Monday, June 30, 2008

MESSAGE #454 - WANT A PH.D. IN LEADERSHIP?

Ph.D. in Leadership,

Short Course:

Make a careful list
of all things done
to you that you
abhorred.

Don’t do them to others,
EVER.

Make another list
of things done
for you that you
loved.

Do them for others,
ALWAYS.

Dee Hock,
Founder &
former CEO
VISA

Sunday, June 29, 2008

MESSAGE #453 - INSPIRATION DOESN’T WORK AS WELL AS...

I.
"Genius
is
1%
inspiration
and
99%
perspiration.”

Thomas Alva Edison

II.
“Don’t
wait
until
you
feel
motivated
to
do
it –
DO IT
and
you’ll
feel
motivated.”

Robert Ellis Gilbert

Saturday, June 28, 2008

MESSAGE #452 - “IT’S ABOUT OTHERS”

What do you do in your free time?

Me?

I google “commencement addresses.”

I’m not kidding.

I love reading these short, insightful, and, hopefully, inspirational speeches.

I love the “life lessons” most. The part when the speaker relates what they known now that they wished they knew then.

Here’s part of a good one . . .

In 2007, Daniel Ritchie, chancellor emeritus of the University of Denver, was the commencement speaker at Colorado School of Mines.

Here’s my favorite part . . .

In looking back now over these many years, I have learned a few other things that I think might be useful to you. I have a few suggestions -- just a few -- on how to make your life not only a success, but a joy.

Finding joy in life doesn't have so much to do with what you know. It's about values and character. Let me tell you about a personal experience.

When I graduated from business school, I looked around at my classmates and divided them into two categories -- those that I would like to work with and those that I wouldn't.

The latter group, I called the snakes.

I was really dividing them up according to my assessment of their character. I wanted to work with people of integrity, loyalty, and honesty -- because I valued those qualities even more than knowledge and skill.

I decided that I would watch my classmates over the years to see how they turned out.

Frankly, the early years were a big surprise!

The snakes were winning hands down.

I worried that maybe I'd gotten life figured out all wrong. Maybe this integrity and caring stuff was for the birds.

But over time, the tide began to turn.

Now, more than 50 years later the good guys are winning by a huge margin and most of the snakes have been run over.

You see, it's a real advantage to be a snake if people don't know you are one, but, sooner or later, they figure it out. And once they have, it's over. You can never change their minds. Also, I've noticed that it isn't much fun being a snake.

There's a reason why caring people with integrity, loyalty, and honesty succeed.

To succeed, any organization, whether a business organization or any other kind, must have teamwork. Real teamwork, requires people who trust one another and care about one another.

In short, you have to be trustworthy. If everybody's just in it for their own fame or fortune, I guarantee you that the organization will be a loser. Over the course of history, mercenaries have never won a war. You have to believe.

And what is true of organizational behavior and success is equally true of societies as a whole. Moral decline recedes economic and social decline. A society of snakes can't function over the long haul, because people are not meant to be selfish, solitary units. To survive and flourish people need to - and must - rely on each other. Snakes can't do that. And we know a society of snakes certainly is no fun.

Now, what I'm telling you, most of you know already. In fact, the human race has known these truths for a very long time.

We in the West have the Golden Rule, which tells us to do unto others what you would have them do unto you.

Across the globe, Confucius said not to do unto others what we would not have them do unto us.

Pretty much the same idea, with a cultural twist.

We've known these things for thousands of years. Sometimes we just forget them.

I remind you of them today because today begins the real test of your life and person. Today marks the beginning of what you've prepared for all these years. And with an education from the School of Mines, you are ready.

Now you just need to make two promises to yourself.

First, that you will never, ever, under any circumstances, compromise your personal integrity.

And, second, that you will find a life purpose, if you haven't already, that goes beyond yourself.

It can be to grow a fine family, improve the environment, support a cause or serve your God.

I can tell you, after many years of personal experience and observation, that a self-centered, selfish life isn't very satisfying or rewarding.

So, just do these two things: Maintain your personal integrity, no matter what. And have a life purpose that goes beyond yourself.

You will be successful.

You will feel fulfilled.

And you'll have a great time, which is very important.

Friday, June 27, 2008

MESSAGE #451 - ONE OF THE GREATEST COMMENCEMENT ADDRESSES EVER!

Brian Dyce, the former CEO of Coca Cola, delivered the following commencement address many years ago . . .

Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air.

You can name them -- work, family, health, friends, and spirit -- and you're keeping all of these in the air and you will soon understand that work is a rubber ball.

If you drop it, it'll bounce back.

But the other four balls -- family, health, friends, and spirit -- are made of glass.

If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They'll never be the same, and you must understand that and strive for the balance of your life.

"How?”

Don't undermine your worth by comparing yourself with others. It is
because we are different that each of us is special.

Don't set your goals by what other people deem important. Only you know what is best for you.

Don't take for granted the things that are closest to your heart. Cling to
them as you would your life; for without them, life is meaningless.

Don't let your life slip through your fingers by living in the past or for the future. By living your life one day at a time, you live all the days of your life.

Don't give up when you still have something to give. Nothing is really over until the moment you stop trying.

Don't be afraid to admit that you are less than perfect -- it is this fragile thread that binds us to each other.

Don't be afraid to encounter risk -- it is by taking chances that we learn how to be brave.

Don't shut love out of your life by saying it's impossible to find -- the quickest way to receive love is to give, and the fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly, and the best way to keep love is to give it wings.

Don't run through life so fast that you forget not only where you've been but also where you're going.

Don't forget that a person's greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.

Don't be afraid to learn -- knowledge is weightless, a treasure you can always carry easily.

Don't use time or words carelessly; neither can be retrieved.

Life is not a race but a journey to be savored each step of the way. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift. That's why we call it the present.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

MESSAGE #450 - WALT DISNEY’S FOUR C’S...

Somehow I can’t believe
there are many heights
that can’t be scaled by a
person who knows the
secret of making dreams
come true.

This special secret,
it seems to me,
can be summarized
in four C’s.

They are
Curiosity,
Confidence,
Courage and
Constancy
and the greatest
of these is
CONFIDENCE.

When you believe
a thing,
believe it all over,
implicitly and unquestioning.

Walt Disney (1901-1966)

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

MESSAGE #449 - A GREAT STORY???

Is today’s story a great story?

There’s only one way to tell.

If you read it and like it so much that you re-tell it to someone else – it’s a great story.

From The Speaker’s Book of Quotations by Henry O. Dormann . . .

One of the favorite stories [the great writer] James Thurber told is of a conversation he had with a nurse while he was in a hospital.

“What seven letter word has three u’s in it?” he asked.

The nurse thought for a while and then replied, “I really don’t know, but it must be very unusual.”

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

MESSAGE #448 - WHY TIGER IS TIGER

Op-Ed Columnist
New York Times
June 17, 2008

THE FROZEN GAZE

By DAVID BROOKS

Rocco Mediate’s head swiveled about as he walked up the fairway of the sudden-death hole of the U.S. Open on Monday. Somebody would catch his attention, and his eyes would dart over and he’d wave or make a crack. Tiger Woods’s gaze, on the other hand, remained fixed on the ground, a few feet ahead of his steps. He was, as always, locked in, focused and self-contained.

The fans greeted Mediate with fraternal affection and Woods with reverence. Most were probably rooting for Rocco, but only because Woods, the inevitable victor, has risen above mere human status and become an embodiment of immortal excellence. That frozen gaze of his looks out from airport billboards, TV commercials and the ad pages. And its ubiquity is proof that every age finds the heroes it needs.

In a period that has brought us instant messaging, multitasking, wireless distractions and attention deficit disorder, Woods has become the exemplar of mental discipline. After watching Woods walk stone-faced through a roaring crowd, the science writer Steven Johnson, in a typical comment, wrote: “I have never in my life seen a wider chasm between the look in someone’s eye and the surrounding environment.”

The coverage of him often centers upon this question: How did this creature come about? The articles inevitably mention his precocity (at age 3, he shot a 48 on the front nine of a regulation course) and provide examples of his athletic prowess: Once Woods tried out four drivers that Nike was experimenting with and told the lab guys that he preferred the heavier one. The researchers thought the clubs were the same weight, but they measured and Woods was right. The club he’d selected was heavier by the equivalent of two cotton balls.

But inevitably, it is his ability to enter the cocoon of concentration that is written about and admired most. Writers describe the way Earl Woods, his lieutenant colonel father, dropped his golf bag while Tiger was swinging to toughen his mind. They describe his mother’s iron discipline at home. “Old man is soft,” Kultida Woods once said of her husband. “He cry. He forgive people. Not me. I don’t forgive anybody.”

Tiger was the one dragging them out on the course to practice. At age 6 months, he was put in a baby chair and had the ability, his father claimed, to watch golf for two hours without losing focus.

As an adult, he is famously self-controlled. His press conferences are a string of carefully modulated banalities. His lifestyle is meticulously tidy. His style of play is actuarial. He calculates odds and avoids unnecessary risks like the accounting major he once planned on being. “I am, by nature, a control freak,” he once told John Garrity of Sports Illustrated, as Garrity resisted the temptation to reply, “You think?

And for that, in this day and age, he stands out. As I’ve been trying to write this column, I’ve toggled over to check my e-mail a few times. I’ve looked out the window. I’ve jotted down random thoughts for the paragraphs ahead. But Woods seems able to mute the chatter that normal people have in their heads and build a tunnel of focused attention.

Writers get rhapsodic over this facility. “Woods’s concentration often seems to be made of the same stuff as the liquid-metal cyborg in Terminator 2: If you break it, it reforms,” David Owen wrote in Men’s Vogue.

Then they get spiritual. In Slate, Robert Wright only semi-facetiously compared Woods to Gandhi, for his ability to live in the present and achieve transcendent awareness. Analysts inevitably bring up his mother’s Buddhism, his experiments in meditation. They describe his match-mentality in the phrases one might use to describe a guru achieving nirvana. He achieves, they say, perfect clarity, tranquility and flow. We’re talking about somebody who is the primary spokesman for Buick, and much of the commentary about him is on the subject of his elevated spiritual capacities.

And here we’re getting to the nub of what’s so remarkable about the “Be A Tiger” phenomenon: He’s become the beau ideal for golf-loving corporate America, the personification of mental fortitude.

The ancients were familiar with physical courage and the priests with moral courage, but in this over-communicated age when mortals feel perpetually addled, Woods is the symbol of mental willpower. He is, in addition, competitive, ruthless, unsatisfied by success and honest about his own failings. (Twice, he risked his career to retool his swing.)

During the broadcast of Monday’s playoff round, Nike ran an ad that had Earl Woods’s voice running over images of his son: “I’d say, ‘Tiger, I promise you that you’ll never meet another person as mentally tough as you in your entire life.’ And he hasn’t. And he never will.”

You can like this model or not. Either way, the legend grows.

Monday, June 23, 2008

MESSAGE #447 - SUCCESS SECRETS

I.

“The secret of success
is
constancy to purpose.”

Benjamin Disraeli
British Prime Minister


II.

F.O.C.U.S.

Follow
One
Course
Until
Successful

Gary Pritchard
Author

III.

“Focused
action
beats
brilliance
any
day.”

Art Turock
Professional speaker

IV.


“The problem isn’t that you can’t focus.
You’re always focusing.
The problem is: Are you focusing on the right thing.”

Rob Gilbert

Sunday, June 22, 2008

MESSAGE #446 - INCH BY INCH

Yard by yard,
it might be hard,
but
inch by inch,
it’s a cinch.

Norman Lear, television writer and producer . . .

My grandfather told
me when I was about
ten, as we stood at
the edge of a lake
in Moodus, Connecticut,
that each time I threw
a stone into the water
I was raising the level
of the lake.

I threw another stone.


It wasn’t happening.


So I threw a rock.


I still couldn’t see the
level of the lake rising,
but my grandfather
asked me if I saw the
ripple.

Years later I understood
what he was getting at.

The ripple is what we all
have to be satisfied with.

That’s what we all have
to work our hearts out for –
to make a ripple.

Then we won’t see it
but the water level
does rise.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

MESSAGE #445 - RAED EVREY WROD!

Aoccdrnig to rseaecrh
at Hravard Uinervtisy,
it deosn’t mttaer waht oredr
the ltteers in a word are,
the olny iprmoatnt tihng
is taht the frist and lsat
ltteers be in the rghjit pclae.

Tihs is bcuseae the
huamn mnid deos not
raed ervey lteter by istlef,
but the wrod as a wlohe.

Friday, June 20, 2008

MESSAGE #444 - “OH, MY GOD!”

The balance beam in women’s gymnastics is one of the most difficult events in all of sports.

Imagine if the balance beam moved.

Imagine if you had . . . oh, I don’t want to give it away.

This video is beyond amazing.

WATCH IT TO THE END!

Don’t be surprised if you say, “Oh, my God!”


Thursday, June 19, 2008

MESSAGE #443 - FAILURE CAN MOTIVATE YOU!

Is failure, disappointment, and rejection going to make you better or bitter?

The choice is yours.

Lolo Jones is one of the best in the world in the 100 meter hurdles. She’ll probably win a medal in the Olympics this August.

Here’s what she had to say . . .

“I’m inspired by failure.
The process of defeat –
picking yourself back up again
is the hardest thing in the world.
But you emerge stronger.”

Thanks, Lolo . . .

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

MESSAGE #442 - FACT OR FICTION?

The following is a list that been around for a while.

Please feel to add, delete, compliment or reject . . .

1. At least two people in this world love you so much they would die for you.

2. At least 15 people in this world love you in some way.

3. The only reason anyone would ever really hate you is because they want to be just like you.

4. A smile from you can bring happiness to people, even if they don’t know you.

5. Every night, someone thinks about you before they go to sleep.

6. You mean the world to more people than you think.

7. If not for you, someone may not be living.

8. You may have saved someone’s life and you don’t even know it.

9. Someone you don’t even know trusts you.

10. Even when you make the biggest mistake ever -- something good will come from it.

11. When you think the world has turned its back on you, take a look – what you see may pleasantly surprise you.

12. When you think you have no chance of getting what you want, you probably won’t get it. But if you believe in yourself, sooner or later, you will get it.

13. Always remember the compliments you received. Forget about the rude criticisms.

14. If you saw a list of everyone who admires you – you would be amazed!

15. You’ve rejected yourself more than the rest of the world has rejected you. Don’t let it take you years to realize that this is true.

16. If you have a great friend, take the time to let them know that they are great.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

MESSAGE #441 - THE BEST ADVICE EVER

“FIND
WHAT
YOU
REALLY
CARE
ABOUT
AND
LIVE
A
LIFE
THAT
SHOWS
IT.”

-- Kate Wolf (1942 – 1986)
folk singer and song writer

Monday, June 16, 2008

MESSAGE #440 - THE 10,000 TEST

Tiger Woods passed the test.
David Copperfield passed the test.
Linda Eder passed the test.
Steven King passed the test.
Михаил Николаевич Барышников passed the test.
So did Mia Hamm, Joan Rivers, Dr. Paul Hartunian,
Adina Aaron, and Dr. Arthur Benjamin . . .

Have you???

If you want to be really, really, really
good at something: 10,000 hours.

. . . ten thousand hours of practice is required
to achieve the level of mastery associated
with being a world-class expert -- in anything.

In study after study, of composers, basketball
players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert
pianists, chess players, master criminals,
and what have you, this number comes up
again and again.

Ten thousand hours is the equivalent to roughly
three hours per day, or twenty hours per week,
of practice over ten years.

Of course, this doesn't address why some people
don't seem to get anywhere when they practice,
and why some people get more out of their practice
sessions than others.

But no one has yet found a case in which true
world-class expertise was accomplished in less time.

It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate
all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

Source
Book: “This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession”
Author: Dr. Daniel J. Levitin


So . . . if you think it’s going to be difficult
to devote 10,000 hours – imagine how difficult
it will be to compete against someone who has
devoted the 10,000 hours if you haven’t.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

MESSAGE #439 - ENERGY!

This is dancing.

A BIG thank you to SUE BROOKS for discovering this . . .


Saturday, June 14, 2008

MESSAGE #438 - DESIRE WINS!

IT’S
NOT
HOW
GOOD
YOU
ARE,
IT’S
HOW
BAD
YOU
WANT
IT!




Friday, June 13, 2008

MESSAGE #437 - WHAT A STORY!

If the Moccos do well this weekend, can a movie be far behind?

Pain, prison and the pursuit of gold
A scarred family's Olympic trial

Friday, June 13, 2008
Steve Politi
The Newark Star-Ledger

We want our Olympic stories to fit neatly into made-for-TV themes -- with heroes and villains, champions and losers. But where do we put the Mocco family and its incredible tale?
How do you capture the emotions of a family that has two elite athletes competing in Team USA trials this weekend in Las Vegas? Katie Mocco, a rising star in judo, fights for her dream today. Steve Mocco, one of the best heavyweight wrestlers in the world, chases his on Sunday.
How can you understand the way family patriarch Joe Mocco feels with two of his six children on the verge of greatness? Especially when he prays daily for three other children who died in horrific car accidents not far from their North Bergen home?

How do you reconcile Mocco as a selfless father who drags suitcases filled with food on family road trips to save money when he served five years in prison on racketeering charges? When he missed a chunk of their childhood?

No, there is nothing easy about this story, nothing TV producers can fit into a slick Olympic feature. But if Steve or Katie Mocco -- or both -- ends up on a medal stand in Beijing this August, all of the Moccos will share that moment.
And the impressive part won't be a gold medal. It will be how this family didn't break.

Maybe we should start with the good.

Joe Mocco, 64, is the reason his kids can train full-time without worry. He pays their rent and sends them money to cover their expenses. He travels to every tournament, and he never packs light.

He spent the days leading up to Las Vegas shopping for the best deals on groceries, then he and his wife, Helen, prepared a week of meals to take on his flight Wednesday. Helen, a grammar school teacher, decided to stay home.
One slab of London Broil, cooked and frozen. ... Two whole cooked chickens, cut up and sealed in plastic bags. ... One casserole dish of chicken parmigiana, prepared and frozen. ... Two jars of homemade soup. ...

"Believe me, there's a science to it," Mocco said earlier this week as he held up London Broil he bought for $1.39 a pound. "We're not wealthy people. We're not poor, but we're not wealthy."

So instead of a table for seven at a swank restaurant on the strip, his family will eat around a hotel-room bed. Mocco will cook in a small microwave he lugged along from Hudson County.
Cutting corners is nothing new for the family. Mocco bought a used Ford Extended Van in 1990 for the trips where they could sleep. And when that wasn't big enough? He extended the extended van, using parts from a junkyard to add another four and a half feet on the back.
He fashioned it with four beds, including one big enough for Steve, who is 26 and now weighs 275 pounds. He installed a refrigerator and a sink. He put up a curtain between the two rear doors, running a hose from the sink for a makeshift shower.

Everyone used that shower except Katie, who was just a bit mortified. "We called it Frankenvan," Katie, 24, said with a giggle. "I pretended I was embarrassed, but it was actually pretty cool."

The van has almost 400,000 miles on it. It followed Steve, who went 216-1 as a prep wrestler at St. Benedict's and Blair Academy, onto stardom at Iowa and Oklahoma State. It carried Katie as she dropped out of college and became a national judo champion in 2005.
The family lived in that van and became closer in it. But there was a time when the father wasn't around to do the driving.

Joe Mocco might have been plain old "dad" to his children, but to state investigators, he was "The Big Guy," "The King" and "God." He was the town clerk in North Bergen, a longtime powerbroker in Hudson County, and according to court documents, he also was corrupt.
Mocco was charged with taking more than $56,000 in bribes to allow a hauling company to illegally dump garbage in North Bergen. He was convicted of racketeering in 1989, but avoided prison until July 1995 with appeals.

Steve Mocco was entering the sixth grade, his promise as a wrestler beginning to show when his father was sent to prison.

"I did nothing," Joe Mocco said, claiming his political enemies wanted him out of the way. "They framed me. They absolutely framed me. I never met the people they were talking about."
State investigators, of course, tell a different story. They point to wiretaps, seized financial records and the rest of the evidence in their 116-page indictment. The trial lasted seven months, and when it ended, Mocco was sentenced to 20 years and ordered to pay a quarter of a million in fines and restitution.

Mocco, who once gave away 20,000 tomatoes in North Bergen in an effort to promote healthier lives in the town, spent three years at Bayside State prison in Leesburg and another two in an Elizabeth halfway house.

"It was a nightmare," said Mocco, who's still paying off the fine. "A total nightmare."
But not the only one his family would endure, and certainly not the worst.
There are six Mocco children in Las Vegas this weekend.

Steve and Katie are competing. Audrey, the oldest daughter, is there. So is Joey, an Ivy League grad and a lawyer, and J, a neurosurgeon. So is Colleen, the youngest and a college student.
Michael never made it.

Neither did Diana.

Neither did Peter.

The first accident was in July 1982. Michael, then 6, and Diana, just 2, were crossing Kennedy Boulevard in North Bergen with their baby-sitter. Cops were chasing a stolen 1973 Chevrolet. The light at 84th Street turned red. The Chevy swerved into the other lane and struck the pedestrians. All three died.

The second accident happened two days before Christmas in 1989, just five blocks from the site of the first. Mocco was bringing his family home from a wrestling tournament. The kids looked out and saw a man in a Santa Claus outfit on the sidewalk.
Mocco stopped the van to let them out, but Peter, then 4, slipped on the ice and fell under the van. Mocco never knew his son was unconscious and under one of the wheels when the light turned green and he hit the gas.

"I picked him up and rushed to the hospital," Mocco said. "We waited for the news for four or five hours."

The father inhaled deeply.

"He would be 23 now."

Does sorrow surpass scandal when telling this story? Does triumph top tragedy when recounting the Mocco family's odyssey to the brink of the Olympics?

"We've had a lot of adversity in the course of our lives," Joe Mocco said. "But it has not hindered or crippled (my children) in any way.
"If anything, it has made us stronger."

Both Moccos will be underdogs this weekend, forced to emerge from the challenger's bracket for a shot at the winner-takes-all final and a ticket to Beijing. One misstep, one slip or stumble, and another four years of training and sacrifice will vanish.

That is the central theme of nearly every Olympic story. But not this one. When the Moccos settle in for dinner around that hotel bed this weekend, when their father prepares his meals in that tiny microwave, the hardest part of their journey will be behind them.

Steve Politi appears regularly in The Star-Ledger.
He may be reached at spoliti@starledger.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

MESSAGE #436 - MY FAVORITE BASEBALL PLAYER IS...

My favorite ball player is eight-year old Adam Bender from Kentucky.

Three minutes from now, he’ll be your favorite ball player too!

Thanks to Dave Kaplan of the Yogi Berra Museum for sharing this.


Wednesday, June 11, 2008

MESSAGE #435 - DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. . . .

“The
ultimate
measure
of
a
man
is not
where
he
stands
in
moments
of
COMFORT
and
CONVENIENCE,
but
where
he
stands
at
times
of
CHALLENGE
and
CONTROVERSY.”

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

MESSAGE #434 - ON MOUNTAIN CLIMBING

“I’ve had enough. I’m giving up. I quit.”

Climbing is a sport, but climbing in the mountains, like ocean racing or crossing a desert takes place in different conditions from those of common sports.

A climb is not a sort of game that can be stopped at any time.

Even if you are at the limits of endurance, if your feet are like lead, if nothing but extreme effort of will keeps you going, even if lightning is flashing across the sky, you cannot sit down and say, “I’ve had enough. I’m giving up. I quit.”

And even when you do get to the top, the rock is still not half finished.

This is undoubtedly the hardest of rules to accept, but it is nevertheless an attraction:
On every crest the climber must ride his whole self.

Author unknown

Monday, June 9, 2008

MESSAGE #433 - ESPECIALLY FOR SALESPEOPLE

“Hard work
beats
talent
when
talent
doesn’t
work hard.”

“Your
competitor’s
name
for
your
#1 customer –
their
#1 prospect.”

-- Frank Somma
sales trainer extraordinaire

Sunday, June 8, 2008

MESSAGE #432 - DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!

Wally was a slow-moving, unpopular clerk in a small grocery store.

One Monday morning, Wally wasn’t at work.

A loyal customer asked the owner where Wally was.

The owner said, “Wally doesn’t work here any more.”

The inquisitive customer asked, “Who do you have in mind to fill the vacancy?”

The owner replied, “That’s no problem at all. Wally didn’t leave a vacancy.”

Saturday, June 7, 2008

MESSAGE #431 - EVERY SUCCESSFUL PERSON KNOWS THIS

“The Common Denominator of Success”
lies the fact that:

WINNERS
HAVE
SIMPLY
FORMED
THE
HABIT
OF
DOING
THINGS
THAT
LOSERS
DON’T
LIKE
TO
DO.

Albert E.N. Gray
life insurance expert


Friday, June 6, 2008

MESSAGE #430 - GREATEST SPORTS MOVIE EVER???

I don’t know if it’s the greatest sports movie ever.

I do know that it’s the greatest theme for a sports movie – EVER!!!

Here are two versions . . .

The first with the genius composer Vangelis.

And the second from a concert at the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens on June 28, 2001.

I love YouTube!


Thursday, June 5, 2008

MESSAGE # 429 - WHY GET MAD...

Gramps still drove his big 18-wheeler even though he was in his 80s.

One day, while he was eating lunch at small roadside bar, three tough young hoodlums parked their motorcycles, came in, and started drinking.

After they had a couple of beers, they started getting on Gramps’ case.

They taunted him, started eating some of his food, and threw some beer in his face.

Gramps, trying to ignore their taunts, quickly got up and paid his bill without saying a word.

One of the hoodlums, upset that they couldn’t provoke the old man into a fight, said to the waitress, “What a wimp, he wasn’t much of a man was he?”

The waitress, looking out the window, said, “No he wasn’t much of a man and he isn’t much of a truck driver either. He just backed his truck over three motorcycles.”

WHY GET MAD . . . WHEN YOU CAN GET EVEN!

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

MESSAGE #428 - ONE OF THE GREATEST FEELINGS IN LIFE

The following quote from a commencement address given in 2004 at Whitman College by Michael Ignatieff, Canadian author, professor, and politician . . .

One
of the
greatest feelings
in life
is
the conviction
that
you have
lived the life
you wanted
to live –
with
the
rough and smooth,
the
good and the bad –
but yours,
shaped by
your own choices,
and
not
someone else’s.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

MESSAGE # 427 - QUALITY

Quality isn’t about money,

it’s about caring.

It’s about wanting
to be the best
because there is
personal pride
at stake –
an individual
declaration
of identity
with the product.

There is always a market
for the best,
all over the globe.

It’s an obvious and well-known
fact that mountain climbers
don’t like to buy
discounted climbing ropes.

And there’s the joke
about the parachute
offer for sale --
“Cheap, slightly irregular,
but used only once.”

When something is as
important as life and death –
and all business decisions
should be --
quality is irreplaceable.

Hap Klopp,
Founder,
The North Face
(world’s largest producer
Of outdoor adventure equipment)

Monday, June 2, 2008

MESSAGE #426 - THE ABSOLUTE SECRET TO SUCCESS

Once upon a time,
there was a
chicken and a pig
who were the best of friends.

They lived in a very poor
town where no one ever
seemed to have enough food.

One day, the chicken
had an idea
how to help the poor,
hungry townspeople.

She approached her
friend the pig and said,
“I know how we could help
everyone in town.”

“What could we do?”
questioned the pig.

“Well, I could give the
eggs I lay and you
could make some of your big
body into a ham so that we
could have ham and eggs
breakfast for all the poor,
needy people,” the chicken
explained.

“I understand your concern,”
answered the pig, “but
what is just a donation for yo
is a total commitment for me!”

Let’s talk about you . . .
when you go to work or school,
do you “donate” your
time or do you
totally commit
yourself?

Total commitment is the absolute
secret of success.

Totally commit – it won’t kill you!

Rob Gilbert

Sunday, June 1, 2008

MESSAGE # 425 - CHANGE

“YOU
MUST

BE
THE CHANGE
YOU
WISH
TO SEE
IN
THE
WORLD.”

-- Gandhi