Category Archives: Change

Thought for food?

What Benjamin Franklin Taught Me— Yesterday

Are you angry that others disappoint you?
Remember you cannot depend on yourself.
~Benjamin Franklin

I get on my high horse at times about things people do. My latest rant has been about people who don’t return calls or answer personal emails from me. Maybe they have asked me a question, or even asked me to do something for them. I respond and then I don’t hear anything—nothing. I am left with not only not knowing the ultimate outcome, but am also left resenting that I put my self out for them.

Last night, I was in full rant mode about this, and then I received this quote:

Are you angry that others disappoint you?
Remember you cannot depend on yourself.
~Benjamin Franklin

Hmm, its true, I am sometimes undependable. I do not keep my word all of the time. How I interpret the quote, is essentially, clean your own house before you criticize another. Now that is humbling. It was also a wake up call for me.

I am now on a mission. I am looking to see, checking myself out, to find those things in me that I criticize others about? Am I doing the same things they are? If I am, I am cleaning it up.

I bring this up to you because it may be useful for you to take a look at yourself. It may make a difference to you as it has for me. If this seems not very important to you, that’s fine too. Who am I to criticize?

In the space below, please share about some of your aha moments and what you have done to bring them into being a lasting part of your life. I look forward to hearing from you!

I Am Sorry

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Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.
I Ching

Several years ago, I was the subject of a campaign of hate fueled by nasty rumors, gossip, and even some threats. The result of this campaign was being socially “black balled” by a large influential segment of the community. Naturally I was devastated and felt misidentified and maligned. I also felt very alone.

That very event was a catalyst for my growth and development. I made wonderful new friends, deepened my spiritual path, and gained the confidence to build two new businesses.

Until yesterday, that past was mostly forgotten. I had moved on. Then I had lunch with an acquaintance from the that time. Lunch was delightful and stimulating. I was so happy that we re-connected and as we asked for the bill, she said, “I need to apologize to you.” She was quiet for a few moments. Then she said, “Please accept my apology for believing the gossip and rumors about you.” She said she was now puzzled as to why she ever gave the gossip any credence at all.

This was one of those huge moments that come into our lives sometimes, both for her and me. It takes a big person to apologize for perpetrating harm, real or imagined, on another. It takes courage to apologize—and its scary.

I was a little stunned and quiet as all the old hurt and isolation re-occurred for me. Then I said, “Of course, I accept your apology, thank you”. The moment was over, the damage undone, history once again tucked away in the past. We both left that lunch looking forward to the next time we would see each other.

This woman’s courage and bigness has inspired me. I am writing this blog today with the intention to inspire you too. It is my goal to encourage you to apologize to whomever you think you may have hurt. I promise that you will discover yourself to be a bigger and more complete person.

In the space below, please share with me times when you have apologized for wrong and what happened. I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Grit – Your Personal Predictor of Success

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So what the is grit? And how do I get some?

According to Angela Lee Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania: “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future—day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years—and working really hard to make that future a reality.”

It turns out it is not talent, good looks, intelligence, or amassing financial stability that make us successful—it’s grit.

Of course to develop grit you will have to operate as though failure is not a permanent condition—you may have to give up self pity—after all, you have not failed until you quit, until you have left the playing field forever.

I do believe if you are an entrepreneur, you already have grit. It takes passion, stamina, and working hard, to be an entrepreneur. Putting your self out there with a business that you created, and which depends on you to make it work, is grit.

One of my clients called me this week and asked if I would take some time to “visit’ with him. I knew that he recently suffered a devastating business blow and nine months of hard work had been crushed when his business plan was rejected by an important investor. I assumed the “visit” was going to be about how he was quitting. I was ready for the predictable fallout from this disappointment. I was wrong.

He wanted to tell me that he had a new idea about how to make his business succeed. And for the next, forty-five minutes we talked about his new idea for the success of his business plan. He told me that he wasn’t giving up and that it was probably good that he didn’t get the loan. He thinks his new idea is even better and will make him more successful. This guy is a working model of grit. You see, he doesn’t believe that failure is permanent. He has grit!

In the comments below, please tell me what you think about “grit”. I look forward to hearing from you.

Fuel Your Life With Back to School Energy – Here’s How!

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There is the undercurrent of excitement in the air. Can you feel it? It’s back to school time! Even though I am not personally going back to school, don’t have new books, a new pen or even a fresh clean uniform, I can feel the excitement of learning something new, opening up to possibilities not yet seen, new friends, new, well, everything. See if you can feel it even if you hated school and the beginning of school. If not steal some excitement from me.

This is the perfect time for you to review what you have accomplished so far this year. Make a list of what you still want to accomplish and a plan to do so. This is your second chance to end the year with a triumph of accomplishments graciously given to you by the arrival of “back to school” time.

The easiest way to do this is to get a pencil and paper and make this list of areas in your life:

Family
Personal Relationships
Spirituality
Physical Fitness
Health
Finances
Business
Fun/Vacations
Home
Contribution
Personal Style

Ask your self the following questions:

Where am I now?
Where do I want to be?
What am I willing to do to get there

Rate each area from 5 (totally satisfied) to 1 (no, satisfaction ).

In some areas, you will be perfectly satisfied—and good for you! What we are going for is for you to tag the areas of the your life that you are not satisfied with and are willing to change. Notice that I used the word willing. If you are not willing to take action, don’t even mess with it. In the areas where you are willing to take some definite action, what will you accomplish? Make it measurable and be accountable for it by putting a by when date next to it. Put it in your calendar. And, keep your word.

For example: Under the category of Personal Style, my closet rates a 1. I am “willing” to move that from a 1 to a 3 by changing from plastic hangers to wooden hangers. I will do that by August 30.

I am looking forward to hearing from you about what happened out of using this review of your life this year. If you need any support, let me know.

Going Pro

The Rules of Life

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Life has rules, and the rules of life—your life—are not necessarily those rules and regulations which are most obvious. Some are hidden; others appear to be of little consequence, and to complicate matters more, they are not the same for everyone. But these are not the only problems with rules, nor are they the greatest. The main problem arises when we make the rules a moral issue, when we make it right to obey the rules and wrong to disobey them. Over the years this has created a huge amount of mischief and misery in people’s lives. If you want to enslave a group of people, all you need do is present them with a set of rules and convince them they are morally wrong if they don’t obey them.

For the most part, you and I have made the rules in our lives a moral issue. Why do we do this? I don’t know. Man has been doing it for thousands of years. But that doesn’t mean we must continue doing it. Try this on. Begin to think of the rules of life in terms of workability and unworkability, rather than in terms of right and wrong. The result will be that breaking a rule is no longer wrong; it simply has a consequence, and you don’t have to obey a rule if you are willing to deal with the consequence. Obviously some consequences are not something you want to deal with. For instance the consequence of you killing your neighbor would most likely be life in the penitentiary. But is it wrong? I don’t know. For a samurai in sixteenth century Japan, to whom honor was everything (in theory at least), killing had a whole other meaning than it does for us.

An example of greater relevance to you and me are the consequences of tax evasion. They are a lot less concrete than the consequences of murder. For instance, if you take a few excess deductions and then get challenged, or even if you fail to file a return, you will have to pay a fine and some interest, but that is all. On the other hand, if you file a bogus return and get caught, you may very well go to prison.

And there is the sleep problem as well. Worrying about getting caught is a consequence. And the worry may not be immediately obvious. You know—break a little rule here and another one there, without being responsible for the fact that there are consequences, and by and by you will start looking and acting like someone who has something to hide. Your life is no longer yours.

What is the practical point of this discussion? This. For most of us, we have a lot of useless and even counterproductive rules in our lives. We break them all the time, and then feel guilty about breaking them. If you shift rules from being a moral issue to being a practical issue, then you won’t experience the pain of guilt if you break them. You still have to deal with the consequences. If you’re not willing to deal with the consequence, don’t break the rule.

How To Re-imagine Part 2

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Apparently, I hit a nerve with the last newsletter, Re-imagine Your Failure. Some readers commented on it and others just called to tell me what they saw about re-imagining. What struck me as the most was that their reactions pointed to who they are as entrepreneurs. Yes, they have failures. Yes, they do NOT like failures, and YES, OF COURSE, re-imagining is what must occur.

Here is what one highly successful entrepreneur said: “When asking yourself that important question, ‘What could you do differently that may make the project succeed?’… it is also important to realize it was YOUR SCENE…Re-Imagine the SCENE…you may not have failed, even though you FEEL that way! Re-imagining has you get out of the grief a LOT faster!”

I think it’s a brilliant response to the inquiry. Taking the comment apart, here is what inspires me about it. It is where this person is coming from, this person is totally taking responsibility for her reaction to the failure. In being responsible for the reaction then she can re-imagine it and give herself an alternative to experiencing failure.

She pointed to a very important trait of successful entrepreneurs, the art of being responsible. Responsibility is perhaps a unsung positive trait of entrepreneurs. In the true meaning of the word, being responsible is not blame or guilt, shame or any such demoralizing explanation. Being responsible is “liable to be called on to answer, being the cause or explanation, able to answer for one’s conduct and obligations.” Notice that the word “being” is used. Being meaning, at least to me, who we are on the playing field of business.

An entrepreneur who is being responsible can re-imagine effortlessly, as the commenter said: “it is also important to realize it was YOUR SCENE”. She takes responsibility for the scene and then, since its hers, she can re-imagine it. And, that ability, is the key factor for being a successful entrepreneur. No one else did it to you, or even for you; you and you alone are the one. There is so much power in that way of being that you cannot fail. You can only re-imagine and move forward.

I look forward to hearing your comments about this way of being.

To Succeed Do This — Not That!

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“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

― George Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Warren’s Profession

Many of you have seen this quote before. At first glance, it doesn’t seem that remarkable does it? However, with some further examination, you might find, as I have, it is a pointer to how to live your life, and how to create what you want in your life.

I think it’s one of the things that we sometimes remember. And then we forget it. It is as if we are cast out into the raging ocean in a shaky rowboat without any oars. We then become a victim of our circumstances instead of the creator of them. When we become the victim, all sorts of events thwart our intentions. Everything we try seems to go wrong. Everything appears to be against us. We think we are doomed. Our view of the future becomes dark and gloomy with thunder and lightening. We then become right about how hard it is and that nothing is going to work out—and nothing does work out, which makes us even more right. This is a vicious cycle. AND, we can, if not prevent it, at least reverse it.

This is where George Bernard Shaw enters the picture with his wonderful quote.

We can make our own circumstances. When we begin to act on our own behalf, all sorts of openings begin to occur.

I have seen this reversal happen with many of my coaching clients. Sometimes, it takes them, first of all, making a commitment to be coached. Often, setting the first appointment begins the shift of circumstances. Why? Because they are then committed to shifting their circumstances rather than being victim of them. The next big shift happens when they begin to talk to their coach about their lost dreams and they are listened to seriously and respectfully. With a coach, someone who is committed to the idea that something can work, the client can succeed. The client experiences being whole and complete and not their rotten circumstances. They begin the process of being the success they know themselves to be. I have seen this happen many times with my clients.

And how about you? Have you triumphed over a set of rotten circumstances? What happened? I would love to hear your comments about this topic.