, and get some scrap paper) I challenge you to write down five things that you feel blessed to have in your life. When you are done… find one more!

Today’s pic is from the flowers bursting with the joy of being in the sun… day lilies open every day and absorbs the sun.

Have you ever been there? Have you ever reached that highest peak where you are operating at an incredible level? Did you love it? Did you feel energized so much so that you felt you could do anything? I have… in fact it was yesterday. Our second session began yesterday and with more then 120 people in the room (our rec hall) I really felt it. I told the story of James, the little five year old soccer player on my daughters under seven soccer team. The campers were really listening, hanging on every word. I felt fantastic, like I could do no wrong!!

Now to be honest with you, the event that I was talking about took place many years ago and I really do have fond memories of coaching the soccer team. I was no World Cup coach, but I was pretty good at the level I was coaching. The story came back to me yesterday while watching the final of the FIFA World Cup. Italy and France where battling it out and the game ended at regulation time in a tie (I know it must be a surprise that a soccer game ended in a low scoring tie).

This of course meant that the game would go to penalty shots, the goalies where useless, missing every single potential save. Not one shot was really challenged. If you didn’t see the final then you don’t know that the only reason the Italians won was because the French player hit the crossbar of the net and the ball dropped down inches from the goal line.

So in essence, although the Italians are very talented and worked very hard to get to the final, they won by default. They won because a ball hit a crossbar on a beautifully placed penalty shot. You might think that I must be a French fan, but I am not. I was cheering for England, to be honest, I was only cheering for the Empire because I felt as if I should cheer for somebody so that I could still have conversations with my friends who were soccer crazy.

Here is the point of today’s BLOG… life usually doesn’t work like a soccer game. You usually do not win by default; it is true that sometimes through the luck of the draw, or someone else’s bad circumstance you can get ahead. But, you will never really reach the highest peak by someone else failing or screwing up. The best peaks are the ones that we find ourselves and fight and struggle to get to.

So… I hope that everyone has recovered from world cup fever and will now get back to climbing those peaks and taking those 1% action steps so they can create a life of TRUE MAGNIFICENCE!

Today’s pic is taken from www.tsn.ca and is from the yesterday’s World Cup Final! Dream BIG. Don’t settle. Be STUpendous!

Good Thursday morning North America! I feel quite bad that I have been gone for so long! Camp has been so busy and without any real internet connection it becomes very hard to stay on top of the cyber world. I am planning to be back on the track and start posting every day (or at least every other day).

Has that ever happened to you? You make a plan and then “life” gets in the way… So you make excuses, you can’t do whatever it is, because of _________ (insert reason). The great thing about being human is that you are in total control of what happens to you! You can have free will, unlike any other animal. If you fall off the design you have created for your self then get back up, dust yourself off and start the day a new.

Stay tuned for more BLOG’s soon, the bottom line is that camp is going well. It’s not to late to sign up! Check out www.ylcc.com for all the information. For more pictures and stories of camp check out Phil Doucette’s BLOG at www.phillyd.com

Today’s pic is from the first day of camp. So much joy, laughter and learning! I loved story time!!