  Hello!
One of the things though, that I've discovered is the draw for it is that there is some instant gratification. If you do what is asked and are diligent in keeping things moving, you'll get rewarded. If you ask friends for help, they send it. If you give a 'reward', you get one in return. I guess the key is to create that outside of a cybergame. :)
SALE FOR APRIL - For this month, I'm trying something new. Well, not entirely new, but I found a new distributor for some stoles. Right now, I have them in white, with a cross and dove. I haven't found any plain ones yet, but I do have a possible vendor for some. I only bought 4 of them to start, so if you want one, get it now. If you order it and the first ones were sold, I'll order a bunch more, so there may be a slight delay. I'm waiting now to see what sort of interest there is before I invest in more of them. You can find them here:
http://www.ulcseminary.org/store/product_info.php?products_id=215
LATEST LESSONS - I've been noticing some interesting things going on over the last few months. As a baseline, I will start off by saying that I was very fortunate to grow up in a household where my parents were happily married, got along well, and treated us all pretty decently. As a kid, (and often as adults) we often think that whatever we experience is what most other people experience. That being said, I had generally assumed that most people lived a reasonably good life and their parents were reasonably kind. I knew there were exceptions, but I thought that was the average. I've been finding out exactly how wrong I was.
I've been talking to a lot of people who have had very difficult upbringings. Their parents were unkind to them, neglectful, mean, abusive, etc. Some I've met as adults and some are going through it now, but there are a lot of them.
One of the things that I've been thinking about is how these people who are brought up with no self-worth, not taught how to make good decisions, given wrong information about the world, etc. are then expected, as adults, to 'get over it.' These people are expected to somehow make good decisions and to not do what they have been programmed to do since birth. So the question is, if you are one of those people, how do you move past it? How do you learn to make good decisions, like yourself, and work towards emotional health?
My only answer to that is the one that has worked for me. Be aware. Notice things. Notice when something didn't go well. If you had an interaction and it didn't work out, ask yourself what happened? If you can be honest with yourself and recognize your mistake, then just be aware of it. Next time, you'll catch it a little sooner and a little sooner until you can finally notice the situation happening and stop yourself before you say or do whatever it is that isn't working. It's simple, but in no way easy. It takes a lot of practice and a willingness to recognize when you are wrong.
I did something recently where I hurt my friend's feelings. I didn't think about it at the time -- just running my mouth. Not about him, but about someone else. I wasn't intending harm, just noticing someone's behavior. Still, bad timing on my part and I should've known better. I thought about it way after and wasn't sure, but he told me that he was upset and I knew immediately I'd made a misstep. I apologized immediately and sincerely, and we're all good now. Next time, I'll try to catch it sooner.
I know there's more that's going on with this whole concept, but I don't think I've got all the parts yet. I've noticed too how even small things can make a difference. The kind words mailings are my little way of putting some good out in the world and I've been rewarded a thousand fold. Maybe that's what's getting me thinking. If something that is to me, a small gesture, can make someone's day or help them in any way, imagine what all of you can do if everyone did it?
It's one thing to sit around and claim to be righteous and another thing to reach out and give someone a hand. I know many of you have been reaching out to others and others of you really need a helping hand. Not sure where I'm going with this, but I suspect that next month, or the month after, things will get more clear.
ARTICLE DIRECTORY - The article directory is not turning out the be the fabulous place for you to post articles that I'd hoped it would be. Instead, I'm getting a lot of spam. A few good articles, but lots of things that aren't. It would be great if you all would sign up, put your name on the appropriate lines (spam entries have no names) and please submit your articles and wonderful writings. Rest-assured that I will continue to remove the unrelated articles as quickly as I can. I'm needing to put some kind of spam-guard on it, but I don't know how yet.
AFFILIATE PROGRAM - Please check out the affiliate program again. If you've downloaded the ULC Toolbar (http://ULCSeminary.OurToolbar.com/), you'll see there is now a direct link to go there. I've added some new pages to the affiliate program, so please sign up and look at the training videos that are available. Speaking of videos, I expect to have some videos up on the site soon. Hopefully, I'll be talking about it in next month's announcement. Keep checking the site in the coming weeks and you should be able to find them on a lot of different pages. If you can think of some areas specifically, that you'd like to see more info, let me know.
The link for the affiliate program is: http://www.ulcseminary.org/idevaffiliate/. It's brand new, so more things will be added as I go, and there may be a few bugs, but I think it's ready to rock and roll right now.
- It's free to join
- You get a $10 bonus just for signing up.
- You earn money with every sale that comes through your link.
- You can track the link 24/7 to check on sales and traffic.
- You will get paid monthly.
- If you send me the pages that you have the banner on, I will help promote them through the search engines, which will help increase your sales.
You can put any or all of the links/banners, etc. on your website. I currently have several banners and some text links available, as well as a couple of html pages that you can put on your site. You can choose which banner(s) you like, depending on what products you want to market. Each banner takes you to a separate category in the store that sells only those items. Several of the pages also include the option for people to become ordained through your site. It's all part of the page, so you should be able to add it easily.
FAVORITES SECTION - In the right-hand column of the site, I've added a new section at the top called 'Favorites'. This is a short list of pages that go to the most-often questions I get asked. I'll probably add a little more too it, but so far so good. I also have drop down menus added to the sidebar as well to help you find any pages you need on the site. I hope this helps.
SPAM - INLCUDE A SUBJECT LINE PLEASE - The latest spam thing going out is to get emails from familiar addresses, but with no subject line. What that means is that if an email doesn't have a subject line, it will be deleted without being read. I'm sure I'm missing a few real ones that way, but to open all of them is very time-consuming, so please include a descriptive subject. (Not 'hey' or 'amy' as the subject)
If you're new to the Seminary, check out announcements from previous months at http://www.ulcseminary.org/announcements.php
Warmly, Rev. Amy Long
President of ULC Seminary
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