Elastic Time - A New Year's Wish

New Years always makes me think about the passage of time. I think about how quickly time seems to pass sometimes, and these days, I'm thinking more about how much time is left.

My favorite Steve Martin flick is “The Jerk” (1979), which has a cool scene that exemplifies the elasticity of time. Steve Martin tells his lover that days with her seem longer than normal. His girlfriend is asleep when he exclaims, “Our first day together seemed like a week. The second day seemed like five days. The third day seemed like a week again. And the fourth day seemed like eight days.”

Years ago, when I lived in Virginia, I was driving to a party with my wife. It was raining hard, and traffic on the Interstate was heavy. Then something totally unexpected happened. As we approached a curve in the road, the car didn’t turn with it. We were hydroplaning. The car slowly began to rotate in the wrong direction. It was a strange, helpless feeling. I saw two lanes of oncoming cars rushing from the other direction and I thought, “Well, this isn’t what I wanted.”

Fascinated, I watched everything as it passed by my field of vision. I saw the steady stream of cars rushing towards us. The car hit the median with a crunch and I felt each bump as we left the highway. At some point, all motion stopped. The car was still. We were still alive. We weren’t hurt. We were resting on the narrow median, facing the opposite direction. Traffic streamed by in both directions. We were lucky. Damage to the car was minimal, and we drove off the median to a repair shop. Later, we talked with amazement that we survived the accident and that the whole experience had taken place in less than two seconds.
Have you had that feeling when minutes seem like hours? Or when hours fly by like minutes? Naturally, I wish the good times would last longer, and I’d like to get past unpleasantness as quickly as possible. Why does time seem elastic? Isn’t an hour an hour, after all?

The answer lies in how you pay attention to what happens during an hour. The human brain manages new information by focusing attention on only one thing at a time. The more you concentrate your attention on what’s going on in the present moment, the more second-by-second memories you create. With your memory filled with rich details, a few minutes will seem to have lasted a much longer time.

Compare this to what it’s like to think about something. As you focus on your thoughts, your attention isn’t focused on what’s happening around you. New images aren’t taken in and stored in memory. You may shift your focus in and out of the present moment, but during that time you’ll have stored in memory only a few brief fragments of here-and-now experience, and in retrospect that period will seem brief.

When a friend of mine returned from a cruise to Alaska, she talked ecstatically about seeing massive glaciers and a flock of three dozen eagles. One of the eagles flew within twenty feet of her. “The first day seemed like three days,” she said.

American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “To fill the hour—that is happiness.”

At the end, your life may seem like a single, boring afternoon, or it may seem like a thousand years. My New Year's wish for you is that you experience hours and days seem to last forever. Everything depends on how frequently you concentrate your awareness on the present moment with passionate intensity.

More about time...

Acceptance: We Live in Primitive Times

It's December 30th, and thoughts of the coming year make me think of the passing of time and the kind of world we live in.

Recently I read in the paper that Cecil Bothwell, a city councilman in Raleigh, North Carolina, has become the center of controversy. People who oppose him want to take the city to court for swearing him in, because he doesn't believe in God. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of Americans are uncomfortable with the idea of an atheist holding public office.

The North Carolina constitution disqualifies officeholders who "deny the being of Almight God." Obviously, the language is an artifact, still present and uncorrected in the law. Surprisingly, six other states, including my state, Texas, have similar provisions.

And yet, a person should be allowed the freedom of religious belief, and the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in 1961 that states may not require any kind of religious test to serve in public office.

Max - My Role Model for PATIENCE

My favorite definition for patience: the willingness to wait until the best time to take action.

The hard thing about patience is that most of us don't want to wait. We want to say something NOW. We want to do something NOW. We want results NOW. When your need is great, it's all too easy to keep pushing for something, even if it's impossible to get what you want right away.

Now I'm not saying you should put things off, procrastinate. The key to patience is knowing when there's a chance that taking action will get you what you want, and when it won't. This little bit of wisdom has saved me a ton of wasted effort over the years.

My role model for patience was - and I'm not kidding about this - a cat.

His name was Max, a male brown tabby. All of our cats have been sweet, but Max was my buddy. Whenever I was in my chair reading or watching TV, Max was right next to me in his spot. And he really did watch TV. He liked nature programs, especially about birds and other animals in the wild.

Here's why Max was my role model for patience. I fed him and Ernest at 5:00 PM every day. I knew he was hungry because sat next to my desk, quietly looking up at me. Most days, he wouldn't say a word until 5 o'clock. And then, if I forgot to get up from my desk on time, he would stand up on his back legs and tap me twice on the left shoulder with his paw.

If he said something before 5 o'clock, I simply looked at him and said, "It's not time." I knew he's hungry. Everybody gets hungry before dinner time. He could persist with his complaints every two minutes until I finally fed him, but somehow he knew that it's not time to act. That saying something or doing something before it's time will be futile. Instead, he continued his silent vigil, not saying a word until 5 o'clock. In my book, that's patience.

I admired him for that. He inspired me. If he can do it, I can do it. 

More about patience...

More about Max...

Loving memories of Max after his passing...

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength . (Photo by Kathleen Scott, used with her permission)

Zig Ziglar Explains how to change an ATTITIDE

Listening to Zig Ziglar is like listening to a sermon on LIFE. In this video, Zig tells a wonderful story about how he got a woman to change an ATTITUDE, which in turn changed her life.



This video is my holiday gift to you. Zig Ziglar is such an entertaining storyteller, and this segment has so much value, you'll be happy to enjoy all 9 minutes of it

Christmas Tree Cat

A kitty who dares to enjoy Christmas. He's ba-a-ad!

 

I hope you're enjoying Christmas, too.

Happy Holidays from Our "Poster-Cat for Christmas"

We have three cats. Harry is a 20-year-old all-black cat. Max, a large brown tabby, is eleven years old. The youngest is Ernest, an eight-year-old orange Tabby. We still call him "The Baby."

Somehow, beginning with his first year with us, Ernest managed to star in most of the Christmas photos. A six-toed cat, he is a descendant of one of the six-toed cats of the Hemingway house in Key West, Florida. Uh, that's why we named him Ernest. He's a prolific communicator, a petting slut, and the most playful of the three.

And, I almost forgot, charismatic in front of a camera. Here's Ernest among the packages, Christmas 2002.

This was taken the other day for Christmas 2009.

In this one, Ernest sends the message, "Peace on Earth." For visitors who love cats, here's a cat-poem Lisa Monet sent me with her Christmas greeting:

Lurk low, leap high,
Hunt brave, hide shy,
Blink warm, stare cold,
Play young, yawn old,
Crouch short, strut tall,
Act big, sleep small.

Peace on Earth - Relaxing "Sounds of Silence"

"Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men..." I hear this a lot during the holiday season, but it rarely seems peaceful this time of year. But we really do need the peace, we need to relax...

This video worked for me. The music comes from Simon and Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence," a huge hit back in the amazing year of 1969. I was living in a bunker in Vietnam, and my sergeant loved this song, played it over and over again. I heard it at least 30 times a day. In later years, I'd have anxious memories when hearing the song. But now, 40 years later, this video is VERY relaxing.



Enjoy...feel free to come back, "make yourself to home," and listen as often as you need to during the holidays!

Humility: Tiger Woods vs. "The Third Enemy"

My Ph.D. in English from Duke University didn't turn me into a scholar or an English professor. Instead, it pushed me in other directions.

For one thing, it made me a more confident writer. I'm still learning, and I trust I always will be. Any day I get to write a lot is a good day.

It also sharpened my love of stories. Whether in fiction or film, I love stories. I understand the craft, I know a great story when I see it, and I appreciate a well-told story.

My tastes in fiction are outside the box. For example, after reading most of the classic fiction of British and American literature, I have to say that my favorite novelist is Carlos Castaneda, who wrote eight immensely popular novels before he died about ten years ago.

Yesterday, my post was a somber one. Thoughts of death often lead me to thoughts of Castaneda's fiction, and today, strangely, thoughts of Castaneda reminded me of Tiger Woods. In my mind, I linked Tiger's colossal mistake to something that don Juan Matus said in the first novel, The Teachings of Don Juan. In all of the novels, Carlos is a character in his own fiction, and don Juan, a Yaqui Indian shaman, is his mentor.

Death Reaches Out...

I was a blogger several years ago, and then I wasn't for a few years, and now I'm blogging again. During all that time, the only blog I couldn't stop reading was Switched at Birth. For me, the best writer in the blogosphere is Beth Westmark, and her post about how the news of her brother's cancer affected her is the most recent example.

Her article made me remember the anxiety I felt 13 years ago when Kathleen was having a lump removed. It was an early mid-September evening, and I sat in the waiting room at the outpatient center of Miami’s Baptist Hospital.

Four other families were there, too. The children were restless and irritable, and the adults appeared somber and distracted as they tried to control them. I picked up a magazine but I couldn't read it. I couldn't think, either. My reasoning, memory and imagination wouldn't engage. Not knowing when the procedure would be finished, there was nowhere for me to go and nothing for me to do except to wait for the doctor’s repo

Shortly after the time I expected to see the doctor, I noticed that the other families had left. Now alone in the silent room, I began to feel agitated. This was not good. It was not good that the doctor still had not come, and it was not good that I was feeling upset. I thought: if there’s a reason to be upset, I won’t know what it is until the doctor gives me his report. So I put my emotions on hold and sat motionless in my chair, as if I were in a state of suspended animation.

About an hour later, the surgeon came through the door and walked towards me. It was the first time I had met him. He seemed too young to be a surgeon. I shook his hand. He looked me in the eye and got right to the point. "I removed the lump and had it tested. It's malignant. We’ll need to schedule another procedure to take more of her breast to be sure we got all of the cancer and to take some lymph nodes to check for metastasis.”

He was frank, but gentle. “I'm sorry. From my office examination and the ultrasound, I expected it to be benign. In eighty percent of cases like this, it’s not cancer. On the positive side, the lump was small and easy to remove, which is a good sign."

I thanked him and shook his hand again.

After he left, I felt disoriented. I had the feeling I was somewhere else. The walls glowed, as if they were alive. I was still standing and the room was silent, but my brain was filled with background noise. I was alone, but it felt as if some kind of presence was in the room with me, something large and threatening that filled the room behind me. I sensed that I couldn't reason with it, and I was afraid to turn around to confront it. It seemed so close to me that I could feel its breath on the back of my neck. It was communicating something to me, without words. My body went rigid.

A few moments later, I recognized the familiar pale green walls of the waiting room. I looked around at the empty chairs. There was no “presence.” But in my bones I knew something important that I didn’t know before: Kathleen’s life was in danger.

In place of fear, I felt a calm clarity, like the “just-take-care-of-business” attitude I remember having in combat in Vietnam. This was not the time for emotion. There would be time for that later. Now was the time for action. Effective action.

I found a public telephone and called her mom and dad. Borrowing some of the doctor’s matter-of-fact demeanor, I explained what I knew. They thanked me for taking care of their daughter. They said they would pray for us.

This was the first step of the strange journey of Kathleen’s treatment and recovery. We were going into battle to save my sweetheart’s life. It was time for personal strength. We would do what we had to do. Everything else was bullshit.

A Video That Encourages COMPOSURE

"Grace under pressure," Hemingway called it. "Mental toughness," which is what we call it today, is the ability to manage your emotions when all hell breaks loose. Why? So you don't throw gasoline onto a fire. So you deal with your situation calmly and effectively, instead of making it worse because you came apart at the seams.

This terrific video comes from the "Voice of Encouragement" lady, Meredith Bell. I love these features, because they're so on target and give such a terrific boost in only a couple minutes



Meredith's video was also featured in the Golden Eggs newsletter. To receive this multi-media, multi-contributor uplifting ezine every Wednesday, sign up in the box at the top of this page.

My recent blog post on Composure...

Generosity - Wisdom of the Ages for Our Time

Here we are, in the season of giving. Some thoughts...

"It is more blessed to give than to receive." - Jesus Christ

“You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.” - Albert Camus

“Even when you’re really needy, you’ve got to give more than you receive.” - Christopher Reeve

"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one." - Mother Teresa

“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The wise man does not lay up his own treasures. The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.” - Lao Tzu

  
Give with your heart, and hearts will reach out to you. May your generosity bring you joy.  
 

Eleanor Roosevelt - One of the Great People of the 20th Century

People who love quotes know that Albert Einstein, Mark Twain and Ralph Waldo Emerson are among the richest sources of wisdom. But how many people know that Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962) is one of the most often-quoted people in history?

Yes, she was the First Lady to Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1945. But she was also a prominent speaker, author, politician and human rights advocate all her life. She was instrumental in forming the United Nations, and President Truman appointed her the U. S. Delegate to the U.N. General Assembly.

Some of my favorite quotes...

"When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else."

"Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death."

"To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart." 

"The basic thing which contributes to charm is the ability to forget oneself and be engrossed in other people."

"Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart."

"Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than fear, to try rather than not to try."

"It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness."

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

Composure - Controlling Your Emotions in Stressful Situations

It's been over 40 years since my years as a cadet at West Point, and I’m sure the institution has made many changes since then. However back then, in addition to being physically and academically challenging, Plebe (freshman) year was a period of trial and indoctrination. During that first year I experienced countless stressful encounters with upperclassmen.

For example, during meals I had to sit on the front edge of my chair at rigid attention. At any moment during the meal, an upperclassman at my table might shout, “Mr. Coates, what’s for supper and what’s the movie tonight?”

Plebes were required to memorize and recite these details on command.

37 Years Later - The Brooklyn Bridge

In 1972, I was at Duke University studying British and American literature. For me, it was an intense time of learning and personal growth. Since I didn't have the typical undergraduate preparation in English, Duke made an exception to allow me to take graduate-level courses. I was in way over my head. To catch up, I had to study my ass off. I read a novel every day for several months, wrote 200 pages of essays each semester, and struggled to ask questions in class without exposing my ignorance.

Billons of Dollars Wasted, Part Two - What Happened Next...

As I said in my post on December 9th, I never did write the article exposing the "Dark Secret" of the training and development industry - that organizations world-wide were investing billions of dollars annually in instruction that fails to produce lasting changes in behavior and improved workplace performance.

During the 15 years that followed, four things happened...

First, billions of dollars continued to be wasted every year on training that doesn't have the desired impact. This shocking circumstance continues to this day.
Second, I got out of the training and development business. My company was good at it, but the work took a lot out of us and, as I explained in my previous post, it didn't give us the kind of satisfaction we were looking for. Instead, we evolved our company into a human resource development product business. Our flagship product since 1994 has been a breakthrough highly customizable multi-purpose web-based feedback survey system called 20/20 Insight GOLD. 

Third, a number of experts in the field noticed the same problem and did decide to write the articles--and books. Their common theme: organizations pay big bucks for training but by and large they refuse to pay for follow-through. Most of these books explain what the necessary follow-through should look like. The most vocal of the bunch is Mary L. Broad:

Transfer of Training (Addison-Wesley, 1992 - with John W. Newstrom)

Transferring Learning to the Workplace (ASTD, 1997)

Beyond Transfer of Training (Pfeiffer, 2005)

Two other good books on the topic:

Robert O. Brinkerhoff and Anne M. Apking, High-Impact Learning (Perseus, 2001)

Calhoun Wick, et al, The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning (Pfeiffer, 2006)

Fourth, my enduring interest in the cognitive neuroscience of learning led me to understand why the post-training follow-through is absolutely essential. It's because what's acquired in the classroom is mainly knowledge, not skill. Skill comes from many, many repetitions of the desired behavior in the workplace, so that the skill becomes ingrained as a work habit.

People won't continue using a new skill in the workplace unless it becomes second nature. Instead, they fall back on old, comfortable patterns. And skills become second nature only when the brain cells involved in the skill grow together to form a neural pathway. Repetitions of the skill excite the chemistry that initiates the growth of dendrites, which eventually connect the brain cells. And more repetition continues the growth until the pathway is complete. Only then will the new, improved approach to behavior, which was introduced in training, feel comfortable enough to use it in place of the old behavior pattern.

And this usually takes months of consistent application. This is why a few days of training can never produce the desired result. This is why follow-up is needed. And why, to this day, billions of dollars are still being wasted. Because it's still unusual for an organization to invest in an effective follow-up program.

My belief is that organizations may have heard the alarm, but none of the books I cited above included this essentially physiological cause-and-effect explanation. So executives don't appreciate why so much follow-up is necessary. Hence, I wrote an ASTD Infoline monograph entitled Enhance the Transfer of Training (2007), in which I outline the core problem and clarify the solution. It's all there, but in retrospect I think my paper was like a tree falling in the woods.

To address the problem with a technology solution, my company began development of ProStar Coach, a web-based learner support system to serve as a "virtual coach" during the period of follow-up.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .

SELF-CONFIDENCE - Believe in Yourself!

Thomas Edison said, “If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.” 

It's all too easy to look at our mistakes, our frailties, our limitations, our imperfections -- and conclude that we'll probably never be able to do the one great thing that we want so much in our hearts to do. 

Never underestimate what's inside you that makes you special.
 

SELF-CONFIDENCE –THREE POWER LISTS

Most people underestimate themselves. Because every life is peppered by mistakes, shortfalls and failures, people tend to be more aware of their shortcomings and limitations than they are of their strengths and possibilities.

I once knew a woman who had an M.A. in English from a well-known university. She loved fiction and poetry, and we would frequently talk about books. She often said that she would like to write a novel someday. One day I encouraged her to take the first step by writing a story. To my surprise, she expressed reluctance, explaining that she wasn’t ready to try it. I was puzzled by her attitude, because she was a student of literature and a thoughtful, intuitive person. I had seen examples of her writing. It was quite elegant — far above the norm. She simply believed that she couldn't do it. And so she never did.

Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of Insight

Most people don't even know what a stroke is.

In case you're not sure, I'll tell you. When the blood supply is cut off to a part of the brain, which can happen if a blood vessel bursts, brain function in that area can be disrupted, which can cause parts of the brain to stop functioning, permanent brain damage, and even death. If you don't die from it, the damage can change the way your brain makes sense of reality, which of course changes who you are.

I urge you to listen to Dr. Taylor's personal account of what it feels like to have a stroke,. Because she's a brain scientist, you'll probably never again hear a story quite like hers. Her presentation was for TED, which shares videos of enlightening speakers online, so the talk lasts about 20 minutes. If you take the time to watch it all the way through, you'll be glad you did.



Now I'm going to encourage you to do two things.

First, read Dr. Taylor's book. If you think her presentation is remarkable, you should hear the whole story. You'll never think of stroke in the same way again. But it's not just a memoir. In plain English, she describes how the brain works. More important she shares the wisdom that her seven-year journey to recovery brought her.

Second, go to the TED website, watch a couple videos, and then bookmark it. It's one of the most valuable online resources I've found.

Billions of Dollars Wasted on Training That Doesn't Work

Over 15 years ago, I was having lunch with a colleague in a restaurant south of Akron, Ohio. We had just spent the morning with the Vice President for Human Resources at one of the biggest corporations in the U.S., and we were reviewing what was said and what we learned. At some point, I looked at him over my cup of coffee. It was one of those moments when I felt that it was important to be honest, truthful.

I said, "You know, Dave, whatever you do there probably won't get the results you expect, or what they think they're paying for. I'm not saying you're a second-rate trainer. Quite the opposite. You're probably the best trainer I know. But I honestly don't think your program will change anything."

He sat up straight and just looked at me with a puzzled expression. "What are you talking about?"

"What I'm saying is, it's rare that this kind of training has the impact it's supposed to. I don't know how many times I've given the client my best stuff, promised a lot and delivered more, and got rave reviews from the participants. Then a year or two later, when I go back to talk with the managers, they tell me that practically nothing has changed. It's frustrating and disappointing to admit that what we do doesn't really have much long term impact. Surely, you've experienced the same thing."

He looked out the window and didn't say anything for a while. I thought I might have hurt his feelings. Maybe I shouldn't have said what I was thinking.

But then he said, "I suppose you're right. Yes, I've been disappointed like that. Yes, probably most of the time. But what are we supposed to do? Stop trying? Go into another line of work? Besides, even if the training doesn't take with everyone, there's always those few who do take it to heart. It helps those few. And the rest, well, if their behavior doesn't change, maybe their thinking does. Maybe it has an impact down the road."

"I don't know if that's good enough, Dave. Companies large and small are spending millions--no, billions of dollars every year to hire people like you and me to improve the skills of their employees. That's the ROI they expect, but it's not what they're getting. It's like some kind of deep dark secret that nobody wants to talk about. The thing is, I know it and you know it. It makes me feel conflicted and uncomfortable with this business."

"So what are you going to do? Stop training? What?"

"I don't know. I've been thinking about writing an article about this problem. I have an outline..."

"Oh no, man, don't write it. A negative article like that, if anybody published it, and if anybody read it, would hurt our efforts to get organizations to invest in their people. It would be bad for all of us. People would come after you. It's a bad idea, Denny. Don't do it."

I wanted to do it, though. I kept thinking about all that wasted investment, all that effort for little or no gain.

But I can tell you today, looking back across the years, that I never did write that article. Why not? I think basically I didn't want to be someone who raises an ugly issue without giving a good explanation for it or without proposing some kind of solution.

The good news is, I did come to understand why most training doesn't work, why billions of dollars of HR money are still wasted every year. I even learned what to do about it. I don't mean to keep you in suspense...but that's another story, another blog post. Please stay tuned for Part 2 of the story...

Marshall Goldsmith - The Best Advice for Your Life

Jim Rohn's passing this past weekend has put me in a reflective mood. I remembered a brief video that featured some profound statements by one of his colleagues, Marshall Goldsmith. In it, Marshall asks us to imagine what advice we'd give to someone if we knew we had only moments left to live. This is really important stuff, worth listening to...

Sad News - Legendary Success Speaker Jim Rohn Has Died

With great sadness we share that Jim Rohn, our mentor and friend, left us December 5, 2009 for a better place.

Over the past 18 months, in his battle with Pulmonary Fibrosis, Jim assured us with a smile that all is good, that he would fight until the last breath, yet he had no fear as to what would be next. Jim’s faith was as much a part of his life as his desire to inspire and challenge us all to be the best we could be and to live our dreams.

Jim’s courage in his final months and days were a testament to his message that we should all fight the good fight. He never gave up and never gave in.

For the rest of the story, see "The Passing of a Legend" on the official Jim Rohn website. 

Some memorable Jim Rohn quotes...

GENEROSITY - "Somebody says, 'Well, I can't be concerned about other people. About the best I can do is to take care of myself.' Well, then you will always be poor."

SELF-DEVELOPMENT - "We generally change ourselves for one of two reasons: inspiration or desperation."

PASSION - When you know what you want, and you want it bad enough, you will find a way to get it.
 
INTEGRITY - "For every promise, there is a price to pay."

RESPONSIBILITY - "Walk away from the 97% crowd. Don't use their excuses. Take charge of your own life"

VISION - "Don't set your goals too low. If you don't need much, you won't become much."

And there are hundreds more...
    

COACH K - ON LEADERSHIP

Having read over 200 books on leadership, I prefer a book not by someone who has thought well about leadership, but someone who has actually been a successful leader. If John Wooden's book on leadership is my favorite, Mike Krzyzewski's book, Leading with the Heart is a close second.

Coach K and I were cadets at West Point at the same time. He was in the class of 1969, two classes after me, so even though we were assigned to the same cadet regiment, I remember him mainly from what he did on the basketball court. Back then, with Bobby Knight as the head coach, the undersized Army basketball team played in the final four of the NIT two years in a row.

I was a graduate student at Duke from 1971 to 1973, before Coach K's first year as coach. Translation: this was before he built the now-famous Blue Devil program, so in those days I paid more attention to American literature than to basketball. But now I'm an over-the-top Duke hoops fan. I even search the web for recruiting news during the summer.

So what would a basketball coach have to say about leadership? Here are some of my favorite Coach K quotes...

CHARACTER - "There are always those times when you're going to be down, it's how you step through it that makes you the person you are.''

COOPERATION - "People want to be on a team. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. They want to be in a situation where they feel that they are doing something for the greater good."

EXCELLENCE -  "Everything we do has our own personal signature one it. So we want to do it as well as we possibly can."

LEADERSHIP - "Almost everything in leadership comes back to relationships."

LEADERSHIP - "People are not going to follow you as a leader unless you show them that you're real. They are not going to believe you unless they trust you. And they are not going to trust you unless you always tell them the truth and admit when you were wrong."

OPTIMISM - “Whether it's sunny or muddy or whatever, you figure a way to win. The only way you do that is to feel positively about your situation.”

PERSEVERANCE - "Don't let a single game break your heart."

RESPONSIBILITY -  "To be successful, you have to learn to do things you don't like. You find ways to like the process and make the most of that time."

SELF-DEVELOPMENT -  "Mistakes are a part of the building process. Mistakes have to be made. How you act when you make mistakes is of paramount importance."

  

Major New Blog Feature - Your Voice of Encouragement

I've been following Meredith Bell's new blog, "Your Voice of Encouragement," and I really like its positive tone. Her articles are usually based on personal stories and touch on personal strength themes.

Now she's added something new and, in my opinion even more powerful - encouragement videos. Today I watched the first in what I hope will be a long, encouraging series. See for yourself...



Meredith and I have been colleagues for 20 years, and I'm thrilled with the direction she's taking with this. It coincides with an inspirational new e-Newsletter called "Golden Eggs," which features her encouragement videos, my personal strength articles, and meditation podcasts by Paula Schlauch. If I'm not mistaken, this kind of weekly-themed, multi-expert, multi-media 100% content format is unprecedented.

To check it out, just enter your address in the box at the top of page and issues will arrive weekly.

Perseverance - Don't Give Up

What's the one thing you want most? Chances are you're going to fail.

The question is: When you fail, will you quit?

Because chances are that no matter how smart and hard you work, barriers will stop you in your tracks. People will doubt you and refuse to support you. Mistakes will be made. Unexpected problems will arise. You'll feel the pain of discouragement and failure. Probably over and over again.

But will you give up on your dream?



You see, you have within you - right now - the potential to be strong in so many different ways. To work harder. To take chances. To think creatively. To be patient. To keep your composure.

"“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.” - Langston Hughes

When you feel discouragement, don't focus on it. Let it pass. Then do the hard things and keep trying. Move forward, fail again, and keep trying.

More about Building Personal Strength

One of my memories from youth was the feeling that compared to adults, I was naïve and ignorant about almost everything. I guess most kids feel this way. In my case, it motivated me to learn. I felt that my ignorance put me at a disadvantage. This translated into a keen sense that I had a lot of work to do. So I became one of those kids who sit in the front of the class and raise their hands a lot. I didn’t pass notes or shoot spitballs

On my final day of high school I delivered the valedictory address. A month later I joined the class of 1967 at the U.S. Military Academy. I found myself in more select company, and once again I felt naïve and ignorant. I took my studies seriously, but the feeling that I had a lot to learn persisted well after graduation and for another ten years, until I earned my Ph.D. in English from Duke University.

But as they say, once you leave the classroom the real learning begins....