Feb 17

Jumpstarting Your Fervor: Finding Direction to Obtain Goals

Motivation No Comments »

Have you ever been truly bored with what you do?  Uninspired?  You know that you need to head off into a different direction that will renew your passion but you are unable to motivate yourself.  You have become complacent and feel that there is a severe lull occurring within your career but you don’t know where to go next or what you should do.  You’ve reached what you thought was the pinnacle of your career but realize that you have reached the “fork in the road” of your professional life.  Where do you go now?

Drive and Determination

I believe these are fundamental and the basis of gaining direction.  You have to WANT to go somewhere.  You have to WANT to make a choice.  Instead of sitting waiting for things to happen, you have to get up and make them happen.  This reminds me of when I established one of my earlier businesses that was situated around teaching people and small businesses about information security awareness.  I did all of the work needed to make people aware of my seminar and I marketed myself and my business.  In doing so, I actually had people want to talk to me about future security awareness classes for their businesses!  Bottom-line, I was driven and determined to make things happen and to succeed.  This also showed me the many other hidden opportunities that were waiting for me.  Finding your drive and being determined is not mysterious or elusive; it starts from within yourself.  What is your passion? What do you like to do?  “JUST DO IT” as Nike so often reminds us.

Continual Self-Motivation

This builds upon your drive and determination.  You have to remind yourself daily and in every instance what you want to do.  You have to see the end even though you are at the beginning.   Imagine.  Be your own cheerleader.  You can do it!  Daily, make strides to your goal.  No matter how big or small your pace, you are stepping in the direction of achievement.  Always keep that in the forefront of your mind.  Not everyone is going to see what you see.  Steadily maintain your vision and do whatever it takes to stay on course.

Write Your Goals Down

Have you ever gone to the grocery store without a list?  If this has happened to you and you are like me, you end up buying a whole bunch of things that are not on your list and you forgetting things (some important) that you meant to pick up.  The same thing occurs when you do not write your goals down.  You end up doing a bunch of things that are not in line with your ultimate aspirations and you end up forgetting important things that you should have done.  This leads to confusion, cloudiness, lack of inspiration, and never getting to where you need to be.  You will lose focus.  This all can be prevented by writing your goals down.  Write specific actions you need to achieve to get to your greater goal.  Doing this will reinforce your drive and continue to motivate you!   Not to mention, your list will serve as a checklist for you so you can see what you have done and what you need to do to achieve your goal.

BELIEVE!

I know all too well that you can believe as much as you want but if you have no actions behind that belief, you will remain stagnant.  Just know that you can achieve whatever goal it is that you are trying to obtain.

One of my favorite quotes is:

“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.”–Henry Ford

It all starts with you.  So….what are you going to do about it?

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Jan 01

New Year, New Design!

Motivation No Comments »

Happy New Year, everyone!  It’s the first day of a new year and like most people, I feel inspired and have made a long list of New Year’s resolutions both personal and professional.  One thing that I want to do both personally and professionally is to be positive and inspired.  I want to be rejuvenated and constantly do things that will boost me to higher levels in my professional aspirations.

Last week, I read an article at Smashing Magazine entitled “Design Something Every Day”.  For me, the article was VERY inspirational in terms of providing a way for me to stay motivated from day to day.  With everything, I normally dive right in and I am REALLY trying to dive right into my life now.  I am charged! Amped!  And I figure that in order to achieve a new level of success, I need to stay inspired DAILY and keep my creative juices flowing.

I look forward to sharing my journey with you as I continue to develop and transform.  I’ve developed a separate page on this blog entitled “Daily Design” that will show the creations that I develop.  Feel free to comment and give honest feedback.

Again, Happy New Year, and I hope that you too will be inspired to take the reigns of your destiny through creative rejuvenation!

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Dec 17

Who is Jeri Brown?

Motivation, Personal Branding, Social Media, Technology 2 Comments »

Who am I?  Well, that’s a good question!  As I have been struggling as to what my first blog post would be about, I thought the best idea would be an intriguing introduction so that you are able to get to know me.

I’ve always disliked the saying statement at job interviews, “So, tell me a little bit about yourself.”  I never know where to start.  Obviously, the requester wants to know about my professional experience so I will start there.  I’ve been consumed in the information technology world for quite some time.  Believe it or not, my first appeal to computers was back in middle school when I signed up for an after school program on beginner’s programming.  Back then, our task was to create a functional computer game using the BASIC language.  I even remember the name of my game:  Ranger Bob.  I chose Bob because it was easy to program the B-O-B visually!

Some 15 years after that, I became captivated with Microsoft Windows.  I think it was Microsoft 2.0 where it ran on top of DOS.  As crazy as it may sound, I used to like to hand-draw cartoons in Microsoft Paint—by freehand using only a mouse.  I was very good at it and would take comic strips from the newspaper, bring it to my summer job, and spend the day “drawing” between doing menial admin work.  I was working in an IT office and became so curious and intrigued that I went back to school the following semester and changed my major to Computer Science.

It went uphill quite fast for a while after that.  I love to learn and information technology was second nature to me.  So I quickly went from working in a helpdesk to system and network administration and right into information security.  For a while I continued to grasp everything that came my way but these past 4 years, I’ve been in a deep “sleep”.  Sure, I became a CISSP just about 5 years ago, wrote a number of security policies, and performed a large number of challenging C&A tasks.  But what’s next?   I have achieved information assurance expertise but I did so with blinders on unaware of the current technological trends and slowly rotting with menial information security “challenges” which to me, no longer embodies the true essence of information security.

Now I am awake!!  And ready to move at top speed to the technological developments ahead.  With my new consciousness, I have shaken the title Senior Information Security Analyst and have adopted the self-proclaimed title of Technology Strategist.  Sure, the information security analyst is my day job but not what I am all about.  I just no longer want to be boxed into the information assurance/C&A “genre”.

I decided to start a blog for a few reasons:

1.  Discuss my ideas and opinions on various emerging technology trends.

I have become fascinated with Web 2.0 technology.  I feel that it has opened my eyes and has me feeling the same passion I felt when I first discovered BASIC programming some 25+ years ago.  Because I’ve been emerged in the world of certification and accreditation (C&A) for the past 7 years, I’ve been blind to its emergence and popularity.  Where have I been?!  Now that I’m enlightened (and awake), I see that there is absolutely no reason why the various platforms of social media shouldn’t be used in our everyday lives to include business.  Look at twitter and facebook.  Need I say more?

2.  Discuss information security and how I see it in the workplace.

Information Security is my forte so to speak.  I’ve been particularly submerged in information assurance and certification and accreditation.  And, not to toot my own horn, but I know my stuff.  Lately, I’ve become aggravated at being hired on as an expert with my experience and background only to be told “that’s not the way we do it here” or “do it this way”.  Why’d you hire me then if you know I bring fresh ideas, experience, and crave challenge??!!  I bring to the table insightful ideas, and yes, I play by the book when it comes to security.  If the directive says, “a, b, and c”, then, by golly, “a, b, and c” it is!  To me, it’s not rocket science.  It’s just playing by the rules.  That is what ENFORCING information security is all about—not seeing what you can get away with!  Excuse my mini-rant.  :)

I so long to be an effective, insightful information security contributor … sigh…

3.  Conquering the “web frontier”.

I feel that our society is headed more and more onto the web front.  There are a number of emerging technology trends that are making their way onto the forefront of optimal and affordable business practices.  One topic that has recently make its way to my knowledge base is cloud computing.  With Microsoft’s upcoming release of Azure, I can only see this technology being the new wave of the future.  Yes, the technology has been around but it’s a trend that I am sure many businesses will be leveraging.  I look forward to exploring this technology as well as others that are out there.

4.  Discussion and interaction.

I want to interact and discuss with my peers on what is going on in technology.  Information security, new technology trends, or anything else, I want to hear and discuss it.  Learning comes through discussions.  Sadly, it’s been quite a while since I’ve been afforded the opportunity of stimulating, intellectual conversation about technology topics with my peers.  I believe that everyone is able to add something valuable that will shape and enlighten the topic of discussion.

5.  Social media is where it’s at!

Upon waking up out of my deep non-technological slumber, social media is where it is at!  I cannot say that enough.  Wikipedia couldn’t have said it better when it states that:

“It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.”

How awesome is that!!!  So with my ever-expanding knowledge, I plan to use social media to its fullest.  I know it hasn’t been around very long but I feel as though I have a learning curve which spells a challenge to me.  I thrive off of challenging situations when it comes to learning and solving problems so this is all right up my alley!

I hope my rants, raves, and requests for interaction will be profitable for anyone who decides to subscribe.  Learning definitely comes from sharing experiences and I certainly have a large number experiences that I would love to share as well as learn from your experiences.  My plan and my goal with this blog is to leverage information technology and information security by teaching, learning, sharing, solving, and enlightenment.

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