Jack was playing center outfield during the third game of the season. He’ll be 10 this year and is starting to refine his baseball talents. It’s his favorite sport with football a close second.

In the fifth inning a pop fly was hit in his direction. He got under it, adjusted his stance, focused on the falling ball but couldn’t hold on to it and dropped it. He grabbed the ball and threw it to second base. The batter was safe.

He had a tough time letting that error go. Jack is one of the better players on the team. He commits to keeping his skills sharp with additional practices in the off season and learning by watching professional MLB players on television.
During the ride home, Jack was silent, though his team won. His father asked him what’s wrong. He just kept repeating he should have caught that pop up in the fifth. He couldn’t forgive himself.

His father reminded him of a last game they played when one of Jack’s teammates, Taylor, missed a pop up, causing the team to lose the game. Jack criticized Taylor all the way home and blamed him for losing the game. “Perhaps the withheld forgiveness that Jack held towards Taylor is the same withheld forgiveness Jack feels towards himself,” his father thought. He shared that thought with his son. Then he thought about it in his own life. [Read more…]

The summer of 2010 I took the StrengthFinders™ test and found my top strength was Learner. This means I feel strong when I’m learning (I also have Responsibility, Intellection, Empathy and Connectedness). As a Learner, I enjoy reading business and self-development books and have found a conflict in the advice from two positions. The conflict is in the mixed message of “Taking Action” and “Delaying Gratification.”

One position is taking action and getting started.  This has always been my axiom from Og Mandino as he stresses it in Scroll IX, “I will act now” from his book the “Greatest Salesman in the World.”  Supporting this position is David J. Schwartz in his book, “The Magic of Thinking Big” as he writes in chapter 10; “The way to combat any kind of fear is action.” [Read more…]

“Believing can come true if you are involved in the believing.”

I cannot remember where I heard this quote, but it stuck with me because it reinforces the axiom that your beliefs determine your behavior and your behavior (daily habits) determines the results you receive.  If you are not receiving the desired results in life, no matter the role you are playing, change begins with determining what you are doing and not doing (behavior) and then asking yourself why.  “Why am I doing this”? or “Why am I not doing that?”

Are your beliefs a choice?  Good question.  I guess now that I’m thinking about it, I would have to say YES.  We consciously decide what is true and what we want to believe as fact.  True would mean the means (behavior) justify the desired ends (results). [Read more…]

“The only thing worse than training employees and losing them is not training them and keeping them” – Zig Ziglar.

Occasionally I’m asked if I can guarantee the results of a sales team after they attend a seminar and my reply is, “It is difficult for me to guarantee the application of the content presented and the commitment of a salesperson to their career success and professional development after they attend a seminar.”

Commitment is about applying what we know.  Often we know, but don’t.  We know how to make cold calls, but don’t.  We know we should exercise more, but don’t.  We know we should eat better, drink less, but don’t.

What are we waiting for?  Why can’t we decide to start and just apply what we know we should do now?

It boils down to one word; commitment.  How’s your commitment? [Read more…]

The first American woman that flew into space, Dr. Sally Ride, passed away during the Olympics.  That day I heard an interview where a reporter asked another female astronaut, “Why are there not more women in the space program?”  The woman replied with, “Women have just as much a right to be in space as men do.”  I don’t disagree with that, nor do most other people, but a right is not the same as ability. [Read more…]