Archive for the ‘Work & Success’ Category
Become a master storyteller
September 9th, 2010
My nine-year-old nephew just finished his first season as a top hitter on a baseball
all-star team. When he started as a little T-baller a few years ago, I suppose his coach warned him not to sling the bat behind him after a hit. Good advice—but unnecessary. He and his younger sister know well what can happen when a bat spins out of the hitter’s hands.
So many times they’ve heard the tale of my one and only baseball hit. It was a game of cousins and friends in Alabama, and I took my place at the plate: the sorriest hitter on the team. As the ball came toward me, I all but shut my eyes, swung the bat in its general direction, and HOLY COW! I connected. The ball went bouncing toward the pitcher and I took off! First base … I could hear yelling … second base … third base. Only then did I notice there weren’t any basemen. Everyone was huddled over something on the ground at home plate.
The credit-grabbing boss
September 8th, 2010
It’s tough enough to get ahead these days without others taking credit for your work. But office politics is nothing new.
In the 15th Century, English and European sea captains made their fortunes by traveling to the Far East and returning with valuable silks and spices. But it was an arduous journey, around the southern tip of Africa, up to China and Japan, then down and back again. Believing the earth was a small orb, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus
Being an unlikely leader
August 28th, 2010
Sometimes it feels like I was born in the wrong era. I’d love to have marched with suffragists at the turn of the last century, campaigned for better labor conditions in 1930s factories, or helped stage sit-ins on college campuses in the 1960s. Oh, I’ve participated in my share of marches and worked for many causes. But I always yearned to do something more dramatic … until an unlikely hero reminded me you don’t have to start a revolution to make a difference.
“Johnny” was exceptional … but not in a way that usually suggests leadership qualities. He had Down Syndrome, and working as a grocery bagger for a Midwestern supermarket chain was likely as far as his skills would take him. Continue reading...
Is your life off-balance?
August 12th, 2010
As a small child, I was so afraid of heights I was scared to go up on a teeter-totter. So I only got on with children much smaller than I was. That way I could control the experience, keeping myself in the middle and bottom ranges and sending the other kids soaring to the top. Naturally, they were thrilled with the view from on high. The view from the bottom wasn’t so great, but at least it didn’t come with a panic attack.
The other day, I realized I’m back on the teeter-totter, sitting at the bottom and hating the sucky view. Only this time, I don’t have the same level of control. That’s because the teeter-totter is my life, and I’ve somehow seesawed out of balance
Quotes on courage
August 11th, 2010
Children are much more influenced by what their parents do than what they say. Sherry Lansing is a perfect example.
When Sherry chattered about becoming an actress, like other stereotypical moms in the 1950s, Margot Heimann Duhl told her daughter to focus on becoming a housewife. But necessity had forced Margot off traditional paths. When she’d fled Nazi Germany for America at 17, she’d had to be self-reliant, learning to speak English and working as a dressmaker. And when Sherry’s father, real-estate investor David Duhl, died of a sudden heart attack when she was nine, Margot stepped up again. The grieving widow went to his office and announced she was taking over the family business. On being informed by a male office manager that she couldn’t possibly do that because she didn’t know anything about real estate, she replied, “Teach me. I can do it.”
TAGS: courage, fears, goals, influence, inspiration, motivation, Quotations, quotes, Self-Improvement, success | 
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Quotes on fame
August 4th, 2010
She starred in fewer than 25 films and died at only 36 nearly a half century ago. But Marilyn Monroe
made a lasting impression …
A 2006 survey by StarPulse.com listed her as the “All-Time Style Icon of the Last Century.” In April 2010, Americans polled for Gillette named her among the world’s “Top Ten Goddesses.” The same month, British survey respondents chose her one of the “Most Seductive Women of All Time.” In July 2010, a survey for QVC found her one of the “Most Beautiful Women of the Last Century.” And in 2008 when Smithsonian magazine polled cross-country samplings of high school students and adults 45 and over, she was listed among the ten most famous Americans in history, not including presidents or first ladies.
TAGS: fame, inspiration, marilyn, marilyn monroe, monroe, motivation, Quotations, quotes, Self-Improvement, success |
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Quotes on loving your work
July 28th, 2010
Appearances on the U.S. version of the TV hit Dancing With the Stars by former UFC champ and mixed martial artist Chuck Liddell
and rodeo great Ty Murray
have helped erase the stereotype that tough guys don’t dance. But for boys growing up in the 1940s, taking dance classes was a sure way to become the go-to target for neighborhood bullies. So Richard Beymer might have called it quits if fate hadn’t intervened with a paying job on a local L.A. television program. After that, when the bullies started their rants, he smugly told them they’d dance, too, if it meant earning $200 a week. Impressive chutzpah for a kid really making only $8 a week.
A matter of timing
July 26th, 2010
While sipping our caffeinated beverages each morning, we’re also likely to be shaking our heads at news reports of public figures trying to recover from PR nightmares brought on by bad timing:
• With his re-election already in doubt, soon-to-be-ex British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is mortified to be caught open-mic’d ranting about being annoyed by Jane Q. Voter.
• The Virginia Department of Transportation announces 678 layoffs the same morning a huge snowstorm blankets the state’s roadways, overwhelming snow-plowing crews already short-staffed by previous layoffs.
• Reality star Kim Kardashian apologizes profusely for publicizing her new “pet” chimp—actually rented to punk her mom—just three days after another pet chimp makes worldwide headlines for viciously attacking a Connecticut woman.
3 easy problem-solving strategies
July 18th, 2010
Lucien Loubiere had a problem. A big, angry, snorting problem. It was early 1961, and the actor commanded the spotlight before a live audience in Périgueux, France. As he stood center stage looking regal in a brilliant bullfighter’s costume, he suddenly found himself facing an unexpected and unwelcome challenge: an enraged young bull, set loose by practical jokers in the show’s company.
Audience members began screaming and scrambling from the front rows, but Loubiere remained calm. Reaching inside his costume, he quickly extracted a pistol and fired three shots, killing the bull as it charged. Then turning to the audience, he announced with a dismissive shrug, “It’s the modern way to do it.”
Reacting to others’ screw-ups
June 15th, 2010
Poor Virgil was a sweet young man saddled with total ineptitude. Whatever he touched, he broke. No matter how simple the job, he botched it. Finally, given the easy task of polishing a set of keys, he managed to wear away the grooves, rendering the keys useless and sealing the door they were supposed to unlock.
Faced with this latest example of his incompetence, his cousin Barney berated his stupidity, leaving Virgil hanging his head in shame and defeat.
Fans of The Andy Griffith Show
