How are things working out for you?

March 9, 2015

“Things work out best for those who make the best of the way things work out.” ― John Wooden

John WoodenJohn Wooden was one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time. Nicknamed the “Wizard of Westwood,” as head coach at UCLA he won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period, including an unprecedented seven in a row. Wooden was a master motivator as well as a masterful coach.

There are those who spend a good part of their life lamenting how things have turned out, as if they are somehow the target of some huge plot or the unfortunate recipient of inordinate amounts of bad luck. Others accept the cards that they are dealt and see if they can still make a winning hand out of them. The former embrace failure by finding a way to blame it all on someone or something else; the latter use failures as teachable moments in their lives from which they can learn and get better.

How do you approach life? Do you let temporary setbacks get you down or do they gloomy guyserve to motivate you to try harder the next time? Do you wallow in self-pity or marvel at how far you got or what you achieved before you were set back? Do you learn from those mistakes or failures or just cry about them? Are you about to give up on your dreams and goals? Wooden had a thought about that, too.  Don’t give up on your dreams, or your dreams will give up on you.

As one might expect, great athletic coaches often excel because they teach their players great advice for life; and that advice also helps their teams achieve great things. Often facing new daythe best advice is really almost intuitive, but we need someone to pull it out of the clutter of day-to-day living and hold it up in front of us over and over again. That’s what coach Wooden did for his teams. He was a simple, straightforward man who demanded the same things from his athletes. While others called him a wizard; he often took pains to deny that label and instead kept pointing back to the things that he believed in and taught his players. He lived by one of his own quotes – “if you’re true to yourself you’re going to be true to everyone else.” John Wooden was true to himself and to his players. He asked them to just give him their best and they did.

So, as we start a new week; is it time for you to reassess how things are working out for you and whether you are doing the best that you can with how things are working out? Are you giving it your best? Have you given up on your dreams or are they still out woman catching starthere behind that cloud that has temporarily darkened your sky? Are you being true to yourself or are you giving up on yourself?  It’s never too late to step back, reassess the situation and become even more resolute that you will achieve your dream. It’s time to summon up that little extra bit of courage, that spark of hope that keeps you going and fan it back into a flame. A final John Wooden quote might help get you going – Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.

Have courage…persevere and make the best of things. It will all work out.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Live better, live simply…

March 8, 2015

“In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.”  – (Longfellow). Also seen recently  in an ad – “Complexity breeds confusion; while simplicity leads to contentment”

I like simplicity, especially when the alternative is needless complexity. Many times in life simplicity equates to transparency. There is nothing complex or confusing about being honest, open and transparent in how you deal with others. Maybe you’ve metsecrtets some people for whom life seems to be a big drama, with secrets, innuendos, conspiracies and double meanings read into everything that goes on in their life.  If you say to them, “Hi, how are you doing?” they are just as like to come back with. “Why, what have you heard about me?” For those people there is no simplicity in life and no contentment; everyone is someone to be mistrusted or someone who is somehow out to do them harm. What a pity.

People who try to live simple lives usually have less stuff surrounding them than most others. They do not judge themselves by what possessions they have accumulated. It does not take these people hours to load up the car for a day at the park; they just get woman wving on motor scooterout the bike or throw on their hiking boots and off they go; or perhaps they throw a kayak on the roof of their car and head to the lake or river. People living simple lives seldom do so in ornate McManions, in fact an entire industry has grown up around then tiny houses that many of these people love.  On weekends they would rather tent camp than spend hours getting the RV ready. For these people, a simple bowl of popcorn while watching a movie on TV with the family is preferable to spending $50-60 to go to the movies. Many of them also would prefer an old fashion board game to a video game any day.

Choosing to live a simple life does not mean that one is a simple person; in fact it may mean just the opposite. It actually takes quite a bit of intelligence and sophistication tored-dot5 appreciate many of life’s most simple and beautiful things. Perhaps that is a level that I fall short of because there are simple works of art that escape me completely, like the red dot series of paintings; however, I could sit for quite some time admiring some of the simpler works of the great masters of art or the way that the more modern Impressionists boiled down complex scenes into their essence of colors and shapes.

In their human relationships, people who embrace the simple life don’t have time for coyness, pettiness or deception. They will move on to someone else if that’s how you come across. Your act is one of complexity and confusion and that has no place in their lives. It is just so much easier to be open and honest, trusting and loving than it is to waste lots of energy conniving or plotting. I suspect that at the root of that behavior is surrounded by sharkssomeone who hasn’t learned to like or love themselves and so they are yet incapable of truly liking or loving others. The plots that they see everywhere and from everyone are self-destructive delusions that provide them with a substitute for actually living life as it is. In order to live in those delusions they create a persona to show the world – maybe it’s the brash, loud person at the bar or the social butterfly at the party, who seems to be talking to everyone and no one at the same time.  How much better to live by just saying “here I am, take me as you see me, because that’s all there is.” Presenting yourself at face value will make it easier for you to accept others that way, too.

So, give the simple life a try. Maybe you’ll like it. You don’t have to give up everything that you already have; however, I think you’ll quickly start to ask yourself why you have all of those things that you hardly ever use. Rather, living the simple life meanssmiling man not seeing or creating complexity in the decisions of your everyday life. It may mean not buying more stuff or maybe just different stuff that you can use in your new, simpler pursuit of happiness in the little things in life. In your relationships it may mean stopping and taking the time to say “I love you” every day. To paraphrase and extend an old saying, it may mean stopping to smell, see, touch and appreciate the roses along the way – a simple thing, really, but incredibly powerful  if you can get there.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go stare at that red dot some more and see if I can figure it out…it’s got to be a plot somehow.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Did your resolutions turn into good habits?

March 6, 2015

“Good habits, once established, are just as hard to break as bad habits.”  (Robert Fuller)

I saw a story on the local news last night that today is the watershed day for New Years Resolutions. Apparently there is evidence that if one can keep doing something for 66 days straight it will have established itself as a habit and today (Mar 6) is day 66 for happy winner2015. So, if you’ve managed to do every day whatever it is that you promised yourself that you would do for 2015; congratulations you’ve formed a new habit (hopefully a good one).

The most often reported New Year’s Resolutions seem to be about losing weight, quitting a bad habit (like smoking) or getting more exercise. Those resolutions are all tough to stick with for most people, so if you did it and stuck with any of them; good for you.  For me I was resolved to be a regular at the gym this year. I just can’t go every day, but I was on the list of the top 15 gym attendees at the Milford Anytime Fitness for the first month and just barely out off the list in February, when I took a week off for vacation. I think I have this down to a habit, but I’ll keep tracking it to make sure.

There was a story in today’s Detroit papers about a new young catcher who is expected
baseball catcherto become the backup catcher on the team this year – James McCann. James was in a pre-season game this week and let a ball that was outside and in the dirt get by him. In a real game during the season a miscue like that can cost a game and James knows it. He was upset with himself for that miss, so the next day he came to practice early and had the pitching coach line up the pitching machine so that it would fire balls at him outside and in the dirt. He had 100 balls loaded up and fired away so that he would get all of that practice to make sure that he stops balls that might get by him. In the process he was forming the good habits that catchers need of getting down and staying in front of the ball. He is hard on himself, but he doesn’t just beat himself up or get moody about it. He uses his mistakes (misses) as motivation to double-down and work harder.

How about you? Did you keep your resolutions? Have they become good habits for you? The alternatives to holding yourself accountable for your resolutions are to lower your standards or give up completely, neither is a good choice. Once you start allowing at the gymyourself to slip and finding ways to rationalize why that’s OK, you’ve stepped way out onto the slippery slope of backsliding and failure. Don’t go there. It’s not a pleasant place to live. Rather, double your resolve, but don’t beat yourself up. The first step in not giving up is to realize that it’s not too late…you can still do this (whatever “this” is). So, don’t bury your resolutions; dust them off; learn from your mistakes or failures so far; and double-down on your resolve to accomplish those goals (and that’s what they really should have been all along – goals).

Create good new habits along the way to reaching your goals. Have a great weekend catching up on those promises to yourself. As for me, I’ll be at the gym working out.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Push the envelope – break out of your bubble…

March 5, 2015

For some reason that escapes me now, I came up with the idea to do a post on the topic of “pushing the envelope”. I Googled that phrase to see if there had been any significant quotes about that topic. I found this really deep thought from way, way back.

Just as the mother’s womb holds us for ten months not in preparation for itself but for the region to which we seem to be discharged when we are capable of drawing breath and surviving in the open, so in the span extending from infancy to old age we are ripening for another birth. Another beginning awaits us, another status. We cannot yet bear heaven’s light except at intervals; look unfalteringly, then, to that decisive hour which is the body’s last but not the soul’s. All that lies about you look upon as the luggage in a posting station; you must push on. At your departure Nature strips you as bare as at your entry. You cannot carry out more than you brought in; indeed, you must lay down a good part of what you brought into life. The envelope of skin, which is your last covering, will be stripped off; the flesh and the blood which is diffused and courses through the whole of it will be stripped off; the bones and sinews which are the structural support of the shapeless and precarious mass will be stripped off. That day which you dread as the end is your birth into eternity. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca (5 B.C.–A.D. c. 65), Roman philosopher, statesman. Letter 102 to Lucilius (c. 60 A.D.).

Wow! I’m not ready to go there yet or even to explore this quote in any depth, but it blew me away.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca takes us on a quick journey from birth to death in a blink of an eye and a paragraph. Lucius was focused upon the end game, which I may return to in a future post; but I wanted to touch on more immediate things, like the daily here and now.

man in a bubbleI was going to begin this post with a “quote” from my own thoughts about the topic, which is  – “If you don’t push the envelope you are forever trapped within  a bubble of your own making.” I quite liked that and thought it clever, but then I realized it is also somewhat superficial. But, I’m going to go with it anyway.

We all find our own comfort zones and most of us settle into a contented life within that zone. What we don’t realize is that we become entrapped by the bubble of our own comfort zones. We don’t try new things, we don’t meet new people, we don’t take risks; instead, we “go with what we know” and convince ourselves that there is no reward to push the envelope and get outside of that wonderful feeling of safety and security. What a pity! Yes, there is comfort in the security of the familiar life within the bubble that we havepeople in bubbles built for ourselves; but there is also sameness and boredom and emptiness. A life lived in the safety of only the known is a life lived without adventure or discovery, a life lived without the enriching lessons of failure and ultimately a life lived without passion.

I have posted here from time to time about not ending life with a bad case of the “coulda, woulda, shouldas” , and that is really what we are talking about. Pushing the envelope means taking the risks that you have been avoiding. It means asking out the guy or girl that you most fear rejection from or taking that giant leap of faith to quit your secure, but boring, job to pursue your dreams (maybe after you’ve spent the extra time to get the education that you need for pursuing your dream). Most times it involves more than just pushing on the walls of the bubble that we call our lives – it involved breaking through those walls and exposing ourselves to new and scary risks in order to achieve what we’ve been dreaming about for some time.

I love the TV show The Voice because every one of the contestants is at the breakthrough point in their lives. The stories that that they all tell, right before they go on stage in the blind auditions part, are about pushing on the bubble in their lives and dive inhow this show is their way to break out of that bubble and dive into their dreams.  It’s great TV, but it’s also great life drama. One can’t help but root for them to be successful. In them we somehow see ourselves taking that chance to break free. It is a quick moment of vicarious living through their experiences; but, if we are honest with ourselves, it is also disappointing, because we know in our hearts that we have hesitated in our own lives.

So what are you doing to push on your own personal bubble? What are your unfulfilled dreams? Are they still out there, just beyond the bubble that you currently inhabit? What do you think would happen if you pushed towards them? If you see that life dreams
doesn’t end just because you push for them, then why are you still in that bubble? Push the envelope in your life. Your bubble won’t really burst and leave you standing there naked and alone, it will probably just stretch with your to get to your goals.

If there is a good lesson to be learned from the beginning quote from  Lucius Annaeus Seneca it’s that whatever we have at the end we leave behind anyway, so why not let that be a smile because you pushed the envelope and achieved your dreams. Don’t live your life in a bubble that you have created for yourself.  Go for it!

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Posted by Norm Werner

In the Huron Valley area, why would you look anywhere else?

March 4, 2015

I created and maintain a web site called Move to Milford (www.movetomilford.com ). It is a web site with a mission to try to keep up with and share information about Welcome to the Village of Milford signwhat’s going on in the Huron Valley area – mainly Milford, Highland and White Lake, the Townships in the Huron Valley School District. In addition, because it is Milford Village centric, it contains an enormous amount of information about the Village and links to important sites from organizations that are located in the Village and immediate surrounding areas. If it’s information about Milford it’s probably there or there’s a link to the organization’s web site where it can be found on the Click on Milford page.

One of the features of the site is the poster wall. Did you ever notice while you were walking along in downtown Milford that many of the local stores have posters in theirposters in window windows? Well, I go get those posters from the various organizations, plus many that never make it to the windows downtown and post them on the “Poster Wall” at the Move to Milford site, right next to the calendar of ‘Things to do in the Valley”. That calendar has all of the events that I can find that are upcoming. If it’s not in that calendar column, there’s a good chance that it’s in one of the seasonal calendars or brochures that organizations like the “YMCA” or the Huron Valley Recreation and community Education program or the Milford Library put out. You’ll find all of those calendars, schedules and brochures there, too; along with a link to the Milford Cinema, so that you can see what’s currently showing there.   And where I could find them on web sites all of the calendars of the various organizations in the area are there, too.

Sometimes you just need the answer to questions like where would my children go to school, if I lived in the area. There’s a link to help answer that question and another to help you evaluate the schools in the area. Maybe you want to know if there are booksordinances about outbuildings in Village or Township – there’s a link there to all of the ordinances for both on the Click on Milford page. Maybe you’ve looking at moving into a home that is on a lake in the area and you’d like to know about that like, like how deep it is or how many acres it covers – there’s a link for that, too, on the Real Estate Readings page.

While we’re on real estate stuff, there’s a ton of great information available through this site, like what has sold in the area. I track eight townships that surround Milford and report on all of the sales above $20,000 (let’s face it, any less than that and the sale was for a tear-down house and mainly just to get the land). I don’t just report the sale prices, but also the percentage of sale price vs. asking price, the square footage ofsold sign the home, the number of bedrooms and baths, the days that it was on the market and the asking and sold price per square foot. For each of those eight areas I also calculate the average and median asking and sold prices, so that you get meaningful statistics about each area. I’ve been doing this for some time, so there is 5-7 years’ worth of data there and the data is updated every week. There are also capabilities there to search for homes in the area – I am a Realtor, after all – using various methods, including map-based searches.

If you do happen to be thinking of buying or selling a home, there’s a ton of great reading material about the real estate process – things that buyers and sellers need to know. Much of that I write myself, but there are also lots of great links to things that go beyond my real estate expertise, like mortgages and insurance. There’re links to the various programs for first time buyers, to help them get the assistance that they may need and links to sites that focus on short sales and foreclosures for homeowners who might be desperate for some help or advice.

As in any small town there are lots of local businesses and I maintain a business referral page for many of the local businesses  that I know and can recommend, It’s not Angie’s List, I guess it is Norm’s list, but more importantly it is a list of businesses and people that I trust. I feature a single business each month with a more detailed write up about it and the owner. If it’s not there, use the links to the Huron Valley Chamber of Commerce or the Highland-White Lake Business Association to search for other local businesses. We also have lots of great restaurants in Milford and they are all listed on the Restaurants page. Maybe what you are hungering for is spiritual, so there’s a page for area churches. Maybe you are interested in the history of Milford, well there’s a great article about Milford’s history and a link to the Milford Historical Society Web site. If you are interested in the arts I also track what’s going on at the Village Fine Arts Association in Milford and at the Huron Valley Council for the Arts in Highland. Both organizations have very active calendars of events and opportunities for artists and would-be artists.

Hopefully you get the picture that you can find almost anything that you might be searching for at this site. I search the Web so that you don’t have to. Spend some time exploring the site and I think you’ll want to bookmark it and use it as your go-to site for what’s going on in the Huron Valley. And if there’s something that you’d like to see there that I haven’t thought of, contact me on the About Us page and let me know.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Someone needs you; will you be there for them?

March 2, 2015

“We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all.”  (Erik Erikson)

There was a long story in the Sunday Detroit Free Press about a local woman, whom repairmen discovered dead in her garage a while back. She had been dead for five years and no one had missed her! The story went into great detail about this woman’s background and how something like that could happen. It wasn’t as if the women had no relatives. She had brothers and sisters living in different parts of the country. And this didn’t happen in some out of the way place; but, rather in a nice neighborhood up in Pontiac, Michigan where homes are fairly close together – she had neighbors. The story recounted that she wasn’t really what we might call a hermit, just a very private person, with no friends locally and with a history of not communicating with her family members, sometimes for years. Sadly, her mummified body was found in her own garage, sitting in her own car. The body was so badly deteriorated that the coroner may never be able to determine the cause of her death. One might classify it as death by isolation. It certainly was death in isolation and that is sad.

In the paper’s recounting of this woman’s back story It is documented that she did have friends and co-workers at one time and even showed up for family events on occasion (rare, but it did happen). She was always recognized by everyone who knew her as someone who kept to herself and that in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But she took her need for privacy to the extreme and got to the point where she apparently needed no one. She established this image so firmly in everyone’s mind that there was no one that saw it as unusual that they had not seen her or heard from her in years. She had set her bills up on an auto-payment schedule, so they just kept getting paid after her death until such time as the funds ran out. Eventually her house was repossessed through foreclosure and it was when workmen showed up to repair a hole in the roof that they discovered her body.

Had she taken to heart the little saying from today by Erik Erikson she might still have died, but she would have been missed a lot sooner. We’ll never know if she perhaps could have even been saved by someone who cared and became concerned about her when she didn’t show up somewhere or wasn’t seen for a while.

Gristly stories like this account aside, there is more to Erik’s statement than just watching out for each other. While humans aren’t classified as “pack animals”, we are normally social beings. We depend upon social interactions for reinforcement, feedback and self-assurance. It is important that we learn to like ourselves, but it is also critical thatfriends holdi hands we have the interactions with other humans that confirm who we think we are or help us to become the person that we would like to be. At its most intense and important level this human interaction is with our life-mate. I can no longer even imagine life without the one in my life who completes me. Perhaps that is why the loss of a husband or wife can be so devastating and really why those left behind often seek that level of companionship again.

Another obvious reason that we need each other is that we are all dependent upon the work and contributions of others to supply almost everything that we need. I haven’t seen anything but the trailers for the movie about “The Last Man on Earth”, but I can imagine that initially one could run around breaking into stores for whatever is needed; however, that supply is finite and since no one else was around, there would be no new supplies of anything. Systems such as the power grid that are fairly highly automated might run for some time, but event hey would faultier and quit after a while if there was no one around. So the things that everyone else is out there doing is important to me and what I do somehow is important to them, too.

From time to time we may be in situations where it feels like we’re alone. Maybe we are away from home, maybe even in a fairly isolated location. It is important in time like that to savor our memories of loved ones and friends and woman workingperhaps even to take advantage of modern technologies like Skype to reach out and touch them, if only for a moment. Texting also has a feel of immediacy that is somehow comforting; at least you know that the person on the other end of a texting exchange is there and aware of you. There’s nothing wrong with feeling that sense of loneliness and reaching out to someone for relief. There’s no great honor in being known as a loner and it is no proof of your independence to shun friends and family when you could use help.

On the flip-side of this coin, it is not the right thing to do to allow this to happen with someone that you know. Being concerned about them is not being nosy. Taking steps to communicate with them, even if they have not made thecaring effort with you is reaching out, not reaching in to their lives. It’s not snooping when it’s driven by love or concern, so don’t let your friends or relatives become hermits. Sometimes, if the secrecy and withdrawal of a loved one is caused by factors like drugs or alcohol it is only through your aggressive actions to communicate that you might be able to save them from themselves.  Make them see you and then help them see themselves. Remember that we need each other. Help them see that and we’ll all be better off.

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Posted by Norm Werner

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