What's it all about?

There is an old song with a line ‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’

Replace ‘Alfie’ with your name and try to answer that question for yourself. What’s it all about for you?

What did you come up with? Is it all about,

Your job or your career?
Your business?
Your Investments?
Your favorite sports team?
Your house or vacation house?
Your kids?
Your spouse?
Your conquests?
Your achievements?

Notice the word common to each line. Yea, I did set it up that way but to try to get you to see a point.

Most of what we pursue is for our own joy, satisfaction or pleasure. This stuff won’t last forever or, in the case of your family, they won’t always do what you want, or be there.

There are opportunities more enduring that can provide you with more satisfaction and enjoyment. You can even feel some accomplishment all when you do things for others.

It will require some changes. And you won’t be a wimp doing stuff for others. It requires courage, leadership and discipline. Requires you to become more of a man or woman.

But you can do it! There is someone who can help you do it.

Is everyone a critic?

Have you criticized anyone today? How about more than one person?

So what was the outcome?

Initially you felt better and they felt bad or discouraged. But ultimately both of you may be feeling bad and your relationship may be strained.

What was accomplished by doing this?

Hopefully by thinking about this you’ve grown personally or in your maturity level and you realized there may be a better way to make your point without upsetting someone else, yourself and creating a long term problem in your relationship.

Challenge yourself to find a better way to point things out to others without creating relationship tsunamis.

Get hell-bent on making it work

‘Failure will do one of two things to you - toughen your resolve to try again with more intelligence or break you. Choosing the former is a "not-so-secret" secret to success, but that doesn't make it any easier when you're struggling. You've got to make a conscious choice to not let the failure stop you. There's a definite magic in being "hell-bent" on making something work.’

Try This:
1.Pick some place in your life where you're not happy with the level of progress you're making
2.Answer this question at least 5 times - "If I were "hell-bent" on making this work what would I do differently than I'm doing now?"
3.Then finish this sentence at least 5 times - "If in 6 months I still haven't made progress, the reasons I'll give are..."
4.Get to work doing what you wrote in #2 and ensuring what your wrote in #3 doesn't happen
5.Repeat as necessary

Doug Sundheim at the FC (Fast Company) Expert Blog quoting Elon Musk, CEO of Space – X in the blog of 1/13/10 titled ‘Get hell-bent on making it work’.

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/doug-sundheim/leading-ideas/get-hell-bent-making-it-work

Capitalism

‘Along with bringing prosperity to millions, democratic capitalism has undermined political tyranny and promoted democracy and peace between nations of the world. It is, without doubt, the world's most moral system.’

Steve Forbes in "How Capitalism Will Save Us."

Standards

Standards are important. Why have we lowered ours as a society?

‘Whether character can be taught is an age-old question; usually we refer to its being built. West Point does not pretend its cadets are immune from the normal temptations of our culture. After all, they come from the same towns and high schools other universities draw from. The difference is that at West Point, words such as duty, honor and country are spoken without irony—and a scandal is a scandal because behavior is still measured against standards’

Wall St Journal of 1/5/10 - By WILLIAM MCGURN – ‘A Salute to West Point - The school tries to build a military led by officers of character’

Respect

"Coach Addazio walked up to the front of the team, and it was one of the loudest rounds of ovations that I have been a part of in my entire life," Gators quarterback Tim Tebow said on Monday. "The team, the players clapped for probably three or four minutes for Addazio. It didn't stop."

"I just really felt great about their support," Addazio said. "Do you know what I mean? Ultimately, that's what it's all about. It's about players and the respect that they have. If you have that, you can push and you can drive. If you don't have that now, you can't do that."

"It's not about me," he said. "It's not. It sounds corny, but that's how I feel about it. ... I'm just interested in making sure our players are good, our coaches are good, Coach Meyer is good. We've got a lot of work to do now."

From 12.29.09 USA Today after Steve Addazio was announced as the Interim Head Football Coach of the Florida Gators.

The point of this quote is that leaders earn respect because of what they give (involvement, commitment, concern and respect for people). These leaders will have a team that will give a great deal of effort for them. Leaders who think their position or title entitles them to this type of respect won’t get it because the team knows that 'you' as the leader think it’s all about 'you'.

Responsibility

Below are quotes from two different men from two different periods of history and each achieved success in a different arena. Each has come to the same conclusion.

"The price of greatness is responsibility." — Winston Churchill, Statesman, Prime Minister of England during WWII

In the old days, words like sin and Satan had a moral certitude. Today, they're replaced with self-help jargon, words like dysfunction and antisocial behavior, discouraging any responsibility for one's actions.." — Don Henley
Singer/Songwriter/ Founding member of the Eagles

One way to determine those who don’t take responsibility is to see who they blame when something doesn’t work out - themselves or others. Politicians come to mind when I think about this.