Tag Archives: Be that person

If Wishes Were Horses Beggars Would Ride

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Old City Philly 2014 (37)

In the week of resolutions and calls to action and life changing scenarios this Scottish proverb, originating in the 16th century, suggests that it is useless to wish and that better results will be achieved through action.  So how are your resolutions going…?  Since this has also been a week of lists let’s look at the top resolutions of those living life and the top regrets for those who are close to the end:

The top ten wishes for this year:              Top ten regrets of the dying:

1 Lose Weight                                          1 never pursued my dreams and aspirations

2 Getting Organized                                 2 worked too much/neglected my family

3 Spend Less, Save More                       3 should have made more time for my friends

4 Enjoy Life to the Fullest                         4 should have said I love you more.

5 Getting Fit and Healthy                          5 should have spoken my mind

6 Learn Something Exciting                     6 should have resolved my problems.

7 Quit Smoking                                        7 wish I had children

8 Help Others in Their Dreams                8 should have saved more money.

9 Fall in Love                                           9 not having the courage to live truthfully

10 Spend More Time with Family          10 I didn’t choose happiness

Interesting no?  I hate to be the one to remind you that at some point your legacy will take up where your life left off but the truth is, well the truth.  If you only made one resolution this year why not just resolve to live your life the way you want your story told.  Why not?

I’m not a big fan of anything that contains the words coulda, shoulda, or woulda so the regret list is certainly grating my spine…  Get rid of those words while there’s still time to change the road you’re on.  Don’t know if you’ll wind up with your stairway to heaven (jury’s still out on that) but you will relieve yourself of an awful lot of angst.

Is there a correlation between lists?  Certainly losing weight, getting fit and quitting smoking may keep you from getting to the thoughts on the right too early but check your motivation too.  If this is about health then you’re on track to solving what may be a huge life problem.  If it’s about trying to live up to the ridiculous standards that only makes money for the diet/beauty business stop it right now. Remember who you are, practice some self-kindness and choose to be happy where you are now.  I think you’ll see that most of the time that is just the impetus for the rest to follow.

Getting organized and spending less more often than not comes down to “stuff” .  Does your stuff define you?  Are you in constant pursuit of stuff?  Do you need to work harder and longer and spend less time with your family and friends because of stuff?  Then you may be able to kill several birds with one stone.  If you want a practical way to rejoin your life you may want to check out Becoming Minimalist.  Joshua Becker has plenty of first-hand information to help and no you don’t have to give up everything to be a minimalist, you can define your own parameters based on which of the things in the two lists above might be most important to you…just sayin.

I’m pretty sure that enjoying life to the fullest, learning something exciting or even just something new to you, and spending more time with your family will produce the kind of stories that will begin to make up a wonderful legacy.  I know like I know that helping anyone with their dreams, or their aspirations or redecorating their home or teaching them to cook or any service to anyone with good intention will rocket you into the legacy hall of fame.

I hope that you will embrace living your truth, if you don’t know your truth make that your life’s work. It will elevate the need for any forward or backward looking list and provide just the exhale you a really looking for.

If wishes were horses then beggars would ride,

If turnips were swords I’d have one by my side.

If ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ were pots and pans

There would be no need for tinker’s hands!

The one exception to the wishes dilemma is wishing good for someone else.  With that I wish you hope, peace, ordinary moments in time and plenty of food for thought toward an extraordinary legacy through an ordinary life well lived.

Be That Person

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sls mgr mtg 1

How you make people feel about themselves says an awful lot about you. No one knows who’s quote this is but I figure if I say it enough eventually it will be attributed to me. No? Ok but I can live it. It’s the number one way to create your legacy. Be that person.

You can be that person in any number of ways to any number of people or groups of people. But how will you know if, let me rephrase, when you’ve become that person? Oh you’ll know…

I had the distinct honor of attending a Sales Manager’s function this week and it became perfectly clear after the many hugs and kisses and stories that I had become that person. Define “that” in whatever way you choose.   For some I was helpful, for some I was fair, for some I was a pain in the ass. One of the manager’s began telling the story of our first encounter when after the third email I may have said something along the lines of “I’m really not the person you want to be strong arming”. The collective gasp was not because I may have said that but because this manager got me there. And the stories began to emerge about the time she…. Don’t worry they were all happy endings, I think. If nothing else they were hysterical.

I’ve had the great fortune to be doing what I do for many years and so I’ve become part of the vernacular and part of the day to day. I’m that person you call when…If anyone will know…Let’s start with… I know almost everyone and if I don’t know them they know me, how cool is that?

sls mgr mtg 2

While circulating with the crowd, if there is someone new, I introduce them to someone old. If they’ve just arrived I herd them over to their Area Manager.  I ask about their family and their business and their sales people. One of the descriptions went something like the high school chaperone making sure everyone mingled. Just love that.

When you go to work each day the temptation to just do what you need to do and get up and do it again, as Jackson Browne said, isn’t my style. For whatever reason, boredom sets in easily for me, I see things that need to be fixed, and I’m a big picture person. These are things that don’t easily fit into a performance review. Samuel A Culbert wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal, “To my way of thinking, a one-sided-accountable, boss-administered review is little more than a dysfunctional pretense. It’s a negative corporate performance, an obstacle to straight talk relationships, and a prime cause of low morale at work.” If you know me you know like you know I’m a straight talk kind of a woman. Further, I may have mentioned once or twice that a former boss of mine once described me as having the ability to slap you so hard you think you got a kiss. That about sums it up.

Though these things may not be performance review worthy they are genuinely part of my work routine. If one could measure their work in the number of hugs received at these events then one would be sure to get a very nice raise. Instead I get respect and that Cinderella feeling of being the Belle of the Ball. I am grateful to work with these people; they are a unique bunch with their feet firmly planted on the ground and a work ethic that has completely annihilated the stereotype of car sales manager. I am especially grateful to the individual who went to each and every bar in the hotel and adjoining club until he found a Dubonet for me. Zeke you are my hero.

And I’m not talking about just the men. You’re aware this is still a male centric business right? The women sales managers are cut from a very similar cloth as I am; the slap-them-so-hard cloth. The straight talking, pragmatic, we’ve got our own way of doing things thank you very much cloth. Car Hags one and all and I say that with the utmost respect and admiration being one of the original Car Hags.

In reflecting on this event it occurred to me that my mentor taught me most of what I know about this business and its people. He is no longer with us but the respect paid him at the end of his life was out the door and around the building if you know what I mean. He was “that person”; I can only hope to follow so completely in his footsteps.