Setting goals: first things first

Goals can be daunting. Setting a goal plan even more challenging the more complex the goal.

What actions can you take to get you started and move the register to begin starting on path to accomplish larger goals?

Begin with a relatively easy goal you have in mind.

On a separate sheet of paper or online tool, write down every possible action you can think of to help you achieve this goal.

Include any tasks you can give yourself, any obstacles you can identify to your actions and tasks and the resources you would need and person that could help you around obstacles or help you with tasks.

Ultimately, you are responsible for completion and accountable to yourself.

As you begin working on your goal, more action items may emerge. Incorporate them to your original list.

Ask a friend or accountability buddy to help you think about your list and brainstorm action steps.

Decide how many hours per day and many days per week you want to allot to working on your goal. A good rule of thumb is two hours per task!

Implement and revise if needed.

Note that if you change your mind about starting toward your goal more than three times, you’ll need to reevaluate how important that goal was – no matter how small – and how committed you were.

Start small. Reach your goal. Learn and build your self confidence along the way.

Call Joe the Life Coach for more help at 202.328.7414 or Skype at sandpdc.

Do you know your pleasure centers?

As a man, do you know your pleasure centers?

Like some stylized drawing of a seated male, cross legged, with a fiery flame flickering above your head or divine halo signaling your aura, you ponder your pleasures. An orgasm, after all is buildup and release of sexual tension, so the more tension you build up, the greater the release!

Where do get your kicks – above or below the waistline?

Have you really thought about what gives you pleasure?

Are you and your partner you hitting the right places?

You might know the usual places that turn you or your partner on, but when it comes to the most erogenous zones of your body, you might be surprised to know about other male pleasure spots you might be missing – from top to bottom.

Brain

A man’s mind is a powerful erogenous zone. A heightened state of arousal in the generalized central nervous system – the brain – makes sexual arousal easier. When your mind gets excited, your body follows.

Forehead

The head and scalp are covered with nerve endings and a light massage from your hairline to your forehead can trigger feel-good hormones like dopamine and serotonin and get you aroused.

Eyelids

When a man’s eyes are closed, kissing or rubbing his eyelids gently can drive him wild. Try having your partner lightly touch your eyes and eye sockets, then have your partner kiss this area slightly. Having your eyes closed allows you to lose control!

Ears

Many men love their ears touched.

Have your partner placing a thumb and index finger on the spot where your ear lobe connects to the tissue near your face, gently pulling down and letting fingers slide off to start again. You will feel soothed or excited. Gentle tongue action or playful bites, warm breath or tender whispering will continue to be a turn on.

Lips

Kissing is a basic skill to be mastered early. Bad kissing is a deal breaker: if you can’t master the basic simple, wet, deep kiss, how can you be expected to go for more complex techniques?

But it’s not just tongue action. Stimulation by licking and biting lips gently allow a man to feel just the tiniest little sting. There’s a lot of pleasure in a little bit of pain!

Nape of the Neck

Any gentle touch on a man’s neck and collarbone area increases his arousal. Rubbing his neck lightly, nibbling on an earlobe while also running hands toward his genitals are creative combinations.

Nipples

This erogenous zone does not apply to all men, but men who do enjoy having their nipples stimulated do enjoy it. Immensely. Follow cues: what is he doing to yours?

Flick his nipples with your tongue or place it gently (very gently) between your teeth and move your jaw from side to side. Play with his nipples with your fingers or other common objects, a brush, feather, ice cube!

Lower Abs

The belly button and the area between navel and pelvis are tantalizing regions as blood flows to the pelvis and sexual tension increases. Stimulation going back and forth between this area and the genitals develops sexual tension throughout a man’s body.

Inner Thighs

Lightly touching a man’s inner thighs can get him in the mood—fast. Slowly move fingertips up and down his inner thighs. Following the outline of the crevice of his thigh, sensuously move the index and middle fingers up and down this hot spot for a few strokes before pressing the palm of a hand on the top of his thigh to start again with your fingertips.

Perineum

The area between a man’s testicles and his anus is a hot spot for most. If rubbed the right way, it can lead very powerful orgasms.

When he’s about to ejaculate, start vigorously massaging the perineum with your thumb. This gives a man a rush of pleasure and will make his orgasm that much more intense.

Scrotum

The scrotum holds the sensitive testicles. One wrong move and it’s pain, so start off slow.

Cup his scrotum into your hand and gently move the tips of your fingers while performing oral sex.

If both of you are comfortable exploring this, start masturbating him while you lick the area between his testicles. Eventually, you can suck it and perhaps even take a testicle into your mouth at a time for a little pulsation.

Back of the Knees

Ticklish and more sensitive perhaps since the skin is smoother at the back of knee, yet many men love to be kissed or caressed there. Gentle caresses can lead to fireworks. To ramp up anticipation, lightly yet firmly touch the back of the knees with your fingertips in a circular motion.

Feet

Men love foot massages! No wonder practitioners of the ancient art of reflexology focus on the heels of the feet as pressure points that can trigger sexual arousal. Brushing a man’s feet against other parts of your body can really get him excited.

Where does your compass lead you?

Where is your compass – physical, mental, emotional, financial, moral – pointing?

Back in the late Nineties, I worked for a company that managed U.S government projects in developing counties to increase their agricultural output – promoting export-led growth in countries where agriculture represented, and still does, the largest portion of economic activity and gross domestic product. Products like the quinoa on your supermarket shelf; once a nutritious staple for Andean folks who now can’t afford it or can’t buy it.

The company’s logo was a crude plowing field shaped into its corporate initials. As it grew, a designer revamped the logo into a stylized compass rose, which combined the creativity of a Spirograph design and the Arab influences of a region that would later produce a company president and chief financial officer.

The compass, with a big letter C, had a curiously placed little triangle pointing up – North. In development, North always seemed better. Post-industrial. Modern. Developed. The South, a host of isms and a proverbial game of catching up or leap frogging. Oddly this north-south distinction applied within Western economies where North is industrial, faster paced, progressive. The South, agrarian, traditional and slower paced in language and thinking.

About the same time I had undertaken a spiritual exercise in the first decade of new century, I had a rare opportunity to view a world map compiled in 1602 by Jesuit missionary to China, Matteo Ricci. Displayed at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the 400-year-old map was being shown publicly for the first time in North America after fetching a purchase price of USD1 million, the second highest price ever paid for a rare map.

Ricci’s map included pictures and annotations describing different regions of the world; Africa is noted to have the world’s highest mountain and longest river. North America mentions “humped oxen” or bison, wild horses and a region named “Ka-na-ta.” Ricci was the first Westerner to visit what is now Beijing in the late 1500s. Known for introducing Western science to China, Ricci created the map at the request of Emperor Wanli.

The map measured 12 feet by 5 feet and was printed on six rolls of rice paper.It showed Florida as “the Land of Flowers.” For the first time, China was placed at the center of the world map – thus displacing Jerusalem and the Holy Land from their primacy.

Later, after joining a global men’s organization championing integrity, accountability and self-awareness, I became acutely aware of the importance of the compass as each session of our group peer counseling began with the NEWS: a physical and verbal recounting of the multicultural importance of the cardinal points. In opposition to each other. East is East and West is West and never the twain…

And now in every man”s hero or warrior journey, does North-South axis represent highest and lowest points of journey and East-West the separation of the ordinary and special world of the journey?

Erotic energy and male figurative art

The naked and the nude.

Langage cru. Langage cuit.

Is today’s man threatened or aroused by erotic depictions of the male form?

The Vitruvian Gallery in Washington DC, addresses the need of male and erotic energy in a one-of-a-kind space for artists to draw, paint and show uninhibited and primal works.

In SMUT, the gallery’s current show, Pennsylvania-born graphic artist J. Eric Goines showcases his academic training. Yet he reveals himself as slightly pervy painter and sketch artist.

The one-man show features Goines’s recent oeuvre, which culminates a year-long project working with the Vitruvian Gallery Men’s Sketch Group and the NDG, also based in the Vitruvian Gallery space.

Goines’s passionate paintings and drawings of the male form draw from the classic and erotic vernacular, revealing his energetic closeness to the model.

Voyeurism, fantasy role-playing and fetish-gear rule in a world of idealized bears and musclemen — topics featured in the African-American artist’s blog, “Sex. Politics. Art. Cuisine.” In a digital age of manipulation and mechanical and technological reproduction – as Walter Benjamin called it – artists such as Goines are going back to basics: the beauty of the male form, paper, charcoal, pencil and ink.

The work is a raw yet depicts DC models by an artist who honed his skills drawing at the gallery almost every week.

Goines is a “wonderful man,” says Vitruvian Gallery owner Larry Hall “and an important part of our sketch sessions…he makes it to every session he can, sometimes twice per week.”

Regardless of model type or physique, Goines gets some great drawings from poses lasting 20 minutes or less.

Find out for yourself what happens when the artist defies studio conventions and see Goines experiment with the titillating question, “What if model and artist were both naked?”

Opening reception:

September 21, 2013
4:00-10:00 pm
Vitruvian Gallery
734 7th street SE, Second Floor Washington DC
Metro: Eastern Market

Planning: a tool that’s right for you

Planning is an extraordinary tool.

Yet it often takes a lot of effort in the initial phase since you are basically starting to “initialize,” “reprogram” or “reboot” your brain to respond with behaviors that move you closer to your goals.

Imagine if every self-help, motivational and diet book came with an easy goal plan to do whatever’s recommended in the book, you would be a better manager, employee, people-person, entrepreneur, leader, leaner, thinner, healthier and better dressed, groomed, grounded and balanced.

Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson, author of Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals and “Nine Things Successful People Do Differently,” the most popular and commented on Harvard Business Review blog post in 2011, suggests contingency or if/then planning – is a successful way to reach your goals.

Connecting the if – situation you’re going to act on – and the then – specific action you’re going to take – duplicate the language of the brain, “if z, then y.”

When added to SMARTER goals, contingency planning contributes to succeeding in short-term goals and establishing a foundation for other successes.

How do you define success?

Why are you pursuing the goals you are pursuing?

How are your goals really satisfying your basic human needs for belonging (relatedness), competence and autonomy?

Let Joe the Life Coach help you with transitions, important life aspirations and goal planning! One step at a time. Call 202.328.7414, Skype to sandpdc or tweet @aprayerdc.

Erotic energy and male figurative art

The naked and the nude.

Langage cru. Langage cuit.

Is today’s man threatened or aroused by erotic depictions of the male form?

The Vitruvian Gallery in Washington DC, addresses the need of male and erotic energy in a one-of-a-kind space for artists to draw, paint and show uninhibited and primal works.

In SMUT, the gallery’s current show, Pennsylvania-born graphic artist J. Eric Goines showcases his academic training. Yet he reveals himself as slightly pervy painter and sketch artist.

The one-man show features Goines’s recent oeuvre, which culminates a year-long project working with the Vitruvian Gallery Men’s Sketch Group and the NDG, also based in the Vitruvian Gallery space.

Goines’s passionate paintings and drawings of the male form draw from the classic and erotic vernacular, revealing his energetic closeness to the model.

Voyeurism, fantasy role-playing and fetish-gear rule in a world of idealized bears and musclemen — topics featured in the artist’s blog, “Sex. Politics. Art. Cuisine.”

The work is a raw yet depicts DC models by an artist who honed his skills drawing at the gallery almost every week.

Goines is a “wonderful man,” says Vitruvian Gallery owner Larry Hall “and an important part of our sketch sessions…he makes it to every session he can, sometimes twice per week.” Practice inspires perfection.

Regardless of model type or physique, Goines gets some great drawings from poses lasting 20 minutes or less.

Find out for yourself what happens when the artist defies studio conventions and see Goines experiment with the titillating question, “What if model and artist were both naked?”

Opening reception:

September 21, 2013
4:00-10:00 pm
Vitruvian Gallery
734 7th street SE, Second Floor Washington DC
Metro: Eastern Market

Exhibit runs until late October. Showings by appointment available.

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Are you a good judge of people?

The most critical choices we make relate to people.

Being a good judge of people, however, is difficult – particularly when you throw in eons of biological prejudices or cultural biases, stigmas and discrimination.

How do you get better at sizing up first impressions?

Do you focus on extrinsic markers?

How do you love?

Is your love intimate?

Is your love physical?

Does your love defy?

Does your love make you feel ashamed?

Does your love prefer adventure?

Do you feel the spirit that unites?

Eros.

Five questions for self-discovery

You’re answering anywhere between 600 and 10,000 questions per day!

You judge, discern, discriminate. You decide and choose.

Yet here are some of the questions you should ask yourself regularly:

How do the results I’m getting today compare to the ones I got six months ago?

What’s changed that might affect the results that I need now?

What’s changed about the definition of a successful result?

Is what I’ve been doing still working?

What should I start or stop doing to get different results?

What’s your cultural IQ?

There are three levels to cultural information.

Rules: the dos and don’ts often associated with etiquette that intend to reduce or eliminate offenses to another person

General notions: the potential similarities and differences between cultures, where often finding similarities can be a seductive way of creating bonds yet where differences can be definitive in distinguishing essential elements of a culture

Integrated dimension: the ability to empathize and see your world, yourself, your own perspective through the eyes of someone else.