Whether the primary focus is to extend your in-house applications to your roaming workforce (B2E) or to interface with customers and prospects (B2C) via mobile devices, or possibly both, the options and considerations are ever-growing.

It’s no surprise that Gartner’s “Top Ten Strategic Technologies for 2012″ shows number one and two as “Media Tablets and Beyond” and “Mobile-Centric Applications and Interfaces” with the fifth being “App Stores and Marketplaces.” This list is intended to help CIOs who are building their strategic plans and budgets. So, deploying mobile solutions should be a priority for most Information Technology departments. To show how fast this is changing, note that Mobility wasn’t even on Gartner’s list in 2009 and now it encompasses three of the top five. (See Figure 1 showing the list for the last four years).

Confrontation

Mine is a familiar story, almost cliche – I was a mess – emotionally charged, kicked out of school and home regularly, suspicious and mistrustful of most adults, lots of friends and parties, drugs and alcohol.  Boyfriends added to the emotional roller coaster.  If I wasn’t fighting with the boyfriend then it was my parents or teachers.  My mind was always spinning – obsessive thoughts, sometimes paranoid and jealous.

I was seeing a social worker (at the ‘suggestion’ of my high school) and I still remember some advice she gave me.  I was obsessing and hadn’t eaten much for days after a bitter break-up from a two year relationship.   At fifteen, I was in a desperate frame of mind.  I’d been alternating between pushing away my constant thoughts, trying hard not to think about the situation or giving in to my obsessions, wallowing in it, raging internally.  Everything – songs, TV, friends – reminded me of him, good times and bad, perceived transgressions, the degree to which I’d been victimized, etcetera.

Her suggestion was simple.  She said when a memory surfaces, acknowledge it, don’t resist it but also don’t expand it, generating thoughts that lead to suffering.  Once you’ve accepted the memory that’s been triggered, that’s it.  Move on. This may sound obvious but it really struck me.  For the first time, I began to realize that I have a choice.  I wouldn’t have been able to articulate this then but what it meant was that my mind was not in charge – I was.

What I understand now is that conquering a busy mind is a lifelong practice and can be the difference between a miserable, angry life or one filled with love and gratitude.

We have somewhere between 12,000 to 65,000 thoughts per day, although I’ve seen reference to a wider range (between 2,000 to 600,000!). Most commonly, 50-60,000 is considered a good estimate.

Being human means having thoughts all day, every day: endless observations, judgements, interpretations, complaints, worries, ‘what-ifs’, memories, regrets, wishes, desires, dreams about our future, anger about our past, and on and on. I’ve seen statistics that 95% of them are repetitive. Some thoughts are random, others can hijack us if let our emotions react to what are sometimes completely irrational, twisted versions of reality. For me, it has been a major breakthrough to understand that I am NOT my thoughts. For years, my thoughts ran me. They still try to, every single day, but I am watching them now!

In researching this, I was astounded to discover that most of our thoughts are not even about the present.  The majority of our thoughts are rooted in the past, somewhere between 70 and 90%.  They’re not just replays of ‘what happened’ but we add our own interpretation and meaning.  Within our minds, our perception of the past can often become warped.  About 10-20% of our thoughts involve imagining what will happen in the future.  Only a small percentage of them actually focus on the present moment in a purely experiential manner which is where life truly exists.

Eckhart Tolle, author of “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth”, tells us: “Stay fully present in the now—your whole life unfolds here. In the now there is joy of Being and deep peace”.

When you realize you are not your thoughts, that you are a being with a powerful inner spirit with an appendage that generates non-stop thoughts, the possibility exists to become an observer of the mind and take control.

Louise Hay’s work on “affirmations” demonstrates how you can change your life by the practice of generating positive, life-affirming thoughts.  She says: “Trust life to hear and respond to your positive words. Say these affirmations every day and your whole world will change for the better.”

I still struggle with my tendency to wallow in negative, mistrustful thoughts, to over-react to situations.  I believe it was Samuel Clemens who said: “Just because I’m paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me.”  Well, that pretty much sums up how I feel sometimes, especially in the politically charged corporate world that many of us need to immerse ourselves in to make a living.

I believe that being self-aware and committed to conquering your mind is half the battle. Avoid the inner time travel and be here now.  I’m so much better at this than I was at fifteen.  With continued practice, I imagine I will be quite wise (and peaceful) by the time I’m 70.

Innovation can take many forms, depending on your business, but agility in Information Technology is often critical to delivering new services and products and to connecting via new channels or markets. At the same time, many businesses are reliant on legacy systems that cannot easily meet these emerging needs.

And yet the legacy systems that many organizations depend on are not easily replaced, not without risk to the business. They may have grown with the organization and have information structures and embedded processing logic that is crucial to the unique products, services, and delivery mechanisms employed by the business. Highly skilled, long-time technical staff may be needed to maintain the system and keep the business operational.

So, how do you move forward? How do you maintain smooth operations and innovate to meet your business’ demands? There are many options, but identifying the best approach involves an assessment of your current enterprise applications portfolio, agreement within your organization on where you want to go, and many other factors. One size does not fit all when it comes to legacy asset management and transformation, but you can craft a plan that will take your systems and business forward on a safe and continuous path.

….for the full article, go to http://www.mcpressonline.com/general/planning-for-legacy-transformation.html 

Thought for today, by Mark  Nepo:  ‘The glassblower knows:  while in the heat of beginning, any  shape is possible.  Once hardened,  the only way to change is to break.’

Once again, as with Elizabeth Lesser’s book, ‘Broken Open,’ I am reminded of how we all have parts of ourselves which seem  broken.  It’s not our downfall this  brokenness, its part of the fiber of our lives.  And it is in looking at our lives – warts and all – with compassion, that begins to make us whole. 

Paul Ferrini wrote “In each moment  we are modeling something.  Sometimes it is fear.  Sometimes it is love.  The  question is not ‘How can we get rid of our fear?’  The question is, ‘How can we hold our  fear with love?”’  If fear is the  base of our flaws, our harsh judgments of how we are broken, what better way to  heal than to hold these aspects of ourselves in love, with the same  loving kindness in our hearts that we would a small child who has made a  mistake.  We are children,  children of God, and we forget that all of us are doing the best we can at any  given moment.  The courage it takes  to pick ourselves up, forgive ourselves for whatever we perceive needs forgiving  and move on – that is the courage of a compassionate traveler in this journey to  reach our best selves.  We are all  on this path, whether we know it or not.  Each must walk at his own pace, and know that in picking up the broken  pieces we have the opportunity to create the shape of the life we genuinely  want.