The unfit die, the fit both live and thrive! -Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn (1876-1959), a poet associated with the American Naturalist literary movement; her autobiography was prefaced with an introduction by Robert Frost.
I remember when I was young talking to a friend of mine who had become a great tennis player! I had not seen him in a while and was amazed at how great he had become…we actually whacked the ball around in the street together…pretty funny scene playing tennis on a skinny Boston street….I could hardly catch up to his shots. He had top spin, under spin, power…the whole box of tricks! So while we were playing I said to him, “Jimmy, you’ve gotten so good at this you must just coast when you’re ahead?”…but his reply was both unexpected and unforgettable: “Nope, exactly the opposite…when I’m ahead, I hit it even harder and play like I’m way behind!”
If you’re any kind of a sports fan like I am, I’m sure you can remember your team or favorite player being ahead on points only to watch them fold like a tent and act like there was no possible way to win without becoming completely defensive. I can think of boxers running away in the last few rounds only to lose on the judges’ score cards after having crafted a masterpiece up to that point…or how about golfers imploding on the final holes!
But think about the real winners…they never seem to let up on the throttle! How about Tiger Woods…he never seems content unless he has decimated the field and even then he finds the flaws in his game or the holes in his boat! How about the image of the great Muhammad Ali standing over his opponents as they lay stretched out on the canvas with nothing left as he willed them back to life hoping for more of that victory!
To a journalist good news is often not news at all. Phil Donahue (1935-), Emmy award winning media personality and star of Donahue, the first tabloid talk show.
There is something I just can’t get past this week! Why is it that we seem to keep accepting that the media…conservative or liberal doesn’t matter…just keeps pounding us with negative news! We sit on the couch and hear about the litany of local fires, shootings, attacks and especially how the financial sky is falling on top of Chicken Little’s head and we just soak it up like we have no choice!
What’s even worse is that we get together, especially in business discussions, and slam the media for accelerating the down turn! Well before you go extending the finger, what are you doing about spreading the good news? Honestly…if you have a business, are you telling people about the fact that your product is discounted to the lowest level it has been in many many years or are you just cutting your budgets to the bone and hoping that someone else does your job for you?
If you’re working at a company are you hiding in your cubicle and waiting for the Grim Reeper to come and harvest your life or are you looking for opportunities to step up and be the leader…you know…the one who gets to work before anybody else and leaves last?! The one who works for free if they have to, just to advance the cause of the team?!
You see the problem is that we’re too focused on the bad news…the end is always coming! Like my grandfather used to say when I was watching cartoons, “you believe that crap?” He was right! I did and we still believe it because we stop looking for the good news or even better the truth! Why not ask a few Bernie Madoff clients?
Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors. -Norman Cousins (1915-1990), prominent political journalist, author and professor. Authored Anatomy of an Illness that chronicled how he overcame a seemingly terminal illness through alternative methods including laughter.
I’d like to start this post off by apologizing to all my fans and admit that during the years between 2002 and 2004, I did in fact take performance enhancing drugs! I thought that by taking these drugs I could move swiftly through the world of mediocrity and ascend quickly into the inner circle of the rich and famous! I would hope that you judge me only from this point forward and realize that I am back to being a working stiff and bleeding through the recession just like the rest of you! While I do miss being 6′5″ and looking like a gorilla in a bathing suit, I do feel much less pressure knowing that it’s just plain old okay to be a “real person” again!!
HAHAHA!!! Get it? Ridiculous eh? But seriously…why can’t we find humor in everything that happens? With the sports world in turmoil over the fact that…hey news flash…you might not believe this…but there are hundreds, thousands and probably the majority of professional athletes taking drugs to gain the tiniest of edges to leapfrog to the elusive brass ring and swing from the tree tops! Didn’t you notice a long time ago that a few German female athletes looked a little too “manly?” It’s everywhere…but why not find it funny? Why do we sit in front of the TV waiting to chastise the next exposed person like an angry, disappointed parent…you know why?! Because you’ve got nothing better to do!
Welcome to my blog! The prupose of this blog is to share the insights that I have gained from coaching hundreds of real estate agents in Craig Proctor’s Quantum Leap System. As a coach, I have realized that no matter what you do you have to work on the “head stuff” on a regular basis! My students have found the mental preparation to not only be the most challenging, but also the most life changing! Any proven system is easy to follow once you understand it’s the operator that needs the most work! At this site I will share with you some of the “Monday Morning Motivations” and other thinking tools that I write for our group! I hope they have the same positive effect on you that they have had on our members! If they work for you, then do the right thing and share them with someone else you think could use them!
Danny Griffin
