Potential
March 18th, 2010
by Ron White
The stage was a Texas Rangers baseball game. I stared at the batter and muttered “potential” as he held the bat over his shoulder waiting for the pitch. No sooner had the word escaped my mouth when my friend leaned over and said, “What did you say?” I replied, “I said potential.” Her confused question was, “OK…? Potential in regard to what?”
I then explained. “Well, in science they have something called potential energy, and it basically says that the higher an object is, the more potential energy it has. For example, a rock on top of a building has a potential energy in it—if it were to fall. I was just thinking about the potential energy in the player’s bat and how that relates to me.”
She looked at me intensely, somehow sensing that I was telling the truth that these were my thoughts. She proclaimed, “I never cease to be astounded at the weird things you think about.”
Perhaps it is an odd thought to cross my mind at a baseball game, but it happened. Potential energy basically says that the higher an object is, the greater the potential energy. A ball on a six-story building has more potential energy than one on a three-story building. As a matter of fact, the doubling of the height doubles the potential energy.
At the baseball game, when I started thinking about potential energy, I was considering it in regards to me—and you, for that matter. You see, it has been said that from those to whom much has been given much is expected. Based on the fact that you have access to a computer, understand how to read and have a thirst for learning, you have been given much. Or, in scientific terms, you have tremendous potential energy. You are like that rock on a tall building. However, if you sit there, the potential energy is never utilized or accessed.
One of the greatest tragedies of life is when an individual has tremendous potential energy and squanders it. That is one of my greatest fears. I am constantly faced with the prospect of not using my potential energy. To me, that is one of my largest motivating factors. Every day as I age, I look in the mirror and question if I did everything I could to use my potential energy. Did I do everything I could to figuratively jump off that building and expend the energy?
Pent up inside of you right now is tremendous potential energy that could be utilized to cure cancer, send humans to Mars, write a novel or become president of the United States. The great tragedy is not expending your potential energy and falling short. The great tragedy of life is to be that boulder—to have tremendous potential energy—and squander it through inaction.
There you have it. I was thinking about potential at the baseball game. I was thinking about it because I know that humans with nothing more than primitive tools constructed the pyramids, Stonehenge and the Great Wall of China. These are testaments to human potential. They are testaments to certain individuals thousands of years ago expending their potential energy for the ages to witness and marvel at. The challenge today for you may not be a monument for society or culture; however, it is a call for you to understand potential energy and implore you to seize yours.
Oldies Humour
March 17th, 2010
Now that I’m ‘older’ (but refuse to grow up), here’s what I’ve discovered:
I. I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it.
2. My wild oats have turned into prunes and All Bran.
3. I finally got my head together; now my body is falling apart.
4. Funny, I don’t remember being absent minded…
4. Funny, I don’t remember being absent minded…
5. All reports are in; life actually is unfair.
6. If all is not lost, where is it?
7. It is easier to get older than it is to get wiser.
8. Some days you’re the dog; some days you’re the hydrant.
9. I wish the buck stopped here; I sure could use a few.
10. Kids in the back seat cause accidents.
11. Accidents in the back seat cause kids.
12. It’s hard to make a comeback when you haven’t been anywhere.
13. The only time the world beats a path to your door is when you’re in the bathroom.
14. If God wanted me to touch my toes, he would have put them on my knees.
15. When I’m finally holding all the cards, why does everyone decide to play chess?
16. It’s not hard to meet expenses… they’re everywhere.
17. The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.
18. These days, I spend a lot of time thinking about the hereafter. I go somewhere to get something and then wonder what I’m here after.
Four Benefits of Pursuing Your Potential
March 16th, 2010
by John C. Maxwell
(Here’s a short excerpt from an article by best-selling author and leadership expert John C. Maxwell. Enjoy!)
- Higher self-esteem. People who are constantly learning and growing have a good self-image.
- Willingness to change and risk. One of the obvious evidences of growing people is that they are constantly changing and risking. Show me a person who doesn’t change, who doesn’t risk, and I’ll show you a person who’s not growing.
- Passion increases. When we begin to grow personally, our passion for life and learning begins to increase proportionately.
- Lifting the lid for others. What a leader does determines what everybody else is going to do. The people don’t pass the leader. An organization’s growth doesn’t outpace the leader’s progress. As you lift the lid for yourself, you lift the lid for others.
10 Commandments for the Office
March 15th, 2010
By Harvey Mackay
It’s just business as usual, day in and day out. The fast lane gets faster. Competition for business and jobs gets meaner. The world gets smaller every day. You’ve dealt with a hundred co-workers, customers, vendors, and the irritating kid who works at the lunch counter. It’s time to go home and unwind.
The traffic jam gives you an opportunity to replay some of the day’s encounters. Regrettably, you wish you would have handled a few things quite differently. How can you make tomorrow better?
My mother always told me, “You don’t have to like everybody, but you do need to learn to get along.”
Over the years, I’ve developed a list, a “Ten Commandments for the Office,” which makes my commute home a little less guilt-ridden. Better yet, it’s improved my commute to the office. If I follow my own advice, I won’t have to spend my time apologizing for what I should have done in the first place. Try it out.
1) Be respectful. This includes respect for other people’s property, ideas and time. Frankly, this commandment should about cover everything. If you are respectful of others, you can usually work out most issues – even if it’s agreeing to disagree. An added bonus is that when you treat others with respect, they are more inclined to return the favor.
2) Follow through. If you promise to do something, do it. No ifs, buts or maybes. No excuses, no whining. You are only as good as your word. There will always be a place in this world for the person who says, “I’ll take care of it.” And then does it.
3) Think before you speak. Don’t say whatever is on your mind, unless you want your mindless thoughts to come back to haunt you. Those ghosts can rise up years later, just when that promotion looks so promising. And while we’re on the topic, remember that how you say something is as important as what you say.
4) Help out. So what if it’s not in your job description. If you have an opportunity to be useful, jump at it. Even if the rewards are not in the form of a paycheck, your co-workers will remember who helped them when they needed it. Taking on a little extra work – or a lot – shows that you are a team player, an employee worth watching.
5) Learn something new every day. It could be a new skill. Maybe the latest developments in your industry. Or just the name of a person you see daily at the copy machine. You have millions of brain cells just waiting to work for you!
6) Pay attention. If you go directly to your cubicle and barricade yourself all day, you’re missing important developments in your workplace. Not the gossipy events, of course, but the really good stuff – new procedures, new ideas and so on. This commandment also covers those occasions when the value of your input depends on your familiarity with the situation at hand. In short, always keep your antennae up!
7) Ignore pettiness. Rise above it, or you will be dragged down with it. There will always be someone who will make a mountain out of a molehill. It better not be you.
Be patient. Not to be confused with tolerating incompetence, this commandment covers a multitude of situations.; Someone misunderstood you. A job is taking longer than you planned. You are missing every traffic light. What will you gain by losing your cool? I’m not a patient guy by nature, so I’ve really had to work at this one. If I can do it, you can too!
9) A good attitude is up to you. It takes a lot for the world to come to an end, so don’t act like it’s happening every day. Be encouraging, be cheerful. Refuse to be brought down by minor – or major – setbacks. Bad attitudes are contagious. The good news is that positive attitudes are catching, too.
10) Do your best. Like commandment #1, this should also cover just about everything. No one can ask you to do more.
It’s important to decide early on how you will conduct yourself. Then, when a crisis erupts or challenge arises, you won’t have to think twice about the right thing to do. I’ve always said that perfect practice makes perfect. These rules are no exception. And just for the record, these commandments work outside the office too.
Mackay’s Moral: Some rules are made not to be broken.
Quote – Herbert Swope
March 15th, 2010
“I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure – which is, try to please everybody.”
Herbert Swope
Don’t Take a Chance on Luck
March 11th, 2010
By PJ McClure
I couldn’t help but listen in. RB, an upperclassman, was reveling in his “accomplishment” over the weekend.
“We found a gate into the pasture and drove out toward where they were sleeping,” he said, lowering his voice. “The first one woke up and ran off, just as we got close. We were trying to be quiet, but it was hard because we were laughing so hard! I think the final count was 15, and I was worn out. Pushing over that many cows is harder than you think!”
That’s right, RB had been cow-tipping. As the son of a dairy farmer, his story was especially interesting to me. That same weekend, I had spent an hour rounding up cows that had escaped through an open gate we never used. My dad called the veterinarian out, because 11 of the cows were obviously hurt and had blood in their milk. Turns out they had broken ribs and had to be removed from production. And for our small operation, those cows represented 14 percent of our producing herd.
More than 20 years later, I’m still blown away when I think about RB and his involvement in this idiotic pastime. How could he have been so shortsighted and selfish? His family owned the most successful dairy operation in the area. As a dairyman, he should have had a greater appreciation for what those big, dumb animals represented… cash and our way of life.
But now, after a decade of studying how people achieve and sustain personal success, I better understand RB’s actions. He lacked two of the critical factors necessary for a successful mindset: gratitude and purpose.
Without gratitude, without an appreciation for what is good and right about our own lives, we are unlikely to be sensitive to how our actions impact others. RB wasn’t grateful for his own lifestyle, so how could he have an appreciation for anyone else’s?
RB found that out the hard way when his family’s multimillion-dollar farm went broke within three years of his taking over. In the aftermath, he realized how self-centered he had been. I know that, because he applied for a job in the business unit I was running at the time. He shared his personal revelation with me and told me that he hoped to make a new start.
After some soul searching, I passed RB and two other candidates on to our company president. RB got the nod. For the next two months, I coached him. And though he was sincere in his attempt to take control of his life, I still needed to continually prod and motivate him to stay on track.
RB’s absence of purpose was just as fundamental to his old mindset as his lack of gratitude. I’m not just talking about some transcendental concept of purpose, but about a practical, down-to-earth purpose. “Why am I doing this and what do I hope to gain?” Answering that question brings focus and meaning to our lives. Without the answer, without a purpose for our actions, good decisions are accidents.
By asking RB some very pointed questions — by digging in with one “Why is that important?” question after another — I finally got him to the core of why he was starting over.
It was an emotional moment. RB actually cried.
The bigger the task or opportunity in front of us, the bigger our purpose for taking it on has to be. RB was uprooting his family, moving to a big city, starting a brand-new career… but hadn’t figured out why.
Before I started coaching him, he assumed he was doing it to make more money. But money, by itself, is never a strong enough motivator. As it turned out, it wasn’t even in RB’s top five of what was really important to him.
With his new found appreciation for life and a supremely powerful purpose for what he was trying to accomplish, RB became my most valuable colleague in less than six months. He made decisions quickly, accurately, and in alignment with what mattered most to the company. Our business unit grew from $600,000 per year to $8,000,000 during his first full year, and he had a big hand in that growth. He took over for me when I left the company, and was eventually recruited by our largest competitor.
At home, he made a similar transition, instilling in his wife and children the same principles I taught him.
One of his children was a 2010 Winter Olympian, and she considers “What my dad taught me about how to think” to be her biggest competitive asset. That makes me proud.
So, what were the keys to RB’s transformation from cow-tipping redneck to poster boy for success?
- A wake-up call. This is usually caused by an event that causes so much pain that you can’t ignore your need for change — but you can generate your own wake-up call with a little personal awareness.
- Gratitude. Being grateful is actually easier when the chips are down. When all of the things we take for granted are disappearing or gone, we give our attention to what is left. The trick is to maintain gratitude for what we have, while we have it.
- Purpose. It seems so fundamental… but how often do we set a goal, take on a task, or engage in an activity without knowing what we want to accomplish? Having purpose is one of the greatest keys to eliminating disappointment and increasing fulfillment in life.
- A mentor. I had the great privilege of being just the right person at just the right time for RB — but there is more at work here than good timing. First make up your mind that you are ready to learn and grow. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
- Never stop learning. Become a lifelong learner. Maintain a healthy sense of humility and fascination with the world. You never know where your next wonderful lesson may come from.
Seeds of Optimism: The Biology of Hope
March 9th, 2010
(These quotes were taken from Denis Waitley’s Excerpts from The Seeds of Greatness Treasury booklet)
Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You may not get what you want, but in the long run you will get what you expect.
A good life is a collection of happy memories.
The good old days are here and now!
Happiness is the experience of living a life you feel is worthwhile.
To be enthused is to be infused with life!
Accept yourself as you are right now; an imperfect, changing, growing and worthy person.
You are a masterpiece of creation.
Each human being on earth has equal rights to fulfill his or her own potential.
You are an uncut gemstone of priceless value. Cut and polish your potential with knowledge, skills and service and you will be in great demand throughout your life.
View stumbling blocks as stepping stones to the stars.
Optimism creates energy and is contagious.
Quote – Ann Landers
March 8th, 2010
“If you have a good name, if you are more often right than you are wrong, if your children respect you, if your grandchildren are glad to see you, if our friends can count on you and you can count on them in time of trouble, if you can face God and say “I have done my best,” then you are a success.”
Ann Landers
Moral of the Fence
March 2nd, 2010
There once was a young boy named Ricky who had a bad temper. His mother gave him a bag of small nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he had to hammer 5 nails into the back of their picket fence in the backyard.
The first day Ricky had to drive 55 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails he had to hammer into the fence gradually dwindled each day. And it wasn’t long before he decided it was easier to hold his temper than to drive all those nails into the fence.
Finally the day came when Ricky didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his mother about it and the mother suggested that he now pull out five nails for each day that he was able to hold his temper.
Many days passed before Ricky was able to tell his mother that all the nails were gone. The mother took him by the hand and led him to the fence.
Pointing to it, she said, “You’ve done well, Ricky, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say angry things to someone, they leave a scar in the person just like these holes. And it doesn’t matter how many times you say you’re sorry, the wounds will always be there. Next time you start to get angry at someone, Ricky, remember the holes in the fence.”
The Virtue of Patience
March 2nd, 2010
by Denis Waitley
While persistence is the determination to strive to achieve your ultimate goal, there is another virtue of equally great value. Persistence keeps us moving inside ourselves to see the purpose behind the purpose, but patience is the wisdom behind persistence.
Patience cautions us to focus our efforts on what we can change while accepting what we cannot. When external circumstance rains on our parade, patience is our umbrella. Rather than blaming what we cannot control, patience is the wisdom behind persistence.
It is when a goal is distant and difficult to reach that patience is an ally. Time changes everything, but with patience you can keep your desires relatively constant. If you can just hang on long enough, time will finally create the conditions in which you can succeed.
