The five “P’s” of success in life…

September 22, 2014

There are, is seems to me, five things that are important to achieving success in life. Two of them I saw recently as I visited one of the blogs of a follower of my blog –

“Purpose is the reason you journey. Passion is the fire that lights your way.” – as seen on the KSFINBLOG

I would add to those two essential ingredients Persistence, Perseverance and Patience, which are what ultimately lead to success.

woman carrying torchPurpose is what turns life from just wandering through into a journey. Purpose defines the goal or destination that you want to achieve. Passion supplies the drive to get to that destination or goal. If you have that passion lighting the way, then Persistence means getting up every day and taking a few more steps towards the goal. Perseverance means being able to bounce back from set-backs or disappointments and refocusing upon the goal; and Patience means understand that most journeys take a while and are not accomplished all in a day.

We have become a society used to instant gratification; to getting things right now; and, quite honestly, many times used to not having to work too hard to achieve our goals. Purpose-driven lives tend to take a longer view; maybe because they focus upon bigger goals or maybe because they start further away from the final destination. Purpose-gymnastdriven athletes tend to have train for years before they even get to the level where they have a shot at achieving their goal. Some, like Olympians have four years of training between attempts. It takes a lot of passion, persistence, perseverance, and patience to train for four years in order to get one shot at the gold. Imagine setting your sights on a goal that is four years out. Maybe you have evenlonger term goals.

So, as you set your goals and define the journey that your passion is leading you upon, make sure that you are ready for the long run. Make sure that you have the persistence, perseverance and patience for the journey. Otherwise you will just experience many short trips into failure and frustration. We’ve all met someone like that who keep making half-hearted efforts into “the next big thing” in their life, whether it be a relationship or a new job or some new hobby or sport that they dabble in for a while. They mistake an interest for purpose and an attraction for passion; but they really have none of the other things that they need to make things work. Many of us do take false starts at things that we reaching goalinitially believe to be worthwhile goals, only to discover that we really don’t have the passion to persist and overcome obstacles or maybe the patience to stay the course.

What purposes (goals) do you have in your life? What passions? Are you persistent in pursuing them with patience and perseverance? Where are you on those journeys? Have you taken time to feel rewarded by the progress that you’ve made? Have you made your goals know to others? If not, why not? If so, are they cheering you on? Think about these things in the week ahead. Just thinking about what the important goals are in your life will help reinforce your passin for achieving them. Have a great and purposeful week.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Live a creative life…

September 20, 2014

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” – Anonymous

I saw that little quote somewhere recently and though it worthy of comment. I’m not sure that I agree that there is a right or wrong to creativity or to living a creative life. To my way of thinking, there are better ways to express the idea that I assume the author of that saying was try to get at. One might be “to live a creative life, we lust lose our fear ofafraid being laughed at” or maybe “to live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being judged.”

My point is that the fear that others will not understand or accept our creative efforts is what holds many people back. Personally, I find no meaning in many modern impressionist paintings; but that does not mean that the artist should be afraid to paint them. There are songs that I don’t get, poems that I cannot fathom, movies that I could watch several times and still not understand, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t creative or that the people who produced them aren’t leading creative lives. Their creativity should not be judged by whether someone else gets their message. In fact, I have always found it amusing that the so-called critics can stand around discussing what the artist was trying to convey in a work, when they have no idea what that artists motivation and thought process was at the time that the work was created.

There also seems to be some confusion in the world about the difference between creativity and technique. The worlds most accomplished pianist might bring wonderful technique to the playing of a piece by Mozart; however, it was only Mozart who represented creativity in that work. The pianist is representing technique and skills honed over long hours of practice and that is to be admired, but kept separate from the original creativity. In art, once one moves beyond the impressionists and into the abstractionists the line between creativity and technique becomes blurred. Was it creativity or technique to stand back 10 feet and throw blobs of paint at a canvas on the floor? I guess a bit of both. But, who am I to judge? I’m certainly not an art critic.

In non-fiction writing there is always the chance (almost the certainty) that someone will disagree with your approach, your “facts, your conclusions or just with the fact that you wrote about something in the first place. Writers almost always take some point of view in their works and there are inevitably those with the opposite view of things. So we must not live in fear of someone else disagreeing with us or challenging our work. Sometimes I get emails or messages, some rather blunt, disagreeing with what I’ve written. My response is normally – OK, that’s your point of view. What else is there to do?

So, I will continue to live my little creative life, writing about whatever strikes my fancy each day and unafraid of being judged or being wrong. How can I be wrong, if I write, “this is how I feel about that?” Now I will admit that I wander off creativeinto the world of giving advice on some topics from time to time; however, the reader should feel free to ignore my advice and my opinions. I’m not wrong, just being creative.

And what of you? Do you write or paint or sculpt or make pottery or scrapbook. Whatever it is that you do that is creative; do it without fear of judgement by others. There is no right and wrong in creativity, there are just finished works and those in progress. Get on with it.

Have a great weekend!

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Posted by Norm Werner

Show someone that you care…

September 17, 2014

From the Jack’s Winning Words blog comes this – “Nothing is as bad as it seems, and nothing is as good as it seems.”  (Lou Holz)  Jack went on to write – Holz is a true motivator of people.  He’s often asked to speak at business meetings, because he makes sense in a down-to-earth way.  Lou says:  “I follow 3 rules.  Do the right thing, do the best you can and always show people you care.” 

I’ve written posts about how we sometimes let our imagination that over and make things seem worse than they are, especially situations relating to confrontations with others. I’ve also written about taking the time to celebrate even your small accomplishments, as a way to keep yourself motivated. Today I’d like to focus on that last sentence that was attributed to Holz – “Do the right thing, do the best that you can and always show people you care.”

I’ve written here about the first two thoughts in Holz’s advice, but not about that last phrase. It’s all too easy to just caring
ignore people in today’s fast-paced world of e-everything. Sometimes it is inadvertent – you just don’t see them or their needs, because your attention is riveted to that tiny screen in front of you. That’s bad.  But, sometimes you ignore people on purpose, because you just don’t want to take the time to get involved in their lives and problems. That’s worse. You are making a conscious decision to show them that you don’t care about them.

Obviously, you can’t take on all of the troubles of the world and all of the people in it; however, for the tiny fraction of the world‘s population that you know personally, it is up to you to show that you care. best friendsYou can’t really blow it off by thinking, “oh, someone else will help them”; especially if they have sought you out to share their problem. I sort of wrote about this topic in my post Reach out, I’ll be there back in 2012 and again in one of my three little words that will change your life posts – I’ll be there. The gist of those posts was to make yourself available when someone reached out for help.

Showing that you care is about more than just being there when there is a problem. It’s also about being there during the good time, to join the celebration for whatever little victory was just achieved. It’s especially important to spouses and children that the things that they achieve at home or in school be recognized and that you show that you care. Successful working husbands often will be rewarded by their companies with plaques or bonuses or other means of recognition; however, there are no awards given to the stay-at-home mom who successfully manages the home and raises the children. She is often left to tag along to the banquets or trips that her husband might have won. You can show her that you care by surprising her with an award of flowers or maybe a weekend get-away trip – something special that says, “I recognize and care about what you are doing.”

The same thought process applies to caring about your parents. Once children get out on their own and have their own families to worry about, mom and dad are often relegated to a few visits a year, maybe around the Holidays. It’s not fishing with grandpathat you don’t still love them and aren’t thankful for all that they may have done for you when you were growing up, it just that you have become too busy with your own life and that of your own family. That’s understandable and as it should be; however, make the effort to include them the important events that your family celebrates – birthdays, holidays and sports or other events that they might want to attend. It shows that you still care and that they are still an important part of your life. It also help’s your children get to know their grandparents and may give them a better understanding about how mommy or daddy grew up.

One way to show anybody that you care about them is to listen to them. We often are too impatient to take our next listeningturn to speak and so we don’t listen to what the other person is saying. This little quote from Bryant H. McGill sums it up well – “One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.” So, show some respect and show that you care by really listening to what the other person is saying to you. You may surprise yourself when you discover what you may have been missing by not paying attention.

So, show someone that you care today. Call your mom or dad or just a friend. When they ask what you are calling about, just tell them that you miss talking to them and just wanted to see how they are doing. You’ll make them very happy and you’ll end up happy, too.

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Posted by Norm Werner

What do you believe in?

September 16, 2014

“The older I get, the more deeply I believe, but the fewer beliefs I have.”  (John Shelby Spong)

For me, this little quote that I spotted on the Jack’s Winning Words blog was meaningful. I suspect that there is a “funnel effect” to life that comes onto play in this little saying. Earlier in life, like I think that many do; I had all sorts of beliefs and goals that I thought were important.  As I get deeper into the final quarter of life, I find that many of those things have dropped away.  They have become unimportant to me and I am becoming more focused upon the only beliefs that make any sense in an end game scenario.

I certainly don’t want to sound maudlin or depressed or anything like that; it’s just that, as one gets older, one begins smiling manto weed out many of the things in their life that really have little real importance or consequence and to concentrate on finding out what is important and meaningful and fulfilling. It is relatively easy, from the perspective of age and a bit more wisdom, to see the lack of importance of material things when compared to meaningful and lasting relationships. It becomes more obvious that personal achievements pale next to things like personal satisfaction found in service to others. There is a heighted sense of self, not as the center; but, rather as the tool through which greater good might be achieved. The “I” becomes less important than the “us” in life and much of that turns on what you can do to help others or to love others more and receive their love in return.

I suspect that if you asked Bill Gates what motivates him now and what makes him feel good at the end of a day, it will have nothing to do with the things that he became famous for achieving. It’s no longer about getting more; it now about doing the most good with what he has to give away. Many famous and wealthy people get to that stage in their lives. They just happen to have the wherewithal to do huge things; whereas most of us have to be satisfied with doing the smaller things that we can. The good news is that all of us can feel great about what we did do at the end of the day.

So what does all of that have to do with the opening quote? We all eventually get to a stage in life where we spend some time considering our own mortality. Once you begin to consider that, it is easy to move on to thinking about what is really important in life and what you hope that people will remember about you or what lasting mark you will have made on this planet because you were here.  No one is likely to remember how big your house was or what fancy cars you owned or how much money you accumulated (unless, of course, you do some great things for others with that money).  What you did in life is much more important than what you had in life.

So, based upon those thoughts, it is easy to see why many “beliefs” that may have served as pillars in your life can dropthinking hard away.  How long will you “believe” that working 70-80 hours a week to provide for your family is really the right thing to do? In fact, how long will you “believe” that you’re really doing that for your family and not just to feed your own ego? How long will you believe that stepping on or stepping over others to get ahead is the right thing to do?

Am I saying that you need to sell everything, give the proceeds to the poor and go join a monastery? No! I’m espousing taking some time to think about what is really important in life. Once you get beyond what is needed for basic survival and some level of comfort and security for your family, what then?  Is it more important to earn another few dollars or to spend time with your son or daughter at their game or play or dance? Is chasing that next promotion worth more to you than taking time to hug your wife and planning a little weekend getaway?  Is putting in extra time on a presentation for work more important than visiting a shut-in relative or friend? For that matter; is making a new friend by visiting someone wo is shut-in that you don’t even know more rewarding than glad-handing a bunch of people that you don’t know at a work-related meeting?

It may be hard to see that now, but those are all choices that you will face in the middle years of life, when your beliefs piles on deskare many and focused more on personal success than on your relationships and service to others. Eventually, many of those “beliefs” will drop away. You will realize that some were never worth believing in to begin with, and some were beliefs in things that just were not true or lasting or worthwhile.

It is unfortunate that, for many, it will take most of their life for them to come to these realizations. For a few, these revelations come early in life and they are usually thought of as weird or unusual, because they aren’t dancing to the same tune as everyone else. They go into careers of service or ministry or support for others or they live simple lives that most people can’t relate to. Many times they are thought to be somehow odd; and, the really disquieting thing about them is how oddly happy they seem to be. It could almost make one wonder, who could be in the wrong in that picture?

It’s a good thing to pause and take stock every now and then about the things that you “believe in”. It’s good to ask why
you believe that way and whether those things are worthy of your continued belief. It is also a good thing to ask to whatwomen dreaming purpose you hold those beliefs; what rewards do they promise to return to you and has that promise proven to be true. Then ask what those rewards were really worth to you in your life. Did they enhance your relationships? Did they relieve pain or suffering for someone? Did they make life easier and more enriched for someone? Did they make a difference in someone’s life? Did someone love you more because you gave them things when all they wanted was more of you, your time, or your love?

Inevitably you will face that moment of truth in this process where you have discarded all other beliefs but one – your belief in what happens next? If you have that one belief left to lean on – that there is a “next” after this life – you will have reduced your life to the most basic belief of our existence.  Maybe you can build on that belief to more fully enjoy the here and now. If you get to that point and there is no “next” that you can believe in, nothing beyond the abyss that you can see in front of you, perhaps it is time to get down on your knees and ask for help. The good news is that it’s never too late to believe.

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Posted by Norm Werner

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.

1 Comment | Inspiration | Tagged: , , | Permalink
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

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