Wake Up…We’ve Moved!
Happy New Year!
Thank you for being part of our Wake Up Be Inspired community. It’s been great to have you following our blog since 2010 when we started creating posts aimed to inspire you to do and think about things differently.
It’s a new year and a new beginning. Whilst Wake Up Be Inspired continues to exist as a community and a business, all my blog writing is now focused in one place at www.AskSimonSmith.com so this will be the last post here at Wake Up Be Inspired.
You can continue to read our thoughts and trustfully Be Inspired to new things, Get Stuff Done, develop yourself and your business by visiting AskSimonSmith.com. Check out our new blog there or download some of our free resources and keep up-to-date with us.
I hope you like what you see when you visit AskSimonSmith.com, and in the meantime, if you need something, all you have to do is Ask!
Take Time To Listen To Your Team
Your team have valuable insights and information to support you in improving your organisation, department or business, if you make the time to listen.
When was the last time you, as a business owner or department head, just sat down with the team and asked their opinion? If you’re not doing it regularly you’re missing out big time.
People want to feel valued. They need to feel listened to. The wage or salary is not enough to breed loyalty in your business. Your team want to be part of the solution and business development, and they want to be heard.
Taking 1-2 hours of your time, on a regular basis, will reap huge rewards in the long run, providing you do it from a place of integrity and not just to “tick the box”.
Ask powerful questions that gets them engaged and never judge the responses, or defend your position, in the meeting itself.
To get you started:
1. Arrange a short meeting with your team and make sure the location you use supports a “round table” discussion. Theatre / lecture style room layout won’t cut it.
2. Use an “ice-breaker” that has your team find out a little bit more about each other on a personal level. For example, ask them to pair up and find out from each other who they are, what they did this morning / yesterday at work and what would be their dream holiday. Then have them introduce their partner to the rest of the group.
3. Ask a series of potentially useful questions for your organisation. Give the team a few minutes for each question and ask them to work with their partner before sharing what they’ve come up with. Capture the main points on a flip chart as you go and let the conversation flow. For example, you might ask:
- What works well in the business?
- What bugs you or gets in the way?
- What can be improved?
- What support or training do you need?
- How can you improve communication in the business?
- What are the demands on your time?
4. Complete the session with appreciation and thanks, and remind the team that you will follow up. They need to know that you value their input and will do something with it. At the very least, address every point raised with the actual outcome, even if it’s a “sorry, we took that point and decided to take no further action on it because…”
There is no quick solution to building trust with your team. When you take the time to ask how people feel and what they think, and you follow up and take action based on the feedback, even when the answer is no, your team will provide you with everything you need to know.
Please let us know how you build trust in your team and find business improvement opportunities in your business?
If five simple words can cause this much confusion, imagine what a whole sentence can create!
In the mail today was a letter that I assumed, by the thickness of the envelope and the hand written name and address details, contained “new business” correspondence.
However, what it contained was a page from a flipchart that simply had the following written on it in large letters:
FALSE
EXPECTATIONS
APPEARING
REAL
And the curious thing was that the only other thing contained in the envelope was one of my own company compliments slips.
On closer inspection I realised that the flip chart had been written by me.
Confused, I couldn’t work out:
a) why would someone send me this flipchart page
b) who had received my compliments slips in the past
c) why would they send me this page?
It’s interesting how you think when you’re confused and the communication isn’t clear.
Further questions flashed through my mind:
- Has this been sent as some sort of dig at me?
- Does someone think I’m scared of something?
- Has it been returned because someone in one of my audiences rejects the idea that fear is false expectations appearing real?
- Is it a threat?
- Do I fear anything right now?
- Do I need to practice what I preach?
- Have I asked for it to be sent to me and forgotten?
- Has a friend sent it as a motivational prompt for me?
- Has someone in my audience returned it because they have overcome their fears now?
And of course I then made up the answers:
- No. Nobody I know would have a dig at me in this way. If they had something to say they would just say it.
- No. I’m quite happy to get out of my comfort zone…or am I?
- Never had anyone reject the idea before. If this were true then wouldn’t they have just spoken up?
- No. I’m not aware of upsetting anyone enough for them to feel the need to threaten me.
- Where do I start? We all fear many things and constantly. We fear how someone will react when we ask them a question or make a statement. We fear upsetting our loved ones by doing or saying the wrong thing. We fear being rejected by the prospect we are currently in negotiations with. We fear our staff may call in sick and we won’t be able to get things done or have the phone answered. We fear being late because of the traffic. We fear having a lousy holiday because the weather may ruin it. We fear our children will be bullied at school. We fear the meal will burned if we don’t watch it carefully. We fear we won’t be able to get online if the broadband goes down. We fear the crazy driver in front of us on the motorway. The list is endless and is all based on “expectations appearing real” – our imagination at work.
- Always. We teach what we need to learn. Fear can be debilitating if we allow it to be. And the way to overcome is take a leap of faith and just go for it. As Susan Jeffers said “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway”. Only when we recognize that our fear is our thoughts translated into “reality” can we move beyond it.
- Quite possibly I’ve forgotten. I write everything down, or ask requests to be emailed to me, so I can be sure to remember things I want to do. If I rely on my memory alone, there is simply too much for me to handle.
- More than possible a friend has sent it out of kindness, as a motivational message. I love receiving notes, cards and messages from people.
- Wouldn’t that be wonderful? What a lovely thought that someone has sent it back to me because they have overcome their fears about something. So that’s my choice for now. 😉
What I find so interesting in this situation, and it demonstrates it perfectly, is that you have to have clarity in your communication if you are looking to create a specific result.
Four words and a compliments slip arrived at my door.
From those four words, I created 12 different questions in my head (and that was just the start), before creating a list of possible answers to those questions.
And, in the end, I choose how I want to interpret the message.
I choose, because it’s always a choice!
Stuff happens. Words gets said. Gestures are made.
The real questions we should ask when we communicate, and we are communicating all the time in everything we do, or don’t do, say, or don’t say, is:
What is my intention?
What do I want to cause?
What interpretation do I want to create?
Love to hear your experiences of how unclear communication has affected you. Please do comment or get in touch.
Create pictures and your audience will respond
I was speaking at a seminar in the Black Country (a region in England) this week and helping local business people (from BNI) create “Presentations with a Punch” (well that’s what they called it in the marketing spiel anyway ;-)).
What I love about speaking at this sort of thing is how, when you tell a story, the audience truly engage with the point you’re making and you can almost see the “light bulbs come on”.
I used what we call a “metaphoric loop” in my presentation which helps to create the “emotional state” you want for your audience so they get what they came for – insight and, more importantly, learning that can be taken away and used.
The great thing about telling stories (which is the basis for a metaphoric loop) is that you get to speak from the heart and you literally FEEL the audience respond. The passion and emotion is clear for all to see.
The biggest challenge people face about speaking in public or their presentation skills, is the fear they create in their own mind about what might, or might not, happen. When you shift your thinking around this, you become more confident, manage your nerves, and deliver a more effective and compelling message. Fear is simply False Expectations Appearing Real, and it’s learned over time…
We translate our experiences of life, what’s important to us (our values), the language we use, attitudes we adopt, beliefs and a variety of other factors into “pictures” in the mind. When we create pictures in the minds of the people we communicate with, and they can relate in some way to that illustration, we connect with the emotion. When that happens, the possibilities for changes in behaviour, and therefore results, are infinite.
If you want to change people’s results, change their behaviour. If you want to change their behaviour, change the pictures in their head.
Do adults learn more slowly than children?
A friend stated yesterday during a team meeting, in which we were discussing how to get a message across to our colleagues, that “adults learn more slowly than children”.
This thought promoted a question from someone else in the room, via Facebook later in the day: “Do you agree, or not?”
My initial response…
Children take everything on face value until they learn to discriminate based on values they accumulate over time. They discover how to distinguish “the truth” from “not truth” based on their teachers opinions (parents, siblings, school, peers and so on), and then they become more adult like in their thinking, i.e. they look for mixed messages, hidden agendas, the underlying thinking, what’s in it for me mentality, etc etc. In other words, children accept “what is” until they learn to become cynical, skeptical and suspicious because that’s what they experience around them. If we, as adults, were more giving, loving, enthusiastic, positive, honest, caring, playful, full of joy, and open to all the possibilities the world has to offer, just like a young child, wouldn’t the world be a simpler and more interesting place to be?
So let’s think about this some more.
Children take everything on face value until they learn to discriminate based on values they accumulate over time:
Ever watched toddlers at play? They just “be” who they are. They chat, fiddle, search, copy, test, ask. They have a ferocious curiosity and accept everything they see, hear and feel as being true.
They discover how to distinguish “the truth” based on their teachers’ opinions:
Soon, children are “told” about things. Their parents tell them when things are “right or wrong”. Their siblings scream about “ownership” of material things. School teachers show them the “facts” on a wide variety of academic subjects. And as they grow older, examiners assess their performance based on the averages of everyone else and then “categorize” their achievement as being above, below, or on par, with that figure. Interview panels determine whether they are “good enough” for the job or placement. Lecturers tell them the way the world is.
And as they develop into adulthood, they bring it all together into one massive compendium of opinions and views, based on other opinions and views. All of which creates potential confusion, suspicion, cynicism and skepticism.
Finally, as adults, they spend the rest of their life trying to unravel the complexities of what they have been taught. They invest in building their confidence because they learned somewhere you shouldn’t stand out from the crowd. They go to self-esteem seminars to help them get beyond the teaching that they “weren’t good enough”. They compete in the workplace because someone had them believe at some stage that it’s all about winning over the rest. They scream at their partners and children because they heard somewhere that you have to shout to get heard. They mistrust others because they were brought up to think that “this side is better than that side”, “they’re wrong and we’re right”. They manipulate because they’ve discovered “techniques” to get what they want.
OR, because they are children, they are permitted to learn for themselves. They discover that co-operation is easier and more interesting than competition. They feel that they are valued and their voices are heard. They are confident in their own ability and don’t need to compare themselves to other people and come off better, or worse. They are like sponges, soaking it all up without judgement.
And as they grow and develop, they give of themselves, unconditionally. They serve and add value to other people’s lives. They live, they love, they care, they are full of joy and possibility.
Adults have the capacity to learn as quickly as children. They don’t because they filter everything that is presented to them based on the assessments and judgements they make, created by their experience, values, attitude, environments, and behaviour of others. All these things slow down the learning process.
When we, as adults, remove our filters and become open to all possibilities, we learn more quickly and we take experiences and people on face value.
Until proved otherwise of course! 😉
Wake Up and Manage Your Time
Do you have issues with “time management”?
There never seems to be enough time to get everything handled – make the calls that need making, respond to the requests that come in, complete the “to-do” list, fix all the little issues around the home or office, tidy the wardrobe, clear the garage, ring old friends, develop the new marketing material, attend all the networking events, go and see relatives, take a new evening class or attend another seminar, etc etc etc…
People get stuck in their “have to get this done sometime” mindset. Then they don’t get it done at all. They procrastinate, put it off, avoid it. They commit and then wish they hadn’t. They say yes when they probably should have said no. And regrettably they often put off their own leisure and wind-down time in favour of someone else’s urgent need.
Sometimes it’s easier to say yes than it is to say no. When this happens we do ourselves a dis-service and we can often create even more stress in our lives around having enough time. It becomes a vicious circle. We want more time. We say yes too often. Then we create less time to do all the things that need handling because we’ve been saying yes! Result – more stress about not having the time…
So what’s the answer?
The first step is to just STOP. Stop everything, and I mean everything! Just stop and take some time out to look at where you’re at, what needs handling, what must get done, what can be avoided completely, what can be delegated to someone else.
Sounds perverse – to create more time you need to stop. I hear you screaming that it doesn’t make sense. This is totally at odds with the problem. I know. I know.
Nevertheless, it works. 😉
When you find yourself simply overwhelmed with everything the absolute best thing you can do for yourself is just stop. Take a breath. Relax…
Now, clear some time in your diary. A few hours, half a day, a whole day. A Saturday or Sunday. Whatever you think it will take to just reorganize your current status. I’m not talking about doing all the things that need doing. I’m simply saying take some time to get a handle on where you are at.
Now that you’ve scheduled the time get a sense of where all the information is that you need to reorganize. Perhaps you have written “to-do” lists. What about your email inbox(es)? If you have a diary you will need it. If you use a Blackberry or similar you will need this as well. Remember your in-tray or files and folders. Anything at all that has “stuff” that you need to get clear at some point.
Once you have all this to hand and you reach your “de-clutter session”, take these simple steps:
1. Create a master list of all your “incompletes”. Don’t try and prioritize them at this stage. Simply get them down. Your list should have 3 columns – “ITEM” / “DUE DATE” / “DELEGATE TO” – At this point just fill in the “ITEM” column with the thing that needs doing.
2. Now look at each item and make some decisions about each item:
a) Can I ditch this completely? – If so, cross it out and forget it. If not, move on to question b)
b) Do I need to do this all myself? – If so, decide on a date it needs to be completed by and fill in column two. If not, move on to question c)
c) Can I delegate some or all of this to someone else? – If so, how much of it and to whom?
2. Contact those people you can delegate to and agree a date when it will be complete by. Fill in column two.
3. Re-organize your list in “due date” order with the nearest date at the top of the list.
Now you’ve got a sense of what needs to be completed and it’s all in one place. The next piece takes a little more effort and is so worth it in the end…
Take your scheduling system, diary, PDA or whatever you use and consider your own goals around free time and work time. Now schedule your free time, leisure activities, family time, social events, holidays and so on. Do this first. This is now “non-negotiable” time. You have made a commitment to yourself and your loved ones, and it’s in the diary! Do it for the next 3 months as a minimum, to begin with anyway.
Once you’ve scheduled your leisure time you’re ready to start thinking about everything else. Look at your list and schedule your priorities based on what you believe is achievable. I suggest you look at this process as a way of creating your “default diary”. For example, you might say every week day morning is “client meeting” time, two afternoons each week are “marketing activity” time (this would include making calls, networking etc), two afternoons are “customer care” time (follow up to meetings, handling customer service issues, seeking feedback etc), one afternoon is “managing incompletes”, Monday night is “evening class” or “study” time – personal development, Tuesday evening is “yoga”. You get the idea I hope.
Having scheduled your default diary we come to the most important piece…
Create a daily “Post-It Note To-Do List”.
Why a post-it note? Because it will help you train yourself to, in other words get in the habit of, creating 5 or less “have to get done” tasks every day.
Why 5?
Five is an easy to manage number. Any more and you set yourself up for failure. Have just 5 and you are much more like to succeed. When you’ve completed your 5 you can build on that success if you have time spare in the day and get EXTRA handled. Now you have reason to celebrate!
Wake Up to Your Charisma
What is it that draws people to you? How is it that some people seem to have a natural ability to be “interesting” to others? Why do some people seem so confident meeting new people when others feel afraid?
I was speaking at a CIPFA event earlier this month in which I was invited to discuss: “How to be a great PA – The Art (& Science) of Charisma” and it was these questions and more that I considered when putting together my presentation.
The definition of charisma according to Wikipedia is:
- Compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others
- A divinely conferred power or talent
It goes on to discuss that the word originates “from the Greek “kharisma” meaning “gift” “of/from/favored by the God/divine” is a trait found in persons whose personalities are characterized by a personal charm and magnetism (attractiveness), along with inate and powerfully sophisticated abilities of interpersonal communication.”
Modern media describes charisma as the “X-Factor”, popularized of course by the talent show of the same name.
I suspect that some people appear to be charismatic because they have the ability to demonstrate confidence and a genuineness of character. They come from a place of authenticity and can create a real connection with people through their ability to “be there” for others. They ask questions and help people feel important and valued. They listen intently and allow everyone to be heard. They care and they can connect.
Furthermore they have a high level of self esteem. They are generally comfortable with themselves and are confident in their own abilities.
At the event I suggested that being charismatic is something that can be developed, it can be taught, so to speak. We are all born with a natural ability to connect with everyone. Just watch a very young child to see that this is true. They are naturally charismatic because they have no inhibitions, until they learn to have them that is.
We unlearn how to connect with others as we are conditioned by those who influence us. We are told by our parents and teachers to be quiet, speak only when given permission to do so, hold back until we are certain of our facts, don’t take risks, don’t speak to strangers, don’t ask for what we want as it seems greedy, sit down – shut up!
It is no wonder that so many people move into adulthood lacking confidence and feel intimidated by meeting new people. It is no surprise that many adults fear speaking in public and standing out from the crowd.
So, in fact, when I suggest that being charismatic can be taught, what I actually mean is that having charisma is something that can be created by unlearning that which we have learned to hold us back!
Charisma is indeed a gift from the divine and it is within all of us. We simply need to get out of our own way to find it again!
Wake Up to Your Charisma and get out of your own way. Try it, you might enjoy it. 😉
Wake Up to the Way You Do One Thing…
Commuting on the motorway provides you with an insight into the way people behave.
Have you ever been frustrated by the way other people drive? Do you get annoyed or angry when drivers behave in a way you find unacceptable.
Every day, while commuting, I see people act in “interesting ways” on the road. Some cut across to lane 3 on the motorway when lanes 1 and 2 are empty. Some sit in lane 2 doing 55-60 mph when lane 1 is clear. Others cut across me into my lane, seemingly just to stop me getting past them.
In any event, they seem to be frustrated by their eagerness to “win” their position on the road and stay in front of other drivers.
I won’t pretend that I’ve always been the “perfect” driver. Years ago I would have strived to stay in front of the others. I would have driven too fast and made sure I took “pole position” on the road.
However, I observe the “road ragers” and the “road hoggers” now and find myself simply aiming to avoid them and take the journey at my own pace. Safe and perhaps a little slow for some.
It occurs to me that this is just like life really. In the early years of our lives and careers we spend so much time wanting to be better than everyone else. We aim to position ourselves in some way elevated above others. We go for the next promotion. We work towards being in front of others. For what purpose?
It is said that the way we do one thing is the way we do everything.
So it seems to me that life is far more relaxed and easy when we are simply aiming to be better than ourselves day by day. That way there is no judgement and comparison to others. By intending to just improve oneself day by day life is a lot less stressful and we get to be more at ease. Why bother comparing ourselves to other people when what it is really important is simply looking inside and asking “how can I be better today than I was yesterday?”
On the road, I’ve taught myself to simply observe “that was interesting driving” when someone does something I consider to be an act of “winning” or at worst “stupidity”. This enables me to come from a place of calm and ultimately resourcefulness should anything go wrong. I believe I am then in a position to react carefully and safely should an incident occur that requires skill and care of me.
Does this make me better than the other drivers? No. It simply means, I suspect, that I arrive at my destination with less stress and frustration. Thus, I am probably in a space of resourcefulness rather than stress, in a state of happiness rather than anger.
So my invitation to you this week is to take some time out there [the big wide world] to ask yourself “what is my purpose in gaining this advantage?” or observe when something is simply “interesting” rather than placing judgement on what is. You may find that life is far less stressful and you reach your destination with more peace!
Wake Up to The Way You Do One Thing…
Enjoy 😉
Wake Up to What You Stand For
Whilst researching some of my material for a new program I’m developing I came across a newsletter article I sent out some years ago. It inspired me so much again I thought I’d share it with you here…
I received an email this morning from my coach in Sydney and it literally stopped me in my tracks. It contained a story which I decided to share with you a little further below.
We talk about taking 100% responsibility for our lives. We say that the way we feel, the results we get, the responses we get from others around us, is all a choice. We discuss getting out of the blame game and creating the life we want and the goals we desire.
The story simply had me consider “what do I choose to stand for?” regardless of what I have achieved yet, or may want to achieve in the future, despite the successes I have created or the feedback I have used when outcomes have been “unexpected”.
Many people in business try and sell what they have to sell without consideration for what people actually need or want. Some businesses “go for the close” before asking their customers “what do you need?” or “how can I help you?” Occasionally businesses will force their product or service on someone and they may even buy, once.
Many businesses are so focused on their “competition” they forget to see how they can add value to their own customers. They are constantly looking for the opportunity to “beat the competition” rather than look to improve what they do for benefit of being better than they themselves are right now. Perhaps the only competition we have in business is ourselves?
But what do these businesses stand for? What do you stand for in your business, your life?
This story may help…Would you have made the same choice?
Two Choices
At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves children with learning disabilities, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended.
After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question: ‘When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?’
The audience was stilled by the query.
The father continued. ‘I believe that when a child like Shay, who was mentally and physically disabled comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.’ Then he told the following story:
Shay and I had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, ‘Do you think they’ll let me play?’
I knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but as a father I also understood that if my son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.
I approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, ‘We’re losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.’
Shay struggled over to the team’s bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt. I watched with a small tear in my eye and warmth in my heart. The boys saw my joy at my son being accepted.
In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three.
In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as I waved to him from the stands.
In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again.
Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat.
At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball.
However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay’s life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact.
The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher.
The game would now be over.
The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman.
Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.
Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman’s head, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, ‘Shay, run to first! Run to first!’
Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.
Everyone yelled, ‘Run to second, run to second!’
Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball, the smallest guy on their team, who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher’s intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman’s head.
Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home. All were screaming, ‘Shay, Shay, Shay, all the way Shay’
Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, ‘Run to third! Shay, run to third!’
As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, ‘Shay, run home! Run home!’
Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team.
‘That day’, said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, ‘the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world’.
Shay didn’t make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making me so happy, coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!
And the foot note that came with this story:
We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people hesitate. The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and workplaces.
If you’re thinking about forwarding this message, chances are that you’re probably sorting out the people in your address book who aren’t the ‘appropriate’ ones to receive this type of message Well, the person who sent you this believes that we all can make a difference. We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize the ‘natural order of things.’
So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a choice: Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up those opportunities and leave the world a little bit colder in the process?
A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats it’s least fortunate amongst them.
You now have two choices: 1. Delete 2. Forward
May your day, be a Shay Day.
I receive many stories and video clips every day, many if which will invite the reader to forward it to other people. For me, my choice is to ignore that invitation as I, like you no doubt, don’t want to add to people’s inbox just for the sake of it.
Today however, I made a choice. This choice is based simply on the question I asked at the top of this article “what do I choose to stand for?”
Imagine a business world where people made choices like the baseball team in the story. Imagine a business world where everyone truly wanted to support each other to be successful rather than just “cut each other’s throats” for the sake of the quick sale. Imagine a business world that believed in “win/win” in the true spirit of the principle so well described by Stephen Covey in his book. Imagine your business if everyone you encountered tried to help you be successful and you in turn tried to help them.
Would you prefer to go to work each day knowing that everyone you meet wants to help and support you to win, or do you prefer the cut throat competitive world of mistrust and deviousness that results in win/lose or lose/win?
So ultimately, you really do have a choice and my invitation to you this week is simply this:
Ask yourself, “What do I choose to stand for?”
I trust you do indeed have a “Shay day” 😉
Wake Up to What You Stand For and have yourself a “Shay Day”
Wake Up to the Real Enemy is Hatred Itself
The entire week has been full of the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden. Despite my own daily intention of avoiding the mainstream news, which is full of negativity, I have been less than successful in achieving this aim over the last few days. Every public place I have visited seems to have had a news channel showing more discussion on the subject or a newspaper with pictures and headlines on the issue.
The sad thing is the apparent joy over the death of another human being. Never before have I witnessed so many people being happy in the news that someone has been killed.
I don’t condone the events of 9th September 2001 or the subsequent, or indeed preceding acts of violence around the world in the name of al-Qaeda, or any “terrorist” organization. However, I have to question the validity of killing someone else in the name of revenge. How can one act of violence be justified when another is seen to be an atrocity? Does it not amount to the same thing?
This hatred of others because they are on “the other side of the fence” has been the source of so much despair, sadness and pointless loss of life in so many places around the world in all history. Yet, we never see a real resolution to it all. As time moves on, the enemy just becomes a different face, from a different part of the world, and all because we are told that now is the time to hate another specific individual or another sector of our global community.
In recent history alone, I think of conflicts such as the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the conflicts of Northern Ireland and the Falklands, the Gulf war, Bosnia, Afghanistan and of course, the “war on terrorism”. When and where will it all end?
Who’s to say that we are right and they are wrong? And who is “we” anyway?
The real enemy is hatred itself.
When we strive to hurt someone else because of our own beliefs we simply create more negativity in our own lives. The hurt we want to inflict, whether it be physical or emotional pain, can never release us from the stress and anxiety of the process of wanting to inflict that pain in the first place. Have you ever actually felt any better because you created hurt for someone else?
Hatred eats us up. It consumes our energy and creates cynicism and sadness. There can never be any good that comes from hurting others.
Imagine a world where people just accepted everyone else for being who they are. A world in which we respect other opinions and beliefs as simply being ok. A world where there are no borders and constrictions on travel. A world where we simply help each other for no other reason than we just can.
Does it really make any difference whether we call our spiritual connection God, Allah, Vishnu, Jehovah, Buddha, Ahura Mazda, Izanagi & Izanami, Lao-Tse or any of the many many other “gods” or “teachers” of religion? Does it really make any difference whether the borders to one country are here and another there? We don’t own this planet of ours, we simply reside here for the time being, so we have no real right to any of it anyway.
There are very few certainties in life. We come into this world with nothing and we will leave it with nothing, except the legacy of what difference we made to the lives we touch. Doesn’t it make more sense to leave hatred behind and be a global community of people who support, inspire and help each other in a positive way?
I invite you to Wake Up to the Real Enemy is Hatred Itself. Make a commitment to help and support someone this week just because you can and with no other intention than to make someone else feel good.
Enjoy. 😉
Wake Up, Be Inspired 