It doesn’t have to be difficult…

September 13, 2014

“All things are difficult before they are easy.” – Thomas Fuller

Do you remember back to when you first learned to ride a bicycle without the training wheels? That was difficult for a while because you probably didn’t understand what your parents were trying to tell you about turning the way that you were leaning. Eventually you got it and then it became easy. Once you learned how, you never forgot how to ride a bike. Even if it’s been years since you were last on a bicycle, if got on one today you’d probably be immediately able to ride it.

afraidLife presents you with lots of new things that seem to be difficult, especially f you haven’t ever encountered them before. Most of them will eventually become easy for you, once you have some experiences trying to do them.

For some people, just meeting other people and carrying on a conversation with them is difficult, or it seems that way. People who are considered “shy” are usually just afraid of the situation because it is difficult for them. You can help make that easy by taking the initiative to talk to them. Sometimes all it takes is one person breaking the ice, in an otherwise embarrassing or scary situation, to get people started talking and interacting.

I have a role like that in our local Chamber of Commerce events – coffee clubs, ribbon cuttings and mixers. I’m a Chamber Ambassador. Ambassadors are a small group of Chamber members who commit to spend the time to go to Chamber events and act as hosts, especially for new members.  It is usually fairly easy to spot the newcomers at these events, because they are standing off to the side with that “deer-in-the-headlights” look on their face. Gatherings involving people who mostly know each other already can be intimidating. Everyone seems to know everyone else and no one knows you. That’s where I come in as an Ambassador. I take that new person around and introduce them to the others in the group and hopefully get them started talking. Most of the time that’s all it takes to break the ice and get them going in the group. It was difficult for them before and I try to help make it easy.

Sometimes things that initially appear difficult look that way because we just don’t understand them or have never done whatever it is before. That’s when some of our modern technologies can help. There is almost nothing that you can’t findknowledge funnel some information on in either Google or Wikipedia. In many cases you will find links to videos on YouTube or one of the other video sharing services. Those can be very helpful, especially if you are a very visual person. One can glean a lot from reading the instructions that come with every product, but see it in use ads immensely to our understanding. I used a floor leveling product earlier this summer and watched several videos about how to use it beforehand. That made all the difference for me. Probably the best piece of advice that I got from one of the video was “don’t overthink this thing.”

So, as you face something new and challenging; something that you see as difficult right now; seek out the available information and videos (if appropriate) and try to build your knowledge base before you tackle it. I think you’ll end up visualizing yourself being able to do it by following the instructions or advice that you get. Then it won’t seem quite so hard when you actually do it. The other thing that doing that level of planning will do for you is to cause you to be better prepared for the things that might go wrong. You will have thought about them ahead and can take steps to be better prepared. Go for it!

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Posted by Norm Werner

Luck has nothing to do with success…

September 12, 2014

“The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.” – Harry Golden

This week on Wednesday I wrote about having a dream, seeing what is needed to accomplish that dream and doing what is necessary to get to that goal. On Thursday, I wrote about “the burn of success” – that good feeling you get when you’ve made progress towards your goal , no matter how small that progress was.

Today, let’s deal with hard luck. Sometimes you will suffer setbacks in life and sometimes that will involve just plain old hard luck – something that didn’t work out through no fault of your own. Maybe an event that would have marked a milestone for you got rained out. Maybe a promotion that you thought was in hand got pushed out due to factors that are out of your control. Maybe an accident or some other act of happenstance prevented you from completing a task this week. Whatever the hard luck circumstance was that set you back a bit, there is only one real solution – work harder to overcome that setback.

Anytime you attribute something to luck – good or bad – you are allowing yourself to believe that things were totally out of your control; that there was no way to see the event or incident coming and certainly no way that you could have prevented or changed it. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Successful people who become high achievers usually also are good planners. A part of their planning is dealing with the things that may be out of their control – like the weather or traffic tie-ups. At least a small part of their plan is having some idea ahead of time of the possibilities of those things impacting their plans and giving some thought to what the alternatives are or what steps might be taken to recover, should the worst happen.  That’s part of the hard work that overcomes hard luck.

It’s much easier for us all to say, “I just wasn’t lucky today” than it is to admit, “I just didn’t plan for what happened today.” Many times when things happen there really wasn’t anything that we could have done to prevent them; but, perhaps we could have been better prepared to deal with them. In some cases being prepared may just mean being able to accept the setback as a temporary blip on the road to our goals. Being mentally prepared to say “Oh, well that didn’t work, let’s try something else or let’s try again”, is so much better than allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by feelings of defeat due to a little hard luck. Hard luck will just bounce off a strong positive mental attitude.

So here we are and it’s Friday. Maybe you jumped with both feet on your dream on Wednesday and started to make some progress. Celebrate that progress. Maybe you’ve already hit a snag or some hard luck. Don’t give up. Rest up, if you can, on the weekend. Think about your goal and the things that went right and the things that didn’t. Figure out a plan to overcome the adversity that you have hit, even if that means starting over along a different path and working even harder.

If thoughts of giving up your goal creep in, due to all of the work that seems to be involved, take some heart from these words from Ann Frank – Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction. The satisfaction that Ann spoke of is the same as “feeling the burn of success” that I wrote about on Thursday. Get that feeling back and recharge for the week ahead. You have lots to do to reach your goal and fortunately you will have a full week next week. Have a great weekend.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Feel the burn of success…

September 11, 2014

“Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it.  Plan more than you can do, then do it.”  (Joe Paterno). From a recent post to the Jack’s Winning Words blog.

I was glad to see Jack make this post of a quote by Joe Paterno because too many people have been avoiding anything to do with Joe Paterno since the child abuse scandal broke out about his long-time assistant coach. I don’t want to comment upon that here at all; but I do want to expand on the quote from Joe.

woman catching starThis quote is a nice follow-up to my last post, which was about stretching yourself to go for your dreams (read See it and be it). In most cases that may initially seem like you are biting off more than you can chew. I guess if it didn’t feel that way, it wouldn’t be called a “stretch” would it? And, in order to achieve it, you will need to plan more than it seems that your can do. Then to get there, you will need to do what you have planned. Somehow it all falls into place; doesn’t it?

So, what logically comes next? No, it’s not instant success and reward. There is no magic in the equation for success just lots of hard work. Another great football coach had his to say about that –

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. – Vince Lombardi

Great coaches, whether in sports, business or life in general, tend to boil things down to simple, straightforward little phrases that make a lot of sense and inspire action. These aren’t just the “lunks” in the gym telling you to “feel the at the gymburn”; these are the leaders who help you understand that felling that burn is the only way to get to the next level and beyond; the only way to achieve your goals.

The “burn” that comes from success is not just about exercise and your muscles; it’s about putting in that extra effort, going that extra mile, studying that extra hour; doing what others are not willing to do to achieve the goal that you have set for yourself. The “burn” that you will feel when you’ve done what was necessary to achieve success burns your soul and it is something that only you will be aware of and understand. Once you’ve experienced it; it can become addictive. It’s not just the feeling of success at having reached that new level; it’s the good feeling that you get during the process. It is realizing how alive and in control you feel as you go through what you must to get to that new level.

A well-respected phycologist named Abraham Maslow reflected on this in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation”. Maslow postulated that once you get past all of the things that motivate people out of their need to survive and be loved and accepted they will eventually reach a state of mind that he called self-actualization, in which that are chasing goalfocused upon things which are self-gratifying. That is what the “burn” of reaching for your dream of success can become – a self-gratifying and self-motivating energy that you can feed upon.
So, as you commit yourself to achieving your dream and do what you must do to get there, “feel the burn” that comes with success. Feel good about putting in that extra effort. Feel good about taking that extra class. Feel good about staying to make those extra charts for your presentation. Feel good about being the last one out of the building, because you put in that extra effort. Feel the burn of success. Let it warm you a bit, but then move on to the next thing that you need to do to reach your goal.

Once you reach your goal; once you have climbed the mountain that was before you; you may discover that you look out reaching goalfrom that peak and see another mountain far off in the distance that is even higher and even more challenging.
Congratulations! You’ve just discovered your next goal. Take a moment to savor this victory; then take a deep breath, visualize yourself at the top of that new mountain and start to feel the exhilarating burn from your next challenge. Nothing in life will make you feel more alive than the pain of the next struggle for success.

Feel the burn of success!

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Posted by Norm Werner

See it and be it….

September 10, 2014

“Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”  (Arthur Ashe) From the Jack’s Winning Wordsstruggleblog earlier this week.

I understand where Ashe was coming from in this little quote, but, to me, it seems a little defeatist; a little too accepting of things as you find them; and a little to limiting on what you can actually do. There is no ‘stretch” in those statements. Those almost seem to be the aspirations of a plugger or a grinder. If I had to pick a fictional character to voice them, I’d pick Eeyore from Winnie the Poo.

If I were to rephrase this quote in a more positive and upbeat way, it would read like this –

“Start with where you want to be; visualize what you’ll need to do to get there; then, do what you have to do to achieve your goal.” ( Norm Werner)

It seems to me, that if you start each week with your goal to somehow make it through until Friday, then that’s exactly all that you’ll achieve. You’ll grind along using what you have and doing what you can, but at the end of the week you’ll still be where you started. Not very inspiring is it?

dreamsNow, I’m not saying that you can imagine yourself to success; however, a variation of imagining is visualization and that has proven to be one of the secrets to success of people who get ahead and for winners in sports. They “see” themselves being successful. They visualize the perfect golf shot or they “see” themselves getting the big promotion or creating the hot new company.  However; actual success is the product of hard work, in addition to high aspirations. No one said it would be easy; but no one is saying it’s impossible either.

Every story of great athletic success also has a back-story of tremendous amounts of training and striving and putting in the extra effort to be the best and to get to that goal. Every Olympics has tons of those stories associated with the Gold Medal winners. Every story of success in business has a background story of putting in the extra effort to learn or to try and fail and start over again when others would have given up. You don’t get to see how many times that Olympic ice skater fell while trying to perfect her triple toe loop, but she could show you the bruises. You probably will never heart about the 4-5 start-up companies that failed before that young business success got it right, but they are out there in the dust bins of history.  Winners get up, dust themselves off, learn from their failure and try again and again and again and again…until theyfacing new day achieve their goal.

So, here we are. It’s Wednesday and you’re half way to achieving your goal, if just getting to Friday was your goal. Woo Hoo!

What about your dreams? What about breaking out of the rut that you are in? What have you done about that this week? What about having something real to celebrate on Friday? You still have time. Forget about where you are. Where do you want to be? Forget about what you have. What do you need to do to get where you want to be? Do what you must to stay alive; but, then go beyond that and do what you need to do to get where you want to be – to get a new life. It’s only Wednesday, you still have time this week.

If you take the plunge to pursue your dreams you won’t be celebrating TGIF; you’ll be saying, “Oh crap, it’s Friday
already, I need more time to get stuff done.” Don’t worry, there’s always next week; and, if you start it with the right attitude of commitment to your dream you’ll have something great to celebrate again the next Friday.

I believe that’s celebrateanother other key to success, learning to celebrate your successes, no matter how small; and learning how to build upon them. Every hour that you put in is an hour that someone else didn’t dedicate to their success and that puts you an hour ahead of them. Every class that you take gets you closer to your goal. Every sacrifice that you make brings you a step closer to where you want to be. Every time that you fall (fail) but get back up again is another indication that you will not be stopped by adversity. Celebrate that; revel in that; you cannot be defeated and that is something to thank God for on Friday and every day of the week.

Print this quote out and put it on your wall –

I know where I’m going, I can see what I need to do to get there; and, I will not stop until I have reached my goal. (Put your name at the end, because it’s your dream and you own it)

Now get off your duffs and get on with your dreams. Thanks God it’s not Friday, yet.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Work the room that you’re in…

September 6, 2014

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, find a different room.”  (Richard Rusczyk), as seen on a recent post to the Jack’s Winning Words blog.

Richard was not trying to be cute or sarcastic in his little quote; rather he was saying that you need to keep finding people who are smarter than you, so that you can keep learning from them. OK, there is probably a little underlying cynicism in that quote that has to do with even thinking that you are the smartest person in the room to begin with. Remember where the smartest people in the room at Enron ended up – in a tiny prison cell where they might be the only person in the room.

crowdI get to go to a lot of mixers and networking event in my role as an Ambassador for the Huron Valley Chamber of Commerce. The people you meet at those events always seem to have something interesting to talk about and I often learn something new. Once everyone overcomes the natural shyness that comes with walking into a room fill mostly with people that you don’t know it can become a very rewarding experience. Part of my “job” as an Ambassador is to seek out people who are new to the group and introduce them around. It is usually fairly easy to spot the people who are off to the side with that “deer in the headlights” look of bewilderment in their eyes. Once they’ve met a few people and get into the conversations they are usually OK.

We all learn something from our interactions with others. Usually it is initially about them, their background or family or where they live and went to school; but, eventually you wander off into topics that contain new knowledgeQ and A for you, perhaps starting with their opinion about something and then on to why they have that opinion – what basis in facts do they purport to have for having reached their conclusion. You may have the reaction of “I didn’t know that” or you may store the so-called facts away and think to yourself that you will check them out later, because you don’t believe that they are true. No matter; you’ve learned something or you will in your follow-up research about the “facts” that you’ve just been given.

There may be occasions when you are, in fact, the smartest person in the room, in some sense; however, there are literally no occasions that I can think of where you cannot learn something else from someone else in the room. If you do not understand that and at least try to learn by interacting with the others in the room, you may, in fact, be the dumbest person in the room. So, you don’t have to find a different room; you need to do a better job of interacting and learning in the room that you are in.

Look around you and see the possibilities of learning from those who are in the room with you.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Hope leads to great memories…

September 3, 2014

A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow.  Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day. – Grandma Moses

If, as Grandma Moses said, memory is a painter, recording pictures of our past, then hope is a dreamer, imagining exciting new paths for our future. Eventually memory will paint the picture of the path that we have chosen to take.

Hope enables us to look past the darkness of a gloomy or sad situation and see a rainbow on the horizon. I wrote about hope in an earlier post about the four candles – peace, faith love and hope. Hope was the last candle burning and as long as it was still alive the others could be relit. The YouTube video in that post is a good watch.

man daydreamingIf you start rummaging around through your memories you might recall some of the hopes that you had at the time when those pictures were painted. How did that work out? Which of your hopes and dreams did you pursue and did they come true? Sometimes an old hope or dream can rekindle a passion that you once had and lead you off into exciting new directions. Maybe you had to delay things for a while, but you don’t necessary have to abandon those dreams. Many times they are actually more reachable now than they might have been years ago.

My wife had a dream of finishing college (I interrupted her academic life with my proposal) and, after raising our two children, she finally went back to school and a couple of years later got to walk across the stage and accept her degree. She never gave up her hope to one day accomplish that goal and she did. She also rediscovered the joy of learning. Are there still unrealized hopes hanging around somewhere in your head women dreamingthat you still have time to pursue? What’s holding you back?

So, take a quiet moment sometime soon and revisit your old hopes and dreams. Some of them you may now realize just weren’t right for you; but many of them might just have been put on hold, due to life circumstances. Drag them out, dust them off and see if they still excite you. If they do, then go for it. Find the way to stick with them this time and make them come true. Then you’ll have some great memories to paint pictures of in your later years.

Have a great and hopeful day.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Off to a good short start…

September 2, 2014

The weeks after a three day holiday always seem a little weird, but in a good way. This week in particular is strange because the schools started in this area today; so, traffic was up significantly as those parents with school buslittle princesses and princes who can’t walk to school or  ride the buses are transported by dads on the way to work or moms still in their pajamas. Perhaps many of them are “schools of choice” kids who can’t ride the buses, but I doubt it. More likely, they are our local versions of  Honey Boo-Boo. I guess the short week helps make the transition back into the school routine a bit easier for the kids.

Short work weeks are always a bit confusing, because the start feels like it should be Monday, even if it is Tuesday. By the time you get used to that, it’s already Wednesday and the week’s half over already – Yea! Wouldn’t it be great if every work week were only four days? There are some European countries that have proposed doing just that. They are looking at having four 10-hour workdays and then three day weekends every week. I could see that, since many already work 10-hour days (most without the benefit of overtime).

The people who really don’t like these short weeks are the garbage collectors, who have to make up that lost collection day by doubling up somewhere. Of course they will start entering the fall leaf collection period soon, which really doubles up their work with recycling bags of leaves.

Also this week…

The new minimum wage increase started in Michigan yesterday and so far the world has not come to an end.money paid The wage for our food servers and other minimum wage jobs moved from $7.40 an hour to $8.15. It will continue to gradually increase to $9.25 hour in 2018. Of course there was grousing about this by many small business owners who fear that raising prices to cover the new costs will drive away customers. The bottom line; however, is that this increase will impact only 4-5% of the workforce. Meanwhile, a new study commissioned by the Michigan Association of United Ways finds 40 percent of Michigan households with at least one worker don’t make enough money to meet basic survival needs.

Home Tour picture 1The countdown to the next big weekend in Milford started on September 1. The big Home Tour Weekend is September 20 and 21. The 38th annual Milford Home Tour will take place on that Saturday and Sunday, with 5 historic Milford homes offered for public viewing on the tour. Tickets for the Tour are on sale now at several locations in Milford – Acorn Farm, Main Street Art, Your Nesting Place, the Milford Township office and of course at the Milford Historical Museum. Tickets are $15 for adults and $13 for youth and seniors. The tickets are good for both days and include visits to the Log Cabin in South Side Park, a visit to the Milford Historical Museum and a walking tour of Oak Grove Cemetery. For more on the Home Tour, click here.

In addition to the Home Tour, the big weekend includes The Milford Car Show on Sunday all down Main car show graphic 1Street and into Central Park, with over 300 cars on display; and a Tractor Show out at the Huron Valley State Bank parking lot near the corner of Milford Road and GM Road. On Sunday the Milford Rotary also stages its annual rubber duck race in Central Park, this year expanded to include a family fun picnic event starting at 10 AM. Several hundred bright yellow rubber ducks are dumped into Pettibone Creek, which leads to the Huron River; with the first few RotaryDucksducks to make it to the catch net at the end leading to prizes for the duck owners. The first place duck earned its owner $2,000 last year. Events for the kids, plus food are part of the family fun day. Plan on spending the day in Milford on that Sunday. There will be something going on for everyone in your family.

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Posted by Norm Werner

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