A new step forward for education and leadership » Personal Development

A thought provoking thought…

anewstepforward — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:56:40 +0000

“If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.” – Dr. Wayne Dyer

A column by Richard Reynolds-Autographs

anewstepforward — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:41:28 +0000

Written by Richard Reynolds Commentary from Richard Reynolds At birth every person has a clean slate with the ability to do something great. Some people would say that there are social and economic factors that prevent a person from achieving great things. I believe just the opposite that one can add value to their name through the life that they live. Last summer, my son and I participated in the Southeastern Conference Football Media Days at the Wynfrey Hotel in Birmingham. “Participating” may be stretching things because it was more like asking for autographs and allowing my son the opportunity to meet some famous and not so famous sports leaders. At that time the season was just starting with great promise for every team, every coach and every institution. Every autograph, one could say, had equal value and what made the difference in the value would be the coming performance of each individual. Isn’t that like life? We each start out on equal footing given a name at birth. The value of that name is determined not by what our parents or grandparents did but will be determined by the legacy of the life that we live. What is your name worth? Here the term “worth” has no relationship to money but has the connotation of the value of one’s life because of the good that one has contributed to this world. What have you contributed , what are you contributing to this world and what will you contribute in the future? Above is a column written by Richard Reynolds the writer of this blog. It is posted at www.claynews.net The small paper uses this as an avenue to compete with the larger papers with news in between its editions.

Its not the number or words that you use but which ones you use…

anewstepforward — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:36:58 +0000

We use words and phrases without realizing what we saying many times…how many cliches do you use? Or how many “buzz” words do you use which have long ago lost their effectiveness and meaning? Today’s post is short with the point of allowing the words to penetrate the grey matter between our ears. Notice that it is not the length of the words but the quality of the words used that matters! For the quality to be there the brain must be activated…is yours activated or is it on “cruise control?”

The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.”

–Thomas Edison,
inventor and businessman

One of the hardest tasks of leadership is understanding that you are not what you are, but what you’re perceived to be by others.”

–Edward L. Flom,
CEO of Florida Steel

Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”

–Eleanor Roosevelt,
former first lady and American political leader

If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?”

–Steven Wright,
comedian, actor

Autographs…

anewstepforward — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 04:50:22 +0000

At birth every person has a clean slate with the ability to do something great! Some people would say that there are social and economic factors that prevent a person from achieving great things. I believe just the opposite that one can add value to their name through the life that they live.

Last summer my son and I participated in the Southeastern Conference Football Media Days at the Wynfrey Hotel in Birmingham, Alabama. Participating may be stretching things because it was more like asking for Autographs and allowing my son the opportunity to meet some famous and not so famous sports leaders. At that time the season was just starting with great promise for every team, every coach and every institution. Every autograph one could say had equal value and what made the difference in the value would be the coming performance of each individual. Isn’t that like life? We each start out on equal footing given a name at birth. The value of that name is determined not by what our parents or grandparents did but will be determined by the legacy of the life that we live. What is your name worth? Here the term “worth” has no relationship to money but has the connotation of the value of one’s life because of the good that one has contributed to this world. What have you contributed , what are you contributing to this world and what will you contribute in the future?

A New Step Forward Quotes

anewstepforward — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 16:15:02 +0000

“I generally avoid temptation — unless I can’t resist it.” – Mae West

“Everywhere I go the under-developed world, when I ask people what they want to be, they say a ‘teacher’ or ‘doctor’-the two most respected professions. I really regret that in (the developed) world, where we have the money and the ability, we treat teachers like third-class citizens and pay them like fifth-class citizens.”

-CNN Reporter Christiane Amanpour, in Edutopia

Carew International…ideas that can be implemented in any vocation or area of life…don’t paint yourself in a box…

anewstepforward — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 07:39:08 +0000

Have you heard of Carew International ? http://www.carew.com/ Bringing you only the best resources to take a new step forward and provide opportunities… The Difference The other day, I ran across this quote: “The difference between genius and stupidity, is that genius has its limits……” I loved the quote, as all of us have experienced limitless acts of stupidity. In fact, I can remember a time or two where I have stretched the boundaries “where no man has gone before” to quote Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame, and the results were not pretty. How does stupidity apply to sales? Certainly Jack%&#, the movie(s) and television series, has proven there are few limits to a willingness to go the extra mile in the name of stupidity, but in sales, we all have that governor that creates boundaries. Unfortunately, many of us as individuals or our companies as organizations, have touched the edge of the abyss of stupidity and plunged headfirst into it. Inside our Corporate Lore, there are shining examples of poor decision making that could have been avoided but are spoken about in hushed tones. So how do these things, that everyone knows in the sanest moments should never occur, OCCUR? There are a few answers: company policies and culture, emotion and loss of focus on the big picture, and lastly, the inability to separate emotion from logic. Bear witness to a recent example that just came across my radar (names, measures and product have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty): a customer calls to report a problem with a shipment; it seems the order was for about 100 tons and 1000 tons showed up. The customer, while liking the idea of extra inventory, really does not have room for an extra 900 tons. Respectfully, he calls the customer service representative who is not authorized to accept returns, and who quickly reports to the customer the computer and says to the customer, “You ordered 1000 tons, so it must be a mistake on your end.” The customer respectfully says, “Well there must be some kind of mistake, because our Purchase Order clearly says 100 tons not 1000, so if you could just correct the system and pick up the extra 900 tons, we will all be very happy.” The Customer Service Representative replies, &l! dquo;We would be happy to pick up the 900 tons for a 10% restocking fee and the freight cost to return to the factory.” The customer figures restocking and freight might actually be as much as the original order and asks to transfer to a Sales Representative, and the story goes on, on and on. Three days, 10 phone calls, and sales management involvement later, the problem is finally resolved by losing entire order and the customer. At this point you might be saying, “How can these things happen? No one in his or her right mind would ever do something like this!” Well friends, it happens every day. These little “snafu’s” are there, and the major cause is best captured by Will Rodgers: “The thing about common sense is that it is Not Common.” An organization’s decisions, rules, and approvals are generally put in place to control costs, NOT potential customer issues, and the bottom line is sometimes, you have to just put a governor on rules that provide limitless stupidity. One of the ways to prevent such disasters is to have an understanding with the leadership that if the decision is obvious, you have the approval in advance to make the call in favor of the customer. In today’s world of 10 to 15 sales professionals with one sales manager, it is a no-win situation for anybody (customer, sales professional, leader and company). Many times, we get caught in the moment with no escape route; we are being challenged by the customer, and everybody has high emotion. Having an escape route helps make the situation controllable and helps maintain the composure of all parties. An effective tool is in the next meeting with your sales manager. Role play a difficult situation and see how he or she responds as you make decisions that may not be following the exact corporate policy. This will help each person to understand the emergency ground rules and give you a sense as to how each should react during and after the crisis and will help set boundaries on stupidity. Discussing difficult situations in advance and role playing them out to conclusion provides confidence to step in and save the account where necessary. More importantly, during one of these inevitable crises, your customers will see your real genius and value what timely and relevant decision-making accomplishes. Customer relationships are fortified in these situations and both the customer and your manager both know you have the customer’s and company’s best interests at the front of your decision-making.

20 years of experience or 20 years of the same experience?

anewstepforward — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 07:37:11 +0000

…Its not what you go through its how you go through it…

What a spin on words but is it a “spin” or is it truth in its simplest form? We moan and groan many times about the things that daily we grow through but really does going through something mean that we have learned or become a better person because of it? It is much like the person who put on his resume that he had been at his previous job twenty years. During the interview for the job he was asked if he had twenty years of experience or twenty years of the same experience. Daily we must strive to be alert and sharpening our skills, ability and wisdom because of the events that we encounter during every 24 hour period knowing that those hours can never be reclaimed and are lost from the thing that we know as “our life.”

Achievement…can it be achieved?

anewstepforward — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 06:55:44 +0000

The Nature of Time

by Robert Stuberg

Well, to begin with, time, as we think about it, doesn’t even really exist. We think of weeks and hours and minutes and seconds, but these are completely human inventions. Days and years can be scientifically measured, of course, but these concepts as they’re familiar to us would mean nothing if we were on the surface of another planet. They’re simply subjective.

Now, sure, all of these labels present a convenient way for us to function as a society, but they are really just lies we agree upon. There is no such thing as an hour. Nine o’clock in the morning does not exist. And yet, to give you an example of how powerful a hold this lie of time can have over us, more people have heart attacks at 9:00 on Monday mornings than at any other hour. Think about that. They’d rather die than go to a job they hate. How’s that for processing time with an extraordinary psychology?

And examples of this abound. Traffic on the streets of our cities overflows twice a day in the hour before nine and the hour after five. Most of us eat lunch at noon and go to bed before midnight. But these are all arbitrary hours that have meaning only because we’ve assigned it to them. In the United States, we’re used to working from nine to five, but if we all decided that we were going to take a nap in the middle of the day, that’s what would become the norm. And in some areas of the world, that’s exactly what happens.

Those of us who are concerned about using our time wisely — of balancing our myriad roles effectively and getting the most success from all of them — would do well to break out of these artificial constructs and create a personalized way of interacting with time and the things we would like to accomplish in it. That’s what this artilce is about. But to do this, we first need to understand a little more about the nature of time itself and of how it progresses in the natural universe. If a week or an hour doesn’t really exist, then what exactly is time? What’s it made up of?

Well, as a physicist would tell you, time is the factor that distinguishes sequential events from simultaneous events. Time allows for progression, for cause and effect, but it’s also the barrier that separates the present from the past and the future.

Time is not anything you can see. It’s not a force that has a demonstrable effect on its own, like gravity. Gravity is actually a property of matter, but time is a property of space. We think of space as having three dimensions — which we popularly call “length,” “width,” and “height” — but it actually has at least one other dimension. The fourth dimension of space is time, which we could also call “duration.” In fact, space and time are so closely linked that scientists often refer to them as parts of the same phenomenon. This is called space-time.

Now, I know this is getting to sound more like Physics 101 than a way of mastering your use of time! But believe me, it’s all connected. What I want to make clear is that we’re used to thinking of things as happening in space. The same amount of space could hold a house or a forest or an ocean or a landfill, just like the same amount of space could hold a BMW or a rusty old hatchback.

And I want you to start thinking of time in the same way. Space-time is nothing more than an arena for us to fill up as we choose. We can fill our own personal space-time with junk, or we can fill it with riches. The same area can bring us joy or regret, productivity or relaxation, pleasure or pain. Like so many other things, how we fill any amount of space and time comes down to simple decisions that we make every moment of our life. And that’s one of the things this article is about — how we choose to fill our time, and whether that choice is made by an extraordinary psychology or by inertia or laziness or by a thousand other impulses that rob us of our precious treasure.

But it’s also about the nature of time and how time relates to nature. And especially how people experience time, because we have such a unique relationship with it. Our bodies are “designed” to last a specific amount of time. Now, every day the scientific community is learning things that help extend that functioning by just a little longer, but we’ll never be able to alter the fact that there is a beginning and an end to physical. And much of the time in between is determined by natural systems for which time plays an critical role. So many of our biological functions are “timed” … the activation of our pituitary glands that trigger puberty … our heartbeat and respiration … cell division and elimination … menstruation. These are part of timed cycles, like the cycles of the tides, of the seasons, of days and nights, and of the Earth’s revolution around the sun. We may or may not be aware of them, but the cycles of our biology exist in balance with these natural cycles and others.

And think about other natural cycles that move without cease around us. All living creatures are affected by cycles … cycles like when wild animals reproduce. Think about insects like the cicada, which emerge from hibernation every seventeen years to mate. Or cycles of migration, like birds that fly south for the winter. In the wild, much of an animal’s instincts are centered upon the passage of time.

But humans differ from every other life we know about because, even though we have cycles and instincts of our own, we have a conscious and active sense of passing time that goes beyond “hardwired” responses. Just the fact that we have arbitrarily determined and named intervals of time speaks much for our unique power for comprehending and harnessing it. This is really quite extraordinary, if you think about it! A cat might realize that it’s hungry, but it doesn’t understand why two hours must pass before its next meal. And because of this, it becomes a servant to the hunger, as it’s a servant to all of its instincts.

Only we humans are different. Consider the story of a group of coal miners who were trapped underground by a cave-in. While they all survived the falling rocks, they were cut off from the surface and, even worse, from their air supply. Knowing that they only had a few hours before their air ran out, they prayed for rescue in that time, but it seemed hopeless.

Only one of the miners had a watch, and he used it to keep them alive beyond the time the air should have been exhausted. How was this possible? It isn’t a riddle. Since he was the only one who “knew” how much time was really passing, he was able to convince the others that what felt like a passing hour, because of their isolation and panic, was really only a half hour. He was lying, of course, but it did the trick. The miners, convinced that only three hours had passed, were able to survive the six hours it took for the rescuers to dig to them, just as the air was running out. Only one man died … the man with the watch. Aware of the “impossibility” of survival, he didn’t survive.

Now, this is an extreme and possibly apocryphal tale, but it does nicely illustrate two points. The first is one of my favorite philosophies, and I’ve seen it proven over and over again: that what you believe becomes your reality. The second is that it’s possible for people to break the seemingly unassailable hold that time has over them. It’s simply a matter of changing the way you think about it. That’s all it takes to be the master of time, rather than one of its many, many slaves.

Filed under: Abundance , Philosophy , Thoughts , Time Management

Website Profile | About Robert Stuberg

Robert Stuberg is one of the world’s leading authorities on personal and professional success. He is most widely recognized for his role as Founder and Chairman of Success.com, the premier source for personal and professional development products and services worldwide. Robert is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, coach, entrepreneur, and consultant.

For over 20 years, Robert has researched the philosophy and science of achievement, traveling the world and studying with some of the greatest minds in the personal development field to learn ancient wisdom and cutting-edge technologies. His goal: to help people from all walks of life reach more of their infinite human potential for success.

Robert’s experiences include developing some of the most successful programs in the personal development industry with such people as Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, Deepak Chopra, Ken Blanchard, and many others. Prior to starting his own company, Robert was Executive Vice President of Nightingale-Conant Corporation.

Robert is the author of many best-selling books and audio programs including “The 12 Life Secrets,” “Creating Your Ultimate Destiny,” “The 12 Wealth Secrets,” “Creating Internet Wealth,” “Sell and Grow Rich,” “Success Coaching,” and “Time Mastery.”

To change or not to change?

anewstepforward — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 06:48:44 +0000

If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

–Gen. Eric Shinseki,
former Army Chief of Staff

Arthur Ashe on true success…

anewstepforward — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 06:19:52 +0000

“True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.”
-Arthur Ashe