A Sermon Walking
Have you ever seen a sermon walking? Listen to this story.
Reporters and city officials gathered at a Chicago railroad station one afternoon in 1953. The person they were meeting was the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize winner. A few minutes after the train came to a stop, a giant of a man - six feet four inches - with bushy hair and a large mustache stepped from the train. Cameras flashed. City officials approached him with hands outstretched. Various people began telling him how honored they were to meet him.
The man politely thanked them and then, looking over their heads, asked if he could be excused for a moment. He quickly walked through the crowd until he reached the side of an elderly black woman who was struggling with two large suitcases. He picked up the bags and with a smile, escorted the woman to a bus. After helping her aboard, he wished her a safe journey. As he returned to the greeting party he apologized, "Sorry to have kept you waiting."
Becoming an Enlarger
Dr. John C. Maxwell is a very prolific author. Our company Inspire Leadership Consultancy has been licensed to do his leadership training programs here in our country. I would love to share with you an article Maxwell wrote many years ago. And as the whole country prepares to go to the polls, I hope that the new set of elected officers would learn from the lessons presented here. Maxwell writes:
Before the NBA ever heard of Shaquille O'Neal, Dikembe Mutombo or Tim Duncan; back before anyone knew the name Hakeem Olajuwon; in the days before Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ruled the hardwoods, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell changed the nature of professional basketball with the way they played the center position.
A Timely Reminder
"When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned. There is no such thing as a no-man's land between honesty and dishonesty. Our strength lies in spiritual concepts. It lies in public sensitiveness to evil. Our greatest danger is not from invasion by foreign armies. Our dangers are that we may commit suicide from within by complaisance with evil, or by public tolerance of scandalous behavior." - President Herbert Hoover
Speaking Brings Fulfillment
Had a blast speaking to the awardees and top performers of an internationally known cooking ware company. Excited too to speak to parents of special children tomorrow morning. I make sure I continue to speak in schools, giving parenting seminars, faculty development seminars and leadership seminars for students and have never charged fees and refuse honorarium. This is the least I can do to give back to my country and my community and wonderfully, this is what really brings meaning and fulfillment to what I do.
Constructive Criticism
Albert Einstein wasn't always acclaimed for his scientific breakthroughs, notes physicist Stephen Hawking in his book A Brief History of Time (Bantam Books). "His theories came under attack; an anti-Einstein organization was even set up." But Einstein remained unconcerned about these critics, Hawking writes. "When a book was published entitled 100 Authors Against Einstein, he retorted, 'If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!"
The painter Zeuxis said: “Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.
And then the famous Charles M. Schwab says: “I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism."
Do Not Lose Your Good People
Do you know how difficult it is to get good people to work for you?
And do you know how challenging it is to have the same good people remain with you when they are offered better positions and better pay somewhere else and when I say somewhere else I mean your competitors? To work abroad where the pay is maybe 5 to 10 times more than you can afford is a no-contest situation but when your good people leave you because you did not handle them correctly, then the fault is yours. And it’s really a dumb thing you did if you allow that to happen. Some sources estimate that as many as 65 percent of people leaving companies do so because of their managers. We may say that people quit their job or their company, but the reality is that they usually quit their lousy bosses.
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Giants Begin With Baby Steps
There are celebrity sales people who bring in tons and tons of sales and as a result they make tons and tons of money. They are the giants in the industry. And then there are those who would make a sale once in a while and then wonder, what is it with these people who continually rake in the sales and make the money?
Is it luck? But no one gets lucky all the time the way they do. Is it connection? Maybe. But how do I get myself to increase my own network too? There must be something behind it. And so the question pops out in your mind. “How do these people continue to make six or seven figures and here I am struggling month by month just to reach my quota and make ends meet?”
Dealing With Stress
Are you stressed? Do you know how to deal with stress? Is there someone in the work place you hate so much that person the very source of your stress? So how do you deal with the situation. Someone came up with this idea. Now do not take this seriously. Picture yourself near a stream. Birds are chirping in the crisp, cool mountain air. Nothing can bother you here. No one knows this secret place. You are in total seclusion from that place called the "world." The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity. The water is so clear that you can easily make out the face of the person whose head you are holding under the water. There now... feeling better?
Stress is caused by two opposing forces, which pull against each other. We usually think of this as something negative but actually some stress is essential for living. For instance, gravity is a stress to your body - but you couldn't live without it. You'll never be able to eliminate all stress from your life. You wouldn't want to. But you can reduce the intensity of stress and you can learn to manage it. When a violinist tightens the strings on a violin, she puts stress on them. The strings are pulled in two directions. The capacity of a string to be stretched is called "tensile strength." If the strings are weak they break when stretched. But if the strings are strong, the violinist is able to produce beautiful music because of the stress. People are like that. When pulled in two different directions some people snap from the stress. Others, however, are able to handle the stress and use it to produce something beautiful. The difference is the spiritual strength of the individual.
The Visible Leader
Their ads have remained the same all these years. And this is why the brand intrigues me no end. The slogan “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation” is placed on all of their ads. Just like their timepieces, which are considered the most admired and respected in the world of luxury watches; the idea transmitted through the ad is genius and perfectly translates the timeless character of the brand. The idea works this way. Since you are not going to buy a good watch every week, so if you want something for life (and longer), then Patek Philippe is the way to go. We can definitely agree with that! This is why I was thrilled no end upon knowing that I will get to have a private dinner with Thierry Stern, the young president of the company.