The Ben Comen Story

Ben Comen might hold the record as the slowest high school cross country runner in the world.  In a typical 3.1 mile race, he takes 40-42 minutes to finish. There is, however, a catch to this inspirational story because Ben Comen is no ordinary runner.

Ben Comen was born with cerebral palsy. He has limited control of his arms and the stiffness in his legs make even walking a strenuous task. Leg braces and physical therapy help improve his functioning but can not change his circumstances.

"I'm more relaxed when I run. When I run, nothing bothers me much." Ben exclaimed with enthusiasm when asked why he enjoyed running so much.

For as long as he could remember, Ben craved to be part of a sports team but no one wanted someone like him to handicap their teams. At best, coaches were only willing, out of pity, to allow him a spot on the bench or to be their water boy. They did not want him to actually participate. His parents would go out of their way to enlist Ben in one of the school's sports teams, but no one took him in until Chuck Parker, the high school cross country coach at Hanna High School did so.

From the moment Ben joined his high school cross country team in eighth grade, his story began to impact others in the school and community. Ben took his role on the team very seriously. Waking up before dawn on most days, he would train on his own, jogging around the community of Anderson, South Carolina. Some days, his siblings would join in. But most often, he trained on his own.

On race day, Ben would line up with everyone else at the starting line. As soon as the starter's gun sounded, Ben would be quickly left behind while the other runners powered ahead of him. Within the first few minutes, Ben would be running alone over the uneven ground of the cross country course. Ben’s goal would always be to try beating his own personal best time, generally around 40-42 minutes for a 3.1 mile race.

Because of his cerebral palsy, Ben falls often and falls hard.  He doesn’t have the reaction time necessary to prevent it.  Anything can trip him up from a twig to an uneven clump of grass.

"I've been coaching cross country for 31 years," says Hanna's Chuck Parker, "and I've never met anyone with the drive that Ben has. I don't think there's an inch of that kid I haven't had to bandage up."

But not before he finishes the race.  Ben hasn’t quit once.  When he falls and goes through the 15 second process of getting back up and getting his bloodied knees back underneath him and stable again, “Words can’t describe it.” His mother says.  “I have seen grown men just stand there and cry.”

To Ben, there was no such thing as quitting. He had been given the privilege of racing despite his handicap, and he was not about to ever quit.  At most races, after the other runners finished the race, they would re-run the same race route and catch up with Ben to 'run him home'.

Ben’s story is wonderful and inspirational but would not be complete without acknowledging the contribution of all those who stood with him along the way, especially his family and coach Parker. In honor of all of these people, Ben and his family have started a nonprofit foundation designed to honor those who give their all - on the course and off. The Ben Comen, Living Without Limits Fund of the Foothills Community Foundation seeks to provide information and resources to challenged athletes, and to recognize their accomplishments and the accomplishments of those who support them.

Ben’s story has inspired not only his community but many others as well.  He has met with President George Bush, and Kevin Cosner has not only donated to his foundation but has attended events in Anderson, South Carolina.

There are plenty of people in the world like Ben who face challenges every day.  Some are born with their challenges and some face them as the result of an accident or disease or in the service of our country. It’s good to know that the Coach Parkers of the world are out there to stand by them and believe in them.

And by the way, Hanna High is also the home of a mentally challenged man known as Radio, who has been the football team's assistant for more than 30 years. This is the same Radio who was portrayed in the 2003 movie by that name staring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ed Harris.

Be inspired everyone, be like coach Parker and have a great day.

The Folded Napkin

This weeks Monday Morning Motivational Minute came to me directly from a good friend and a good man I know.  I don't know where he found it but I am thankful he did and grateful that he sent it to me.

Enjoy.  Nothing I can can say will make it better than it already is.

A Truckers Story

If this doesn't light your fire ... your
wood is wet!

I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy.

But I had never had a mentally handicapped employee and wasn't sure I wanted one. I wasn't sure how my customers would react to Stevie.

He was short, a little dumpy with the smooth facial features and thick-tongued speech of Downs Syndrome. I wasn't worried about most of my trucker customers because truckers don't generally care who buses tables as long as the meatloaf platter is good and the pies are homemade.

The four-wheeler drivers were the ones who concerned me; the mouthy college kids traveling to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded "truck stop germ" the pairs of white-shirted business men on expense accounts who think every truck stop waitress wants to be flirted with. I knew those people would be uncomfortable around Stevie so I closely watched him for the first few weeks.

I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month my truck regulars had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot.

After that, I really didn't care what the rest of the customers thought of him. He was like a 21-year-old kid in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a bread crumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the table. Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a table until after the customers were finished. He would hover in the background, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until a table was empty.Then he would scurry to the empty table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto his cart and meticulously wipe the table up with a practiced flourish of his rag. If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would pucker with added concentration. He took pride in doing his job exactly right, and you had to love how hard he tried to please each and every person he met.

Over time, we learned that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled after repeated surgeries for cancer. They lived on their Social Security benefits in public housing two miles from the truck stop. Their social worker, who stopped to check on him every so often, admitted they had
fallen between the cracks. Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live together and Stevie being sent to a group home. That's why the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work.

He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a new valve or something put in his heart. His social worker said that people with Downs Syndrome often have heart problems at an early age so this wasn't unexpected, and there was a good chance he would come through the surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few months.

A ripple of excitement ran through the staff later that morning when word came that he was out of surgery, in recovery, and doing fine.

Frannie, the head waitress, let out a war hoop and did a little dance in the aisle when she heard the good news.

Marvin Ringers, one of our regular trucker customers, stared at the sight of this 50-year-old grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy beside his table.

Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron and shot Marvin a withering look.

He grinned. "OK, Frannie, what was that all about?" he asked.

"We just got word that Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay."

"I was wondering where he was. I had a new joke to tell him. What was the surgery about?"

Frannie quickly told Marvin and the other two drivers sitting at his booth about Stevie's surgery, then sighed: " Yeah, I'm glad he is going to be OK," she said. "But I don't know how he and his Mom are going to handle all the bills. From what I hear, they're barely getting by as it is." Marvin nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried off to wait on the rest of her tables. Since I hadn't had time to round up a busboy to replace Stevie and really didn't want to replace him, the girls were busing their own tables that day until we decided what to do.

After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office. She had a couple of paper napkins in her hand and a funny look on her face.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I didn't get that table where Marvin and his friends were sitting cleared off after they left, and Pete and Tony were sitting there when I got back to clean it off," she said. "This was folded and tucked under a coffee cup."

She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk when I opened it. On the outside, in big, bold letters, was printed "Something For Stevie."

"Pete asked me what that was all about," she said, "so I told him about Stevie and his Mom and everything, and Pete looked at Tony and Tony looked at Pete, and they ended up giving me this." She handed me another paper napkin that had "Something For Stevie" scrawled on its outside. Two $50 bills were tucked within its folds. Frannie looked at me with wet, shiny eyes, shook her head and said simply:
"truckers."

That was three months ago. Today is Thanksgiving, the first day Stevie is supposed to be back to work.

His placement worker said he's been counting the days until the doctor said he could work, and it didn't matter at all that it was a holiday. He called 10 times in the past week, making sure we knew he was coming, fearful that we had forgotten him or that his job was in jeopardy. I arranged to have his mother bring him to work. I then met them in the parking lot and invited them both to celebrate his day back.

Stevie was thinner and paler, but couldn't stop grinning as he pushed through the doors and headed for the back room where his apron and busing cart were waiting.

"Hold up there, Stevie, not so fast," I said. I took him and his mother by their arms. "Work can wait for a minute. To celebrate your coming back, breakfast for you and your mother is on me!" I led them toward a large corner booth at the rear of the room.

I could feel and hear the rest of the staff following behind as we marched through the dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw booth after booth of grinning truckers empty and join the procession. We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface was covered with coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting slightly crooked on dozens of folded paper napkins. "First thing you have to do, Stevie, is clean up this mess," I said. I tried to sound stern.

Stevie looked at me, and then at his mother, then pulled out one of the napkins. It had "Something for Stevie" printed on the outside. As he picked it up, two $10 bills fell onto the table.

Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from beneath the tableware, each with his name printed or scrawled on it. I turned to his mother. "There's more than $10,000 in cash and checks on that table, all from truckers and trucking companies that heard about your problems. "Happy Thanksgiving."

Well, it got real noisy about that time, with everybody hollering and shouting, and there were a few tears, as well.

But you know what's funny? While everybody else was busy shaking hands and hugging each other, Stevie, with a big smile on his face, was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table..

Best worker I ever hired.

Plant a seed and watch it grow.

At this point, you can bury this inspirational message or forward it fulfilling the need!

If you shed a tear, hug yourself, because you are a compassionate person.


- Be inspired and have a great week.

The Story of Sir John Wilson

Today’s Monday Morning Motivational Minute is excerpted from The Element, How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson.

When 12 year old John Wilson walked into chemistry class one day in October of 1931, he had no idea his life would change completely.  The experiment that day was to show how heating a container of water would cause oxygen to rise to the surface.  The experiment itself was very common but the container John was given this day was not.  A mistake by a lab assistant and a wrongly labeled bottle meant that when John heated his container, it exploded.  A portion of the classroom was destroyed, several students came away bleeding and John was left blinded in both eyes.

After two months in the hospital, as John and his parents tried to figure out how to deal with the tragedy, it became apparent that John did not view the accident as quite as catastrophic as everyone else did.  In a later interview with the London Times he said, “It didn’t strike me, even then, as a tragedy.”  He knew he had the rest of his life to live and he didn’t intend to live it in an understated way.  He went on to learn Braille, become and accomplished rower, swimmer, actor and orator as he finished high school.  After receiving his law degree form Oxford, he went to work for the National Institute for the Blind in England.

In 1946 his real calling found him while on a fact finding tour of British colonies in Africa and the Middle East.  What he discovered was rampant blindness.  However, unlike his blindness, the diseases that affected so many of the people he encountered were preventable with proper medical attention.

John went on to found Sight Savers International and over his 30 years as its director, accomplished remarkable things.  Generations of African children can thank John Wilson for their sight.  Under John’s direction, the organization preformed 3 million cataract operations and treated 12 million others at risk of becoming blind.  Between these and other preventative measures, tens of millions of people can see.

When John retired, he and his wife devoted their energy to IMPACT, a program of the World Health Organization devoted to preventing all types of disabling diseases.  Knighted in 1975, he also received the Helen Keller International Award, the Albert Schweitzer International Prize and the World Humanity Award.  He continued to be active until his death in 1999.

The story of Sir John Wilson reminds me that in Kindergarten we are all marvelously hopeful little boys and girls.  We have the world before us and we believed in the goodness of everything.  We believe in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy.  We believe we can be a fire truck or an astronaut when we grow up.  We believe in fairytales and princesses and that you really can turn a frog into a prince with just a kiss.  We believe in magic. To us, everything is magical.  We dream as much with our eyes open as we do while we sleep and we believe we could fly if we could just remember how we did it in our dream.  In short, we believe in everything. 

John Wilson never stopped believing.  He never lost that marvelous hopefulness. John was faced with a circumstance that would have crushed the spirit of so many other people but he insisted that he never saw his blindness as anything more than a “confounded nuisance”.  He proved dramatically that it is not what happens to us that determines our life, it is what we make of what happens to us.

So everyone, make life happen, be inspired and have a great day.

The Midnight Rides of Paul Revere and William Dawes

On April 18, 1775 a stable boy overheard one British officer say to another something about “hell to pay tomorrow”.  This bit of conversation along with other evidence convinced revolutionaries in Boston that the British were finally about to make their long anticipated move.  It was believed that the British were planning to march on Lexington to arrest John Hancock and Sam Adams and then move on Concord to seize the store of arms that had been collected there by local revolutionaries.

The midnight ride of Paul Revere has become a part of the lexicon of American History.  The British expected little resistance and a swift victory.  Instead, they encountered a strong and organized defense and were soundly defeated.  Although this is an amazing story, it is not a complete one.

That night in 1775, Paul Revere did not set out alone.  He an one other, a local Tanner named William Dawes, set out with the exact same mission and message.  Revere was to take an easterly path north to Lexington and Dawes a westerly path north to Lexington.  They both arrived in Lexington, having delivered their messages but history does not remember William Dawes. He failed.  Despite having delivered the same message as Paul Revere, Dawes was unable to do so in a manner that spread the message in the way Paul Revere had done.  In the wake of Paul Reveres sales blitz from Boston to Lexington, his message spread out behind him like a virus, reaching thousands of people.  Dawes was so unsuccessful that some the towns he visited were later accused of being full of British sympathizers because they did not respond to the defense of Lexington and Concord.

Historians still argue over the reasons for Dawes failure but I believe the answer lies in the difference between the men themselves. I see it as a very simple matter.  I believe that Paul Revere was simply a more energetic, passionate and ultimately, effective salesman.  When you look back at the story of the midnight ride of Paul Revere in this way, it beautifully illustrates that messaging alone does not sell.  If it did, William Dawes would be as famous as Paul Revere, but clearly he is not.

Every day hundreds of thousands of sales reps leave their homes carrying a message.  If you are one of them, I challenge you to ask yourself every morning whether or not you are going to be forgotten like William Dawes or remembered like Paul Revere.  Will you do just enough to get through to the end of the day or will you execute your mission with passion and energy?  The choice, as it always is, is yours alone.

Choose well, be inspired and have a great day.

Hard Work and Enthusiasm

I am not necessarily a huge sports fan but I do enjoy watching sporting events.  I like the notion of competition and what it takes to be competitive at the highest level in a sport.  What is it that some teams have found that others have not, that makes them so consistently the best?  Some teams always seem to win while others just seem to find the magic formula for success to be too elusive.  I began to wonder about this and to think about coaches. I asked myself what seemed like a simple question. Who would win more often, a team with great talent and a mediocre coach or a team with mediocre talent and a great coach?

Despite the considerable amount of time I spent surfing with my good friend Mr. Google, I still haven’t found a satisfactory answer to this question. However, when I came across the name of John Wooden, I realized that I had found the inspiration for today’s Monday Morning Motivational Minute.

John Wooden was born on October 14, 1910 and died June 4, 2010.  He is one of only three men to be inducted into the basketball hall of fame both as a player and as a coach.  In 1948 he took a loosing UCLA program and immediately turned it around, eventually winning ten NCAA national championships over a 12 year period, seven of them in a row.  Within this period, his teams won a record 88 consecutive games and he was named National Coach of the year six times.

What struck me the most was not so much his winning record, which was certainly impressive, but the tremendous adoration and respect so many people both inside and outside of basketball felt for him.  He earned this respect because of who he was and what he believed in.  He thoroughly lived by his beliefs, and applying them in his life made him the success he was both professionally and interpersonally.  Lucky for us…  He wrote them down.

The John Wooden Pyramid of Success consists of 15 beliefs or building blocks upon which success is built.  Said differently, these are 15 beliefs that, if lived by, provide the structure upon which your own personal success can be achieved.  We don’t have time to cover all 15 building blocks so I will explain two of them. 

John felt that two of his building blocks were the cornerstones of the pyramid.  These were the strong foundation, the strength of which the other ideas must necessarily rest and depend upon.  He believed them to be, indispensably, the most critical components of success. 

They are hard work and enthusiasm.

Tiger Woods, Payton Manning, Michael Jordan and Lance Armstrong are just a few individuals legendary for their commitment to hard work.  Legendary coaches like Vince Lombardi, Phil “The Zen Master” Jackson, Red Auerbach, Scotty Bowman and of course, John Wooden himself, all know there is no substitute. 

To John, enthusiasm means your heart is in your work.  Without it, you simply can not work to your fullest potential and perform at your highest level.  Separately, hard work and enthusiasm are powerful tools for success but together, they become an amazingly unimaginable force.

This is so important now, considering the difficulties many Americans face with the struggling economy. Despite the assurances by our leaders, and those hoping to be leaders, that they know exactly how to fix things if we just vote for them, many of us still have uncertainty regarding our future. But whether we want to hear this message or not, the simple truth is that the foundation of our individual success isn’t built on external circumstances.  It is built upon the two things over which we each have complete and absolute control. 

We can choose how hard we work and we can choose whether or not to be enthusiastic about it.

So, choose well, be inspired and have a great day.

Here be Dragons

This is a story about two young men, Alex and Bret Harris, twins, who, at the ripe old age of 16 achieved national recognition because of their movement to encourage teens to rebel against the modern teen culture of low expectations.  They started a simple blog and called their movement a “rebelution” spelled r.e.b.e.l. By the age of 18, they had launched their own website and their movement very quickly went worldwide.

At a time when most teenage blogs were and are little more than schoolyard gossip columns, these boys were talking about changing the world.  Most amazing was how they planned on doing so.  Their plan was wonderfully elegant in its simplicity.  They would change the world by changing themselves. They would become the best that they could be and invite the rest of the world to join them. They would… “Do Hard Things”.  This became their mantra and the title of their book.

If you were to ask them, they would be the first to tell you that they are not particularly more brilliant than other teens.  They have just committed to doing hard things, and their accomplishments represent the result of that simple commitment. Before their 19^th birthday, they had already become legal interns with the Alabama state supreme court and had been responsible for managing scores of grass roots volunteers in a statewide political campaign.

Stepping outside of their comfort zone, that comforting day to day rut of daily activities was the first and most important step. 

Taking those steps were no easier for them than they are for any of the rest of us, for a variety of reasons.  They challenge us because they are unfamiliar and are often frightening.  But when taken, they often become some of our proudest memories.  In any event, they always end up growing the scope and size of our comfort zone for the future.

Bret and Alex took that scary step into the unknown part of the map, at the very edge, where early cartographers wrote things like “here be monsters, here be flaming scorpions and here be dragons”.  This is the place of fear where failure, shame, embarrassment and discomfort lurk.  It is also the place where you find fulfillment, true accomplishment, pride and personal transformation.

It is truly embarrassing and very humbling to be reminded of that by a pair of 16 year olds.  It is a lesson I need to remember, whether it be in my personal endeavors or professional.  Whether regarding major life decisions or simple ones like the way to ask a customer for the business. Do our actions brighten our small corner of the world or darken it?

Modern culture seems to have accepted a scaled down version of how “your best effort” is defined.  Just think about the phrase, “Hey, I did my best”.  When you think about it, it is really more likely to mean “Hey, I gave it a shot. Oh well”.  Maybe my professional colleagues and I, as self–motivated sales reps, are better at this than most people but who knows.  Have all too many of us accepted a scaled down version of “our best effort”?   In the privacy of our own thoughts, only we know the honest answer to that question for ourselves.  Is our best, our best or is it just good enough to meet the basic expectations others require of us?  Society is perfectly happy with you if you meet expectations.  The real question you should ask yourselves is if you are happy with you!

So the message, as I see it, is to step off the map and visit the place where the scary dragons live, and do hard things.  It just may transform your life. 

Thank you everyone. Be inspired and have a great week.

Practice Makes Perfect

Breathing life into today’s motivational minute was a bit of a struggle owing to the difficulty I encountered while attempting to locate my muse. Although I thoroughly enjoy writing these every week, sometimes inspiration can prove to be rather elusive.  When I finally found what I had been looking for, that is to say, when I found my muse, I discovered her curled up among my CDs listening to the Beatles.

If you have ever been told, or have ever told anyone that practice makes perfect, I hope this story will help you understand that you don’t know the half of it until you know the story of the Beatles.

The Beatles arrived in the US in February of 1964 and started what was to be called the “British Invasion” and transformed the face of popular music in America. That is the part most everyone already knows.  The remainder of the story is less well known.

By the time of their arrival in 1964 the Beatles had already been together since 1957.  In 1960 they were still a struggling high school rock band, but they were able to take advantage of a very fortuitous yet unglamorous opportunity.  A strip club owner in Hamburg, Germany named Bruno had a unique idea.  His idea was to bring in cheap, unknown bands to play in his clubs and offer non-stop, live music all day long.  As chance would have it, he came to Liverpool looking for talent and met a local entrepreneur who agreed to find bands for him.  Being fortunate to both live in Liverpool, and to be known to this entrepreneur, the Beatles ended up traveling to Hamburg.  They played not only for Bruno but when other strip clubs started copying Bruno’s very successful idea, they played for them as well.  The pay was awful and the audiences were understandably unappreciative.  The only thing these clubs really offered the young band was time, lots and lots of playing time.

Sometimes they would play for 8 hours straight.  They would do this 7 days a week while in Hamburg.  Between 1960 and the end of 1962, the Beatles traveled to Hamburg five times.  On the first trip they played 106 nights for at least five or more hours a night. On the second trip they played 92 times and they played 48 times on the third trip for a total of 172 hours on stage.  The last two trips in 1962 involved another 90 hours of performing.  They played a total of 270 nights in just under a year and a half.  By the time they had their first real success with Sergeant Pepper and the White Album (yes album); they had performed live on stage, in one venue or another, an estimated 1200 times.  That was nothing short of extraordinary.  Most bands then and now never even perform 1200 times in their entire careers.

According to Phillip Norman, the author of the Beatles biography, Shout, “They were no good on stage when they first went to Hamburg and they were very good when they came back”.

They learned stamina, discipline and hundreds of title tracks from all genres of music which they played along with all of their own original material.  By the time these “kids” from Liverpool came to America, they were quite possibly the most experienced stage performing musicians the music world had ever seen, or likely ever will again. 

What I like about this story is that the “secret” to their success isn’t even a secret.  It is the simplest thing in the world, practice, practice, practice.  It’s also a message that is so universally adaptable to any of our lives endeavors.

Be inspired, practice more and have a great week.

The Person Behind the Professional

Good morning everyone and welcome to Monday.  Today’s Monday Morning Motivational Minute is inspired by a short personal story written by Paul Harvey.  For those of you who may not know, Paul Harvey is most famous for his radio program called “The Rest of The Story” where he tells the beginning of a story whose ending you think is obvious and where, after the commercial break, he reveals the true ending and the moral contained within.  I chose this wonderful story because it is about Paul Harvey as a grandfather.  It reveals the person behind the professional.  It is about his hopes and dreams for his grandchildren.
I began thinking that, as a salesman, I have always tended to see the person in front of me as a professional; as a client or potential client.  The truth is that the person in front of me is a person first.  He or she may have a professional role to play but to himself, he is, most importantly, a private individual with his own thoughts and dreams and ideas.  In a business climate where the new model of selling teaches the value of building both trust and a relationship with your customers, we would do well to remember this.
Nobody cares what you know until they know that you care. 
Ask some questions that aren’t about business once in a while and remember to talk less and listen more. If you think you have a great relationship with a customer and you don’t know about their children or grandchildren, you may want to reevaluate just how much of a relationship you really have.  Over the course of my sales career, I can not remember the number of times I have said that I have such a great relationship with this customer or that one, but I do know that the number of customers about whom I knew their thoughts and dreams and ideas is a much, much smaller number.
I hope you like the story.
Paul Harvey relates:

(As a nation) we’ve tried so hard to make things better for our kids that we’ve made them worse. For my grandchildren, I'd like better. I'd really like for them to know about hand me down clothes and homemade ice cream and leftover meat loaf sandwiches, I really would.

To them I would say…

I hope you learn humility by being humiliated, and that you learn honesty by being cheated. I hope you learn to make your own bed and mow the lawn and wash the car. And I really hope nobody gives you a brand new car when you are sixteen. It will be good if at least one time you can see puppies born and your old dog put to sleep. I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in, I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother. And it's all right if you have to draw a line down the middle of the room, but when he wants to crawl under the covers with you because he's scared, I hope you let him. When you want to see a movie and your little brother wants to tag along, I hope you'll let him. I hope you have to walk uphill to school with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it safely. On rainy days when you have to catch a ride, I hope you don't ask your driver to drop you two blocks away so you won't be seen riding with someone as un-cool as your Mom. If you want a slingshot, I hope your Dad teaches you how to make one instead of buying one. I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books. When you learn to use computers, I hope you also learn to add and subtract in your head. I hope you get teased by your friends when you have your first crush on a girl. When you talk back to your mother, I hope that you learn what ivory soap tastes like. May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on a stove and stick your tongue on a frozen flagpole. I don't care if you try a beer once, but I hope you don't like it. And if a friend offers you drugs, I hope you realize he is not your friend. I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your Grandpa and go fishing with your Uncle. May you feel sorrow at a funeral and joy during the Holidays. I hope your mother punishes you when you throw a baseball through your neighbor's window and that she hugs you and kisses you at Christmas time when you give her a plaster mold of your hand. These things I wish for you - tough times and disappointment, hard work and happiness. To me, it's the only way to appreciate life.

Written with a pen and sealed with a kiss. I'm here for you. And if I die before you do, I'll go to heaven and wait for you.

-         Paul Harvey

Be inspired and have a great day.

Leadership, Ronald Reagan and Listening.

So what is leadership?  There must be thousands of answers to this question. Actually, the great oracle of Google tells me there are about 362,000,000 answers. It is in this very popular question that I found the inspiration to today’s Monday Morning Motivational Minute.

This weekend I was looking through my office library and I came across a copy of Dutch – a Memoir of Ronald Regan by Edmund Morris and I began to think about whom he was and what he meant to our nation and the world.  Who was this man who led our great nation from 1981 to 1989?  What kind of man was he?  What kind of leader was he?

Margaret Thatcher summarized what she believed to be the essence of the man in her eulogy on June 11, 2004. “In his lifetime, Ronald Reagan was such a cheerful and invigorating presence that it was easy to forget what daunting historic tasks he set for himself. He sought to mend America's wounded spirit, to restore the strength of the free world and to free the slaves of Communism.”

Ronald Reagan once said that, “America is too great for small dreams.”

Whatever else you may believe about him, President Reagan was passionately committed to his beliefs. I believe that Reagan’s secret was that he gave people exactly what they needed in a leader.  Not what they wanted but what they needed. What I believe made him so unique is that despite being so passionate with his beliefs he still knew how to listen. It was, however, the unique nature of his listening that made him different.

It would have been easy for him, committed to his vision and enjoying popular support to stop listening at any time during his presidency.  He could have argued that listening would have seemed like following the polls, pandering to special interest and caving to the whims of public opinion just for the sake of reelection and the maintenance of his presidential legacy.  He could have reminded the nation that there is an old saying that if Henry Ford had listened to advice we would all have better buggy whips today and not cars.  So listening can indeed have a dark side.

Yet listening was Reagan’s secret. To listen, and to truly value both the person speaking and what they had to say.  The irony is that often enough, he could be expected to make a decision that contradicted the very people he was listening to.  He impressed his advisors, his enemies and the voters by actively listening to everyone.  He believed that people wanted to be sure that he heard what they had to say and that he cared that they said it and that they were less focused on whether or not he actually did what they asked.

As a result, he often received criticism for accepting campaign contributions from special interest groups whose agendas, many of his other supporters found objectionable. Reagan listened to everyone, and then proceeded to act on his own internal moral compass. Sometimes this agreed with a petitioners request and sometimes it did not.

To truly illustrate the respect his enemies had for him you need look no further than his relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev.  In 1983, Reagan publicly called the Soviet Union “the Evil Empire” and he deeply believed it.  By 1985 he was signing a peace treaty with Gorbachev eliminating the entire class of medium range nuclear tipped missiles and in 2004, Gorbachev remembered President Reagan as, “an honest rival and a friend”.

How will you be remembered?

Value everyone, be inspired and have a great week.

Stop Complaining

While watching the 1^st episode of America, the Story of Us, and I found myself inspired to write today’s Monday Morning Motivational Minute.

As a student of history, nothing in the program was unfamiliar to me but it was humbling never the less.  The men and women throughout our history who were responsible for the very existence of our country suffered.  Nothing they gave us was gained easily.  The legacy they left us was paid for with blood, sweat, tears, suffering, sacrifice, hope, courage and death.

We have become the richest nation on earth and have largely forgotten what true suffering really is.  Yet somehow, we have the audacity to complain about things.  We shouldn’t complain about anything yet we complain about almost everything.  I feel as though I should be ashamed of myself because I’m no different than anyone else in this respect.  I can talk myself into some measure of consolation in that I do not complain as much as others but nevertheless, I do so far more often than I should.

What do we really understand about ourselves as a nation?  How many of us have actually read the Declaration of Independence?  Honestly, I don’t recall that I have. The guy from the Philippines taking a citizenship class has probably read more of it than I have.

“We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Our country provides for our life and our liberty but happiness is for us to achieve on our own.  The Declaration of Independence did not demand that we all be happy.  It demanded that we all be free to pursue happiness.  I believe the best way we can honor the sacrifice of our founding ancestors and anyone who has ever sacrificed for this country is to exercise the very right they fought to provide us.

Far too many Americans do not truly appreciate this hard earned gift. It must be so because antidepressants are the single most prescribed drug in America.  Studies have consistently shown that happy people are healthier and live longer than unhappy people. Pursue happiness. Not only is it your constitutional right and obligation as an American, being happy is just more fun.

So today’s Monday Morning Motivational Minute message is very simply to “Be Happy” and if you can’t be happy just keep trying. 

"Remember that you are only young once but you can remain immature indefinitely."  –Mark Twain

Be inspired and have a great week.

Good Enough Isn't Good Enough

The inspiration for this Monday Morning Motivational Minute began in ancient Greece with Plato.  He wrote “wise men talk because they have something to say, fools speak because they have to say something”.  I felt quite the fool preparing for today’s motivational minute because I could not think of anything to write. I had nothing and I was very close to being the foolish man who feels he has to say something but has nothing to say.  What I found truly inspired me because it made me realize that you don’t need to be a great historical figure or someone famous to be wise and to inspire others.  I found the following story by a man named Barry Spilchuk who is just an ordinary person like you and me, famous for nothing.  And yet here I am moved to share his story.

Mr. Spilchuk relates,

Pete Rose, the famous baseball player, and I have never met, but he taught me something so valuable that it changed my life. Pete was being interviewed in spring training the year he was about to break Ty Cobb's all time hits record. One reporter blurted out, "Pete, you only need 78 hits to break the record. How many at-bats do you think you'll need to get the 78 hits?" Without hesitation, Pete just stared at the reporter and very matter-of-factly said, "78." The reporter yelled back, "Ah, come on Pete, you don't expect to get 78 hits in 78 at-bats do you?" 

Mr. Rose calmly shared his philosophy with the throngs of reporters who were anxiously awaiting his reply to this seemingly boastful claim. "Every time I step up to the plate, I expect to get a hit! If I don't expect to get a hit, I have no right to step in the batter's box in the first place!" "If I don’t go up hoping to get a hit," he continued, "then I probably don't have a prayer to get a hit. It is a positive expectation that has gotten me all of the hits in the first place." 

When I thought about Pete Rose's philosophy and how it applied to everyday life, I felt a little embarrassed. As a business person, I was hoping to make my sales quotas. As a father, I was hoping to be a good dad. As a married man, I was hoping to be a good husband. 

The truth was that I was an adequate salesperson, I was not so bad of a father, and I was an okay husband. I immediately decided that being okay was not enough! I wanted to be a great salesperson, a great father and a great husband. I changed my attitude to one of positive expectation, and the results were amazing. I was fortunate enough to win a few sales trips, I won Coach of the Year in my son's baseball league, and I share a loving relationship with my wife, Karen, with whom I expect to be married to for the rest of my life! Thanks, Mr. Rose! 

Thank you Mr. Barry Spilchuk

Being Unforgettable

Good Morning Everyone.  Today’s Monday Morning Motivational Minute is about confidence, empathy and being unforgettable.  I found my inspiration in a Dale Carnegie course called, Make Yourself Unforgettable and begin with a quote from that course material.

“When you lack confidence in yourself, others are very likely to agree with you.”

I have a very basic belief. I believe that when you interact with others, people really do want to feel good about you.  If you meet someone, they want to like you. They want to connect with you.  It is a very powerful and natural element of the human experience and it is an instinct that is hardwired into our brains.  It is also up to you whether or not you make it easy or difficult for them to do so. So it is not so difficult to understand that confidence in social situations is very important. But, what then, really is confidence? 

Confidence is not as easy as simply believing that anything is possible and never having any doubts. This notion that you can do anything you set your mind to is a great idea.  But just maybe it is not the whole picture.  Maybe true confidence is not the certainty that you will always succeed or that you will never fail.  Maybe it’s the certainty that you will always do your best because doing so is the only thing you truly have control over every moment of your life.  Someone who is truly confident can recognize their own limitations without becoming preoccupied by them.

Why is it that some people make such a strong and lasting impression? Why are they so unforgettable?

According to Dale Carnegie, there are three key social skills that truly unforgettable people possess.

1. The capacity to relax in social situations.  If you feel uncomfortable you can expect everyone to agree with you.
2. Talk less and listen more.  Mark Twain once said, “If we were meant to talk more than we listen, we would have 2 mouths and one ear.”
3. And the most important of all is empathy.  You must genuinely be interested in the thoughts, experiences and feelings of others.  

If you have ever played “topper” in a conversation you’ll easily understand the point.  Topper is an easy game and it goes like this.  Someone tells you something about themselves and then you quickly launch into a far more interesting story about how you did the same thing only faster or higher or longer or maybe better.  You get the point.  Sound familiar?  Topper is such a powerful impulse you can actually see people struggling to hold back in a conversation until they can finally get their chance to get started talking about themselves.

We all do it.

Truly unforgettable people do not.  They have true confidence and have no need.  For them, confidence and empathy are not separate. And if you don’t believe me, maybe Dwight Eisenhower can convince you.  During World War Two Eisenhower was the supreme commander of allied forces in Europe.   Just before the Normandy invasion, a number of names were given to him for possible promotion to General.  One of the men requested a meeting with Eisenhower to speak on his own behalf.  He said something like this.  “Sir, I have every possible qualification to be a commander.  I have absolutely no fear.  I’ve distinguished myself in combat for more than 20 years.  I have tireless energy. I hardly ever need to sleep. I can drive a tank. I can fly a plane. I can climb mountains.  I can swim rivers.  I can walk across desserts.  What more could you want?”  Eisenhower listened closely and replied. “You sound like an amazing soldier but that’s just the point.  Most of our soldiers are not amazing and we need generals who can understand and empathize with those men.  I’m sorry, but I have to deny the promotion.”

Eisenhower understood that being an unforgettable leader takes more than just confidence in your own strengths.  It also means empathizing with the shortcomings of others.

So in the end, confidence isn’t something you have so much as it is something you give that is reflected back to you.

This week, try thinking about your own reflection, be inspired, and have a great week.

Servant Leadership

Hello everyone.  In today’s episode of Monday morning motivational minute, I will introduce the idea of servant leadership.   

I suppose, at its simplest, servant leadership is about the qualities of moral character that enable a person to influence and inspire others successfully.  It is also about power vs. authority.  Power is, “do it because I said so and I can make you”.  Authority is getting people to say, “I will do it for you”.  Leaders like this enrich the lives of everyone they touch and make the world, even if only their small portion of it, a better place for their having been in the world.  I have found a short story that I think decently illustrates what I am talking about.

Ted drove truck for a small family owned manufacturing company and Ted’s wife was going to have a baby.  During the delivery there were complications that translated into a twenty thousand dollar hospital bill.  Although everyone was now healthy, Ted had a very real financial problem.  The fine print is his insurance policy raised a question as to whether or not the hospital bill would be covered.  The answer seemed to be – no.  That, at least, was what the insurance company told Ted.  Since he had no way to pay this bill, he went to see Warren, the owner of the company for whom Ted worked.  Warren listened and said he would look into it and see what he could do.  A few days later, Warren ran into Ted at the start of the work day and said that he had some good news.  He said, “I’ve spoken with the insurance company and they’ve agreed to cover the hospital bill”.  Ted thanked his boss profusely. He truly appreciated that Warren had gone the extra mile to go to bat for him.

Warren died several years later and at the funeral Ted told Warren’s wife what had happened.  That was when Ted learned the truth that Warren had personally paid the hospital bill.  He had been able to afford it so the money wasn’t really a worry.  The only thing that worried Warren was that Ted might somehow find out how he had solved the problem.

Taking on the financial burden of another like Warren did was the act of a true servant leader. Bragging about it would not have been.  I can not imaging a man like Warren running his company with anything but the moral authority that comes from being a servant leader.

So to close I will leave you with a short quote. - Author unknown

“When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced.  Make sure that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.”

Thank you, be inspired and have a great week.

Walter Chrysler's Example

Hello everyone and welcome to today’s Monday morning motivational minute.

“I feel sorry for the person who can't get genuinely excited about his work. Not only will he never be satisfied, but he will never achieve anything worthwhile.”

                                    -Walter Chrysler

In 1911 Walter Chrysler was a plant manager for a locomotive company when he decided to go into the car business.  The trouble was he really didn’t know a lot about cars except that they were beginning to outnumber horses on the public roads.  To remedy this situation, Walter Chrysler bought one of the Model T Fords that were becoming so popular.  To learn how it worked, he took it apart and put it back together again.  Then, just to be sure he understood everything, he repeated the process.  And then, to make ABSOLUTELY certain he knew what made a car work, he took it apart and put it together 48 more times.  By the time he was finished, Walter Chrysler not only had a vision of thousands of cars on American highways, he also had the mechanical details of those cars engraved in his consciousness.

I am sure we all understand how important it is for both a company and an individual to have a vision and to have goals that drive towards that vision but this story is a reminder that your vision won’t do you much good without the skills to make it happen.

No matter how bad things may get.  No matter how dire the news we see and hear can sometimes make the future seem.  No matter how overwhelming our lives may get.  No matter where we are in life versus where we wish to be.  We have something special and that is the power to choose.  I choose to put together these stories.  I choose to read all of the books that inspire me with ideas.  I choose to create this blog and I choose to look at life like Walter Chrysler did and realize that my future and my success is mine to define.

The only caveat is that this is only true for us to the degree that we are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to make it happen.

The world is a busy place and we have a lot to do.

So this week, make choices, build skills, be inspired and have a great week.

Reflections on Social Intelligence

Sometimes what we read can truly inspire. Sometimes a book speaks in a way that compels me to record my thoughts on what it means to me and how it might help shape my future.  Social Intelligence: the New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel Goleman, is just such a book.  I would like to share some of the book’s main messages with you with the hope that you will also find some value in them.

Goleman tells us that human brains are wired to connect socially with one another and that those connections actually affect us physically in measurable ways.  “Social neuroscience” is a new field in which scientists are mapping and identifying the areas of the brain responsible for social interaction and the effects of our positive and negative encounters with one another.

Negativity is contagious – it has measurable physiological effects that perpetuate negative attitudes by subconsciously passing them on to others. A positive attitude, on the other hand, increases positivity in others.  When two people feel a rapport they actually attune to each other physiologically.  People who are in synch develop strikingly similar brain wave activity and other physiological measurements such as breathing patterns.

This means that it is almost impossible to fake sincerity.  The subconscious mind is capable of recognizing subtle cues denoting insincerity in others. If we trust our feelings, we get a “sense” for that insincerity and it affects the quality of our social relationship with that person.

I believe that leaders, managers, teachers and parents must be keenly aware of how their behaviors can positively or negatively affect those whom they lead, guide, teach or raise.  How we make others feels affects how they perform.

Following are some of the main ideas I derived from the book on how to improve your social intelligence and enhance your interactions with others.

Attunement is a key component of Social Intelligence.  It is the ability to listen deeply and it tends to be very strong in successful leaders, sales professionals and those working in helping industries like medicine.  We attune to others by investing ourselves completely in any interaction with them.  Listening without interrupting is one of the most valuable tools in this process.

           

            Multitasking splits our ability to focus completely on one thing and dulls our ability to develop a strong resonance with others.  When we are interaction with someone, it is best to focus solely on that person.

Even simple positive behaviors like smiling can affect others neurochemically.  We actually feel what we are observing, both on the conscious and the subconscious level.

Empathetic accuracy tends to correlate with the most successful sales reps and leaders.  It is when your active conscious mind can accurately read the clues being communicated to your empathetic subconscious mind and you can act in resonance with what you “sense’ is right.

Be inspired and have a great day.

Positivity, "A Message to Garcia"

Hello everyone.  This Monday Morning Motivational Minute is about positivity and once again, I found my inspiration for this story within the pages of The 8^th Habit by Stephen Covey.

Just look around you. You never need to look very far to find negativity in the world.  People seem to carry it around with them everywhere they go, and ironically enough, it is the one thing no one ever seems to mind sharing.  People like this should have warning labels that read something like, “Warning – Listening to me can lead to serious reductions in general happiness and love of life.”

What I would like to do is share a short story that I believe very powerfully illustrates what it’s like if you take ownership of you own thoughts and your own life.  It is a true story called “A message to Garcia”, written by late American author Elbert Hubbard and first made into a silent movie in 1916 by Thomas Edison Inc. Yes, that was a motion picture production company owned by none other than the great inventor himself, Thomas Edison.

It reads,

“When war broke out between Spain and the United Stated at the turn of the century, President McKinley needed to get a message quickly to a Cuban revolutionary known as Garcia.  He was hiding somewhere on the island of Cuba out of reach of mail or telegraph and nobody seemed to know how to reach him.  But someone suggested that if anybody could do it, it would be an officer named Rowan.

 

When McKinley gave the letter to officer Rowan in Washington, D.C., the officer didn’t ask, “Where is he at? How do I get there? What do you want me to do when I’m there? How will I get back?”  He just took the message and figured out how to get to Garcia.  He took a train to New York. A ship to Jamaica. Broke the Spanish blockade to get to Cuba in a sailboat. Then wild carriage rides, marching and riding through the Cuban jungle.  Nine days of traveling later, Rowan got the message to Garcia at nine in the morning.  That same afternoon at five, he started his return journey to the United States.”

Mr. Hubbard comments further upon this story by writing,

“My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the boss is away as well as when he is at home,… the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly take the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing ought else but deliver it…Civilization is one long, anxious search for just such individuals.  Anything such a man asks will be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go.  He is wanted in every city, town and village – in every office, shop, store and factory.  The world cries out for such: he is needed, and needed badly.

Be like officer Rowan, be inspired and have a great day.

Listen More and Notice Things

Good morning everyone.  Today’s motivational minute was initially inspired by a quote from late British psychologist R.D. Lange writing on awareness and it reads,

“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice THAT we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”

When I first read this, it quickly brought to mind the message behind another book I recently read by Eckhart Tolle entitled, “The Power of Now”.  Tolle teaches that the richness of life can only be experienced by being 100% completely present in every moment.  It is like saying that yesterday is gone and tomorrow can only be experience when it finally gets here and becomes now.

I thought about these two sources and had a wonderful inspiration regarding how both messages fit together and could be crafted into a practical and useful idea.

Since Ghandi said, “We must become the change we seek in the world.”, and because modeling behavior is the spirit and center of any leadership effort, I decided to model something for you this week.  I decided to run a week long experiment where I strove to be completely, cognitively present in every waking moment and to notice everything I never realized I wasn’t noticing before.

I discovered two things.  First, it was not easy.  More importantly, it quickly became very apparent that I was noticing a change in the quality and nature of my listening.  We all know that as sales people we are supposed to listen more and speak less.  That is the way to understand a customer’s needs.  How many of us do that really well?  I know that I do not.  This week, however, was noticeably different.  I listened more, uncovered more and got so much more out of my interactions with people.  It did not take long to see that I could not notice the things I failed to notice before AND talk at the same time.

It was a great experiment and I encourage everyone to try it.  For my part, it will continue to be a useful practice to help improve both my sales skills and my interpersonal communication skills.

Think about it this way.  When was the last time you said, “I really don’t like that guy.  He listens too well and seems to care about my needs.”

Have a great week and start noticing everything you have failed to notice you haven’t noticed before.

It has to start somewhere

Hello everyone and welcome.  This is the first Monday Morning Motivational Minute story I wrote for my colleagues at work.  I was reading The 8^th Habit by Steven Covey, his follow-up to 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and was deeply struck by his description of the 8th habit.

  

The 8^th habit is- “Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs”.

I decided that he was absolutely right and the result was weekly stories to my coworkers designed inspire them.  I owe the original spark of life that eventually lead to this blog to Steven Covey and the actual name, Monday Morning Motivational Minute to my good friend Steve Shefter.

I strongly recommend that everyone read this powerful book because at it core, The 8^th Habit is about the boundlessness of the human spirit. 

This has special meaning to me because it is exactly what I am trying to do in the first place with these Monday morning segments.  Steven Covey recognizes something that I think we all understand intuitively.  He points out that the human spirit has an undeniable need to be significant and meaningful.  The problem is that this is easier to say than it is to achieve.  If it were easy, the world would be a much more perfect place.

Fortunately for us as human beings, fundamentally, our greatest natural gift is that we have a mind that gives us the power to choose.  The following words put that nicely into perspective.

“Between Stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response.  In those choices lie our growth and our happiness.”

– author unknown

“Until a person can honestly say that I am what I am, and I am where I am, because I choose to be there, that person can not say with conviction – I choose otherwise.”

- Steven Covey

Everyone have a great week, make your choices, be significant and be the kind of person your dog thinks you are.