Numbers in the News - 13

We're Lost Our Mirrors

Societies have rites of passage to help members deal with change. When these cues are missing and we have nothing in our lives to affirm that change is appropriate and timely, we’ve lost our mirrors. This is when a dependable support system can step up to make the difference. Just like the recovering alcoholic needs reminders about what a healthy identity looks like, we need a trusted circle of friends to remind us that the change in our lives is both positive and necessary.  And we need that circle to encourage us to embrace the new identity and not the old one.

Stephen Goforth

thruth springs

Truth springs from argument amongst friends. –David Hume

your day!

Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way. -Dr. Seuss

keeping your soul

To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life.  If I asked you to keep your soul-would you understand why that is much harder? -Ayn Rand

to do right

To do right because of reputation, to do right because it is the correct thing, to do right to escape criticism, all such motives will fail sooner or later. To do right because I love is the one and only lasting motive. "Love never fails." G. Campbell Morgan

to be trusted

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. –George MacDonald

to be blind

To be blind is bad, but worse it is to have eyes and not to see.  – Helen Keller

not a bystander

Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. -Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC

Improving your inner circle

I reviewed my life when I turned forty. I had the desire to keep going to a higher level and to make a greater impact, but I realized that I had leveraged my time as much as I possibly could, and it would have been impossible to sharpen the focus on my priorities any more than it already was. In other words, I could not work harder or smarter. That left me only one choice: learning to work through others.

John Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership

the extra mile

There is no traffic jam on the extra mile.

two ways

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking. – Alfred Korzybski

no heavier burden

There is no heavier burden than a great potential. --Linus, "Peanuts"

there is someting

There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.

- Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers)

revenge

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

no box

There is no box

made by God

nor us

but that the sides can be flattened out

and the top blown off

to make a dance floor

on which to celebrate life.  

Kenneth Caraway

two ways to live

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.  - Albert Einstein

a simple question

Upon meeting someone, instead of asking, "What do you do?" I prefer asking, "What do you love to do?" That always stops people. Their eyes soften, and they smile. "What do I love to do?" Sadly, it usually it has nothing to do with their work.

The problem is that our society does not teach us to value what we really love. It teaches us to value what we are good at. How many people do you know who are really good at their jobs but hate what they do for a living? Think for a moment. It's staggering.

In the last few years, I've become acutely aware of just where the culprit might lie.

My daughter and I have just finished the college slog, and she is off to her freshman year in a matter of weeks. The journey wasn't easy. Over and over again at colleges around the country I heard admissions people with starched shirts and neat scarves shooting what felt to me like verbal bullets to a room full of prospective students, such as "Who here is good at math? Raise your hand."

Half the room would groan. Half would raise their hands.

"Okay — for those of you with raised hands, you might want to declare Accounting as your major. Accounting majors are guaranteed jobs out of college."

Eh-hem???

Is that what college is for? Getting a job?

A job is a good thing, of course, but college is about something deeper. It should teach you how to think. It should help you learn what you can't stand. It is about stretching your mind in ways you never thought you could and coming out the other side ready to fly into the unknowns of life with some level of confidence and better yet, wonder.

Every single time I witnessed this What-are-you-good-at-raise-your-hand assault on our college-bound youth, I wanted to stand up, Oz-like, and say, "Ignore the person on the stage. It's not what you are good at. It's what you love. If you are lucky enough to have both, good for you!"

Laura Munson, Writing in The Week

tell me

Tell me who admires and loves you, And I will tell you who you are.

–Charles Aguustin Sainte-Beuve

Your Strength Zone

Successful people know their strength zone and consistently works in it.  Successful leaders know how to find the strength zone for the people they lead and help them consistently work in it.  John Maxwell