This is our final post here but you can still read all about MDD Tactics here.   Look forward to seeing you over there.

This blog will be deleted on 1st July 2010.  Cheers and have a great day!

I spent the first 12 months with a vague idea of what sort of business I wanted to grow.  I was fortunate to have some regular work coming in without any effort on my part. 

Towards the end of the year, I started to reassess what it was that I really wanted to do with my business, what direction I wanted to move in and what sort of work I really wanted to do. 

Once I had that decided, amazing things started to happen.  The Universe started presenting the most amazing opportunities to me.  Some of them are exactly in line with the direction I am now moving in.  I was starting to get excited. 

Then, out of the blue, I got a phone call offering me some work.  Early last year, I was chasing work and approached a business offering my services.  They knew me well, knew my work and knew my reputation.  Nothing came of it.  Until this week.  Now the call I got wasn’t from the same company …. but can be tracked back directly to that contact I made last year. 

Things have changed for me quite considerably since I made that approach though.  I wasn’t sure that I wanted that type of work any more.  I was ready to move on to other opportunities.  Did I want to go back, when I decided it was time to move forward and on to other opportunities. 

Then it hit me – Was the Universe presenting this opportunity to me now for a reason?  Why is it that the contact I made last year came to nothing until now?  Would I be crazy to turn down this opportunity because I had decided it was time to move onto other possibilities? 

I decided that I had to stop and listen.  I am convinced that this opportunity is being presented to me now for a very specific reason.  I need to trust that and run with it.

And that’s what I did!

How do you make sure your kids go back to school with a little bit of you each day?

Send your children off to school with a piece of your love tucked inside their lunch, backpack or pocket.  What a great feeling to discover an inspiring little greeting card from you!  Each miniature pop-open card conceals a secret message of love, encouragement and self-esteem hidden inside.  Write a personal message on the back of each card. 

Each pack contains 30 individual “pop open” greeting cards

Example of quotes:

- You make the world more wonderful, just by being in it!

Each card contains a different inspiring quotation

Each box measures 10.8 cm x 7 cm x 3.8 cm

Each card measures 4.8 cm x 6.4 cm

Check them out here – http://bit.ly/LunchMail

On the whole, this has worked for me and I like the way I interact with others and my place in life.  However, it causes much confusion for me when people don’t also behave in such a way.  Why can’t everyone be polite and get along? Now being a MBTI professional, I do understand that not everyone’s internal value system is as important to them as mine is but sometimes it is just a case of good manners.

A couple of things have happened lately to lead me to question this high moral ground I seem to take with people. Over the last week I have twice had appointments that have not shown up (after confirming yes). I just don’t understand how people can do that. You make an appointment, if you can’t keep it, how hard is it to pick up the phone and call or send a text? Or at the very least, answer your phone when I call to find out where you are.  One of these appointments, I think now I may have been in the wrong building, but why would you not answer your phone when I ring to find out?

Then, on the weekend I drove into a car park. Now, car parks are a great place to find numerous examples of people behaving badly!  I admit to the odd case of Car Park rage and get upset with the stupidity and rudeness often on display.  On this particular day though, I had just driven into the car park, indicated to turn right and saw a park immediately.  Perfect, right outside the store I wanted to go to.  I indicated to drive into it, pulled in and was feeling pretty good about life.  I was sitting there, putting on my lippy (as you do), when, much to my surprise, there was a knock on my window. I look up to see a lady standing there.  I wind down the window to be confronted with “I was about to pull into that park”.  I won’t go into the whole conversation except to say that she was exceptionally passive aggressive and at the end as she walked away (after I had offered to move my car), she said “Thanks sweety”.  No I’m not sure what annoyed me the most, the fact that she confronted me (I don’t do confrontation well), that she bothered to argue when there were plenty of other parks available or that she called me “sweety”.  My greatest annoyance was the inference that I would be so rude as to pull into the park if I knew she was waiting. I would never have taken the park if I knew but I thought she was leaving, not waiting to reverse into the spot once I drove past.

I moved my car and found another spot 4 parks down. As I walked past her, on my way to the store I was headed to, she said again “Thanks Sweety”.  I did make some snide comment about it not being that big a deal and that there were plenty of other parks to be had.

On the drive home, I was still going over and over the “confrontation” in my head (as I do).  At one point, I started to actually realise there was a glimmer of admiration there for her.  Good on her for having the “balls” to confront me. I wouldn’t have done it.  I would have driven off, found another park and then whinged about it all day to anyone that would listen. 

It makes me sad though that we are now a society that we believe the worst in people, we believe that people would pull into a park even if they saw you were waiting.  I know that the reason is because people do do that.   Everyday!  But I don’t.  And it upsets me no end to think that people would think I would.

That’s my problem though isn’t it?

I had planned to do this in December and be ready to take on the world once the new year started.  As it turned out, December was a crazy busy month and I really didn’t have a minute to scratch myself.  I ended up making a rookie mistake:

I was too busy working in my business to be working on my business

Christmas come and went, the new year started and I hit the ground running.  Now here we are in the third week in January, and while I have a plan for 2010 in my head, I realised I hadn’t taken the time to write it down and assess how I was going to make the vision a reality. 

It is major dilemma faced at some stage by most small business owners, particularly those that are flying solo.  It’s a fine line sometimes, between making sure you have enough paid work to pay the bills and spending enough time working ON your business.  But then again, isn’t that what nights and weekends were invented for?

She said something along the lines of …. “I tell them and tell them and they keep doing it wrong”. 

My response was quite simple …. “If you tell them the same thing, the same way, more than once and get the same result, who has the issue here? If you tell them once and don’t get the result you wanted, why would you give the same instruction again.  I am sure they are not deaf and don’t need to hear it more than once, but something in the way you gave them the instruction didn’t work for them”. 

In fact I went on to say if a manager gives the same instruction more than once and expects a different response – who then is the idiot???

It reminds me of that old saying that goes something along the lines of 

“If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got”  

Remember Me?

“I am the customer who goes into a restaurant, sits down patiently and waits while the attendant does anything but takes my order.

I am the customer who goes to a bar and stands quietly while the attendants finish their little chat.

I am the customer who is patiently waiting for service, but the staff member’s phone call seems to be a higher priority.

Yes, you might say I am picky, but do you know who else I am?

I am the customer who never comes back, and it amuses me to see that thousands of dollars are spent every year to get me back when I was there in the first place …. and all you had to do was show me a little courtesy.”

One of their favourites, (and has been a favourite for years) is to start a sentence with “No offence”, this is then usually followed by some criticism or negative comment about the person being spoken to:

“No offence Nan but your driving is ordinary today”

“No offence Chell but you are a bit cranky today” (Like that’s going to help the situation)

“No offence Dad but that shirt looks silly with those shorts” ( a favourite with my niece)

It has now become a bit of a running joke within the family.  Whenever one of us adults now want to insult another  (jokingly of course) or take the “mickey” out of each other, we start the insult with “No offence” knowing that it will be taken in the right context. 

It got me to thinking …… how have other generations veiled insults if they haven’t used “No offence” and it struck me, there is one word above all else that allows exactly the same negative comments to be thrown around.  And it is used all the time by those of us not Generation Z … what word I hear you ask???

BUT

Think about it, do you not use the word but to say something positive, quickly followed by something negative …..

“I had a good time but the food was ordinary”

“You look nice today but that skirt needs ironing”

Why is it that we feel that it’s OK to say something negative or derogatory if we say something nice first? Using “but” doesn’t lessen the impact of the negative thing you say, it just undoes the nice thing we said first.  Why can’t we just say:

“I had a good time”

“You look nice today”

This new generations of kids have taken it one step further and don’t bother with the positive comment or the compliment, they just get straight to the insult.  Put “no offence” at the beginning though and you don’t have to think of something nice to say first! 

Today I am laying down a challenge.  Try and get through a day without using the word “but”.  I bet it’s harder than it seems.  Let me know how you go!

Bill Gates’ Lessons in Life

Here is a list of 11 things that many high school and college graduates did not learn in school. In his book, Bill Gates talks about how feel-good, politically-correct teachings created a full generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

1.  Life is not fair; get used to it.

2.  The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

3.  You will not make $40,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice president with a car phone, until you earn both.

4.  If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure.

5.  Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.

6.  If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

7.  Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try “delousing” the closet in your own room.

8.  Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades; they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.

9.  Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

10. Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

11. Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Enjoy!!

Rest in Peace: The “I Can’t” Funeral

Donna’s fourth-grade classroom looked like many others I had seen in the past.  Students sat in five rows of six desks.  The teacher’s desk was in the front and faced the students.  The bulletin board featured student work.  In most respects it appeared to be a typically traditional elementary classroom.  Yet something seemed different that day I entered it for the first time.  There seemed to be an undercurrent of excitement.

Donna was a veteran small-town Michigan school-teacher only two years away from retirement.  In addition she was a volunteer participant in a county-wide staff development project I had organised and facilitated.  The training focused on language arts ideas that would empower students to feel good about themselves and take charge of their lives.  Donna’s job was to attend training sessions and implement the concepts being presented.   My job was to make classroom visitations and encourage implementation.

I took an empty seat in the back of the room and watched.  All the students were working on a task, filling a sheet of notebook paper with thoughts and ideas.  The ten-year-old student closest to me was filling her page with “I Cant’s”. 

                “I can’t kick the soccer ball past second base”

                “I can’t do long division with more than three numerals”

                “I can’t get Debbie to like me”

Her page was half full and she showed no signs of letting up.  She worked on with determination and persistence.

I walked down the row glancing as students’ papers.  Everyone was writing sentences, describing the things they couldn’t do. 

                “I can’t do ten push ups”

                “I can’t hit one over the left-field fence”

                “I can’t eat only one cookie”

By this time, the activity engaged my curiosity, so I decided to check with the teacher to see what was going on.  As I approached, I noticed that she too was busy writing.  I felt it best not to interrupt. 

                “I can’t get John’s mother to come in for a teacher conference”

                “I can’t get my daughter to put gas in the car”

                “I can’t get Alan to use words instead of fists”

Thwarted in my efforts to determine why students and teacher were dwelling on the negative instead of writing the more positive “I can” statements, I returned to my seat and continued my observations.  Students wrote for another ten minutes.  Most filled their page.  Some started another. 

“Finish the one you’re on and don’t start a new one”, were the instructions Donna used to signal the end of the activity.  Students were then instructed to fold their papers in half and bring them to the front.  When students reached the teacher’s desk, they placed their “I can’t” statements into an empty shoe box.

When all of the student papers were collected, Donna added hers.  She put the lid on the box, tucked it under her arm and headed out the door and down the hall.  Students followed the teacher.  I followed the students.

Halfway down the hall the procession stopped.  Donna entered the custodian’s room, rummaged around and came out with a shovel.  Shovel in one hand, shoe box in the other, Donna marched the students out of the school to the farthest corner of the playground.  There they began to dig. 

They were going to bury their “I Cant’s”!  The digging took over ten minutes because most of the fourth-graders wanted a turn.  When the hole approached three-feet deep, the digging ended.  The box of “I Cant’s” was placed in position at the bottom of the hole and quickly covered with dirt. 

Thirty–one 10 and 11 year olds stood around the freshly dug grave site.  Each had at least one page full of “I Cant’s” in the shoe box, four-feet under.  So did their teacher. 

 At this point Donna announced, “Boys and girls, please join hands and bow your heads.”  The students complied.  They quickly formed a circle around the grave, creating a bond with their hands.  They lowered their heads and waited.  Donna delivered the eulogy.

“Friends, we gather today to honour the memory of “I Can’t”.  While he was with us on Earth, he touched the lives of everyone, some more than others.  His name, unfortunately, has been spoken in every public building – schools, city halls, state capitols, and yes, even The White House. 

“We have provided “I Can’t” with a final resting place and a headstone that contains his epitaph.  He is survived by his brothers and sister, “I Can”, “I Will” and “I’m Going to Right Away.”  They are not as well known as their famous relative and are certainly not as strong and powerful yet.  Perhaps some day, with your help, they will make an even bigger mark on the world. 

“May “I Can’t” rest in peace and may everyone present pick up their lives and move forward in his absence.  Amen.”

As I listened to the eulogy I realised that these students would never forget this day.  The activity was symbolic, a metaphor for life.  It was a right-brain experience that would stick in the unconscious and conscious mind forever. 

Writing “I Cant’s,” burying them and hearing the eulogy.  That was a major effort on the part of this teacher.  And she wasn’t done yet.  At the conclusion of the eulogy she turned the students around, marched them back into the classroom and held a wake. 

They celebrated the passing of “I Can’t” with cookies, popcorn and fruit juices.  As part of the celebration, Donna cut out a large tombstone from butcher paper.  She wrote the words “I Can’t” at the top and put RIP in the middle.  The date was added at the bottom.

The paper tombstone hung in Donna’s classroom for the remainder of the year.  On those rare occasions when a student forgot and said, “I Can’t”, Donna simply pointed to the RIP sign.  The student then remembered that “I Can’t” was dead and chose to rephrase the statement. 

I wasn’t one of Donna’s students.  She was one of mine.  Yet that day I learned an enduring lesson from her. 

Now, years later, whenever I hear the phrase, “I Can’t”, I see images of that fourth-grade funeral.  Like the students, I remember that “I Can’t” is dead. 

Chick Moorman

Let’s all work together to make sure “I Can’t” rests in peace!!!!!!