God loves you and there's nothing you can do about it.
-- Sign on church marquis
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U CANT SEND A DUCK TO EAGLES SCHOOL
A few years ago I had lunch with a top executive from a company known for their legendary retail service. My wife and I are both huge fans, and over lunch I shared with him some of the great service stories his people had provided the Anderson family.
I said, "With the service your people give...you must have a training manual 2 inches thick." He looked up and said, "Mac, we don't have a training manual. What we do is find the best people we can find and we empower them to do whatever it takes to satisfy the customer."
Then he said something I'll never forget. He said, "We learned a long time ago that you can't send a duck to eagle school."
"Excuse me," I said. He repeated..."You can't send a duck to eagle school." He said, "You can't teach someone to smile, you can't teach someone to want to serve, you can't teach personality. What we can do, however, is hire people who have those qualities and we can then teach them about our products and teach them our culture."
As long as I live I will never forget this simple analogy about hiring people. It is branded on my brain forever. And since that day, with every hiring decision I've made, I find myself asking the question: "Am I hiring a duck thinking they will become an eagle?"
I can also honestly say that asking this simple question has saved me from making some important hiring mistakes.
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An excerpt from
You Can't Send a Duck to Eagle School
by Mac Anderson
Not long ago, a friend sent me the story of "Old Warwick." It brought a smile to my face, and I think it shares a wonderful lesson for every leader to learn.
A man was lost while driving through the country. As he tried to reach for the map, he accidentally drove off the road into a ditch. Thought he wasn't injured, his car was stuck deep in the mud. So the man walked to a nearby farm to ask for help. "Warwick can get you out of that ditch," said the farmer, pointing to an old mule standing in a field. The man looked at the decrepit old mule and looked at the farmer who just stood there repeating,
"Yep, old Warwick can do the job." The man figured he had nothing to lose. The two men and the mule made their way back to the ditch. The farmer hitched the mule to the car. With a snap of the reins, he shouted,
"Pull, Fred! Pull, Jack! Pull, Ted! Pull, Warwick!"
And the mule pulled that car right out of the ditch.
The man was amazed. He thanked the farmer, patted the mule, and asked, "Why did you call out all of those names before you called Warwick?"
The farmer grinned and said, "Old Warwick is just about blind. As long as he believes he's part of a team, he doesn't mind pulling."
Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishment toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to obtain uncommon results.
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Give yourself what you would like to receive from others.
-- Alan Cohen
Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way. We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions."
~Aristotle
Acceptance is the act of embracing what life presents to you with a good attitude."
~Chérie Carter-Scott
"I find that when we really love and accept and approve of ourselves exactly as we are, then everything in life works."
~Louise Hay
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An excerpt from
If Life is a Game...These are the Rules
by Chérie Carter-Scott, Ph.D
Life has often been compared to a game. We are never told the rules, unfortunately, nor given any instructions about how to play. We simply begin at "go" and make our way around the board, hoping we play it right. We don't exactly know the objective of playing, nor what it means to actually win.
That is what Ten Rules for Being Human is all about. These are the guidelines to playing the game we call life, but they are also much more than that. These Rules will provide you with a basic spiritual primer for what it means to be a human. They are universal truths that everyone inherently knows but has forgotten somewhere along the way. They form the foundation of how we can live a fulfilling, meaningful life.
Each Rule presents its own challenge, which in turn provides certain lessons we all need to learn. Every person on the planet has his or her own set of lessons to learn that are separate and unique from everyone else's, and these lessons, as you will see in Rule Four, will reappear until they are mastered.
The Ten Rules for Being Human are not magic, nor do they promise ten easy steps to serenity. They offer no quick fix for emotional or spiritual ailments, and they are not fast track secrets to enlightenment. Their only purpose is to give you a road map to follow as you travel your path of spiritual growth.
These Rules are not mandates, but rather guidelines as to how to play the game. There is nothing you absolutely must do. I hope this book will help you to become more aware of them. By learning the valuable lessons and wisdom they offer, your journey on the Earth might just a bit easier.
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From Frantic to Fantastic!
By Dr. Lin Morel, 2010 International Coach of The Year
Hungry, upset, tired? Ever had a day when you just wished you could go back to bed and start all over? I have...here are three simple actions to turn one of those crazy frantic days into a fantastic day.
Take It Easy. Recently my purse disappeared on a business trip. I took a deep breath, reminded myself that things would work out for me. That didn’t mean they would work out the way I would prefer, just that I would get through the experience. I was overtired and over committed, and losing the purse pushed me further out of balance. Tiny glitches began to multiply.
I kept reminding myself I was just having experiences, nothing more or less. I could berate myself, or forgive myself for judging myself. Stuff happens. Why add insult to injury by yelling at ourselves inwardly when we’re having a ‘bad’ day? It’s clear that what we need is to be a friend to ourselves - not a critic. There are plenty of critics out there delighted to tell us our shortcomings.
Win in Your Imagination. Panic and negative fantasy about what happened or will happen just puts fuel on the fire and can turn you frantic. The more frantic you get, the more off center. The more off center, the more frantic. It’s a vicious cycle.
Practice seeing and feeling the outcome you’d like. Do this regardless of what the “facts” say. You don’t need to know how the situation will turn out. As you practice looking for the positive in any event, rather than dramatizing the negative, you’ll find you shift your state of mind. It’s far easier to regain your composure when you are thinking kind thoughts and focusing on positive outcomes.
Give Yourself a Break. All of us have those kind of days. It was glaringly obvious that I was out of balance: overtired, pushing too much, and preoccupied with multiple technology challenges. The result was an open door for catastrophe(s) to enter. I was out of my own flow and natural body rhythm. The domino effect was in full force and my morning became a comedy of errors.
The key to getting to fantastic is to acknowledge that your body and your environment, situation and circumstances are always giving you feedback. What a great opportunity to step back, gain perspective, and have a good laugh at your situation. You’ll find some relief and regain your composure. Negativity just lets us know that it’s time for a shift. As for myself, I went to dinner, laughed, hung out with some great friends, and let myself off the hook. It was just another day.
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Target Practice: Learning to Set Goals
Julie Hadden, star of TV’s The Biggest Loser, shares a new tip she learned to help you achieve the success you deserve.
It’s amazing what you can learn when eavesdropping…um…I mean listening.
I overheard a conversation between my husband and a friend of his recently that made a big impression on me.
They were talking about Howard Hill, the famous archer. His ability with a bow and arrow (along with his record of achievements) go unmatched even 25 years after his death.
Mike and his friend were discussing Hill’s skill. And discussing the unlikelihood of ever being able to match his skill under normal circumstances.
Then his friend proposed this scenario: “What if I blindfolded him and spun him in circles. What would my be chances then?”
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How Do You Get to Gratitude?
By Ames S., October 20, 2010
Ever since I’ve been sober, I’ve known that making a gratitude list can help beat the blues. I’ve done it frequently over the years, generally with pretty good success, though I still find times when my mood is so stubborn I just can’t—or won’t—focus on anything positive at all.
At times like these, I’ve actually discovered a trick—a back door to gratitude that works in much the same way as the front door does to pull me out of the dumps. It’s a kind of anti-gratitude list.
This morning, for example, I woke up feeling particularly morose. Maybe it was because my favorite baseball team hasn’t been performing well in the playoffs and lost another game the night before, or the fact that I’ve been struggling with a kind of mid-life malaise that has me thinking about all the opportunities I’ve missed in my life. Whatever the reason, I was way too negative to consider doing a gratitude list, so I figured rather than fighting the negativity, I might as well give in and make a list instead of just how lame I really am. So I started noting down all the things I don’t know how do.
I don’t know how to fly a helicopter. I don’t know how to operate a backhoe. I don’t know how to captain an oil tanker. I can’t memorize all the lines to a Broadway play. I don’t know how to play the piano or make my own clothes. I don’t know how to design a car. I don’t know how to speak Chinese.
The more I wrote, the more ludicrous it became and the more I realized that there were, in fact, a few things that I do know how to do—one of which, clearly, is writing lists.
Through this chink in the wall my negativity had constructed around me, the light of gratitude began to shine in.
Of course, I don’t know how well my baseball team will perform in its next game or where my own life will ultimately lead, yet I do know that finding my way to gratitude, whether it be through the front door or the back, is the best thing I can do for myself and those around me.
How do you get to gratitude? .
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The Dopamine Made Me Do It
By Ames S., September 13, 2010
There have been plenty of advances in the research world regarding alcoholism and addiction since I quit drinking. For instance, the discovery of the neurological circuit in the brain’s limbic system known, beguilingly, as the Pleasure Pathway.
As noted before in this column, I’m not much of a scientist, so I’ll spare you the details of how this circuit in the brain actually works. Suffice it to say, it’s all about dopamine, the neurotransmitter that creates feelings of pleasure. As humans, we have to get a certain amount of pleasure and stimulation—or rewards—from our daily activities. If we don't, we create a pleasure deficit or what is known as “reward deficiency,” and are subject to depression, anxiety and poor performance.
Each day we have to stimulate our reward pathways adequately if we are to function well emotionally, mentally and physically. Me? I discovered alcohol and drugs at an early age, which provided all the pleasure and stimulation I could handle, first flooding and then depleting my system of dopamine as I continued to drink, setting up a pattern where ultimately my limbic system was hijacked by alcohol and drugs.
As I’ve heard many alcoholics remark, “I didn’t set out to become an alcoholic,” yet with my brain’s boom-or-bust approach to dopamine, fueled by an increasing appetite for more of everything, I didn’t have a whole lot of choice. I was a runaway stagecoach with no driver on the top. Luckily for me, I was able to stop drinking, which set off a serious U-turn in my brain’s pleasure pathway—a huge, “Whoaaaaa, Nellie” that slowed the stagecoach down just enough for a new driver to boost up into the seat and ease back on the reins.
But, physical sobriety didn’t end the dopamine devastation going on in my brain. Given how powerful our reward pathways are, the brain demands and will get the pleasure and stimulation it needs, one way or the other, leaving me with basically two options: to consciously choose, seek out, and experience positive, healthy pleasures; or to abdicate that choice to my limbic system, which would doubtless eradicate the dopamine deficiency with its usual tools of overindulgence, thrill seeking, and risky activity.
To my surprise, I discovered that stopping drinking in and of itself wasn’t enough to bring the stagecoach to a halt. As it says in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions in the chapter on Step Three, “...Sobriety brought about by the admission of alcoholism and by attendance at a few meetings is very good indeed, but it is bound to be a far cry from permanent sobriety and a contented, useful life. That is just where the remaining Steps of the AA program come in. Nothing short of continuous action upon these as a way of life can bring the much-desired result.”
With the full complement of tools freely available in AA, I have been able to rein in the runaway stagecoach over the years, and it is moving now at a comfortable trot. Calm and serene as my life in sobriety has become, however, I find I still need to develop new ways of exercising conscious control over my pleasure-seeking limbic system and to put a little more fun into my life on a regular basis.
In this endeavor, most recently I’ve come to rely on a handful of nuts. I’m not sure just when it happened, but within the last few months I somehow stumbled onto a delectable blend of raw cashews, roasted almonds and unshelled, salted pistachio nuts—a combination so stimulating to me that I’ve been visiting Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and my local Fairway market at regular intervals for one-pound bags of the individual components. These I carefully mix in proper proportion and disguise in a series of metal tins and plastic containers at the back of the kitchen cabinet, hoping to keep them out of the marauding hands of my omnivorous son-in-law who has been staying with us for the last few weeks as he and my daughter prepare to spend time overseas on a belated honeymoon.
For the most part I’ve been able to maintain my stash in sufficient quantities to provide a needed boost to my pleasure pathway throughout the day, though every so often I lose a tin or two. Feeling a bit neglected, perhaps, with all the time it takes me to purchase, prepare, hide, and evaluate the available level of nuts, my wife has been grumbling a bit and, just the other night, in a slightly vindictive tone of voice, groused that all I was interested in were “those damned nuts.” Looking at each other for a moment, we laughed out loud. Both of us are recovering alcoholics and easily recognize the difference between hiding bottles and stashing a bunch of mixed nuts. Nevertheless, she had a point. I had been getting more distracted of late. Vowing to scale back on my nutty behavior, I whispered apologetically, “The dopamine did it!!!!!!!!!!
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