“Monday Motivation – What Comes First: The Give or The Get?”
We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give. -Winston Churhill (1874-1965), British Prime Minister.
Teleological. Goal seeking organism. According to Aristotle, that’s what we all are. Some call it go-getters, others refer to it as survival of the fittest. Kill or be killed. Only the strong survive. All that don’t fight are fit for extinction!
Really? Is this the human condition? Wouldn’t an unbridled attack attitude lead to chaos? Look at how much ill will there is toward the wealthy. Certainly we celebrate the inventors like Steve Jobs who brought us pleasing and life changing products, but what about all those bankers who raked in massive fees while their industry tanked…where was the value added cried the abused!
So it appears that the masses tend to lean towards fair play…no problem that there’s a game to play and win, but when you cheat you get reeled in quickly and chastised. So what’s at play here? To some extent we all like to “get” and advance our own cause, but is there a right or better way to do it? And if there is, who says what’s better? Who makes the rules anyhow?
Some would argue that there’s a moral authority that we should look to, but what if you don’t believe that God or any higher power exists? What about a referee? Do we need one? Can we even find an unbiased one that’s incorruptible?
Rather than get exasperated about trying to police unbridled “getting”, why not look to giving? Consider the historical perspective…who do we remember the most? The extreme “getters” such as Napoleon, Hitler, Hussein amongst other enterprising conquerors and the extreme “givers” such as Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King.
“Harmony: Minds vs. Ideas”
The concept of the Master Mind as conceived by Napoleon Hill was predicated on the concept of harmony. In turn, he claimed that true mind chemistry amongst people would be nearly impossible because of the task of coordinating multiple minds.
Why? Well not the least of which could be the insecurity of man and the desire to lead. Or of course the competitive nature of man to dominate others at any expense. Yet there are many examples of minds coming together to collaborate for great achievement. Simply look to Edison’s lab loaded with people grinding away in search of the right filament material.
So this begs the question: do you start by gathering the minds first or the idea or goal to rally around and let the interested minds be magnetically attracted?
What do you think?
“Passion Writes the Why!”
When you feel lost maybe it’s because you lost your mojo, but what is your mojo and how do you find it once it’s lost. We could make the argument that your mojo is that personal swagger, not necessarily your ego, rather a simple confidence that makes you feel good.
In the context of your business, start by asking yourself why you’re the best option for the consumer and watch as your passion to compete swells up. Listen to the conviction with which you describe the problems in your industry and how the lesser competitors could never compare to your compassion and level of service.
Then write it all down. Clean it up. Simplify it. Convert it into a simple claim based statement that tells the world why they should choose you. Then there you have it; the campfire that your mojo loves to gather around.
You can do this in any aspect of your life. Simply remember that all you need to find your mojo again is to turn your passion loose. You’ll always find your way back!
“Monday Motivation-Down But Far From Out!”
Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fail. -Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) Irish poet, writer and physician.
Chest pumped up. Head held high. Come and go as you please. Get paid well. Spend it freely. Plenty of friends. Who cares about the haters? If anybody gets too close for comfort, bite them. Who cares? Everybody that matters likes you anyway…or do they?
So is this the description of us at our best or just what our self-indulgent ego thinks is our best? These days it’s not hard to see how little tolerance the general population has for those that think they can dictate and dominate at the true hard hitting expense of others. It might work for a while but, ultimately it will bring you down. Just look to the world’s dictators who are no longer or the financial institutions that redistributed the average consumers money without adding value.
All of this has come into complete focus as people have been broken by a changing world. For me, I’ve lived it and coached many people through it, even my new dog. Our full-of-life Springer had gotten so out of control that he thought he had a rightful place at the dinner table. Now after a second round of training he came home almost dejected and depressed. Talk about pulling on your heart strings.
Yet I’m blessed to know that look let alone feel it. It’s the tired stare we make after life yanks us off the greased skids we were cruising along. What the heck happened? Our sails were filled with plenty of wind and the waves at our back and just like that it changes. We figure maybe it will be okay soon enough, but it stays tough. Then the clouds start to roll in and we don’t even notice them.
“Monday Motivation-Do You Own It?”
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. -Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher.
My word is my bond. My name is everything. This is what I heard from a few real estate agents this week when I asked them about their values. This all came in the context of of helping them build the presentations that they give to their prospects. My train of thought had been challenged by something I recently read that said all great presentations were based on values and described values as internal states of emotions…something more abstract than simple words.
Perhaps this discovery is at the very heart of why so many people seem to be going through the motions in business and life. It’s one thing to be taught something that works, but if you’re not really feeling it internally, won’t it shine through? If you believe that we can read each other by simple body movements, wouldn’t a lack of true conviction be obvious? Furthermore, if other people truly are looking for leaders and experts why would they line up with somebody that didn’t fully believe in themselves and their message?
Many of us are always after that seemingly illusive concept of success. We want it so badly that we tend to get obsessed with its pursuit. Some of us will even cheat to get it. Enormous volumes have been written about it. Many works about success eventually conclude that we have to start with why we’re after it at all. Why we want to be successful might ultimately be as simple as our drive to survive, which in modern days invokes a more complicated plight in the information age than kill or be killed.
