Over 30 years ago I had a conversation with a teenager that caught me completely off guard – and reminds me of a valuable principle to this day. While I have a very well-honed skill for catching people doing things wrong – if I want to be an effective leader, I need to catch people doing things right. I work on this every day, with clients, peers, and bosses – greatly because of the jumpstart this conversation gave me.
Cultivating a spirit of gratitude makes life more fulfilling and meaningful. But have you thought about how YOU can cause someone else to be grateful? There are lots of ways to enhance the lives of others–one of the most valuable of which is to give them your attention.
Not long ago, two close friends of our family, Terry and Jacqueline, thoughtfully shared that their lifelong passion for antiquing as a small business had changed. More specifically, the couple observed and explained that over the last few years that their business had seemed to transition from finding and providing rarities that people from around the world sought and would purchase to add to their own personal collections, to a growing line of inquiries in which individuals who were intrigued by a unique piece from the past only wanted a picture.
Choose to make the decisions that will take you to the end that you have in mind. That means being proactive, not reactive about life and what it might present to you. The wisdom of Winnie the Pooh in the 2018 movie Christopher Robin is useful on this point. Winnie The Pooh: I always get to where I’m going by walking away from where I’ve been.
I recently published a book, The 9 Dimensions of Conscious Success – It’s All About YOU!, based on challenges and lessons learned over my 40-year career. I wondered whether those who enter the workforce today face bigger challenges than those I had encountered when I launched my career journey. My research verified that, in some ways, the “deck is stacked” against the current generations.