A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I am easily embarrassed – not just for myself but for people around me. I find it almost impossible to watch a program in which I know that the protagonist is going to say or do something that should make him cringe. I say “should make him cringe” because it seems that these days we’ve forgotten the manners that made things less difficult.
Although this isn’t the “official” definition of manners, I like to think of manners as Continue reading » Manners Make the World Go ’round Smoothly
As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The US was a place where anything was possible, where we decided that we would send a man to the moon, and we did. And yet, these days we have lost our belief in the future. We look into the future and we just see more of the same. It’s not that on a personal basis, more of the same is bad, it’s on a societal basis that we get depressed. We assume that we can’t solve the problems that we face today. We extrapolate into the future and decide that there is no hope.
The mistake we make is assuming that tomorrow will be like today when most of the data around us argues for exactly the opposite conclusion. If we just look at the electronics that we use today vs. what we used 10 years ago, we can see the huge leaps forward that have been made: pagers to cell phones to PDAs.
One of my favorite books is Freakonomics and the follow-on Super Freakonomics. The reason that I like both of these books is the Continue reading » Creating the Future
Did you do your 48 hours of ABC’s? I’ll show you one of mine. How about it, will you tell me one of yours?
Good Readers, take note: This may be difficult to read so avoid it if you’re feeling down; save it for another day, or never, your choice. PattiAnn tells me it’s “just a couple steps above my post Such is the Power – A Lament” which was posted shortly after my husband died.
I meant this post to be about how to transform a pessimistic perspective into an optimistic outlook; and for that purpose, I have shared some deeply personal (and usually private) feelings about my grief. I didn’t write it to make you sad, although it deals with sadness. Nor am I looking for sympathy. PLEASE no sympathy. Just good fellowship.
I wrote it to show me and anyone else who must walk this path that hope can prevail. Life goes on and I want to choose a life of hope rather than despair.
So, read on if you dare. Or skip it if you must. Thanks for visiting no matter what you decide.
How about it, will you do your ABC’s for 48 hours?
PattiAnn and I used to be (well I guess we still are) experts on sales and service performance improvement. That was our niche. What caused us to shift our focus to resilience?
Going From Hero to Zero
Well, if you are lucky enough to know and love sales or service people, you’re familiar with the daunting tasks they face: they search for and secure elusive new business, soothe the inevitable irate customers, satisfy the demands of anxious managers, overcome all the quirks and foibles of their company’s operational systems and, despite all their dedication and perseverance, they go from hero to zero on the first day of every month! That’s pretty darn discouraging. So, to serve our customers better, PattiAnn and I hunted for and found better bounceback solutions to help them with their daily heapings of adversities.
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