After giving it much thought, I have decided to retire from blogging. This is my final post. The decision to walk away is not something that I take lightly, but one in which I have tried to look at carefully. Ultimately, the choice was actually a simple one because I’m finally realizing that I have spent an inordinate amount of time tending to my blog and the art of blogging.

This is not a sad day. Rather, it’s a FANTASTIC day because today is the day that I’m taking steps towards fulfilling my goal of making my life a happier and more effective one.

It finally dawned on me that instead of writing about happiness, I should actually live it each and every day. I’m going to stop talking about it and start doing it. I know, I know. It’s a “no-duh” kind of thing. But each of us must learn our life lessons in our own time and in our own way.

I’ve never been good at multitasking and blogging, in addition to everything else in my life, became a balancing act — one I wasn’t very effective at performing. There were, at least for me, simply too many things to balance and not enough limbs with which to do it.

My wonderful wife has been extremely understanding and has supported and encouraged me to do what makes me happy. Through the past (almost) two years of blogging, she’s never once asked me to give it up. This is a decision that I’m making in the best interest of myself and my family.

The BeyondBehaviors.Com site will still be up as I believe that it serves a purpose. Its future is uncertain and when the domain and hosting plan expire, then they expire. No regrets.

I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the readers who have contributed to BeyondBehaviors and towards my own development. I have learned a great deal about blogging, the WordPress platform, and from my interactions with fellow bloggers like Lorelle on WordPress, Leo Babauta of Zen Habits, and Tina Su of ThinkSimpleNow. I wish them and their blogs much success in the coming years.

People who know me and my work ethics know that what I do, I try to do well. What I envision for my professional future requires time and commitment away from blogging. Two years ago, while living and working on Saipan, I made the conscious decision to walk away from time dedicated to beach volleyball (something I truly enjoy) to concentrate my efforts and devote time (away from work) to training school staff on school crisis management. During that time, I missed beach volleyball very much, but I had no regrets because that decision was the right one and proved later on to be a very smart move.

I feel good about my decision and am confident that walking away from blogging at this point in my life is the best thing for me.

It has been a privilege to interact, share with, and learn from each of you here on BeyondBehaviors.Com. My hope for you is to always believe that “You Will Because You Can.”

Wishing everyone good mental and emotional health,

Steve

Tomorrow (Jan. 8, 2004) will be exactly four years since I faxed in my signed employment contract to work as a Behavior Specialist for a school system on a tiny island in the North Pacific Ocean called Saipan. The island is part of a chain of 14 islands which are collectively called the Northern Mariana Islands. This was a momentous day in my life for several reasons. First, it would be the first time that I left the U.S. and my family to live on my own. Second, it was at a point in my life that I felt I was hitting a career-blasé. Third, had I never come to Saipan I would have never met my wife, Miwa. [We recently relocated back to Dallas (July 2007) to be closer to family].

When I tell people that I left Texas to live on an island in the Pacific Ocean because I wanted adventure, excitement, and something different, I get three typical reactions: (1) People are amazed and praise me for taking action to follow my heart, (2) People are confused as to why I would ever want to leave where I was living (Dallas, Texas), and (3) People think that I went through some sort of mid-life crisis.

Taking that job in Saipan was, without a doubt, one of the BEST decisions in my life. In an earlier post (Yearning for More…), I talked about how I had always lived my life vicariously through others. I was a true dreamer but not a doer. I guess my heart simply got tired of my mind’s wanderlust and had a heart-mind talk. In the end, the heart won out and I could no longer ignore those yearnings.

It’s hard to describe how fulfilled I felt when I came to Saipan. Within the first week or so, I knew that I had made the right decision for my life. No one told me that I had made the right choice. No self-help or personal development book answered my deep longings. Rather, it was simply a feeling I felt in my heart. It just felt right.

When I look at my life and the decisions that I made I realize that life has presented and continues to present me with many choices which I either took or ignored.

• I had a choice to attend Baylor University or other colleges. I chose Baylor.
• During my sophomore year at Baylor, I wanted to become a teacher after watching the movie, “Dead Poets Society.” Instead, I chose to remain with pre-med.
• I had a choice to study and do well in my pre-med classes. I chose to be lazy and naturally did poorly.
• When I reached the end of my pre-med classes (almost completing the pre-med program and just months from taking the MCAT, medical school entrance exam), I had a choice to keep on the same track of medicine or getting off that train. Despite the pain and anguish it caused me, I got off that train because it was the right choice.
• I had a choice to attend law school or say no. I chose law school (but I chose out of fear and attended by default because I didn’t know what else to do with my life).
• I had a choice to study and do well in my law classes. I chose to be lazy and did poorly.

When life showed me all the signs and signals in the world that I was unhappy in my current path in life, I chose to ignore them all and chugged aimlessly along the train tracks of life.

After years of regrets, self-sabotage, and self-doubt, I finally began to listen to my heart and started to choose instead of having things chosen for me.

My life changed in December 1996 when I made the conscious decision to go back to school to get a graduate degree in psychology. But it wasn’t until December 2003 (seven year later and after getting my graduate degree), when I made the conscious decision to apply for a job over 7,000 miles away on a tropical island, that my life truly changed.

In late January 2004, after a 20+ hour flight and traveling almost halfway around the world, I landed on a tiny island…and for the next few years experienced some amazing adventures, did some pretty exciting things, and got to see and do something very different.

In 3½ years on Saipan I was able to play beach volleyball with professional players, see guys husk coconuts with their teeth, fly on airplanes not much bigger than a Hummer, learn Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) from an MMA fighter, create an award-winning website, train over 800 teachers and professionals on Crisis Intervention, School Crisis Response, and Classroom Management, get invited to offer testimony to the CNMI Legislators on Assisted Outpatient Treatment, help research and edit H.B. 15-121, the CNMI Assisted Outpatient Treatment Act, produce and edit a “School Crisis Response Handbook,” and have my School Crisis Response Training presentation videotaped and use as a “teach-and-learn” training tool.

Life is not a spectator sport. It’s up to each one of us to consciously choose to participate. If we don’t, the choices may sometimes be chosen for us.

Another goal for this blog was to increase the number of comments received. Within the past two weeks, I’ve noticed a steady increase in visitors as well as their participation through comments. Thank you to each one of you. Please keep them coming!

Finally, I’ve been trying to post more comments on other bloggers’ sites and find it very rewarding. Now, I see what the top bloggers meant by interacting with readers. It’s like a whole other world down there in the comments section! Amazing that this is an area that I’ve overlooked for so long. Bloggers like Leo of Zen Habits, Tina of ThinkSimpleNow, and Skellie of Skelliewag are great at continuing the conversations in their comment sections.

Update [12.30.07] - I am aware that for users of the Internet Explorer (IE) or Opera browsers (for all versions), this site will not look right and may seem untidy or “broken.” Please consider using one of these browsers for a better viewing experience: Firefox (PC & Mac), Safari (PC & Mac), Camino (Mac only), or OmniWeb (Mac only).

Today, 10 months into using Wordpress and having a refocused blog, I’m much happier.

In looking back on what I’ve done through blogging and thinking about what I would like to do here are some goals for 2008:

1. Improve my blog design - Beyond anything else this has been and continues to be my biggest struggle. I really love the design style of Collis Ta’eed of FreelanceSwitch. There’s just something really cool about his designs. Sadly, I cannot afford to pay for a web designer like Collis to do a custom designed theme for Beyond Behaviors. I can afford free though so if any designer is interested please let me know. Alas, I’m just a tiny fish in a big blogosphere with a few visitors (me and my wife).
2. Improve my blog ranking on search engines (Google) & Technorati and increase my site links to social bookmarking sites (StumbleUpon & Tumblr) - Having a higher Google ranking and site links to StumbleUpon and Tumblr will enable visitors and those interested in personal development and emotional health to find my blog easier. I believe that Beyond Behaviors offers quality contents with a psychological and crisis management perspective that isn’t offered anywhere else.
3. Increase the number of daily visitors and RSS subscribers - When I started blogging, I didn’t care about visitors. Who cares about visitors when you have a blog or website, right? Wrong. I have since realized just how important having visitors are to my blog and how much more visitors can bring to a site.
4. Increase the number of comments per post - Along with (hopefully) an increase in visitors, I’d love to have much more interactions and dialogues with my visitors and readers. I think that my refocused blog will help to keep readers engaged and contribute their voices and perspectives. So PLEASE leave comments (constructive, engaging, and insightful ones are best).
5. Post more comments on fellow bloggers’ sites (e.g., Zen Habits, ThinkSimpleNow, Life Optimizer, Skelliewag, lifehack, DailyBlogTips, NorthxEast, ProBlogger, and CopyBlogger).
6. Maintain quality content about Personal Development, Emotional Health, and Transformation on Beyond Behaviors - Just a little over one month ago, I decided to shift gears and talk more about uplifting topics like achieving your best, emotional well-being, and transforming your life. I plan on sticking to this new focus and hope that visitors will find the site more positive and more infused with energy and excitement to help them achieve emotional health and be their best.

If you enjoy Beyond Behaviors, please subscribe, link to this site from your blog, Stumble it or Tumblr it, stop by and post comments, and tell your friends.

Last of all, thank you to everyone who has visited, commented, and offered feedback and suggestions. A special thanks to those who have linked to me. It has been a wonderful 2007, with lots of changes sprinkled here and there, most notably that I started Beyond Behaviors in February 2007, my wife and I left Saipan in July 2007 and moved back to Dallas, Texas to be closer to family, and I found a great job in September 2007 working for Collin County Community College.

About a year later (Feb. 2007), I started the site you’re visiting now, BeyondBehaviors.Com, because I wanted to cover more topics and take the focus off of me and my life. In the past 9 months, this blog has gone through many changes, both cosmetically (in terms of templates) and contentwise. I noticed that the site started tackling Traumatic Stress, Crisis Intervention, and School Crisis Response much more. And while this was fine, I also felt that it made the site too serious and gloomy.

My biggest struggle was that I didn’t want to just talk about crisis intervention or traumatic stress. Instead, I wanted to talk about more uplifting topics like achieving your best, emotional well-being, and transforming your life (like those covered in Oprah’s “O” Magazine).

For about 4 months I went through this “blogging identity crisis.” I felt that I was losing my way, blogwise. I was struggling to keep the site fresh and even more importantly I felt that what I had to say and share were becoming stale.

After doing some research I came across Lorelle on Wordpress’ tips about Finding Your Blog Focus. This is what Lorelle had to say:

If you cannot find your blog focus or passion - and you are still clueless as to how focus your blog, blog what you know. Blog what you are an expert in.

I don’t believe it when people say “I don’t know anything”. That’s crap. We all know something. We all got here somehow, someway, and learned a few things along the way. Things we wanted to learn, and things we didn’t, but something kept us going until we reached this point.

Look at all of those things, tasks, skills, abilities, and techniques, and pick one to three of them. Do they feel right? Could you talk about them non-stop for the next three years? If not, keep looking.

What gets you excited? What do you look forward to? What inspires your muse? Inspires you? Motivates you? What do you keep repeating over and over again in your life? Or in your day?

So, with those nuggets of wisdom, I sat down and reassessed what it is that I wanted BeyondBehaviors.Com to be, to say, to represent.

Drawing inspirations from Oprah’s O Magazine as well as my own mental health training and experience (and under the guidance gathered from Lorelle’s Finding Your Blog Focus), this blog will now cover (1) Improving your Emotional Well-Being and (2) Transforming your Life.

Use categories such as Children/School Crisis, Emotional Health, Resources and/or Traumatic Stress/ Crisis to find subjects like Classroom Management, Traumatic Stress, Crisis Intervention, etc.

You can read more about this new blog focus on BeyondBehavior’s About Page and if you’re really curious, you can see what inspires me by reading my Philosophy page.

I hope that you will bear with me as I apply Og Mandino’s Scroll #9 “I Will Act Now” towards making BeyondBehaviors.Com a site that will help others to “Improve their Emotional Well-Being and Transform their Lives.”