When You Deserve The Best

Many folks struggle with the idea of being deserving. They feel that there is something wrong about them. That's why they feel they don't deserve happiness, love, wealth, you name it. Here are three things to avoid when trying to change your life. When you are trying to feel you do deserve all the best.

1. Avoid comparing yourself with others, especially if they have more than you of whatever. You are unique and your situation does not match anyone else's. See yourself as an individual with your own special range of influence, which you truly have.

2. Avoid comparing your present life with your life as a child. You were essentially powerless as a child, as is every child. What was then when, you were a child, does not control what can be when you are an adult.

3. Avoid negative thinking. It is said that people have between 50,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day - - most of them negative. If most of your thoughts are negative, and they will be unless you make a concerted effort to change them, just think how you are perpetuating negativity in your life.

So, there is another side to this coin of thinking you deserve all the best. Here are three things to seek in your daily life - - leading to a better feeling about what you deserve.

A. Seek to define yourself as who you really are. One idea you need to distinctly consider is this: You are a child of the Universe. Yes, if you will, you are divine. Therefore, you deserve all the best.

B. Seek to know that what occurred in the past, whatever is was, need not limit you now. The past is gone. As much as is possible, forget it. Live in this moment. Make the most of this moment.

C. Seek to express yourself positively. You start that by be conscious (aware) of your thoughts when you take a minute, make a minute, to consider what you are thinking. Sounds peculiar, I know. But in order to halt the negativity in your thoughts, you must be come aware of those thoughts. Then, when you discover negativity, replace it immediately with positivity.

Now, take these things to avoid and things to seek and apply them to life now. I believe you will feel immediately more deserving.

Smoking Rooms or Lack There of

Technology continues to march on.  The iPad has changed how we use laptops, phones have changed how we work with the internet and flatscreens has changed how much room we need for our TVs but now it’s changed how we smoke!  I’m not a smoker but I have to say this new e-cigarette is very interesting.  I’m like you, I didn’t know that much about it but I saw Johnny Depp smoking one in the Tourist (see below) and I thought that was really cool. 

I thought it was so cool I looked into it.  With just a little research I found that e-cigarettes are odorless and the smoker only inhales nicotine as a water vapor.  The “smoke” that is exhaled is only water vapor so second hand smoke is supposed to be non-existent! 

I thought the cool factor went up even more so I continued to look into it, especially as society’s mood swings to restrict the areas that a smoker can enjoy their vice.  Apparently Charlie Sheen used one in Toronto where he could not smoke on stage so he got away with it by smoking an e-cig.  He still got booed.

Now you can get a ton of different brands, colors or flavors.  You can get a starter pack or order disposable.  The one thing you will have to change is your habit from lighting your cigarette to charging your cigarette.  But with out lighting anything up you could theoretically smoke in bed now without the fear of falling asleep and burning your house down… or our hotel ;-)

According to the research available the chemicals and tar are considerably less than a normal cigarette as in non existent.  Well except for the nicotine and that’s what most people smoke for anyways right?  Again I’m not a smoker but I think if your going to do it then do it in a more healthy fashion. 

Another plus is that there seems to be less restrictions of where you have to “smoke” these.  Apparently you can smoke these in some areas that have been restricted before such as restaurants, public areas, and in offices of some companies.  I could not find an actual place that boasted these claims but in several news clips they referenced this fact.

The other boast is that these cost considerably less than a cigarette habit.  In some cases (depending on where you live and what brand you smoke) you can cut the amount you pay by half.  That is huge for most people trying to scrape together every dollar they can in today’s economy.

This all sounds great so why doesn’t everyone switch?  Well as of January 2011 the FDA had not regulated these devices and the reason why is because they are a device and not a drug.  Or so the classification of the e-cigarette currently falls into.  Which as a device the FDA does not have strict parameters to go in and regulate production of this product.  I’m sure this will change shortly due to the rising popularity of this device.  After all there are 47 million possible users in the U.S. alone.

Pinball Madness

Pinball machines. Believe it or not, pinball machines were patented in 1871 and were called Bagatelle. In the 30’s they became coin operated and were refered to as marble games or pin games. In 1931 David Gottlieb's Baffle Ball became the first overnight hit of the coin-operated era. Selling for $17.50, the game dispensed five to seven balls for a penny. The game struck a chord with a public eager for cheap entertainment in a depression-era economy. Most drugstores and taverns in America operated pinball machines, with many locations making back the cost of the game in a matter of days. Baffle Ball sold over 50,000 units and established Gottlieb as the first major manufacturer of pinball machines.
At this point you’re probably asking yourself, “big deal, what does this have to do with the Embassy Suites Denver Tech Center?” Well tons! And I mean TONS! In less than a week (4/27-5/3) we will have 7 to 10 tons of pinball machines in our hotel! That’s around 225 different machines!

Pinball machines have been around for so long that most of us that didn’t grow up with a portable game, Ipad or games in our phone can remember going to the arcade or the bowling alley and trying to rack up that high score! Everyone had their own tricks of when to bump the table or tweak it just right to gain more points or save the ball from dropping out of play.

Pinball plays such a big part of our society that they’ve shown up in many of our popular movies. Starting with the first appearance that I could find way back in the 40’s in “They Drive by night” with Humphrey Bogart. They may not pop up as much now in movies but they still come in every now and then even making an appearance in 2000 in “What Women Want” and in 2001 in “Behind Enemy Lines.” The most recent I could find was 2003 in “Bad Santa.” As much as we have a love affair with these machines I’m sure there are other movies out there that I just didn’t find.

Another way pinball machines remain in the spotlight is their panache for taking on the titles of some of our most popular movies. Indian Jones, Tomb Raider, Predator, Aliens, Terminator, Lethal Weapon just to name a few. I see a theme here.

Over these next few weeks as the pinball machines arrive our guests will be able to buy discounted tickets & play if they want. We expect over 2000 visitors for this action packed event. If you love pinball machines you’ve got to get out and come down to see this amazing event! Hope to see you here!

Sleeping Through Meetings

I was walking by one of my meetings and popped my head in to check and make sure everything was refreshed and looking good.  Our meeting space comfortably holds quite a crowd so frequent checks help insure we consistently have everything for our meeting goers.  In this case I had to stifle myself due to the man in the back of the room.   He was head down, arms crossed and I’m sure two breaths away from snoring. 

This really got me thinking.  I’ve been in meetings before that have been dry or tough to get through but I thank coffee or soda for getting me through those tough times, but how many people catch some Z’s in meetings? 

You can find in the news how council members sleep through meetings or Youtube videos of people falling asleep there is a ton of stuff showing people falling asleep in meetings.  So the guy in my meeting was not unusual but comical just like the girl in the video. 

So what is the reason for people falling asleep?  Is it a dry, monotone speaker, lack of sleep, not enough coffee?  If you find yourself in a meeting and need to stay awake here are a couple of tips to use to keep your peepers open:

·  Pretend to take notes. Writing things down will make you look fastidious, efficient and incredibly interested. Rather than notes, however, your pad of paper can be filled with an array of fun activities.

·  Play word games. This is as easy as picking a word, such as "corporate" and seeing how many other words you can make from the letters. "Corporate" gives you: rat, rate, poor, coop, crop and crap, just to name a few.

·  Count words. Certain speakers, in their monotone, may be prone to repeating certain words, utterance or phrases. It's fun and easy to count how many times Nancy in marketing says "newfangled," Vance in budget says "earmarked" or George from human resources utters "Um."

·  Rate neckties. Start with a list merely rating all the different ties in attendance from 1-10. The list can then be broken down to rate the most colorful, the most original and one you would do nothing but hang yourself with.

·  As mentioned, always keep one ear open to what the suits are rambling on about in case someone decides to ask your opinion.
·  Don't doodle. Doodling on your notepad may be fun, but someone is bound to glance over and note your pages are filled with eyeballs, smiley men or other funky little illustrations. Whatever you are writing cannot be read from far away.
·  If you must doodle, don't draw evil caricatures of the people in attendance. Someone is bound to see.
·  Don't play tic-tac-toe with the person next to you. That's just too obvious.

Express Yourself, Just Not Too Much!

In the Hospitality industry it’s a pretty safe bet that we’ll be looking for someone to fill a position at our hotel. It happens. We hire a multitude of people for many positions in our business. There’s a lot to do to keep a full house comfortable.

One thing I will tell you as we look into people coming to work for us, we, as a company, run a background check. Of course this uncovers for us most major things that can be rummaging around in someone’s past but it doesn’t necessarily find everything. And having a background is not something that can keep you from getting one of our positions.

But something that is up and coming in popularity is online searches for people and their public profiles. Or maybe this is something bigger than I thought. Companies looking to hire someone can hire another companies that specializes in online searches for candidates looking to get hired. I’m not sure what the general perception is of people working in the hotel industry but I think it’s safe to say we are, generally, not savvy when it comes to these online kinds of the things.

Imagine my surprise when recently we were looking to hire a new front desk agent and we had narrowed our search to a few good candidates. As I was discussing my thoughts of each candidate with my co-worker he said, “well, let’s do a Google search of each candidate.”

I hadn’t really thought of that but figured, ok. We searched for our candidates and found their profiles online. Pretty easy. One had relatively nothing online and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The second seemed to have a very active social life. Lots of party pictures and fun times. I’m not against having a good time, let’s face it, I’ve even had a night or two that could be considered “blurry,” but when your looking at photographic evidence and the date stamp on them shows it’s practically every weekend, you tend to notice.

The third candidate seemed to have both a healthy balance of good times and family posts. Maybe from a friends point of view you want to see the “party” side but as a potential employer you want to see the stability a candidate has.

I won’t tell you who we hired but I will tell you this, a public search on the internet made our choice that much easier. Just goes to show your friends aren’t the only ones seeing what you have out there. Be careful.