We have no leeway to act our other selvesor use our other lives.
No one would ever know, for instance, that I am still the skinny girl who grew up in a leafy suburb of Boston.
Inside, I still think of myself as the youngest of four children in a vivacious family, headed by a mother of great beauty and a dad of unfailing good cheer. It doesn't matter that my parents are long gone, and that the four children are now three.
I am still the faintly snobbish child accustomed to long cars and maidsthough my dad lost his money in the Depression and I live these days from paycheck to paycheck.
Beth Ashley
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Johnny
We are challenged on every band to work untiringly to achieve excellence in our lifework. Not all men are called to specialized or professional jobs,' even fewer rise to the heights of genius in the arts and sciences,, many are called to be laborers in factories, fields, and streets. But no work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, "Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."
Martin Luther King Jr.
Last fall I was asked to speak to 3,000 employees of a large supermarket chain in the Midwest on building customer loyalty and regenerating the spirit in your workplace.
One of the ideas I stressed was the importance of adding a personal "signature" to your work. With all the
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downsizing, re-engineering, overwhelming technological changes and stress in the workplace, I think it is essential for each of us to find a way we can really feel good about ourselves and our jobs. One of the most powerful ways to do this is to do something that differentiates you from all the other people that do the same thing you do.
I shared the example of a United Airlines pilot who, after everything is under control in the cockpit, goes to the computer and randomly selects several people on board the flight and handwrites them a thank-you note for their business. A graphic artist I work with always encloses a piece of sugarless gum in everything he sends his customers, so you never throw away any mail from him!
A Northwest Airlines baggage attendant decided that his personal signature would be to collect all the luggage tags that fall off customers' suitcases, which in the past have been simply tossed in the garbage, and in his free time send them back with a note thanking them for flying Northwest. A senior manager with whom I worked decided that his personal signature would be to attach Kleenex to memos that he knows his employees won't like very much.
After sharing several other examples of how people add their unique spirit to their jobs, I challenged the audience to get their creative juices flowing and to come up with their own creative personal signature.
About three weeks after I had spoken to the supermarket employees, my phone rang late one afternoon. The person on the line told me that his name was Johnny and that he was a bagger in one of the stores. He also told me that he was a person with Down's syndrome. He said, "Barbara, I liked what you said!" Then he went on to tell me that when he'd gone home that night, he asked his dad to teach him to use the computer.
He said they set up a program using three columns,
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and each night now when he goes home, he finds a "thought for the day." He said when he can't find one he likes, he "thinks one up!" Then he types it into the computer, prints out multiple copies, cuts them out, and signs his name on the back of each one. The next day, as he bags customers' groceries"with flourish'he puts a thought for the day in each person's groceries, adding his own personal signature in a heartwarming, fun and creative way.
One month later the manager of the store called me. He said, "Barbara, you won't believe what happened today. When I went out on the floor this morning, the line at Johnny's checkout was three times longer than any other line! I went ballistic yelling, 'Get more lanes open! Get more people out here,' but the customers said, 'No no! We want to be in Johnny's lanewe want the thought for the day!'"
The manager said one woman approached him and said, "I only used to shop once a week. Now I come here every time I go by because ! want the thought for the day!" (Imagine what that does to the bottom line!) He ended by saying, "Who do you think is the most important person in our whole store? Johnny, of course!"
Three months later he called me again. "You and Johnny have transformed our store! Now in the floral department, when they have a broken flower or an unused corsage, they go out on the floor and find an elderly woman or a little girl and pin it on them. One of our meat packers loves Snoopy, so he bought 50,000 Snoopy stickers, and each time he packages a piece of meat, he puts a Snoopy sticker on it. We are having so much fun, and so are our customers?
That is spirit in the workplace!
Barbara A. Glanz
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I Can't Accept not Trying
I visualized where I wanted to be, what kind of player I wanted to become. ! knew exactly where I wanted to go, and I focused on getting there.
Michael Jordan
On Fears
I never looked at the consequences of missing a big shot. Why? Because when you think about the consequences you always think of a negative result.
Some people get frozen by that fear of failure. They get it from peers or from just thinking about the possibility of a negative result. They might be afraid of looking bad or being embarrassed. I realized that if ! was going to achieve anything in life I had to be aggressive. I had to get out there and go for it. I don't believe you can achieve anything by being passive. I'm not thinking about anything except what I'm trying to accomplish. Any fear is an illusion. You think something is standing in your way, but nothing is really there. What is there is an opportunity to do your best and gain some success. If it turns out my best isn't good enough, then at least I'll never be able to look back and say I was too afraid to try. Failure always made me try harder the next time.
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That's why my advice has always been to "think positive" and find fuel in any failure. Sometimes failure actually just gets you closer to where you want to be. If I'm trying to fix a car, every time I try something that doesn't work, I'm getting closer to finding the answer. The greatest inventions in the world had hundreds of failures before the answers were found.
I think fear sometimes comes from a lack of focus or concentration. If I had stood at the free-throw line and thought about 10 million people watching me on the other side of the camera lens, I couldn't have made anything. So I mentally tried to put myself in a familiar place. I thought about all those times I shot free throws in practice and went through the same motion, the same technique that I had used thousands of times. You forget about the outcome. You know you are doing the right things. So you relax and perform. After that you can't control anything anyway. It's out of your hands, so don't worry about it.
On Commitment
I approached practices the same way I approached games. You can't turn it on and off like a faucet. I couldn't dog it during practice and then, when I needed that extra push late in the game, expect it to be there. But that's how a lot of people approach things. And that's why a lot of people fail. They sound like they're committed to being the best they can be. They say all the right things, make all the proper appearances. But when it comes right down to it, they're looking for reasons instead of answers. If you're trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I've had them; everybody has had them.
But obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.
Michael Jordan
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7
OVERCOMING OBSTACLES
Obstacles cannot crush me; ev
ery obstacle yields to stern resolve.
Leonardo da Vinci
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The Passionate Pursuit of Possibility
Cherish your visions and your dreams, as they
are the children of your soul; the blueprints
of your ultimate achievements.
Napoleon Hill
Years ago, while unearthing an ancient Egyptian tomb, an archaeologist came upon seeds buried in a piece of wood. Planted, the seeds realized their potential after more than 3,000 years! Are there conditions in the lives of people so discouraging, so defeating, that human beingsregardless of inherent potentialityare doomed to lives of failure and quiet desperation? Or are there also seeds of possibility in people, an urge for becoming that is so strong that the hard crust of adversity is breached? Consider this story that came over the wires of the Associated Press on May 23, 1984:
As a child, Mary Groda did not learn to read and write. Experts labeled her retarded. As an adolescent, she "earned" an additional label, "incorrigible," and was sentenced to two years in a reformatory. It was here, ironically, in this closed-in place, that Marybending to the challenge to learnworked at her task for as long as 16
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hours a day. Her hard work paid off: She was awarded her (GED) high school diploma.
But more misfortune was to visit Mary Groda. After leaving the reformatory, she became pregnant without benefit of marriage. Then, two years later a second pregnancy resulted in a stroke, erasing her hard-earned powers of reading and writing. With the help and support of her father, Mary battled back, regaining what she had lost.
In dire financial straits, Mary went on welfare. Finally, to make ends meet, she took in seven foster children. It was during this period that she started taking courses at a community college. Upon completion of her course work, she applied to and was accepted by the Albany Medical School to study medicine.
In the spring of 1984 in Oregon, Mary Groda Lewisshe's married nowparaded in full academic regalia across the graduation stage. No one can know what private thoughts went through Mary's mind as she reached out to grasp this eloquent testimony to her self-belief and perseverance, her diploma that announced to all the world: Here stands on this small point of Planet Earth a person who dared to dream the impossible dream, a person who confirms for all of us our human divineness. Here stands Mary Groda Lewis, M.D.
James E. Conner
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Player of the Game
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
Source Unknown
Senior Byron Houston, star forward on the Oklahoma State University basketball team, threw a final pass to Bryant Reeves and watched the gawky blond freshman slam the ball through the hoop. The two OSU Cowboys were winding up practice for that night's home game against the University of California, Berkeley. Just then, they saw Cowboys coach Eddie Sutton walk toward the court with a man pushing a kid in a wheelchair.
''I want you to meet Scott Carter and his father, Mike," the coach said, after calling the whole team over.
"Hi, guys," the soon to be 12-year-old said brightly, waving a bony arm. He wore black horn-rimmed glasses too large for his pale, sunken face, and a baseball cap that covered his bald head. From beneath the sweatpant on his left leg jutted the plastic shank of an artificial limb.
Sutton explained that Scott had lost part of his leg to bone cancer. Then the coach asked Scott if he wanted to say anything to the team.
The players expected him to speak about his illness. Instead, Scott shrugged. "Well I don't know, Coach," he
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said wryly. "My speech to the football team didn't do them much good. They didn't win a game all season!"
At first there was silence; then all the players roared with laughter. That is one gutsy kid, Houston thought.
Freshman Reeves, especially was awed by Scott's poise. The shy center had taken several minutes to stammer a reply to a question during his first press conference. He turned red-faced just thinking about the courage it took to talk in front of these athletes.
The youngest of three children, Scott had always loved sports, even though he wasn't a natural athlete. He also adored fishing with his Grandfather Bo and Uncle Tom, both of whom had died. He lived in Tulsa with his father, who was a lawyer, and his mother, Paula.
When Scott first complained of pain in his left knee, the Carters assumed it was a sports injury. Later, when told their son had a malignant tumor and would need a complex operation to remove it, Mike and Paula began weeping. Scott looked at his parents, then turned to the doctor. "What I don't understand," he said in mock annoyance, "is why they're doing all the crying. I'm the one with the bad leg."
Scott's irreverence continued through 10 months of stomach-wrenching chemotherapy. When asked how he felt after he awoke from the leg surgery, he responded: "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!'
A week after the Cowboys beat Berkeley that December night in 1991, the team was slated to play Wichita State University before a sellout crowd in the Cowboys' stadium in Stillwater. Just before the tip-off, assistant coach Bill Self caught a glimpse of Mike Carter trying to squeeze his son into a crowded row. "Look," he whispered to Sutton.
"If the kid wants to sit at the end of the players' bench," the coach said, "it's okay by me."
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When Self relayed Sutton's invitation, Scott bobbed up and down excitedly. Seated beside the team, the 12-year-old cheered boisterously. Then Byron Houston came off the court for a rest.
Growing up, Houston had spent his younger years on the tough streets of Kansas City, Kansas. Now a top-billed athlete, he kept his distance from fans and often from his teammates.
Scott began to needle Houston about having elbowed an opposing center. "You think you're a bruiser, but you're playing like a teddy bear."
The young athlete tightened his jaw. Who was this sickly kid to judge his prowess? But then Houston caught Scott's ironic grin.
"Watch out," said Houston, kidding back. "You're going to hate holding this teddy bear."
After the game, OSU's ninth straight victory, Sutton invited Scott to follow the athletes into the locker room. Running his hand across one player's shaved head, Scott joked, 'We must have the same barber."
As Sutton watched how easily his Cowboys accepted Scott, a thought struck him. "You just may be our good-luck charm," the trim, graying coach drawled. "How about sitting on the bench at all our home games?"
Scott's eyes widened. For once, he was speechless.
"I'll take that as a yes," the coach said.
Soon a ritual was born. During one game, as Scott sat on the bench, a Cowboy leaving the court high-rived him. Then another player did. By early January, no Cowboy ever left without high-riving Scott.
One night Scott and his father caught a post-game radio show. The sponsor named one of the Cowboys its "player of the game."
"Dad, how about if we give out our own award?" Scott suggested. The two fashioned a certificate with the words
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"Scott's Player of the Game" printed across the top. The award would go to the person who gave his team the best he could muster in a game. In the February loss to the University of Colorado, Scott watched sixth-man Cornell Hatcher make three steals and dubbed him the "Cowboy Burglar.' Another player was given the "Pine Time Award" for good humor on the bench. Players loved these awards, taping them up in their lockers and dormitory rooms.
By early February 1992, the Cowboys were ranked the No. 2 college basketball team in the country. Then scoring leader Byron Houston suffered a severe sprain. With Houston sidelined, the University of Missouri overran the Cowboys 66-52, handing them their fourth straight loss.