“Eleven Hints for Life” – 1 of 11

March 10, 2014

1. It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return. But what is more painful is to love someone and never find the courage to let that person know how you feel. – Unknown

This is the first of 11 posts based upon this little string “11 Hints for Life” that I found while searching for quotes and saying about life. You can go find all 11 now if you wish by just Googling the title; but I intend to take them one by one and delve a little deeper into each one.  Most of them tend to revolve around relationships that one can have as we go through life.

The first hint can be viewed from many different angles, but the result is always the same. Whether it is a parent or sibling or it is a potential life mate. The point is not to wait to tell them that you love them. It is always especially poignant to hear someone say at a funeral, “I never got to tell him that I loved him.” That happens a lot in families. We grow up and grow distant. We get involved and focused upon ourselves and our lives and often forget to tell those who raised us that we still love them, until it is too late. The same can happen with brothers and sisters.

In most of those family cases, it’s not that you aren’t loved in return; it’s really that both of you have just forgotten to express that love to each other. The enemy of love is not hate, it is apathy. Stay in touch and never miss an opportunity at family gatherings or wherever to let those that you love know how you feel.  Don’t let family funerals become “coulda, woulda, shoulda”-fests about never getting to say “I love you.”

But what of those who aren’t family and for whom we feel that we have love and yet cannot seem to find the way to express it to them.  The reluctance to express your love for someone is usually driven mainly by the fear of rejection; the fear of the embarrassment of laying your heart and soul open and on the line and having both trampled by rejection.

I recall one of those pop-up proposals that sometimes make the news or which occur in the middle of an event of some sort and are captured on video for all to see later. In this case the young man dropped to one knee, opened a ring case and asked the young lady, “Will you marry me?” She said, “No.” Wow, how must that guy have felt? That is the nightmare that we have that causes the fear of expressing our love in the first place.

Unrequited love is often a misguided, one-sided affair that is mainly in our minds. Many times, especially in the young; it may really be lust or infatuation and not really love. Love takes time to develop and mature. The old saying, “It was love at first sight”, is not really true. It could be that you like someone at first sight or even were attracted to hen at first sight, but love – I don’t think so. Love comes from below the surface and you don’t get below the surface on first sight.

A relationship that can eventually turn into mutual love can also start out horribly out of sync. One party can be way ahead of the other in the relationship and in their feelings, at least in their mind. It is important to understand that when it happens and to try to get a handle on where the other party is in the relationship. You can’t just walk up to someone who may barely know that you exist and blurt out, “I love you.”  That’s not what the opening quote is trying to say. Getting up the courage to eventually say,” I love you” starts with getting up the courage to say, ”Hi, my name is…” and goes on from there. Give love time to develop in both parties. If it is meant to be, it will be. The first step to love is friendship.

Unrequited love may also be a consequence of the circumstances. Perhaps the person that you feel love for is already in a relationship with another. You have to accept that and move on. If you can, file those feeling s away, in case you need them again in the future. Think of how many stories you’ve heard about people getting back together after both had separate lives with others, yet they still had love for each other somewhere in the backs of their minds. By the time that they got back together they were also mature enough to really understand what love is.

Obviously, dealing with unrequited love is easier said (and written about) than done. Thousands of books, articles, poems and songs have been written about it, but is still hurts when it happens to you. It is important that you accept that and move on with your life, rather than letting your feelings for that person become an obsession. Obsessions tend to be crippling things that do no good in our lives. We have all at least heard the term stalking. Stalking is what can happen when unrequited love becomes an obsession. Have you ever heard of a good ending in a case of stalking? If you are at that tipping-point in an imagined relationship or have already begun to stalk someone, it is time to get some serious help. Fortunately, things don’t usually go that far.

So, I guess the bottom-line hint for today is to find a way, the best way for the situation, to let those that you have love for, know of your feelings. You may have to work at it, if the relationship is out of sync to begin with or it may just be something that you need to say to a family loved-one at every opportunity that you get. Either way, don’t end up regretting that you never told that person that you loved them.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Reflections about life…

March 8, 2014

I came across two quotes that I really like because they focus upon a couple of aspects of life that we need to understand or at least acknowledge. The first saying deals with the need to think about things and plan a bit in life –

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser – John W. Gardner

At its most basic level this little quote is saying that in life we get no “do-overs”, there is no eraser; no ability to say “Ooppsie, can I do that again?” I thought almost immediately about a toy from my childhood that is still popular today – the Etch-A-Sketch. What a fun, and at the same time frustrating, toy that was. You could make really neat drawing on one, draw anything really; however, you absolutely had to really think it out and plan it out ahead of time, because there was no way to pick up the etching stylus inside and move it to a new location. It would be like putting your pencil on the paper and not being allowed to lift it again until the drawing is done. You can now get Etch-A-Sketch as a free app for your smartphone, if you’re up to dealing with a lot of frustration, give it a try. And as inspiration for what can be done without an eraser, click here to see a gallery of Etch-A-Sketch art or here to watch a YouTube video of an Etch-A-Sketch in action, albeit in the hands of a very patient artist.

When you think about it life is like that. Time is our stylus (or pencil) and we don’t get to stop time and go back or erase what we’ve done, if we’ve drawn ourselves into a corner. Our pencils are on the paper, so to speak and we can only move forward through time with the drawings that are our lives.

The other saying that seemed to fit is this one that is also about time –

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards – Doren Kierkegaard

Our lives are often analyzed by looking back over events or decisions; it’s sort of like the stock market where everyone’s an expert on what happened yesterday and no one has a clue what will happen tomorrow. Actually the expert opinion about what caused the rise or dip in the market yesterday is subject to widely different interpretations; so there really aren’t any experts on that either.

What we strive to do sometimes is to look back at situations and reflect on our own actions. Why did we do that? What did we say that? What was I thinking? Reflections like that on the past help us organize and archive or experiences and thoughts about them into our knowledge base and eventually jell into what we call wisdom. Of course, by the time many of us become wise, the thing that we are wisest about may well be how differently things might have been had we only known then. There is a thin line sometimes between wisdom and regret.

I think one take-away from combining the thoughts from those two quotes is that you need to think things out before you draw a mistake into your life and that one way to help with that is to reflect upon, learn from the past and build your storehouse of wisdom; however, you cannot spend all of your time reflecting upon the past nor planning for the future; you have a today to live, so get on with it.

 

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Posted by Norm Werner

Put your burdens down…

March 6, 2014

“Everyone has his burden; what counts is how you carry it.”  (Hugh McLeod) as seen on my favorite daily blog – Jack’s Winning Words.

Obviously, McLeod wasn’t talking about the size and weight of your backpack or your briefcase, if you’re an adult. His reference is to the mental and emotional loads that most of us haul around – a few pounds of remorse, along with several pounds of regret, maybe some fear, uncertainty and doubt to add a little to the load, and of course gobs of self-doubt and self-depreciation. All of this may be carried, along with sadness, anger, and maybe some jealousy and hate for good measure. Maybe your burden of bad decisions that you’ve made (or perhaps that one whopper of bad judgment that you’ll never get away from), which you now drag along behind like a long tail. Maybe you are weighed down by the coulda, woudlda, shoulda’s in your life. No matter what the makeup these are our burdens in life.

The point is that we all accumulate these things as we journey through life. It is impossible to live without making mistakes that we might later regret. It’s OK to have those burdens according to McLeod; if you know how to carry them. That is probably the point in that little saying upon which I disagree with McLeod. I would  re-state his saying to be, “Everyone has his burdens; what counts is your ability to put them down.”

I would argue that finding a way to keep a stiff upper lip and carrying your burdens through life while playing the role of the good dobby, is both wrong and damaging. It is wrong to hold things in, to keep them to yourself, to let them fester and have control over your life. It is damaging to yourself to let your burdens grow until they beat you down or cause you to vent your anger on others as a release.

To my way of thinking it is much better to find a way to put those burdens down. If they are feelings of disappointment, jealousy or hate, they are likely aimed at someone else and you need to confront that and get it behind you. Most times that means confronting the person at whom the feelings are aimed and talking things out. At least bring that burden to closure, put it down. Get it (and maybe them) behind you and get on with life.

If your burden is directed inward in feelings of inadequacy or self-loathing, seek help from those around you who care about you and love you – family, friends, your pastor, your teachers – they are there if you just reach out. They will probably just tell you what you already know – that they love you for who you are.  It’s just good to hear that from others some times. And if you really can’t think of anyone for that role, remember that there is One who loves you no matter what. Ask Him for help. He will not turn you down.

You must learn to love yourself before you can truly love others. Be content with what you are and who you are and find happiness in spending time alone with yourself. Talk to yourself (out loud if that works for you) and talk the things out that are burdening you. You’ll be amazed how much it helps sometimes to just verbalize those gnawing issues that have become your burdens. Sometimes they sound kind of silly, once you put them into words.  See which one you can put down with having to confront anyone else because they are really all about you. Put those down first.

So, maybe you have that real whopper of a burden that you’re carrying; something really bad that maybe got you into more trouble than being grounded for a week. Maybe you even got suspended from school or perhaps even arrested. It was bad and you know that now. It was wrong and you know that now, too; and you won’t do that again. The real burden that you are carrying is probably more about worrying about how people might react if they find out about that incident in your life and how they will judge you because of it. How do you put that down?

I’ll bet that half of the successful motivational speakers in America are out there entertaining audiences and inspiring them with stories of their big mistakes – how they used to do drugs or rob and stole when they were younger. Many of them relate the consequences that they had to pay for their burdens – prison time for many. But, there they are, in front of the audience telling their story and getting applause for it. They turned it around to a positive life lesson that they want to share with others and which others are happy that they’ve shared. That’s how they put that burden down.

So, rather than let your personal whopper continue to be a burden, stand up and tell your story. Admit that you were wrong and talk about how that changed your life and made you a better person. Do it in small groups or in front of an audience. I think you’ll find that approach to be an extremely liberating thing to do, since you’ll no longer be consumed by the fear of someone finding out and forming an opinion about you based on what they hear. Tell them what you want them to hear and help them form their opinion of you based upon who you’ve become because of that experience. Put that burden down.

And don’t worry about not being cool. The people who think you’re not cool for standing up and talking about what you did wrong and what is right are not the people that you really want to be around anyway. Many of them may end up as motivational speakers, if they get out of prison. It’s the people who listen and take your story to heart that you want around you; the people who then share their stories with you and give you a hug because you inspired them to put their burden down, too.

So take stock today of the burdens that you’ve been carrying and get started on the mental and emotional housecleaning necessary to put them down. Life is a lot more fun without all of that excess baggage. Don’t carry them around; put your burdens down.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Problem Solving 101

March 5, 2014

“Don’t fight the problem, decide it!”  (George C. Marshall)

Yet another sayings that was featured on one of my favorite blog – Jack’s Winning Words

I’ve read elsewhere that when people and animals are suddenly confronted by danger – by a problem – they usually have one of two reactions fight or flight. The reactive response is either to turn and face the issue with an offensive move of your own – to fight – or to turn away and run away from the problem – to take flight as a defensive measure.

There is a difference in the reaction that George Marshall is supporting in today’s little quote. He is not espousing and aggressive, belligerent fight as the solution; nor is he recommending that you run a away and avoid the problem.  By saying “decide it”, he is telling us to use an intelligent approach to the problem. Understand it. Evaluate it. Seek alternative solutions to it, Pick the best alternative. Implement the best solution. Evaluate the results. Choose another solution if the first didn’t work and keep trying. In other words – decide it.

Many of us (I plead guilty to this all too often) just try to let the problem sit there, in hopes that it will eventually go away. That is a form of denial and it solves nothing. In some cases the problem actually gets bigger that longer it’s allowed to go unresolved. That strategy is a form of flight because circling a problem over and over s is as much running away from it as turning your back on it is.

One thing that I’ve finally realized after way too many years is that the problems that we perceive just get bigger than they really are in our own imaginations if we circle around and around them. Worrying and worrying about all of the things that could go wrong if you confront a problem just seems to feed it and make it look bigger. We must eventually turn and face it; but at least we can do so intelligently.

Over the span of a career in the IT technology and services industry, I had the opportunity to take many sales training courses. One of he best was at Xerox during my last foray back into that world. At that course they stressed a technique for dealing with objections (problems) that they reduced to a cute little four letter memory device – CPRT. Those four letters stand for – Clarify, Paraphrase, Respond, Test. I liked that little device enough that I had rubber bracelets with CPRT embossed into them made for my classmates.

CPRT breaks down this way. First you try to Clarify what the problem is. Often it is a lack of clarity about some issue that is at the heart of the problem. Once you have agreement that you understand what the problem is you Paraphrase it back – putting it in your own words and getting agreement with whomever you need to that you have in fact captured the issues. Next you Respond to the problem; you suggest a solution. Finally you Test for whether your response is, in fact, a solution – If I do what I’ve just suggested, will that fix things?

Many times, especially in relationships; once you have clarified the problem and paraphrased it back, your best response may well be an apology. Perhaps the problem was one that you caused with some remark or some slight, real or imagined that you didn’t realize. An apology can defuse many situations. Some times; however, the hurt was so deep, the split so complete, the problem so large, that a simple apology will not fix it. In those cases it is often best to back off and let time work its magic. Time doesn’t necessarily heal all wounds, but it does take the sting off and allow for healing.

It may well be that a relationship damaged by a problem can never be the same as it was before and you have to deal with that. If having a relationship with that person is important to you; you may have to work hard, not to get back to where you were (that may not be possible), but to at least the best place that you both can still get to. Then let it go at that.

So try that mnemonic  CPRT the next time that you hit a problem and see if it helps you. At least it’s better that running around in circles not knowing what to do. That’s another little ditty that used to be popular – when in trouble or in doubt, run in circles scream and shout. I think I prefer CPRT or even better KCCO.

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Posted by Norm Werner

It’s Great Quotes Sunday –

March 3, 2014

Did you ever notice how sometimes great songwriters just get it so right? They write the words to songs that just make so much sense and resonate with us. The same is true of great quotes. Sometimes when you string a few of them together they help us put things in perspective.

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.” – Abraham Lincoln

Never has that saying by Lincoln been more true than today. Sometimes we sit around wondering, maybe even fearing what the future may hold for us. That is the wrong mindset. It is a passive mindset, the mindset of a victim. The future will not inflict itself upon you. In fact, you will inflict yourself upon the future. What you do with that opportunity to impact the future is up to you.

Some people spend a lot of time and energy trying to save time by finding shortcuts or taking shortcuts. That is usually wasted time. Things change and the future gets here because you make the changes happen. If you say, “I don’t like who I am.” Then change who you are. If you say, “I don’t like where I’m headed.” Then go in a different direction. Nothing is predetermined; everything is up to you.

“You are confined only be the walls that you build yourself” – Andrew Murphy

So, break out through whatever walls you have built for yourself and go explore new worlds – or not. Maybe it’s not new worlds that you need but the ability to see your current world differently.

“Discovery comes not from seeking new lands, but from seeing with new eyes” – Marcel Proust

Your challenge may be as simple as taking a fresh look with a fresh perspective on the life that you are already living. Hopefully that perspective will be from a positive angle. Try substituting love for anger, hope for despair, peace for turmoil and faith for fear and see if things don’t look a little different.

Once you can begin your journey into the future with a new attitude the most important thing will become persistence.

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. – Calvin Coolidge

Isn’t it amazing how many famous people went ahead of you and prepared the way? And don’t worry about making mistakes along the way.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. – George Bernard Shaw

So, use tomorrow to start a new beginning in your life. Last week is done and over. Yesterday is history and today will be soon. Whatever happened then is behind you. Look towards your future and get busy creating it.

Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you. – Jim Rohn

Have a great tomorrow and good luck on your journey into the future. I hope you make it all that you want it to be.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Don’t shake it off, laugh it off…

March 1, 2014

A person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused. –Shirley MacLaine

I find that little quote to be particularly true. My wife and I often say about something bad or unexpected that just happened, “Someday we’ll look back on this an laugh.” We laugh a lot.

One must, of course, be serious most of the time; however, one mustn’t take oneself too seriously. I tend to react to unexpected things as they happen with some form of verbal expression, not always something that I would say out loud in polite company. I believe that is called an explanative, which is often deleted in stories that recount the incident. I find that almost immediately after such an outburst, I am amused by my reaction and have a quick chuckle at my own expense.

To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity. – William Arthur Ward

So, the next time that you do something really stupid or that something unexpected happens to you; see if blurting out “You knucklehead” or perhaps other words to that affect don’t relieve the tension of the moment and then allow you to laugh at yourself and the situation. It’s a way to acknowledge the situation and perhaps your poor decision making in laughingthat situation, but without beating yourself up too badly.

Being able to laugh at yourself is a form self-depreciation, but one that is usually harmless and isn’t a precursor to depression. In fact it is a good alternative to slipping into depression. Being amused by your situation or reaction to it is so much more health that being depressed by the same things. Others will also be more forgiving of the dumb things that you might do if you acknowledge them, own up to them and then have a good laugh about them. I’ll close this on this little quote that makes me feel better about the whole thing.

Laugh at yourself and at life. Not in the spirit of derision or whining self-pity, but as a remedy, a miracle drug, that will ease your pain, cure your depression, and help you to put in perspective that seemingly terrible defeat and worry with laughter at your predicaments, thus freeing your mind to think clearly toward the solution that is certain to come. Never take yourself too seriously. – Og Mandino

Remember to KCCO

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