Tag Archives: opportunity

Make Today Count

Posted in Developing the Possibilities Mindset, Practicing Self Mastery by

In his book, The Positive Principle Today, writer Norman Vincent Peale recounts the story of Orville Kelly, a newspaperman from Iowa, who went to the hospital at the age of 43 for an examination and was told he had terminal cancer. Of course, he was stunned by this devastating news, as was his wife, Wanda. After further hospital tests, the doctors told Orville Kelly that he had from six months to three years to live.

Friends avoided discussing the matter with Orville and Wanda, simply advising them, “Don’t think about it,” and then quickly changing the subject. Communication almost stopped. Wanda wanted to say something positive and hopeful; and Orville wanted to reassure her. But they couldn’t find the words; so they remained silent.

Orville Kelly was put on a program of chemotherapy, and the long drive to and from the hospital was a painful, silent journey.

Finally, one day Orville said, “Let’s talk about it…..I’m going to die from cancer…..but I’m not dead yet. So let’s start enjoying life again.” A short time later, a fresh, new, and exciting idea came to Orville Kelly; and he said, “Each day I will accept not as another day closer to death, but as another day of life. I accept each day as a gift from God to be appreciated, enjoyed, and lived to its fullest.”

And he decided to form a new program called “M.T.C.” – “Make Today Count!” After all, Orville said, “We are all ‘terminal’ in a sense. Orville Kelly chose to see every day as a special and gracious gift from God. And that is precisely what he went on to do. Though sentenced to death by a terminal illness, Orville Kelly actually became more alive by making each day count.

Have you ever been so overwhelmed by your feelings that instead of leaning into what you felt you tried to shut it down? Rather than confront a situation, you tried to sweep it under the nearest rug? Instead of accepting the frailty of life and the mortality of those we love, we choose to pretend that we will all live forever and there’s going to be enough time when…because right now we’re busy: building a business, taking care of the children, struggling at work…

“You have no idea how chaotic my life is right now” we offer as a blanket excuse for why we have not been more engaged, connected more, visited more – stopped long enough to smell the damn roses!

Let’s pledge to make today count. Make it count for something. Slow down. Smile. Touch. Smell. Observe. Help.

Orville is right – we’re all ‘terminal’ except we don’t know when we’ll reach our ‘terminus’ – so let’s look at today as a wonderful gift of opportunity – of possibility.

Let’s leave our mark on today – let’s MAKE IT COUNT for SOMETHING!

Great Teachers are Great Leaders (I’ve had a few in my life)…

Posted in Practicing Self Mastery by

They don’t make teachers like they used to – But then again – I’m no longer in school so what do I know?

What I do know for sure is that at Bishop Anstey Junior School there were three teachers that had a significant impact on my life:

  1. Mrs Massiah
  2. Miss (as far as I can remember :) ) Cumberbatch (who myself, Cecilia Thompson and Jacqueline Morris referred to as Ms. Cumbie)
  3. and Leslie Hoyte

Mrs Massiah saw in me stuff that I didn’t see in myself. She encouraged me to stretch and to grow. She shone a light on my strengths and never hesitated to punish me when I went off track – but punishment of the ‘you can learn from this’ variety. Not beating. But sometimes a long stay up near the board, by yourself, so that you had some time to THINK about what you did. The thing is – once it was over. It was over. She didn’t refer to it ever again. No ‘you remember the time when I had to’ – no – none of that. In that light – I wanted to improve – first for myself. Anything after that was icing on the cake and it came as a broad beam on her face that told me that she was proud of me.

Ms Cumbie on the other hand was the scripture teacher. She had us learn psalm 100 and that popular prayer by St Ignatius of Loyola. At the time I had no clue why we had to memorize these verses yet today not only can I recite them by heart but just these two – have had a significant impact on my life. Psalm 100 is primarily about gratitude and that popular prayer by St I. is like a rule book for life. It’s about focus and what we focus on does expand. Had Ms Cumbie tried to wax philosophical then, she would have lost us. But I guess part of her new that by insisting on us committing it to memory that the words would stay indelibly on our hearts and influence our lives forever.

And finally Leslie Hoyte – the art teacher – who was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy cool and wore black nail polish. She taught me that it is was OK to be different. Here I was, a fat kid, teased and mocked, so self conscious that I stuck to reading and trying to fade into the bland school walls. In art I was able to express. In art class Ms. Hoyte SAW me. I have no memory as to whether she thought my art was good or bad – what I do know is that being seen allowed me to open up in a way that I perhaps never did before.

We can all be Great Leaders but not by trying to be anything. I doubt that any of these teachers fully realized their impact. What each had was a definiteness of purpose, strong values and the intention to bring out the best in EVERY SINGLE CHILD that crossed their paths.

We can build a better world by taking home this one idea: today – why don’t you first bring out your best self and once you have the opportunity – encourage the best in others.

Thank you Mrs Massiah, Ms. Cumbie and Leslie (which she sometimes allowed me to call her although I never abused nor disrespected her :) !) – THANK YOU!!!!!

image from http://www.family.webshots.com

Starting Over…

Posted in Developing the Possibilities Mindset, Practicing Self Mastery by

Everyday we get an opportunity to start over. We may not look at it like that – we may think that we are just continuing on from yesterday but I believe it’s an opportunity to begin again. A new day brings with it light and promise. An opportunity to look at things differently, in another light, because it’s not the light of yesterday shining on your challenges, it is the light of today. When we are going through what the mystics call ‘the dark night of the soul’ we can hold on to the hope that there is a tomorrow – that a new day is coming and that we can count on that to happen.

My belief is that we are all connected and that we have all come here to help each other on this journey called life. Some of us think that means being a teacher, or a lawyer, a doctor, or a welder, a carpenter or a bake and shark vendor.

To teach however I don’t think we need to necessarily BE anything. How we handle our day to day lives, our joys and thrills, our challenges and sometimes our loss are the most beneficial lessons to others. We are not consciously aware that anyone is looking. We are not on some podium, making sure that the camera gets our best side or focused on enunciating. We are our raw selves: coping, crying. laughing, cussing, grieving, cheering, worrying, and sometimes reaching to a point from which we feel that we can’t turn around, only to have the courage to remain alive just long enough to see a new day and start over.

At times it may seem that one minute everything in your life is going great and then almost in the blink of an eye, things start going downhill.People get sick.Sometimes they die. The bank forecloses on our house. We lose cars (I know this one well and I’m not talking about it being stolen  although I’ve had that experience too! LOL) but it’s OK.

What we never lose is our heart, our strength, our wisdom, our ability to love, our humility, our kindness. This is our wealth -the good stuff that we are truly made of.

As you approach today, full of possibilities know that  your mess is your message. Someone needs to hear your story, to heal, to be comforted, to be strengthened to take that next step in their own lives. And remember that each new day gives us a wonderful opportunity to start over! :)

Photograph from the Giselle Hudson Tobago Collection™

Stop Teaching and Start Doing the Work

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I’m sure you’re all familiar with the saying ‘We teach what we most need to learn’. Regardless of the service we provide – whether we are teachers, insurance executives, or massage therapists, we can often get so caught up in the “service part” to others that we forget to do our own work on ourselves.

If you’re not practicing what you’re preaching you are going to find yourself in a lot of hot water.  Before you go trying to sell anything that you do, you need to be sold yourself. Remember the last four letters in enthusiasm – IASM – I am sold myself! Use your own product – walk yourself through your service steps – are you happy?

Customers are like blood hounds when it comes to sniffing out authenticity. You need to believe in what you’re offering when everyone’s behind you but you definitely need to believe when others are laughing at you in your face.

I saw the movie “Wall Street” recently and in it one of the main characters – a young broker – is fully committed and betting on great things from a start up clean energy company. He talks about it in meetings, he brings it up any chance he has to, he’s telling other brokers about it and in the end almost loses much in his life because of it. He was willing to put his own money behind his recommendation. How many of us believe in what we’re doing to the point of being charismatic?

But this is not just about believing in your product or service, – sometimes you need to use the very thing that you’re recommending on yourself. At that point you must stop teaching and do the work.

For example – young lawyer Alex Neely was quite successful. She had her own law firm but avoided the issues around legal, insurance, finances and taxes – just a little too long. According to her not having her legal stuff set up right, and having the wrong insurance in place, messed up her financial systems and poor tax planning cost her nearly $800,000 plus stress, worry and heartache.

While we are busy recommending that others should get their taxes in order with our new XYZ software that makes filing income tax a breeze our own tax situation is horrific. Why don’t we do the work on ourselves? Well we think that if we keep our mouths shut and deal with our stuff quietly AND privately we won’t have to seem negative and maybe not have to admit just how painful whatever it is we’re going through really is. We are ashamed.

What we don’t realize is that we are not alone. There are others suffering just like us simply waiting for us to bring the truth into the light so that they can learn and perhaps find a solution to their trauma. These problems don’t have to bring us down but we must be willing to confront the shadows, quit avoiding it and transform it by bringing it into the light.

If you focus all your energy on making more and more money so you don’t have to deal with your own stuff and stuff that perhaps your own products or solutions might solve, then you’re in big trouble because no matter how much you work and how much money you make it would never be enough — not when what you’re doing is really a distraction to avoid looking at the things that are hard for you to look at – like in Alex’s case – the legal and financial parts of her business.

From ever since I first started to work, I’ve been studying how and why some people are successful in life – and why some people are NOT. It’s interesting the answer because it all comes down to a few key principles and techniques.

One of the most important things a person can do to make themselves successful – both personally and with money – is to access opportunity. The thing with opportunity, according to Robert Collier in “The Magic Word” is that the door to it is never ajar. Always closed we have to knock, we have to seek, we have to be persistent. Alex Neely created a LIFT foundation System and Toolkit – LIFT an acronym for Legal, Insurance, Finance and Taxes – showing others how to do business with their eyes wide open so they wouldn’t get taken – as she did.

Think about the nuggets you might find if you only stop teaching and start doing the work you’ve been avoiding – perhaps far too long!

Cartoon from http://www.bettercartoon.com

Knocking on doors is frightening

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Before any door can be opened you need to knock. However we are usually afraid of what will turn up once that door opens. Robert Collier said in his book ‘The Magic Word’:

“The doors of opportunity are always closed. They have been since the world began. History tells us of no time when you could walk down a street and find any doors of opportunity standing open and inviting you to come in. Doors that are worth entering are usually closed, but the resolute and courageous knock at those doors, and keep knocking persistently until they are opened.”

We need to push past whatever fears we may have about what lies behind the closed door. We need to stop working on overcoming fear. I don’t think the fear ever dissipates like a separate act and then you get on with your life. I believe that life is an ongoing stream of various emotions that can sometimes carry us up to heaven or sometimes bring us close to hell but in spite of all the ups and downs and fears we must keep on knocking.

Most of us fail merely because we are not persistent in our knocking. We ask and knock once or twice and because the door didn’t immediately open we give up in despair.

In the sea of all your emotions and turmoil do not waver. Focus. Focus on the door. Knock. And then knock some more.

Paul Zane Pilzer, former economic advisor to two White House administrations says “If you just try something two or three times and it doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean you should give up. ” Apparently he explains you must have enough frequency before you can begin to decide that it’s time to stop or scale back your efforts. He makes another interesting point.

Apparently the Universe is set up with some adversity so we can build our faith muscle – so everything doesn’t work out EVERY time BUT – it does work out over time – therefore we must develop the faith and perseverance to follow our plan.

How many times you ask? Erm about 100 times according to Mr. Pilzer before you even begin thinking about scaling it.

Door Photo from http://www.activerain.com