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

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

Three little words – grow through life –

May 22, 2014

lToday’s three little words post was actually inspired by a longer saying:

“Don’t go through life, grow through life.”  – Eric Butterworth

It’s oh so easy to fall into a pattern of just going through life. One can easily fall into routines and find a comfort zone that required little growth mentally and emotionally. I believe that this leads to people getting prematurely “old”. They may not be old in years, but they’ve become stagnant and old in their outlook on life and they act like it. Their answer to “How’s it going?” is always, “Same ole, same, ole.” They become boring to know and to be around, because they never try new things. Even worse is that, left unchecked or unchallenged, this behavior becomes a self-reinforcing spiral into old age and withering away. Avoid that fate by committing to grow through life.

Do you know people like that? Are you becoming a person like that? Maybe yo already are a person like that. How do you escape this trap? The key it is be committed to growing throughout your life, not just going through life. people with booksThat continuous growth can take many forms. One of the easiest is to remain committed to learning new things. That doesn’t have to mean taking classes in a school all of the time; it can be as simple as committing to reading books and magazines and newspapers and Internet Blogs to keep up with what is happening around you. What is happening around the world right now? What is happening in the U.S. that might affect you? How about in your state or your town; what’s happening locally? Now that you know about more of these things, what are you doing about it? Once you commit to continued learning you are committed to grow through life.

Growing also means doing. People who are doing more than just mailing it in with their lives are usually busy people. They are out volunteering at church or with community groups. These are the people who make things happen, who run the local events in your community. They collect food and raise funds. They serve the homeless tutoringand protect the weak and abused. They build houses on the weekends. They tutor and mentor at-risk kids.These are the people that you wonder how they can do it all; all the while they are wonder how you can see the same needs and not do something. They aren’t just out there working; they have committed to grow through life.

A wonderful and reinforcing side-effect of all of the education efforts and work and service that these people do is that it brings them in contact with so many others who are also committed to growing. They meet a diverse cross-section of life and have experiences that broaden their perspective on things. They begin to understand other cultures and races better through a shared commitment to serving others. They grow emotionally and intellectually because of those experiences. They do not settle into a dull routine; they just don’t have time for that. Ask them and they’ll tell you that they can’t imagine not doing what they are doing, because volunteer builderthey have committed to grow through life.

So, you have a choice. Do you settle in where you are in life and stop learning or participating in the community activities that are around you; or, do you grab a new chuck of life every day, every week, every month and never stop learning, never stop moving, never stop helping. When you are gone will people really miss you because they knew that you’d always be there to help; or, will they hardly miss you, because they couldn’t remember that you were still alive. You will always be alive in people’s minds when you commit not to just go through life, but to grow through life.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Those aren’t scars; that’s wisdom building up…

May 7, 2014

I think I got today’s little saying from the blog Jack’s Winning Words; but, even if I didn’t, it sounds like something that Jack would use.

“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.”
― Terry Pratchett

That’s so true. We build our wisdom from experiences and from taking the time to understand those experiences. Those who don’t take that second step are doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over, instead of learning from them.

One can’t avoid having experiences; they just happen. As we are growing up and have experiences, especially those in which we make mistakes, we often hear the phrase – “You should have known better.” How helpful is that? Obviously we didn’t know better. A better phrase to offer to someone who has just made a mistake would be “what did you learn from that?”

Do you take some time at the end of the day to reflect on the good the bad and the ugly things of the day? Do youthnk about it
relish the good things that happened; turning them over in your mind and getting another smile out of them? What do you do with the bad and the ugly? Do you try to understand them and the way you reacted to them and perhaps think about a better way to have reacted, so that you’ll be prepared for those situations better next time? If you do, you are building your wisdom. If not, what do you expect to happen the next time? Will you still be flummoxed by the situation? Will you get angry again or be embarrassed again or just not know how to act – again? Why? Did you learn nothing from the experience?

If you’ve had an experience; turn that first into knowledge by thinking more about it and then into wisdom by figuring out how to use your new knowledge in the future, should that ever happen again. Remember too that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome each time. It’s better to be wise than to be thought to be insane.

Sometimes the things that we learn from involve pain, either real, physical pain or emotional pain, but eventually the wounds that our experiences open will scar over and heal (thus my title for today’s post) and we add what we have learned to our storehouse of wisdom. A surprising amount of our wisdom comes from what we learned out of our failures or the mistakes that we make in life; however, it is also important to add the things that we learn from successes, especially successes in relationships. What makes that significant other person in knowledge inyour life happy? What things that you do make them smile or laugh or give you a hug. If you know that, why wouldn’t you do those things more often?

I’m sure that many of us have some level of wisdom about what happens when we forget a birthday or anniversary or other important occasion for the one with whom we share life’s journey. Hopefully we also have good knowledge about what we should do on those occasions. We also have some level of recognition of our personal shortcomings, especially in terms of remembering things and occasions. So, in our new-found wisdom, we should take steps to make sure that no special occasion goes un-noticed and unrecognized. Write them down, put them in your calendar, and don’t forget again this year. None of us needs a new layer of wisdom scar tissue on those old wounds.

Learn from life and be wise my friends.

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Posted by Norm Werner

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