You Must Know Me Before You Can Transform Me

I received an invitation today that promised nothing less than to reinvent and transform me as a leader and a human being.

I was intrigued by the offer since the person who sent it to me knows nothing about who I am, what I have learned in my lifetime or what I need to learn to grow as a human being.

And yet the offer contains the perfect plan to help me and thousands of other people, many like me and many totally unlike me … a generic one-size-fits-all plan.

PT Barnum was wrong.

There isn’t one born every minute.

There is one born every second.

We’ve all seen the offers of “I can help you become more “whatever”” that many of us are bombarded with every day.

Most are as worthless as saying “I’m going to sell you a travel plan to NYC that is equally easy for anyone to follow” without caring what the starting point is.  The journey will be dramatically different for the person starting out in Hoboken, NJ versus the person starting out in Sydney, Australia.

It’s also like a 5-year old boy in the Congo and Wayne Gretzky both being given a plan to become a great hockey player or a child in a poverty-ravished part of South America and Bill Gates both being given a plan for developing a level of phenomenal wealth.

One person has no context for how the plan even applies to their Life while the other can only say “been there, done that” or “do you really think you can teach me?”.

And there are millions of people between the two extremes.

The odds that a generic plan can be successfully applied are as mathematically remote as me winning the next Miss America or the next Powerball Lottery.

However, people keep being sucked in by the promise of making their lives better with no effort on their part and no context on the part of the person offering the plan.

So the next time you get all excited about the Super Transformational Galactic Framazam Offer, remember one thing:

Unless the person promising miracles has a means of helping you create a plan that starts by objectively, pragmatically recognizing where you are in your Life right now, it is highly unlikely that they can help you develop a plan that leads you to the promised land since the map requires knowledge of both ends of the journey.

Context is everything.  If they don’t know or don’t care what you have done, what you know or what is left for you to learn, then they can’t help you with your journey.

By the way, I’ve got a guaranteed plan that will make you a master hockey player , one of the wealthiest people in the world, a Miss America winner and a Powerball Lottery winner – all with no effort on your part.

Interested?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

If We Are Not Growing, Then We Are Dying

Most parents agree that if their child’s development, whether it be physically, emotionally or intellectually, did not advance as hoped or considered “normal”, then they would grow concerned and would seek out an expert to help understand why and to outline a plan of corrective action if possible.

I find it intriguing that as we progress to adulthood that we don’t hold ourselves to a similar standard of development.

I would think that if we are not constantly attempting to improve ourselves intellectually, emotionally, physically, spiritually and collaboratively then alarm bells should be sounding off that our development is off track and needs to be reviewed with an eye towards improving our results.

But for some reason, our standards are lowered once a child has made the safe passage to adulthood.

I wonder why.

After all, our ability to be impactful is often much more significant when we are adults and in a world with ever increasing needs and demands, the call for us to be the best we can be is stronger than ever.

The only way this can be accomplished is to make sure that we are growing in as many areas of our Life as possible.

The upside with this as an adult is that we have much more control over our lives then we did as children.

Unfortunately, having more control over our lives is also a downside if we are not fully engaged in being the best that we can be.

In business, we say that if our business is not growing then it is dying.

How many of us can say that we are growing daily (outside of just weight gain)?

Equally important, how many of us are also helping others to grow personally and professionally to the best of our ability (and theirs)?

How do you know?

If not, what’s holding you back?

In service and servanthood,

Harry