Wasting Time On New Year’s Resolutions

Everybody sooner or later has to drop the luggage and the baggage of illusions. - Carlos Santana

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough. - Charles Dudley Warner

I believe that behind both the person who weighs 400 pounds and the one who weighs 85 there is a lot of baggage, and it has nothing to do with their bodies. - Kirstie Alley

Ah yes, it must be the first day of the New Year.

People have flocked to social media yet again to trumpet their intentions for the upcoming year – more money, more love, less weight, more success, more travel, more excitement, less drama, more stuff, less stuff … blah blah blah.

Expectations of success are running high in the heady days of the New Year.  The only problem is that outside of the fact that we now date documents with a ‘2014’ instead of a ‘2013’, nothing else has changed, especially the most important thing of all.

You.

Since this is the case, why should the upcoming year produce any result better than the previous year?  Outside of a warm, fuzzy feeling and the cries of “This is my year!”, nothing has changed in any substantial way for 97% of people who believe that they will win the Life lottery this year.

Maybe those people should try some of the following in order to increase the possibility of success when it comes to manifesting their dreams.

Cut the following out of your Life diet

1. Negative people.  You know the ones.  They are always complaining, undercutting others (and you behind your back), telling you your dreams don’t matter or just dragging you down.  This includes anyone … family, friends, etc.

2. Time stealers.  While similar to the previous group, they may also be the ones filling your Life with drama or using you as a stepping stone to their own dreams at the expense of your own.

3. Brain rotters.  A number of people who constantly complain that their Life is not going anywhere but are the same ones who can instantly bring you up to date on the latest Hollywood gossip, reality show or online game.

4. Vagueness.  I upset a lot of people because I insist on a sharp definition of expectations and results.  When someone asks for something vague, I demand precision which in turn creates mutual accountability and responsibility.  People who would rather avoid this are the same people who will hang a failure on you when vagueness produces the wrong result all the while telling you that you are difficult to work with because “no one else has ever asked for specifics before”.

5. Over-simplifiers. People who say “just overcome your fear” or “just go for it’, etc. without understanding your Life context and the emotional baggage that swims in your head are hindering you more than helping you.  If we could just walk away from our fears and self-limiting beliefs, wouldn’t we have done so already?

6. Everyone who needs help.  Notice that I bolded the word everyone.  We must all help as many people as we can but if we attempt to save the world at our own expense, we will eventually lose ourselves in the process.

Then add the following.

1. Positive people.  These are the people who seek to create a better world for themselves, you and everyone else.  Not everything they say or do feels comfortable but they do it because they know that the intention is to create something better.

2. Personal growth time.  Time dedicated to strengthening your emotional, spiritual, relational and physical self is essential to fuelling your way to success.  You’re intelligent enough to know what you need – you don’t need a high-priced guru to tell you what you already know.

3. Measures of growth. A means of measuring improvement and progress is important.  Affirmation that you are making progress matters, especially when the inevitable difficulty arrives that threatens to knock you off course unless you have reminders of how far you have come.

4. Examples of success. Observe and model successful people.  Nobody is exactly like you but those who have overcome obstacles have much to teach you …. if you are open to learning from them.  Don’t focus on unsuccessful people but be cognizant that they also have lessons to offer.

5. A sense of discernment.  Being able to discriminate between what matters and what doesn’t ….. matters.  Doing the right things in the right order, the right way at the right time is critical to success.

Then identify your goals

Make sure they are measurable.  If they are not, you won’t know if you actually get there or not.  You also won’t know what corrective action to take should you be temporarily knocked off course.

Then make note of your present location

Because you can’t establish a destination and a plan to getting there unless you are realistic about where you are starting from.

Then add optional components

Your personal regimen, including elements of faith (or not), meditation or anything else that matters to you needs to be established.  Don’t let others tell you what this regimen should or must be.  You know what you need – beg, borrow, steal, adapt or invent what you need to fill in the gaps.  You are unique – there is no one-size-fits-all methodology that fits you perfectly.

Then perfect ….

1. The ability to say no to losers, incessant dreamers who never get started (but tell a good story), losing opportunities and anything that will tear you down or not bring you closer to your goals.  Say it respectfully and forcefully.  If your response ticks them off, then you know that you have probably saved yourself from a larger problem down the road.

2. The ability to say yes to winners, opportunities for growth, reasonable risk and anything that creates a better world for yourself and others.  Too many people are afraid to say yes when the Universe presents them with the opportunity of a Lifetime, either because they have fear, a sense of inadequacy or some other self-limiting belief.  Start small and over time you will discover that you become audacious in your ability to embrace opportunity.

Then remember ….

Success comes with time invested, hard work, perseverance, intelligent risk taking, sharing, giving, collaborating, helping, accepting help, service to others and luck.  There is no one-size-fits-all, overnight success plan.

There will be pain.

And there will be victories.

Life is a marathon, not a sprint

What separates those who consistently experience pain from those who find victory despite pain often comes down to those who insist on running the marathon with a 200 pound stone in tow versus those who have shed as much baggage as possible.

So before you establish your great goals for 2014 and beyond, ask yourself these questions:

1. What baggage do I need to shed in order to achieve my goals, knowing that the baggage comes in many forms and has held me back in the past?

2. What positive elements can I add to my Life to give me a greater chance of achieving my goals?

3. How badly do I want my dreams to manifest into reality?

4. How do I know that the answers to the previous questions are accurate?

Because if a “lifestyle guru” doesn’t bother exploring this (ferreting out what holds you back), layering on more “stuff to do”, additional processes or “feel good” will only clutter an already full brain.  The upside (for them) is that you will make the “resolution / goal setting experts” wealthier. 

In fact, they need you to come back year over year because their success depends on your inability to produce it.

And besides, if you can answer these questions honestly, objectively and audaciously, you won’t need a guru to tell you what to do next.

Because you will already know.

Create a great 2014 for yourself and for others.  You deserve it but you must earn it and you must want it badly enough to do whatever it takes to create it.

Otherwise we will be having the same conversation next year.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Perspective–Defining What’s Important

During my morning reflection today, a memory came back to me from my hockey playing youth.

The memory was of a particular game of street hockey I played on a cold Saturday morning back in the late 70’s.  On one occasion in the game, I stole the ball from an opponent behind my net, ran up the street deftly stickhandling around two guys, jumped over the stick of a third guy who swung it in an arc about knee high and suddenly I was living every hockey youth’s dream.

I was on a breakaway.

It was a series of moves worthy of any replay reel – at least in my mind anyway.

As I raced in on net, my heart racing and adrenalin rushing through my veins, I excitedly prepared to complete the perfect end-to-end play.

“Perfect” is a matter of perspective and from the perspective of the goalie I was racing towards, my finish was indeed perfect.

I missed the net entirely.

All that energy …. expended in a brilliant, solo effort …. for nothing.

I replayed that game over and over in my mind many times that year.

I marvelled at how “perfect” everything had gone.

And I re-experienced disappointment over and over at the finish, often choosing to be a slight revisionist as I imagined what the perfect goal would have looked like instead of the finish that I created.

It all seemed pretty important at the time.

A couple of months ago, I happened to be visiting the town of my youth and had an opportunity to drive down the street where I played that game.

The stretch of pavement which was about two hockey rinks long in my memories was maybe 75 feet long at best and only a single lane wide.

That’s funny – it seemed to be a lot bigger 30+ years ago.

Life experience and the perspective that comes with it

At the time I was experiencing the missed goal of a lifetime, the good parts seemed like the most important thing of all time while the missed goal seemed like the most disappointing thing I could ever experience.

The funny thing was that for all the effort I put into living and reliving the moment, in the grand scheme of things the event wasn’t important at all … nor was constantly rehashing it in my mind.

As so while the sequence makes for a great memory that causes me to smile today, it reminds me of the importance of perspective.

Whether or not I scored the goal would have made little difference on the person I became, the things I embraced, the career I set out on or anything else significant in my Life.

But back then, when all I had was “the moment” with no plans for the future, it was as big and as important as anything could be.

Life goals – the ultimate discernment filter

As a student of the human experience, observing what we choose to fight over and how we choose to do it, I can’t help but wonder if too many people are caught up in the same phenomenon of making little things much bigger and more important than they need to be or glossing over things that deserve much more attention than they receive.

I also wonder if the main reason we get caught up magnifying the unimportant while diminishing the important is because many people have no identified Life purpose or goals that would provide them with a lens by which to evaluate and respond to the events around them.

Oh sure, when people are asked what their goals are, they say things like “lose 20 pounds”, “retire early”, “travel the world”, “send their kids to college” and all of that stuff.

But those are merely events and milestones, all contributing to the greater reason for existence.

Most people don’t know what that “reason” is and so without clear perspective on their Life purpose, they have nothing by which to measure the importance of everyday events against.

And when that happens, their Life is one of reacting, getting angry at some event which is not really important, not responding to events that should be calls to action and generally experiencing Life instead of creating it.

They also don’t realize that their response to every single event in their Life takes them closer to or further away from their ultimate Life purpose.  Without a “reason” to help determine the right response, their responses are random and as likely (or more) to produce the wrong long-term result as they are to create the desired result.

To compensate for the void that they feel, they fill the gap with mind numbing activities or allow themselves to overreact to stimuli in their environment, regardless of whether or not the energy and emotion they are expending actually contributes to their Life purpose.

After all, if they manufacture noise in order to be constantly responding to something, it feels like they are making progress in Life (or have an excuse as to why they are not).

It’s not their fault - they don’t know what their Life purpose is so how could they know better?

The truth of the matter is that much of what we get immersed in is not important while the important things are practically screaming at us for attention.

If more people took time to have a better sense of their value, their potential for contribution and the importance of recognizing the same in others, we would spend a lot less time debating and arguing and more time collaborating around developing our Life purpose and helping others do the same.

And for those who choose not to care about what their Life purpose is, here’s another truth.

If you don’t know what your Life purpose is, you become a stepping stone to be used by those who do.

How do you feel about that?  That’s where most people are in society, whether they want to believe it or not.  Maybe that’s why they feel so uncertain – they have a sense of this but can’t quite put their finger on it.

The world is at a point where respectful collaboration and impactful, meaningful change is needed more than ever.

But in order to manifest meaningful change, it takes more than just a lot of energy expended in a random fashion or directed towards things that don’t really matter.  It also takes more than aimlessly rehashing stuff in one’s mind or constantly chattering about it.

And instead of passionately fighting everything in Life, be selective about what you fight for and then be passionate about that.

It takes focused effort, measurable outcomes and the combined efforts and contributions of many to bring positive change to fruition.

Otherwise, when your end-of-days has arrived, you may find that your Life experience was much like my hockey experience on that cold Saturday morning .…

…. a lot of energy expended in what looked like brilliant moves at the time but with your only shot “missing the net” as mine did in the late 70’s.

I believe we all can and must do better than that.

What do you believe?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

The ONE Step Secret To Reducing Information Overload

For years there has been a lot of information floating around that offers tips on how to effectively reduce information overload.  There has been so much published about the subject that I would posit that all the checklists aimed at reducing information overload are actually contributing to it.

I believe there is ONE fundamental principle that, when embraced, truly helps us reduce most of the information overload that we experience.

In order to demonstrate this principle, I would like to ask that you humor me with the following experiment.

When you click on the sample phonebook page shown below, you will be presented with a larger image of that page.

I want you to look for Becky Carter on the phonebook page, look at the last digit in her phone number, close the page and return to this blog.

Ready? Click on the image to get started.

Welcome back!

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Now … tell me the profession of the person immediately preceding Becky Carter.

In fairness, MOST of you did see the other person.  You had to in order to zero in on Becky.

However …..

Many of you will protest that my question is not a fair one since you were asked to look for different information.

Most will not even recall seeing a profession listed for the previous person.

A lot of you will not even remember the name of the person listed before Becky.

And, unfortunately, some of you have now forgotten the last digit in Becky’s number.

It turns out that Barbara Carter, the name prior to Becky, is an MD.

There are official physiology and neurology-based explanations for what just happened here but complex explanations are not important for now.

Here’s what is important.

When I gave you a specific task, seeking a specific piece of information, you zeroed in on that piece of information and ignored all the other superfluous pieces of information around it.

By the same token, when our Life has specific tasks, wired around purpose, intention and goals, we automatically enable appropriate levels of filtering and discernment, tossing out or ignoring the information that doesn’t meet our needs in moving towards our Life goals.

So “10 steps to this” or “15 steps to that” are all fine when it comes to information overload.

However, once you know where you are going in Life and how you intend to get there, you will find that filtering out fluff is a lot easier and comes much more naturally to you than using the complex processes the “experts” would have you believe you need.

So the next time you are feeling overloaded with information, ask yourself this question instead of seeking out another checklist.

How do I know that my personal or professional goals are defined specifically enough to enable me to be more focused and more discerning?

This question is often far more difficult to answer than the candy-coated, it’s-all-so-easy checklists.

However, being able to answer this question is much more important and will reveal volumes about how you let in so much noise …..

…. and why.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Don’t Invest in Maybe

I’ve had some opportunity recently to revisit my BHAG, what Jim Collins in “Good to Great” describes as your “big hairy audacious goal”.

The BHAG is that which drives you to move forward towards a specific objective in life.  It is a goal that is not easy to achieve;  something that stretches you (maybe painfully) in a number of ways and establishes a reason for existence that relentlessly calls you to do whatever it takes in order for you to get there.

It provides the filter that you apply against every significant decision and action in  your life since everything you think, say and do takes you closer to or further away from your life goals and purpose.

Regardless of what most people claim, they in fact do not have a BHAG.

They have hopes, wishes, dreams and aspirations but they do not have a life purpose in mind that they move towards with focus and intention.  They wander aimlessly around hoping to hit on their purpose; wasting their time and the time of those around them.

Is it any wonder the world has so many challenges?

Just as evil as not having a BHAG are the situations where we have one but have allowed a lot of noise to interfere with seeing our BHAG clearly.

This noise takes many forms but there are two in particular that have made my BHAG a little cloudy as of late and which caused me to take some aggressive action to remove this cloudiness:

• People who reach out with an ask that satisfies their own need but offers no value to anyone else
• People who offer tantalizing offers or deals but when you get back to them, you discover they are trapped in the world of “fuzzy commitments” – the ones that keep you trapped in their “world of maybe” where you are offered a carrot but every time you reach back to them, they are not ready “just yet”.  In those situations, you spend an inordinate amount of time following something that wasn’t your idea in the first place and will probably never manifest.

There are many out there who believe that we should always see the best in everybody; that we should always entertain every request from every person simply because that is the right thing to do or that fate, destiny or something else has placed them in our path for a reason and so we MUST explore it (sort of like the people who must answer the phone simply because it rings).

I believe if we adhere to this belief too strongly, our Life falls into a wishy-washy “be everything to everybody” lifestyle that perhaps produces some results but leaves our own Life in a pattern of unfinished projects (or projects that never quite got started) or as a list of disappointments or frustrations.

At times like this, it is easy to be frustrated with others as we think “I can’t believe so-and-so did such-and-such”.

It’s not their fault.

It’s ours.

When someone enters our space, it is OUR choice that determines whether they stay there and what they do while they are there.

If their life is filled with intentions that benefit themselves only or they come heavily-laden with pie-in-the-sky stuff that they never execute, you can spend a lot of time seeking to find something positive that comes out of the collaboration.

In fact, we can spend a lifetime and have nothing to show for it all.  What a waste of our fantastic potential.

When you approach someone, have an idea of why both of you can benefit from a collaboration, what the ask and contribution are from both sides and what the result of the collaboration might be.

If someone approaches you, make the same request of them.

That’s not to say we should be overly aggressive (or ruthless) about turning others away just because we don’t know at the moment how to define the potential collaboration.  Sometimes amazing potential manifests when one stops and reflects on the opportunity.

However, don’t spend too much time trying to “define” something if the reasons are not obvious.  If an opportunity exists for collaboration but the purpose or mechanics are not immediately clear then the reasons for it, the means of execution and the potential upside may become clear at a later point.

Until that clarity exists, don’t chase the nebulous and the maybe’s.

To do so is a great way to spin our lives away into a lifetime of time wasted, unfulfilled dreams and empty intentions.

And when that happens, it is no one’s fault except our own.

Find your BHAG and be aggressive about controlling what contributes to it, detracts from it and what defines how clear or cloudy it is.

Have the courage to say “no” once in a while and stick to it.

It is YOUR Life after all.

Have a say in how you live it, what feeds into it, what influences it, what consumes your time and what results you produce.

YOU are worth it.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version of “Don’t Invest in Maybe”, please click here.

Accountability and Authenticity

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version, please click here.

As I dressed this morning, I donned a pair of jeans and a yellow polo shirt and prepared to meet the day - nothing significant to report there.

However, to a small band of entrepreneurs in New York in the late 90’s to early 2000’s, Tuesday was Yellow Shirt Day.

I had forgotten about it until this morning.

The origins of Yellow Shirt Day were innocent enough.  One Tuesday, a member of my team, Narender and I wore a yellow shirt on the same day.  We laughed about it and said every Tuesday should be Yellow Shirt Day and dismissed the joke.

To my surprise on the next Tuesday, the entire team wore a yellow shirt.  Guys who didn’t own a yellow shirt went out and bought one just for the day.

The tradition being born, we embraced it every Tuesday.  On Tuesday, we would go for a walk during our lunch break and compliment other people who wore yellow shirts.  The reaction from strangers on the streets of New York covered a broad spectrum, ranging from humorous to angry.

The co-founder of Yellow Shirt Day, Narender Nath, was killed in the World Trade Center less than a year later during the horror of 9/11.

Narender came to mind this morning as I realized I was wearing a yellow shirt on Tuesday.

Narender was as close to a perfect human being as I have been able to find on this planet. 

He preferred humor over anger.

He chose directness instead of misdirection. 

He selected honesty over dishonesty.

He embraced transparency instead of being opaque. 

He wished people to be accountable for their actions and was quite direct about it.

He preferred to be proactive and to embrace his passion instead of being apathetic and indifferent.

He avoided being a one-man-band – he was a collaborator by nature.

He didn’t reinvent what someone else had already created.  He recognized the value of leveraging what someone else had worked hard to create.

He asked nothing of anyone.  He led by example.

As I thought about Narender this morning, I was wondering if we have learned anything as a society since he died.

Greed, apathy, indifference and corruption appear to be around us more than ever.

Deception seems to be the way the game is played in many levels of society.  The model of “say one thing and do another” seems to be commonly practiced by leaders and those who are led.

Senseless wars against “this and that” appear to be the preferred model of solving anything.  We have a war against terror, a war against global warming and a war against extinction.  We appear to always be fighting what we don’t like instead of embracing the solution we should be striving for.

Headlines of failure in the housing market, the financial market and the employment market hammer us daily.

The starving, impoverished, diseased and destitute continue to cry out for help.

The media encourages us to focus on the disaster all around us under the guise of informing us.

Many of us who are hammered by the media do the best we can, all the while struggling with our need to be more authentic to ourselves and to others.

If only we could get some breathing room, we reason, then we could be more true to ourselves.

We could then shake off the negative messaging from the media and truly discover the world for its beauty and potential.

Narender looked at this challenge differently.

He didn’t wait for the breathing space in order to create authenticity within himself.

He knew that if he waited for the opportunity to be authentic with himself and with others, he would wait forever and would be incredibly frustrated as he waited.

If you were to ask Narender what he saw in the world, you would swear he lived on a different planet.  In a world allegedly filled with collapse, Narender saw growth.

In a world of war and hate, Narender saw love and nurturing.

In a world of indifference and apathy, Narender saw the opportunities that lay before those who followed their passion to make a positive impact.

Our world is what we believe it to be.

The media wants us to believe it is all coming apart.

Narender believed it to be one of unlimited opportunity for living, loving, learning and leaving a legacy.

I know you believe this also.

However, when you find yourself in the structural tension between what you believe and what you manifest, remember this:

Each of us owns the responsibility for changing our own world and subsequently the world around us.

If we wait for the world to give us the opportunity to become self-enabled to the point where we can finally start living an impactful life we will never get there.

And that makes for a pretty depressing journey of wasted, unrealized potential

Don’t let this happen to you.

As many experts say and as Narender practiced:

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Yes, it is an overused statement.

But perhaps it is overused because we still haven’t learned the truth within it and so we need to keep hearing it.

How do you see the world today?  How badly would you like to see it in a different light?

Look around you – there are many people who are ready to collaborate with you to create that world.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

PS – A guy by the name of Mike walked into the coffee shop as I was writing this.  He was wearing a yellow shirt also and so I couldn’t resist introducing myself and telling him the story of Narender and Yellow Shirt Day.  As he left, he laughed and said “maybe we can start Yellow Shirt Day where I work”.  That would be cool, Mike!

It sometimes doesn’t take much to influence someone else in a positive way.

Simple actions touch hearts and in turn influence minds.  Whose heart are you touching today?

For my Musings-in-a-Minute version, please click here.

Creating A Different Kind of Noise

What a cacophony we are bombarded with these days:

• increasing issues regarding global warming
• terrorism
• the Iraq war
• the war in Afghanistan
• coming soon according to some – the war against Pakistan or some other nation that displeases us
• an energy crisis
• a health crisis
• a financial crisis
• a public wave of murder / suicides related to the financial crisis
• swine flu (just when you thought you had reached your saturation point of bad news)
• a level of political correctness so powerful that we can’s say anything that might offend anybody (which means we can say very little)
• a level of political bullying, such that if you voice specific opinions on certain subjects, you are immediately publically vilified (meanwhile we say – it’s a good thing we aren’t as ignorant to the opinions of others as they were in the 15th century).
• an increased sense of paranoia that something or someone is ready to kill us at any moment unless we relinquish our freedom in exchange for security.  Interestingly enough, the people we are relinquishing our freedom to are the people who tell us we are in trouble.
• a litany of misinformation, including the soldiers of Abu Ghraib  prison who were punished as rogues that violated the human rights of Iraqis when we now discover they were acting under orders from the top of the US administration.

Is it any wonder that our minds don’t melt from an overload of such negative information?

I think they have melted somewhat – we just haven’t figured it out yet.  Some people suggest that our minds have melted so badly that we have lost the ability to self diagnose or that we have correctly diagnosed the issues but we are too tired or afraid to do anything.

I don’t believe this to be true – I believe that our passion burns hot and deep.  Many of us just need a little help bringing this burning desire to the surface.

When I write blogs or articles that reference the need to assert our passion more, to love others more, to follow our faith more (however we define it) and to make a greater difference in the world, hundreds of people privately applaud me but most are afraid to do so in public. 

They fear repercussions from family, friends and co-workers.  Some are politicians more focused on being re-elected than doing what they know is the right thing.  As one friend noted – '”Do you realize that your thoughts are needed but not welcome in the circles of authority?”.

How unfortunate.

In a part of the world founded on encouraging an exchange of thoughts (without necessarily having to agree with them), incubating a belief in the “American Dream” (or the Canadian equivalent), being passionate about the things important to us, holding civil and corporate leaders to specific standards of morals and values, and championing rights and freedoms important to our ancestors, it seems to me that we are losing the strength or interest to assert our beliefs, our passions and most importantly, our voice. 

Some of us have become intimidated to the point where many of us (not all, thankfully) fear for our reputation if we publically follow our heart.  Meanwhile, our spirits may feel crushed by the constant bombardment of bad news and we are caught in an internal tug of war, knowing what needs to be done but being afraid to do it.

Sometimes it is difficult to see that in this onslaught of bad news there are passionate people out there making a difference in the areas where we need it most – empowering us to effect positive change for our environment, promoting the health and wellness of people around the planet, building peace within humanity and strengthening the ecological / economical future of our planet.

We should be grateful for these people.

We should find a group that aligns with what we hold to be important for ourselves and our families and join that group.

Groups like Canada’s World, World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, Oxfam, the Clinton Foundation and others are leading the way to making a difference.

If you don’t know who to speak to, reach out to someone like me – people like me love to connect passionate people with other passionate people.

If you don’t like these organizations, don’t complain about them.  Use your energy to help them improve their offering and execution.  If you feel that you caught in a trap of excessive complaining without action, reach out to this group, A Complaint Free World.  They’ll help you get back on track.

If existing groups still don’t work for you, create a new group that makes a difference.

Whatever you do, find a way to help contribute to the needs of the world.  Don’t wait – many of the challenges on this planet are accelerating and need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Let’s create a different kind of noise – one built around making a difference instead of focusing on how things are allegedly falling apart.  It would be great if our actions spoke so loudly, that we would not be able to hear each other speak.

Many famous writers and philosophers over the years, going back to biblical times, note that we create what we focus on.

So let’s stop focusing on the end of times and instead, focus on a world filled with people aspiring to make a difference for others.

As the great Louis B. Armstrong sang in “What a Wonderful World”:

The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky
Are also on the faces.....of people ..going by
I see friends shaking hands.....sayin’.. how do you do
They’re really sayin’......i love you.

I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more.....than Ill never know
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world

It is indeed a wonderful world.

If we really love our children and our children’s children, we’ll keep it that way.

For those who follow sports, it’s like being up three games to nothing in a best of seven series.

It’s ours to win or lose.

What side do you prefer to be on?

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

When the Student is Ready ....

... the teacher will appear.

So they say.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop, listening to people speak about the problems that confront the world - the economic crisis, poverty, disease, the homeless, depression in people, failing healthcare and education systems, crumbling infrastructure, global warming and whatever else they can think of that strains our confidence and faith in a positive future.

As I listen to this litany of concerns that would challenge some of the greatest optimists that have ever walked the face of the earth, I started to think about how well we apply what we have learned from the most impactful teachers and guides that have entered our respective spheres of influence.  I'm wondering what those teachers would say to us now if they were sitting at the tables around us, challenging us to apply our gifts to take on these global concerns.

From my own perspective, I'm not referring to the obvious list of teachers that come to mind:

• our parents, siblings, spouses, children or other members of our family
• God / Goddess / Allah or other supreme deity we worship
• Gandhi or any other brilliant mind that has walked the earth
• good friends who have been significant in our lives in other ways (that's a series of blogs in itself).

I'm thinking of the people we have encountered in our lives who, with no obligation to us as strangers, took the time to teach us by sharing their knowledge, life experiences and insight in a meaningful and impactful way.

We all have those teachers who arrived at pivotal points in our lives, made a long lasting impression and possibly moved on (or passed on to what follows after our time on Earth is complete).

Sometimes the lessons they taught us have had no perceived impact until we acquired enough life experiences to finally understand the lesson.

I'll share some examples from my life.  As I do so, I invite you to think of your own examples.

When I was in grades 1 to 3, Margaret R. introduced me to the love of reading and learning.  She created a joy of acquiring knowledge within me that burns strong to this day.  If a day goes by where I haven't learned something, then I try twice as hard the next day to make up for the opportunity missed.

Margaret also taught me something else.  One day when I would not stop talking, she asked me to come to the front of the class.  I was terrified - these were still the days when a nice "yardstick across the knuckles" was the common punishment for children who misbehaved.  When I quietly walked to the front of the class, she made me face the class and then informed the class that my punishment would be 5 kisses - the class deciding where the 5 kisses would be planted.

So after the enduring the tremendous embarrassment of being kissed on the forehead, the nose, the top of my head and on each cheek, I sat down quietly and was silent, my ears burning bright red with embarrassment.

It was a far worse punishment to a 7-year old than a whack across the hand.  I would have endured the whack across the hand, felt like somewhat of a hero and moved on.  To be kissed in front of my fellow classmates was dreadful.

Looking back on it as a 43-year old, I realize it was the best punishment I could have ever received.  In that simple lesson, she taught all of us that to make a point through violence was far less effective than to do so with love and humor.

The lesson is more enduring as well.  I may not have remembered the yardstick.  I do remember the love.

Some of the primers that we used back in those days had a lot of content written or edited by Emily H.  The flow of her work and the way it touched my mind and heart without being complex in nature sticks with me to this day.  Her work, which I still enjoy reading (both her new material and the material I read when I was 6, 7 or 8 years old) reminds me of the power of words to inspire, to motivate and to leave a life-long impression on the reader.

When I was in high school, I had a math teacher named Newton M.  Newton had a few simple rules - no gum chewing, no looking at your watch ("It's a lazy man who watches the clock", his voice would boom if he saw you) and if you were done with all of your work, you were to sit up straight and twiddle your thumbs.  If your thumbs got tired, you reversed direction and twiddled them in the opposite way.

Newton taught us that your culture and heritage are integral parts of who you are and that you must learn as much about your cultural history as you can.  "If you don't know where you come from", he reasoned, "how do you know where you are going?"

He also embraced the notion that respect is earned and not demanded.  While many of our school teachers at the time demanded that we respect them because of their title, he treated us like the young adults we were and we loved him for it and gave him equal respect back.  The toughest teacher in the school was one of the most loved. 

I found out after he passed away that he spent every spare dime he had on the kids whose families didn't have sufficient money for clothing, shoes or school books.  He did it without the need for recognition (in fact, he avoided it), he did it frequently and did it even when he had little to give.  He was despised by many teachers for doing it but did it for many years anyway.  This lesson of anonymous, unselfish service to those who need it (but don't request it) and against the beliefs of others who condemned him for it lives with me to this day.

Richard G. was a business associate and mentor of mine during part of my career on Wall Street.  I previously wrote about Richard back in November of 2008 - you can find this blog entry here.  Before he passed away, Richard taught me that even in the cutthroat world of business (and New York is as tough a place as any), good guys don't have to finish last.  He and Bruce P., who I had worked for a few years earlier, both lived by the same philosophy - "Take care of your people, take care of your customer and everything else takes care of itself".  Richard and Bruce also reminded me many times that successful people don't need to be callus, ruthless or cold.   To be successful, Richard and Bruce both insisted on:

• being in tune with your team members individual strengths, skills, talents, knowledge, passion and purpose
• knowing where your team members are in their life journey
• understanding how to find the best fit for each team member within the context of who they are and the needs of the organization they work for - failure to find a place where a team member fit properly was oftentimes more a failure of the leader than the team member
• knowing when to delegate and when to step in to guide (not to take control)
• living with transparency, honesty and humor
• not being afraid to ask for help or admit that a leader has made a mistake.

Richard would say that "applying these thoughts without fear can only produce positive results".  Knowing how to apply this correctly is a a gift that harvests the greatest results personally and professionally for an organization, its teams and the people and organizations they serve.  It's still the model I use when I help organizations rebuild their teams.  Jim, a friend of mine, reminded me recently that this model is not welcome in the corporate world.  He is right but I do it anyway. :-)

When I was working on some goal setting programs for inner city youth a few years back, I was extremely gung-ho to get out there and get stuff done.  I was in a hurry to make an impact, the need was great and so I reasoned that there was no time to waste.

I discovered that being in a hurry and seeing an urgent demand does not necessarily guarantee that things will happen quickly.  My belief that urgency of need guaranteed that everyone would climb on board with the same sense of urgency rapidly hit a brick wall.

At that time, Bret D. arrived in my life, bringing his business knowledge in the space, his passion for education and youth, his love for people and his life experience in the same arena I was working in.  With careful coaching, he was able to reset my expectations without quenching the fire that burned within me. 

He challenged every assumption and assertion in a manner that taught me how to refine my promotion and implementation, all the while increasing my passion instead of diminishing it.  It takes a real gift to guide someone without them feeling that they might as well give up because their initial assumptions needed strong refinement.  It also takes an incredible gift to encourage and teach without crushing the ego of the person who feels that they have it all figured out.  I had been successful in everything else, I thought - how tough could this be? :-) 

Today, I am making a transition from the business world that has provided me with incredible friendships, memories and abundance in many aspects of my life.  My Life purpose is drawing me towards a Life of deeper faith and service to humanity.  As I would expect, another teacher has arrived when I need it.

Dr. Carmel D., who is a chaplain and professor at the theology school where I have been studying theology part time for the past 8 months, brings an incredible calming presence and insightful mind to her students.  Her techniques for guiding students through a discernment process for defining a new path in Life are powerful.  Her strong faith in God and her belief that every person is important and brings God-given, God-inspired talent to Life is inspiring.  Her way of providing the student with the tools to discern for themselves how to bring their gifts to bear for the benefit of themselves and others is life-transformational.  Her relationship with her students is built on respect, love and God's purpose for each of us.

So when I think of these teachers and return my thoughts to the challenges I hear people discussing around me, a few things come to mind.

The teachers I described have taught me some significant things that have strong relevance to today's challenges and the role I can play with others in addressing these challenges:

• Know who you are and where you come from and love yourself for it.  If you can't get past this step, everything else can be very challenging and complicated.
• Loving others can help us overcome our apathy or indifference to what's going on around us - if we truly care for someone else, we know that we must help them.
• Love works better and faster than violence, distrust or dishonesty.
• Fear has no place in our life - we must push forward and expect positive results.  We live in a world conspiring to shower us with abundance - we will never partake in it if we are afraid to lift ourselves and others to share this abundance.
• Knowledge is important to solving many of the challenges before us - we must endeavor to be in a position that provides for constant learning.
• Sharing your knowledge unselfishly and in a way that moves the minds and hearts of others to action produces profound results.
• Give respect to earn respect - demanding respect for any reason is setting yourself up for some incredible disappointment.
• Give unselfishly to others and don't expect payment or recognition.
• Build your life around collaboration, honesty and transparency - it produces much more profound results and is much less complicated.
• Don't try to do everything yourself - there's lots of room to share the credit and provide for opportunities for growth in others. Besides - it's a lot more fun and more gets done when we work together with our respective gifts.
• Put your ego away - we are all equal in Life potential. 
• During times of struggle, listen to what your inner Spirit, your instinct or your faith tells you to do.  Move towards your Purpose without fear.
• Build up the confidence of others.  Breaking others down not only sets them back, but doing so brings you down as well.

In class yesterday, my classmates and I were asked what we would identify as the most impactful story or theme from the Bible.

Mine comes from 1 Corinthians 16:13-14

Stand fast in your faith.  Be brave and be strong and all that you do, do it in love.

I think this quote succinctly ties together the themes taught to me by the teachers significant in my life.  If I can live by this creed, I can proudly say that I did my best for myself and others during my time on earth.

Now it's your turn.

Think about the significant teachers in your life.  If they were with you right now, what knowledge or insight would they share with you about your life or the world we live in?

What would they see in you that needs gentle correction or refinement?

What gifts and talents within you would they praise and draw your attention to?

What action would they encourage you to take regarding challenges in your life, in the life of someone else or in the world?

What insight from them can you share with others, to continue the legacy of learning, sharing and loving?

What indeed .............

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

The Twenty-First Time

I was listening to a powerful song today by the group Monk and Neagle.  The song, "The Twenty-First Time", describes how the singer routinely walks by a number of people in welfare lines, sleeping in alleys, etc. and intentionally looks away.  Over time he starts to see the same people consistently.  It occurs to him one day that perhaps one of these people he is passing on a regular basis is Jesus Christ who is waiting to see if he will stop and help Him and yet he consistently looks away.

It caused me to think about the people we interact with every day on a cursory level.  I'm not talking about people whose lives are tightly entwined with ours - spouses, children, parents, siblings, business associates, etc. although often times we may be guilty of treating even these people in a casual way.

It's the majority of people we come in contact with in life - the ones we never really get to know or never meet but who we are aware of. 

It's the person who gives us a coffee at the drive-thru window every morning.  It's the person at the supermarket checkout who we make idle chatter with a couple of times per week about the weather, vacation plans and the like.  We never take the time to get to know them.  Why should we bother, we think.  They are just doing their job.

It's the politician that we feel so free to judge, waiting for them to solve every problem in our town, country or world because as we see it, the problems are extremely simple.  If the politician won't solve these problems, we conjecture, they should move over and let someone else do it.  However, we can't get involved because we are too busy.

Maybe it is the homeless person who has set up on a particular street corner.  We notice them as we drive past them, wonder for a moment what their story is and then return our thoughts to what is squeezing us today.  It's a shame the western world allows this, you think, and then your mind moves on to another subject.

It is the people who live in socially-assisted complexes, causing some of us to wonder why they can't get jobs like everyone else.  Meanwhile we are oblivious to their story and have little understanding of how they came to be there.

Perhaps it is the prostitute or the incarcerated individual that we feel so free to judge, forgetting that if we had the same genetics and life experiences, there is a good chance we would be in their shoes and being judged by someone else.

Maybe it's the crying child we see on television in an appeal for money to be sent overseas to helped the diseased and the poverty-stricken.  What a shame we think - we should make it a point to contribute more to causes like that.  Five minutes later, the cause is forgotten as we move on to deal with our own pressures.

Why should we get to know any of these people or get involved, we reason?  They are where they are, that is their business and I am in a hurry and have my own difficulties.  If I take the time to get to know every person, I will not have any time to live my Life Purpose.

Perhaps our Life Purpose is to contribute to their story and allow them to contribute to ours.

Everyone has a story.  We are so consumed writing and living our own story that we forget about the myriad of stories around us.  Many of them are far more powerful than our own but we are so consumed by our own story that we don't take time to notice the stories of others.

Many of the stories are missing a few chapters, though.  The chapters are the ones we are being asked to write, completing the story of someone else or that others are being asked to write to complete ours.

All of our stories are interlinked.  As a society, we raise our selves to new levels or diminish ourselves to new lows based on how we recognize the interdependence of our stories and whether we choose to contribute to the compendium that describes our existence on Earth.

If we increased our contribution to the stories of others by half of one percent, the results would be incredible.  A one percent increase in contribution across the board would produce a profound result.

One half of one percent is less than an hour of time per week.  For many of us who say "we don't have an hour to give", as someone who studies human productivity, I can assure you that many of us have many hours of wasted time on our hands - time that could be recovered if we were honest with ourselves and others about our priorities and how we execute towards our Life purpose.

I would like to offer a challenge to the wonderful readers of my blog.  If you have the courage, put some time on your calendar this week to do one of the following (or come up with one of your own).

1. Stop by a children's cancer clinic and ask to speak to staff, parents or children.  Ask them to tell you stories of courage, hope and love.

2. Reach out to a local prison support group or to a prison itself and speak to someone who can share the backgrounds of some of the prisoners.  Really listen to the life experiences of the people who spend time inside the institutions - prisoner and guard alike.

3. Volunteer to spend a little time in a soup kitchen or food bank and as you share nourishment with others, ask them about their story.  Listen closely - the stories are profound.

4. For those in larger urban centers, if you have not done so recently, spend some time in the more decrepit parts of town.  Take note of what is going on around you, especially when it comes to how nurturing the environment is for children.

5. Speak to a doctor or teacher and ask them to share their story with you - why they chose the profession, why they enjoy it and what presents the greatest challenges.

6. Have an honest dialog with your government representative.  Really get to know his or her world and then ask yourself if you could do better.  If you can, prepare to run for election.

7. Stop to give some food or money to a homeless person and ask them to explain their story.  Open your heart as you speak to them and listen to them.

8. OR - Insert your own challenge here.

Let's not talk about it - let's do it.

If you do it, your story will become permanently changed as others write new chapters in your story in indelible ink.  Hopefully, you will have an opportunity to do the same in their story.

If you do it, your Life Purpose may either become more solid, may change slightly or may become rewritten.

Each person in the world, including ourselves, can change the world with unique ideas, passion, skills, talents and knowledge.

Maybe others are waiting for us to finish a chapter or two so that they can become empowered to make a greater difference to themselves, their families and the world.

Maybe we are waiting for them to do the same for us.

What are we really waiting for?

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

Staring in the Rear View Mirror

A couple of days ago, I merged into some heavy traffic on a highway and then immediately began to fidget as the truck I was driving behind drove at half the speed limit while the passing lane zoomed by.

Intent on changing my situation, I monitored the traffic in the passing lane with the mirrors of my vehicle, waiting for the right moment to inject myself into the lane that would assuredly take me to where I needed to go in a faster manner.

At some point, I realized as I was driving along that in fact, I was entirely focused on the traffic in my mirror and wasn't paying any attention to what was going on in front of me.  There might have been things of beauty around me or immediate danger in front of me.  I was too busy paying attention to what was behind me while at the same time, not being happy with how fast I was getting to my destination.

As I corrected my driving behavior, I experienced a little A-HA moment as I realized how similar this is to the life that many people live.

For many people, their focus is on what is behind them and includes reminiscing about:

• their successes and great memories - they relive these over and over with delight and perhaps with a touch of nostalgia or sadness when they think "will I ever experience that again",  the more detrimental thought "why can't I ever experience that again" or the completely negative "I will never experience Life as good as that"
• their failures, or rather, what they perceive to be failures - which they use to constantly bash themselves as they think "I wish I had done .....", "I wish I had known ...." or the more caustic "Why wasn't I smart enough to ...."
• their losses and how they would give anything to have their time back again to regain what they have lost
• thoughts of better or easier times, forgetting that with newly acquired knowledge, their potential for their best result ever is in front of them.

We have all met people focused on their rear-view mirror of Life.  There are times when perhaps we were the one focused on the rear-view mirror when it was important to be looking forward.  I know I have done this more than once, especially recently.

When we do this, so many opportunities to manifest positive new results in our future may become harder to achieve.  After all, if we can't see the promise of a new day because we are consumed by yesterday, how do we expect to manifest a greater result?   I know that as I stared in my mirror the other day, I drove past a beautiful lake that I happened to also notice in my mirror.  It was too late to appreciate it once it faded in the distance behind me.

In the same manner, Life presents a plethora of opportunities to witness its beauty when we are looking around us and not just behind us.  Opportunities to witness the miracles of Life and to make a difference to others manifest around us when we are paying attention and open to the opportunities; opportunities that are only visible when we are not trapped in where we have come from.

By the same token, danger may also be lurking in front of us when we are consumed by that which is behind us.  Many of us have experienced a moment where our attention may have faded for a moment while driving, only to be suddenly alerted by a passenger whose quick alarm of "watch out" brought us back to reality.

Looking backwards on occasion is important and has value.  Just as looking in the mirror occasionally for a brief moment helps make our travel safer and more enjoyable, looking in the mirror of Life to revisit good or bad memories has importance for establishing a more enjoyable Life journey moving forward.

Just don't get stuck staring into the mirror and forget that while you are doing this, you are still moving forward towards something!

As we drive through Life, think about this.

You have just entered a tunnel and in the distance, there is a light.  Is it the light that signals the end of the tunnel, with sunshine illuminating a beautiful, majestic scene in the mountains or is the light in fact a train rapidly moving towards you? 

You will never know and never have the opportunity to enjoy or avoid what's in front of you if you are focused on watching the light of the tunnel entrance fade in your rear view mirror.

Let's be cognizant of our "driving" habits as we are blessed to enjoy the abundance, opportunities and love all around us.  It is good to check our mirrors once in a while and observe that which is behind us as we move forward.  However, let's be aware that manifesting our Life purpose is a lot easier to achieve when we are focused on the direction we are traveling rather than being focused on where we were.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

How is Your Legacy Coming Along?

I walked into a client's building today and the security guard said "I saw your name in the obituaries today".

I replied "Really?  Maybe I am not really here today" and laughed.  As I watched, the security guard brought up this obituary.

Harry Tucker, Bell Island
Born in St Phillips, Newfoundland, Canada

In loving memory of a dear husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather who passed away 20 years ago today.

Silent sorrow remains a constant heartache but loving memories are left to share.

Till we meet again - Evelyn and family.

The obituary that I was looking at was honoring the 20th anniversary of my grandfather's passing.

My grandfather left an amazing legacy - a legacy of a hard worker who put food on the table for 12 kids.  A legacy of a quiet man who went about his business without interfering with anyone.  A legacy of a man who could outwit the craftiest of people and was no one's fool

I ran into someone a couple of weeks ago who looked at me and said "You're "Happy's" son, aren't you?".

I replied in the affirmative (smiling at the nickname that my father had when he was younger).

The person I was speaking to immediately started telling me stories of my grandfather and the fond memories he had of him and the contributions that he made from 30, 40 or more years ago.  That is a legacy.

I'll share one of those stories because it makes me laugh every time someone recounts it to me.

My grandfather was once asked to build a chimney for someone who had a reputation for not paying people for services rendered.  Even though my grandfather was cautioned not to do the work for fear of not being paid, he built the chimney anyway.

Sure enough, the man who had commissioned my grandfather hemmed and hawed over whether he would pay him or not.  When the first fire was lit, it was discovered that the smoke came back into the house instead of going up the chimney.  Peering up into the chimney, no discernible reason for this was evident.

My grandfather indicated that if the man paid him, he would fix the problem immediately.  Accepting his payment, my grandfather carried a large rock up to the top of the chimney and dropped it down the shaft, breaking the pane of glass that he had intentionally placed across the chimney.  He had anticipated this event and played it perfectly.

All these years later, people remember him for events like this.

How will people remember you?

Will you fade into obscurity, remembered by immediate family or close friends only?  Will your legacy extend only a generation or so and then disappear with no visible impact?

Or will your legacy live well beyond your years, going beyond friends and family such that complete strangers can walk up to your children's children and say "Did you ever hear the story of ...." as your grandchildren feel their heart swell up with pride for being descended from someone who had such an impact.

What are you doing today to help ensure a positive, long-lasting, far reaching legacy?

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

Life: Poetry in Motion

I stopped by a local coffee shop recently to take a short break from the work I was doing for a client.  As I sat in the coffee shop amongst the hum of energy from its patrons, a thought came to mind and I put on my oldest son's IPOD so that I wasn't aware of the conversations and sounds around me.

Prior to doing this, I was aware of the different types of conversations as I had overheard snatches of them before putting on my earphones.

Having isolated myself from my environment, I sat and observed what was going on around me.

As I did so, I became aware of and immersed in the tapestry around me, the poetry in motion that we call life, the beauty and orchestration that we often mistakenly view as chaos or random events.

By stripping out awareness of the dialog and focusing on hand gestures, laughter, frowns, smiles and other body language, I felt like I was witnessing an infinite number of plays being written at once - and what an outstanding collection it was.

Comedies, tragedies, romances and stories of overcoming challenge.  New lives beginning and long life stories being passed on.  Some business 101 classes were sprinkled in there.  At some tables, volumes of information were being shared in silence.   Hope and despair, anger and laughter - they all danced around and touched down in different interactions.

Meanwhile outside, people were going through the drive-thru, creating their own stories which were a mystery to this observer on the inside of the coffee shop.

Their story was influenced by the person at the drive-thru window, who had been influenced by the stories within the coffee shop.

What a complex play was being written, a play we are not aware of unless we slow down and observe its creation.

To expand on the experiment, I altered the music I was listening to.  When I was listening to soft music, I became more aware of the gentle side of the interactions.

If I put on fast paced or loud music, I became more aware of heightened emotions and a sense of urgency or need for speed.

It's an interesting experiment that I highly recommend.  Plant yourself where you can observe but suspend your ability to hear what is being said.  Having done that, allow your other senses to insert yourself into the world around you.

As I noted what was going on around me, it reminded me of the phenomenal potential we have - the power to create, to share, to debate, to discuss, to disagree, to despise and to love - the potential to decide between a life of despair and a life of fulfillment.

What we have been blessed with in the way of gifts and potential is something that we may not be as grateful for as we could be.

Some of us may not be aware of the gifts we have.

Perhaps some of us don't believe that we are gifted at all.

The truth is that each of us possesses a fascinating, unique, powerful collection of gifts.  How we choose to weave these gifts into the fabric of our life determines the legacy that we leave to others, the notion of "what will I be remembered for when I am gone".

Each of us brings this distinct collection to bear and plays a leading role in the story of our life and the lives of others.  At other times, we are a supporting actor or a bit player in someone else's play.  All roles are important!

Many of us are waiting for the perfect moment to bring these wonderful gifts to bear.  Many people are waiting for a means of optimizing their gift potential, to bring the "biggest bang" to the table.

While waiting for the perfect moment, many people are denying themselves the sense of pleasure and fulfillment of making a difference now (even if smaller than they prefer).  Some people, while waiting for the perfect moment, will wait until their end of days has come.  In either case, to wait is to deny others of the opportunity to witness your gifts and to be impacted by them.

In the meantime, there are many people waiting for you.  They want to share with you, to have an opportunity to collaborate with  you, to learn from you, to make a difference in the lives of others and to help bring greater awareness of life purpose - yours, theirs and the lives of others.

I ask everyone I meet one simple question which I will ask of you today:

If I had unlimited time, energy and money, living in a world of no constraints, worries or fears, what would I be doing right now?

Don't answer it flippantly.  Think about it.  Observe the world around you and let that question percolate your mind, spirit and soul. 

Some of you are living your purpose.  For those who are not, allow an answer to come to the fore as you think through this question.

Once an answer floats to the surface, ask yourself - "who can help me incubate this and make it a reality?". 

If something seizes your heart, embrace it as the purpose for which you are created and for which you have spent a lifetime developing gifts for.

Having done so, turn the page of life and begin writing the next act in the play that is your life.

Complete your story of inspiration, of overcoming challenge, of sharing, of giving unselfishly, of inspiring, of learning, of motivating and of loving.

The play has been incredible so far but you will discover it has no end.  To those whom you leave a legacy to, they will open up the script and continue the story when you have moved on to what follows our life on earth.

I can hardly wait to see what the next act brings in your life.

The curtain is rising ...... and I hear applause as you step out onto the stage of life.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

Are We Living Life On Purpose?

I've been thinking today that more people are on purpose about talking about being on purpose then just plain old being on purpose.

We use lots of reasons for why this is the case:

1. We are too busy at work
2. We are too busy at home
3. We have too many commitments dragging our kids around to sporting events (that we enrolled them in for the most part)
4. We are waiting for the definition of our purpose to be handed to us
5. We are waiting for the perfect opportunity, when we have more time, energy, money
6. We are waiting to be at the empowerment level (knowledge, network, money) necessary for the opportunity
7. We are waiting for the economy to get better
8. We are waiting for the right time to tell others so that they won't be angry, embarrassed, disappointed, etc.
9. We are waiting for more peace in the world
10. We are waiting to move to a geographical area that is more open to such opportunities,
11. Fill in your own reason here ______________.

That's a lot of waiting!

Many of the reasons we use to delay living a life on purpose are not because of external events.  They are based on choices we are making or have made in the past.

For many people, when you speak to them 5 or more years ago, now or in 5-10 years, you discover they are always in the same spot - they are just about to start living a life on purpose.   Living a life on purpose is almost within their reach, that magical carrot on a stick that will set them free.  They are reading the current "living on purpose du jour" book.  Interestingly enough, they have read every book of the genre and yet their purpose remains dormant or undiscovered.

They are so close to living their life on purpose that they can taste it and they try to convince you of it.  Maybe they are trying to convince themselves of it.

As we say in New York City - woulda, coulda, shoulda.

I don't have the heart to tell them that 10 or more years ago, they were saying the same thing.  Nor do I have the heart to say that in 10 years, they will be in the same place - waiting.

For many, their purpose will still be awaiting discovery well into the future, dangling enticingly in front of them as their end-of-days looms on the horizon.

Oh, the moments we miss.

Many look to latch on to others, with the hope that others will pick them up and carry them to their sense of purpose.  Those people have missed the point:

Their sense of purpose is THEIR own sense of purpose - not someone else's.

For every day we choose not to live a life on purpose, we miss out on many things, including:

1. Enhanced personal fulfillment
2. An opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others, maybe even saving lives
3. A chance to find financial freedom - you didn't really think you would find it working for someone else, did you?
4. A chance to see the world - if that is where your purpose takes you
5. An opportunity to learn new things, maybe to even be the best in the world at something and be recognized for it
6. The potential to meet phenomenal people who will touch your mind and heart forever
7. A chance to leave a legacy - to be remembered by others as someone who made a difference.

I think many of us need to make a choice, a choice that comes down to one of two things.

1. Do we want to stay where we are, wondering about how "someday we will be something", creating the potential for a lot of dreams that will be replaced by frustration or resentment over time?

2. Do we choose to lay out a plan for living our life on purpose, for seizing that which is important to us at any cost and through any struggle and just going for it?

97% of people who tell me that they are living their life on purpose are at the exact same place in their life that they were 10 years ago.  They will probably still be there in 10 years time.  They are also really good at New Year's Resolutions, pie-in-the-sky dreams and stuff of a similar nature.  They are the ones who start 10,000 be-all-and-end-all projects and finish none of them.

Don't be one of the 97%.

Don't hang out with a lot of them either, otherwise you will become one of them.  Save who you can and move on.

Be one of the 3% who stands up and says "My purpose in life is to do _____________.  I exist to make a difference in my family, community, company, country or world by doing _____________.  Today I find the people, knowledge and other resources to get there regardless of what others think.  I want it so badly that my spirit burns to make this happen.  When my end-of-days has come, I will be remembered for _____________.  If I were not here, the world would miss me because I offer _____________ to the world."

Seize this feeling, let it surround and permeate you and then go for it.

If you don't how, email me - I will give you the cranial defibrillator you need to make it happen.

There is a greater sense of urgency every day to make a difference - today it is your turn.

Do you want to live a life waiting for fulfillment ,  hoping someone else provides it, or do you want to own the process, struggles and all, knowing that on the other side of struggle is phenomenal fulfillment and amazing life experiences?

I know what you think you want.  Do you have the courage and desire to go for it?

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

Overcoming your demons

Over the past few years, a number of people have shared with me the notion of the demons that hold them down. The demons vary in attribution - not enough money, not smart enough, not connected enough, etc. No matter how much I tell them that the demons can be overcome, I am told that I don't understand because my life has been so easy.

The demons also vary in intensity and combination but whatever they are, they combine to hold people back from realizing their dreams and their purpose.

I would like to share a story of someone who gave me permission to share his life story with you. I will give this person the name "Sam" for the purposes of this illustration and it is one of many examples of how people can overcome their demons.

Sam's conception was an accident. His parents lived in a small, poor rural community and Sam definitely wasn't planned. His parents made a commitment to stay together and make it work. They moved a couple of times before eventually settling down in another rural town to begin their life together. Money didn't come easily to this family but the family made do.

In the early years, Sam was a thin child, spending time here and there in the local hospital for unexplainable reasons. On more than one occasion in his life (in childhood and adulthood), Sam was believed to be dying for one reason or another. His soft bones broke easily as well and he had more than his share of broken bones. His liver and kidneys have been the impetus of more than one painful / stressful trip to the hospital for unexplainable reasons throughout his life and it has been suggested more than once that they are failing for unknown reasons. A healthy model of a human being was not an attribute of Sam.

His early home years were crowded. He lived in a very small house that was basically one room with a false wall and a couple of dividers to provide the semblance of rooms. The commode was a steel pail and running water was defined as running to the well to draw water from it.

His parents were loving but not always patient. This created a "need to please" within Sam that at times became crippling.

In a house that was smaller than 20ft by 20ft, he lived with then two siblings and his parents for the first seven and a half years of his life.

Throughout his school life in this rural town, he was often the victim of bullies. This bullying continued from grade one all the way to when he finished high school. It was something that he endured and something that took a fair amount of time to overcome when his school years ended. The impact of bullying cannot be underestimated. As he would tell you, if you feel your child is being bullied, do something about it now. He avoided many school activities throughout his school life so that he could avoid being the victim of the people who chose to belittle him because of their own pain. Such avoidance caused him to miss many opportunities for personal growth and fulfillment.

Twice in his young life, including one time on the eve of his first holy communion, pedophiles tried to share their own pain on him. Both times they were unsuccessful. However, in both situations, it caused Sam to wonder - why is this happening to him? Why does God allow this to happen to him? Maybe God doesn't even exist.

When he graduated high school, he was painfully shy, an introvert who was even picked on in college for being a combination of being intelligent and too shy.

Sam has had two mini-strokes, in 1983 and 1990. The diagnosis - unknown cause so don't worry about it. He never told his family - it seemed unnecessary.

Sam is also legally blind in one eye.

The combination of his life events and genetics left him awkward, physically small in stature, an introvert who was afraid to speak to people, a person who generally wasn't happy with himself for many reasons and because of his small stature, introversion, timidity and growing up in a family that was not wealthy, his future didn't look terribly bright.

When we see people like Sam, we may feel pity for him or wonder "Where will he end up, if anywhere at all". After all, he has been damaged beyond repair - why should anyone try to help Sam? He is probably not worth saving anyway - what difference can he make in the world with these circumstances? We are probably better off turning our back on Sam and writing him off as another lost human being.

Maybe we are like Sam, with a collection of demons similar to or different than Sam's and we use these demons to hold us back.

Let me tell you something else about Sam.

Sam's real name is Harry.

I am Sam.

When I look back on the life that I lived as a young person, I feel like I am looking at the life of a different person.

People who know me now see me as an extrovert who is as at ease in front of 15,000 people in an auditorium as he is in an intimate conversation in a coffee shop.

I have created successful companies in New York, one of the most challenging environments in North America to be successful in (especially for a small town boy).

The small, sickly, child now stands 6'3" and weighs in at 220 pounds.

I am blessed with many gifts, many opportunities, many great memories, an incredible business network, a great family, many great friends and a strong faith in God.

If you had looked at me 25+ years ago, you would not have predicted such a life for me. I know I wouldn't have.

There may be someone else that you would not predict such a life for.

Perhaps that person is you.

Perhaps you are Sam.

There is something that you need to tell the person who is like "Sam".

If they dig down deep inside, they can find the spirit that calls them to be something in life.

If they want it bad enough, it is theirs for the taking.

If their faith is strong, what they desire can become their ultimate purpose and destiny.

Their past is their past. What determines the results of the rest of their life rests on how they convert the gifts they have into actions to make a difference.

As Stephen Covey wrote, help "Sam" answer these 4 questions:

• What are you good at? That’s your mind. (Intellectual Quotient)
• What do you love doing? That’s your heart. (Emotional Quotient)
• What need can you serve? That’s the body. (Physical Quotient)
• What is life asking of you? What gives your life meaning and purpose? What do you feel like you should be doing? In short, what is your conscience directing you to do? That is your spirit. (Spiritual Quotient)

We motivate ourselves, according to Dr. Covey, with the law of the 4 L's - to live, to love, to learn and to leave a legacy.

Seek how the answers to the 4 questions overlap the 4 L's and the resulting picture will become the purpose of "Sam's" life - or yours.

No demons in your life will be strong enough to prevent you from achieving your purpose at that point.

Demons hold no power in your life. No matter what demons you have, you can find someone who has overcome the same demon.

What does this tell you? That demons are merely those things which are meant to provide you with an opportunity to gain knowledge and strength and having gained them, provide a means of using them to find your purpose and to leave a legacy.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

PS   By popular request, I am sharing a photo of the house I referred to in the article.  Maybe it was 10x20 and not 20x20.  That's me and my Dad in the photo.

Keep Pushing Forward

The news these days seems pretty rough. The number of layoffs continue to rise. The stock market gains a trillion dollars one day and then loses it the next. People praise President-elect Obama one day as a sign of hope and then disregard him the next as having too much on his plate, therefore assuming he will fail. Hundreds of billions are being spent to save companies that made handsome profits for many years. We keep hearing that global warming is reaching a point of no-return (any minute now, according to some sources - I hope you didn't make plans for Saturday).

Some of the bad news even seems circular in reference. According to one media source I watched last night, large companies are citing lack of consumer confidence as the reason they are laying off large numbers of people. The same media source later said that citizens are citing the large layoffs as one of the main reasons they are losing confidence in the economy. This is a chicken and egg game with profound implications on the earth. The media's amazing talent at magnifying the downside of things is entrenching this even more.

Sounds like we're on our way to hell in a hand basket, as the expression goes.

I guess we might as well lay down, cover our heads and wait for the end to come.

Let's forget about our the future of the next generation - there's nothing worth saving for them anyway.

Our dreams and aspirations are pretty stupid too, aren't they? What a waste of time they are. How could we have been so foolish as to believe we could have accomplished anything at all?

All of those great intentions we had - woulda coulda shoulda as we say in New York. It was just as well that we didn't follow up on them. They were the silly follies of dreamers and infinite optimists.

In fact we've wasted our whole life doing stupid things and now it's too late to change anything. When we ask people around us, they agree with us so it must be true.

Why even bother anymore?

In fact, let's take it a step further.

Let's tell our kids that optimism and hope are a waste of time. Let's tell them to abandon their dreams.

Encourage them to focus on the mass media, to allow the life essence of hope to drain out of them.

If we all work together starting right now, we can finally iron out of everyone, the silly idea of a life of beauty, love and empowerment.

Stop for just a moment - let that sink in. Let's embrace and savor the feeling of despair and hopelessness together. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm - feels good, doesn't it?

Are you angry with me yet? Do you feel the energy rising in you to reject what I am telling you? Do you want to tell me how wrong I am when it comes to your life?

GOOD - now you have some energy flowing - let's talk!

My dear friend, Roberto Luberti, always interjected discussions that were "stuck" with what became know as "the famous but". When he saw people trying to sort things out, he would say "I agree with this, this and this but" and after the "but" would come the reasoning that guided us out of the morass we were in.

So, in honor of my friend, here's the famous but to the negativity I just placed before you.

When we hear these messages as I expressed above, whether from the mass media, associates, family, friends or whomever, take a stand and refute them with all of your energy. Resist them with more energy than they are being pushed upon you in the first place.

If you don't, your mind turns to mush and you actually begin to believe these thoughts of hopelessness for our future. You become one of a growing group of people who are totally lost, blowing in the wind and living a life without purpose. You will manifest these messages in your life because you chose to, not because you had to.

Fight this negative energy with all of your being.

Dare to stand up and say "You are wrong. Where you see despair, I see hope. Where you see failure, I see opportunity. Where you see hopelessness, I see hope."

Don't wait for others to create opportunity for you. Many of the people you are waiting on are the ones whose minds have become laden with despair, sadness, gloom and doom. They are filled with angst and feel most comfortable when they have company to make them feel better as they go down with the ship.

So turn off the mass media that sells the gloom and doom message. Tell people who want to share this with you that you only want to hear news of opportunity - you are now a "no complaint zone". "Bring me opportunity and solutions", you say.

Look at the world for what it is - a smorgasbord of opportunity in unlimited areas. You can be a billionaire basket weaver tomorrow if you take the time to find out what baskets people like and how to make, promote and distribute them as efficiently as possible.

Look at Life for what it is - an incredible miracle which we are all blessed to experience. Struggle strengthens us. It reminds us of our weaknesses and where we need to grow as individuals. It highlights things all around us that need to be improved or enhanced. Struggle and pain are our call to action to make a difference - not a signal to give up. History teaches us that we human beings are at our best when our backs are against the wall.

We are incredible miracles, filled with unlimited potential to have a profound impact on the world. Each of us has a gift that no other has and each of us can do at least one thing better than ANYONE else in the world.

Find that one thing, embrace it, nurture it, be proud of it and then use it to make a difference. Make it your purpose for being and change the world with it.

Others will look at you and say "I want to do what you do - I want to have the fire and passion that you have - how do I do it". Take the time to light the flame of passion in the spirit of that person and then keep moving. They will do the same for others when the opportunity arises.

Momentum, positive and negative, are within your grasp to generate in infinite levels.

What world do you want to live in? It's your choice - not someone else's.

Time is important. Every day you don't do this is another day you missed to manifest miracles.

I salute you and offer this toast to you.

To your purpose in changing the world and manifesting the incredible potential that you have. Don't take "no" for an answer, when you fall, stand up and keep moving forward, keep your eye on your purpose and surround yourself with others who feel the same way with the same level of passion.

What are you waiting for?

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

PS Pretty soon, I will be working with a group of people to conduct an experiment around helping people engage in a life of purpose and passion. We will be working through this experiment in the public domain and sharing the process to help others understand how to find their sense of purpose. I will let you know shortly where you can find this and how you can participate.

When Your Mind is Stuck ....

.... and you can't move forward or backward, what do you do?

I was reading a chapter of Devotional Classics the other day that seemed to profoundly capture the essence of the challenge that many people today seem mired in.

That challenge is:

I don't like who / where I am and I know I need to change but I seem unable to change my life.

I'd like to share an excerpt from that chapter in Devotional Classics, with the hope that it will encourage you to get "unstuck" from that which has ensnared you in your life.  The book is also highly recommended for those of you on a spiritual or philosophical journey.

The chapter summarizes St. Augustine's autobiography entitled Confessions.  St. Augustine lived from 354 to 430 AD and often struggled with the reasons why he was prevented from improving his lot in life, despite his acknowledgement that his life was stuck in a place that was totally unacceptable to him and he knew he should be capable of better.

The key points of the summary are worth reviewing from our own perspective of how well our lives are executed and how happy we are with the result.  How many of the following thoughts resonate with you?

1. Why is my mind a house divided?

When the mind commands a body part to move, accepting that the body is healthy, the body part moves.  Why then, is the will not honored when the brain chooses to take a particular action to produce a different result in Life? 

Since they should be one and the same (the mind and the will), one would think that moving a body part or changing an action or habit could be done with equal ease.

However, the fact that they are not equal in execution suggests that the mind's command of the will is not as deeply rooted as the command of the body and thus the will is not totally "bought in".  Why is this the case?

2. My mind is weighed down by habit

We are weighed down by so many bad habits and the "luggage of life" that it is easier to fall back on old, bad habits rather than do what we are trying to will ourselves to do.  If we were truly totally committed, we wouldn't need to be willing ourselves in the first place (since we would already be in a place of power).  Why is it so difficult to change bad habits?

3. I am torn by conflicting wills

We are torn between:

• that which is easy or hard
• that which is fun or challenging
• that which is quick to provide results versus needing time to manifest
• that which satisfies us versus that which pleases others or
• that which produces something that satisfies the senses now versus something that bears fruit later. 

We often choose the easy, fast, more fun or more immediately satisfying choice, thus missing the opportunity for true life transformation.  What is the impact of such inner conflict?

4. The full force of my will never comes to bear

We struggle to make change in our lives because our mind is only "half in it", even though we claim or believe that we are totally committed to success.  While we know that we need to make particular choices in our life, we do not because of the previously noted points.  If the brain is divided because of habits or it is torn between immediate versus long term results, then the brain is not fully available and committed to transformation, providing minimal opportunity for such transformation to take place.  A half-engaged brain can take us very close to success but then what happens?

5. I am teetering on the cusp of success

Many times we hear of people who sabotaged themselves on the cusp of success.  It was because they finally brought themselves to a place of potential success but they could not bear to make the final decisions or take the final actions necessary to seal the transformational process.  Since the will was never fully engaged, the engaged part carried them close to the "goal line of victory" but the disengaged part of the brain eventually caught up and tackled the engaged portion to the ground.  This leaves people in a sense of limbo - they've come too far to go back but previous fears and habits are preventing them from getting up and pushing forward.  How did the old habits catch up and derail us from transformation?

6. I have too much brain chatter resulting in indecision

We've all heard of analysis paralysis, the need to overanalyze something (or everything for some people).  Many times people get into this mode because they fear making a decision (probably because they fear failure, fear what others think, etc).  See my blog entry here regarding why people are afraid to make decisions.

However, failing to choose will almost assuredly result in failure anyway.  The voices in our mind that tell us to dwell on the poor results of the past or the failure that will result in your future need to be stilled.  We need to encourage the voices of success to loudly trumpet the great results we are capable of.  If the voice of success, optimism and transformation are not encouraged, where will this leave you?

7. I am so close I can almost taste it, but ....

Similar to teetering on the cusp of success, victory is almost in your grasp.  However, there are voices inside your head, chastising you for taking so long to reach this point or telling you not to bother because failure is inevitable.  You know you should push through to the end but you cannot for some reason.  The weight of the journey has tired you but the weight of potential failure is crushing you.  Many people who fail, fail at this point.  However, given that you are this close to success, you have only one real question remaining.

8. What am I waiting for?

This led to St. Augustine's great question (great in my opinion):

Why not now?

How often do we keep saying some variation of:

• "next week I will definitely do this"
• "tomorrow is a brand new day, I will do better"
• "I'll start with a clean slate and try again"
• "just one more self improvement book and I am all set to go - things will be difference after book #150".   :-)

All of these excuses add up to the same thing:

Another opportunity for transformation has passed me by.

OR

He / she stole my idea - I could have done that

OR

I should have taken it when I had the chance - now I have regret that I didn't.

The authors of Devotional Classics suggest a great exercise that while simple, has the opportunity to be profound if repeated in frequency and scale.  I have revised the exercise as follows.

Resolve this week to bring one bad habit to an end.  By the end of the week, take steps to overcome one bad habit (no matter how small).

In addition, identify one good habit that would be powerful for you to have in your arsenal and begin executing this good habit when opportunity permits.

I would add to this, recalling something that Rick Warren once said.

It takes approximately 42 days for a habit to become programmed or unprogrammed in the brain so that it becomes second nature.

So once you have started to overcome a bad habit or program a good habit, be aware that for a while, such actions will feel foreign or may take some effort.

Do not become discouraged.  It will take time for bad habits to disappear and good habits to become entrenched in your psyche.  This is an investment in your life.  Given that you have 20, 30, 40, 50 or 60+ years of life remaining, spending this time reprogramming yourself is worth the effort.

Give this a try, starting small and being gentle and forgiving with yourself if you slip and fall into old practices.  With time and diligence, you will start manifesting a life of greater purpose.

Five books I recommend to help you with this process (of the many I could recommend) are:

Success Built to Last by Stewary Emory et al.

Go Put Your Strengths to Work by Marcus Buckingham

Know Can Do by Ken Blanchard

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

Goals! How to Get Everything .... by Brian Tracy

The truth is that there are a LOT of great books out there.  However, the more time you spend reading "just one more book", the  more you realize you are justifying not making the decisions that can profoundly impact your life in a positive way.

You are a living miracle - live up to the obligation this brings.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry