Don’t underestimate your impact in this world. The slightest thing you do can change the course of many many lives.
Example:
Words are like knives…
About ten years ago I was working with a guy named Todd. Todd and I got along really well and had many interesting conversations, some deep, some shallow, most I don’t even remember. One conversation we had was about fitness. I wanted to get in better shape, and I was uneducated on how to go about it.
Todd recommended a book, Body for Life, by Bill Phillips. It’s a book for entry level fitness folks. If you know almost nothing, it’s great. If you think you know a thing or two, you may be educated a bit. Some things in it may not be totally accurate, but it can and does give you diet guidelines, workout schedules and inspirational stories.
I read it and entered the “Body for Life Challenge” 1999. So did Deb. We made progress on our physical and mental selves and met an entire new online community, the Yahoo Body for Life group. That group got us involved in Wishlifts, which are weight lifting events to raise money for the Make a Wish Foundation. At one of those lifts we met Bob Doyle (from the movie The Secret - before the movie was even thought of) and we organized an event where he presented his Create Your Own Reality workshop. That was his first experience in that direction. His first workshop.
Then I took Bob’s Six Figure Streams course a year later and we started down the path of having on-line internet careers.
The body for life also got Deb excited about fitness and she got certified as a trainer and eventually got a job at Body Zone, which introduced us to Jim and Toni Reece. Meeting them helped start the Get Inspired! Project.
All this from a brief conversation with a coworker on fitness.
We both have new careers and mindsets and have an expanded new group of friends.
Q What tiny thing have you said that has changed lives?
A: You have no idea, but think about that a bit. When you are in a poor mood or a good mood, that’s contagious. When you make a suggestion, someone may listen and follow through. Words are like knives. They can cut through flesh and change lives.
We had a meeting to talk about the focus of our company, which is a major thing. Companies that lose the focus on their target markets are companies that do not stay in business long. So, who is your target market? (not a rhetorical question)
Are you in the group classified as ‘helping professionals’ and what does that even mean? Helping professionals is a new term that includes coaches, mentors, peer support specialists, teachers, social workers, ministers and managers. What do all of those have in common? Guidance. The problem that many of these folks face is that some of them really haven’t had any education along that line, or the education was too general.
Given enough time, your experience will eventually teach you how to handle various situations, but most of us just don’t have the time, and can’t afford to make mistakes. The purpose of this particular entry is to get feedback and discussion on what tools and resources you use on a regular basis. Do you have a particular software program or an HR handbook that assists you in the tough times?
One ‘problem’ with that is that most people in these positions don’t have one resource they can rely on and then try to ‘wing it’ and that doesn’t always give the best results.
I’d really like to get some feedback on this to track where I can go with future blog entries. Thanks
I was thinking a lot about the saying ‘standing on the shoulders of giants.’ This may seem like a really strange thing to be thinking about, and to that I would respond, yeah, I think about odd stuff sometimes.
Standing on the shoulders of giants basically means that all the efforts that are put into research, new products, motorcycle stunts, whatever, are built upon things that have been done in the past. No one would be doing a double back flip in the Olympic floor event if someone wouldn’t have done a single back flip to start out.
So we all build on the things that are. Cars get faster, stronger, more fuel efficient. It’s all about what direction you want to take things. A scientist may look at the human genome project and decide that manipulating genes could make athletes stronger, while another scientist sees that same line of reasoning helping people with ALS.
If you look at the ‘giants’ in the self-help business, they will be quick to reference their influences, whether they are Mother Theresa or Napoleon Hill, and if you look at their work, you can see where they took the original material and changed it to give it their own flavor and personal slant. That slant may or may not be an improvement. It really depends on your perspective.
What it comes down to is you can take other people’s ideas and experiences and use them to shorten your path to success. If you fall in with the right bunch you can leverage their experience and ideas with a mastermind group and really accelerate the process exponentially. That is one line of reasoning with this and it had proved to be very successful over time.
Henry Ford didn’t come up with the automobile or mass production, but he was the one who united those concepts and the rest, as they say, is history.
Not to belabor the point, but it’s kinda like the pyramids. As a large solid foundation is laid, you can build on that to reach for the sky.
The shoulders of giants can be illustrated in the basis of written language. The start of that was probably symbols to represent numbers; one scratch is one, ten scratches, ten – sort of like the old timey movies where a prisoner is counting the days until his release. Ancient languages emerged which evolved into what we have today.
But what happens when ‘facts’ are established and built on over centuries, when the facts are misconceptions? Eventually the whole structure falls to pieces. When Galileo announced that the sun was the center of the solar system, he ended up spending his life in prison for being a heretic. He was not a favored child of the Inquisition, to say the least. Time exonerated Galileo, as it will someday clear Darwin.
It’s the smallest bits of evidence that built a case. Observations. But observations obviously can be wrong, so as R.E.M. says “standing on the shoulders of giants leaves me cold.”
When so much happens from that practice, why deny the obvious benefits? Because you can end up in a rut.
Modern scientists, engineers and theorists all can fall into this trap very easily. It is the safe route to take and going outside the norm can be cause for imprisonment (like Galileo) or ostracism, like UFOlogists. (I’m not saying that UFO’s or Bigfoot is real, just that even having an interest in them leads to other work being taken less seriously.)
So there we are, possibly in a rut. Are there people who are exploring alternative sciences? Yes. But generally they aren’t going to get the funding that people who are more main stream are going to get. Interestingly enough most of the breakthroughs in modern history have come from smaller labs, independent researchers and even basement hobbyists.
So what is my conclusion here? It’s a mixed bag. In most instances standing on the shoulders of giants is going to make you bigger, badder, more efficient and give you better results quicker. The flip side of that coin is that you aren’t going to have divergent investigation that may be paradigm breaking. Bottom line, if you’re going to stand on those shoulders, make sure they are the right shoulders.
(Um, scratch box equals starting from scratch thinking outside a black box.)
I was talking about focus the other day and thinking about how that applies in all areas of my life. I guess that sentence was vague. How ironic. I’ve been scattered since I got laid off.
OK, here’s an example of focus. We all multi-task; probably way too much and at inappropriate times. I could go into texting while driving, which seems to be the pet peeve of the world at this point. (That trivializes TWD, it should not be done, period.) But I am talking about listening to the Get Inspired! Project. If I just listen, my mind starts to wander and then I don’t get the full impact. I miss things. So I listen and read along. This is perfect for me. It keeps me in the moment, which seems to be an underlying theme with all the inspirational people on the site. They all seem to have focus on a certain issue and they all seem to live in the moment. Or is that the same thing? Hmm.
Take the focus thing, and the multi-tasking thing out to other areas of life. For parents, do you listen to your kids as they are talking to you? Broader scenario: Do you listen to your spouse, or people who are significant in your life?
Example 2: While typing that last sentence my youngest daughter came in to talk to me. I have to take a second and totally switch focus and not think about how this entry is going to end. Actually just that interruption changed the content, at least to some extent.
What I really need to do is take my own advice. In my book, Someone Else’s Tomorrow, I talk about something called mini-days, which basically is a system of focus. You have designated times for tasks and have to refuse to be deviated. One example of this that is more common is checking e-mail only twice a day. (10AM and 3PM or something like that) If you look at every e-mail as it arrives (impossible for some people) you are constantly being interrupted. By designating times, you are in control and e-mail doesn’t control you.
Today on the Get Inspired! Project we had an interview with Susan Clark of “heartspark” and the one comment she made struck me and inspired me to write a post. Obviously if you’ve read any of my posts lately you realize that all the interviews are striking me and making me re-assess myself on many different levels.
It’s OK to Brag
This one touched on something I wanted to expand upon, and I’d love to get some dialogue going on this, Susan said, “we’ve really been socialized to hide our light under a bushel, so I encourage people to be boastful and give them permission to brag” and that is really something to think about. We all are told not to brag and to downplay our accomplishments, but we shouldn’t do that. If we are unwilling to shine our own light, jumping into the spotlight that we have turned on, what does that say or do to us?
Does that diminish what we’ve done? No, I don’t think so. But does it encourage us internally to repeat the behavior? no.
There is nothing like the rush that comes from recognition of what you’ve done. As an actor and an improv comic, I can tell you that the applause at the end of a scene is better than a paycheck, better than any traditional reward you can imagine, and being able to bow and through that action say, “Yes! That was me, I am good at this and you saw that”
But we don’t get that in everyday life, in the little and big moments of actions and seeing our efforts make a difference and we are told to downplay that?
One site I belong to Fit Connect, is an online fitness community and their tagline is “it’s OK to brag” I love it. And I think it is OK to brag to be proud of your accomplishments. You are magnificent in the things that you do. It’s lying to yourself to downplay that, and it takes away integrity and self-worth, I think.
Do you really want to know? I mean really? Do you want to know what people in your company think? Many people in management say they want to know, and claim to listen, but how many get out on the floor and really get to the real meat? (or tofu for you veggi-saurus folks)
And even if you actually do care and you really do get down in the trenches how do you know that what you are getting is the real deal? The bona fide truth about what people are thinking? Honestly, you never really do. But some companies are working around this by doing anonymous on-line surveys with their people. In an on-line survey people can really speak their minds. Don’t believe me? Try going to a message board under the finance section of yahoo. I know when I worked for Carpenter Technology, based in Reading PA, there were scathing denouncements of the supposed heinous acts of management. And there were also “company men” lurking and posting opposing views. Sometimes you can get at the truth that way, and sometimes it’s just nonsense.
What I am really driving at are the legitimate surveys done by companies that allow their employees to give real feedback without the fear of reprisal. There are a great many companies that could benefit from tools of this nature, but unfortunately, don’t embrace the capabilities of the internet. - and just in case you wondered, no we don’t have an online survey package for sale, it’s just good information…: )
Life is cyclical and as I get older I realize it more and more. There are highs (and in my life some really highs) and some lows (and I’ve dipped into extreme valleys) and somehow we weather the storm. I’ve had wealth and I’ve declared bankruptcy. I’ve been married and divorced and remarried. Marriages also have their ups and downs.
Last night I had a glimpse of something and it went right along with this “cyclical nature of life” theme. Very young in life, I had a tricycle. I graduated to a bicycle and experimented with a unicycle. As I aged eventually I got a motorcycle and traded up on those a few times. All those different cycles forgotten, rusted, sold, wrecked…and still in my memory. And the next generation starts anew. It seems like yesterday my youngest son was riding with training wheels and now he is ready for his drivers license test. Time flies. And if you are on a cycle of any sort, you are one with nature. It’s not like in a car where you are basically looking out a window at the world. On a cycle you are part of the world. If it has a motor it flies by more quickly, but still you smell the land. Pine trees, flowers, apple orchards, cow manure…not all good smells but all real. One with the world.
I am on another cycle in the midst of an up-swing in the sine wave. The important thing, I have found, is to never give up, never back down. I will continue to pedal my try-cycle, because I know as long as I try, I will have another upswing. I will persevere, to quote a certain chaplain, and I will prosper. How about you? Are you staying on the trycycle or do you need a push? Drop us a line if we can help.
What are your expectations in life? Or marriage? or your career? What are they for this year, this month, this week, today? Are you hoping to have a successful outcome on a business venture? Are you looking forward to getting home and the smell of lasagna greets you as you walk in the door?
What makes you think that you deserve any of that? Is it the hard work you’ve done to prepare for that contract or doing the shopping knowing the ingredients were there for the meal? Is it knowing that you have done all you can and that your best just has to be good enough?
Expectations come from somewhere and realistic expectations are more or less the anticipation of reward for excellent actions done in good faith. In good faith. Great reward comes from fulfilling someone elses expectations. Does this sound circular? It is.
We really are talking about the incentive for action which all ties into attitude. Attitude? This is what your teachers in high school used to scold you about. “You’ll never get anywhere with that attitude, young man!” And perhaps that teacher was right.
What each of us needs to realize is that expectations and attitudes are tied together in business and in life.
This morning I was filming some workout tips for another blog that I maintain. Interestingly enough (or perhaps ironically enough, as I don’t know how totally interested you will be) I managed to twist my back just a tiny bit and now I am bent over double in pain. Why was it ironic, you may ask. I was doing a piece on working out and talking about avoiding injury during a work out. Nice, huh?
The injury occurred before I began filming. I was moving the bench that I was going to be lying on for the lifting portion of the demonstration. Unbeknownst to me my son had a few dumb bells on the floor by the bench and when I went to move the bench there was an extra 25 pounds. An unknown obstacle and an unsuspecting force…and down I went. *groan*
Why do I share my pain? Not to gain sympathy, although that would be appreciated, but to say, we never know from one moment to the next what is going to hit us. So if you are putting things off until tomorrow, remember that tomorrow may not come, or it may find you in an entirely different state of being.
One of my favorite quotes from Janis Joplin is “Tomorrow never comes man. It’s all the same f*ing day” There was something in there about cats, too, but I’ll leave that to Janis. She was a person who embraced life and didn’t give a crap about what people thought. She did what she thought she ought to do, and if you didn’t like it, well, too bad.
She also had a lot of issues, but I’ll also leave that alone. The point is my back spasms, a temporary thing, could have just as easily been something different. Situations arise and some of them we have no control over, so you know, don’t put things off until tomorrow. It’s all the same day, and we need to take care of things now.
This is rambling a bit, and that I’ll admit, but if there is something you need to say or do, take care of it. Appreciate what you have and what you could have if you would just reach out and bridge that gap, hold out a hand to someone that you know and let them know you are there, and you care.
Appreciation and gratitude are two of the biggest pieces to the mindset of success.
A guy that I occasionally work with broke his neck and was paralyzed from the neck down. He was horsing around wrestling around a swimming pool and ended up taking a dive into a shallow area. He wasn’t planning on diving in, it was more the result of tom-foolery and losing his balance and the next thing you know he had a couple of vertebrae fractured.
This is a ‘kid’ in his early twenties, whose life was permanently changed. He went into surgery and they took a chunk out of his hip bone and were able to fix the damage, and luckily the spinal cord wasn’t severed or whatever and he is now able to walk again and has regained full use of all limbs. He said the most painful part on his body now is the hip that the bone came out of.
He’s out of work for six weeks at least and is wearing a collar, and has to give everything time to heal. Medical science is amazing.
How many of us haven’t had those sort of situations? Probably not to that extreme, but still. Have you been goofing around and had a narrow escape? Or just been in an accident that could have been much worse? How does all that impact your psyche? In his case, does he live the rest of his life thinking what if? Does he (or me or you) start to live differently?
I just read a quote “How you spend your days is how you spend your life.” Does having a life threatening incident make people re-assess their lives? I think for some, it does. Other people just wipe their brow, “Whew” and continue with little or no change.
I am at a point where I am concerned about my days becoming my life. But unless I change, my life and my days won’t.
The PEOPLE Academy founders realized that, based on years of experience with direct client engagement, there was a missing piece in both business and life coaching that would connect PEOPLE. The missing element was a universal business development strategy or framework that could be easily understood and implemented by all types of businesses and indeed all people.<p>
The aim of the PEOPLE Academy was to create a powerful, impacting performance coaching system that could be easily understood and used by coaches and clients alike.
Are you in the group classified as ‘helping professionals’ and what does that even mean? Helping professionals is a new term that includes coaches, mentors, peer support specialists, teachers, social workers, ministers and managers. What do all of those have in common? Guidance. The problem that many of these folks face is that some of them really haven’t had any education along that line, or the education was too general.
What it comes down to is you can take other people’s ideas and experiences and use them to shorten your path to success. If you fall in with the right bunch you can leverage their experience and ideas with a mastermind group and really accelerate the process exponentially. That is one line of reasoning with this and it had proved to be very successful over time.
But what happens when ‘facts’ are established and built on over centuries, when the facts are misconceptions? Eventually the whole structure falls to pieces. When Galileo announced that the sun was the center of the solar system, he ended up spending his life in prison for being a heretic. He was not a favored child of the Inquisition, to say the least. Time exonerated Galileo, as it will someday clear Darwin.
OK, here’s an example of focus. We all multi-task; probably way too much and at inappropriate times. I could go into texting while driving, which seems to be the pet peeve of the world at this point. (That trivializes TWD, it should not be done, period.) But I am talking about listening to the Get Inspired! Project. If I just listen, my mind starts to wander and then I don’t get the full impact. I miss things. So I listen and read along. This is perfect for me. It keeps me in the moment, which seems to be an underlying theme with all the inspirational people on the site. They all seem to have focus on a certain issue and they all seem to live in the moment. Or is that the same thing? Hmm.
Last night I had a glimpse of something and it went right along with this “cyclical nature of life” theme. Very young in life, I had a tricycle. I graduated to a bicycle and experimented with a unicycle. As I aged eventually I got a motorcycle and traded up on those a few times. All those different cycles forgotten, rusted, sold, wrecked…and still in my memory. And the next generation starts anew. It seems like yesterday my youngest son was riding with training wheels and now he is ready for his drivers license test. Time flies. And if you are on a cycle of any sort, you are one with nature. It’s not like in a car where you are basically looking out a window at the world. On a cycle you are part of the world. If it has a motor it flies by more quickly, but still you smell the land. Pine trees, flowers, apple orchards, cow manure…not all good smells but all real. One with the world.
One of my favorite quotes from Janis Joplin is “Tomorrow never comes man. It’s all the same f*ing day” There was something in there about cats, too, but I’ll leave that to Janis. She was a person who embraced life and didn’t give a crap about what people thought. She did what she thought she ought to do, and if you didn’t like it, well, too bad.