As a leader, I learned a long time ago that when things go wrong, the blame must always start with me.
Team didn’t get the store open on time? I could have scheduled a different crew. I could have set my expectations more clearly. I could have trained better. I could have brought them in earlier.
Sales don’t match projections? I could have set my projections lower. I could have done more external marketing. I could have improved our service or our quality. Continue reading
Let me preface this post with a caveat: I’m writing about positivity, loss, pain, redemption, lessons, and the like. It’s important that I tell you that I’ve lived a charmed life. I’ve never gone hungry. I’ve never lost my home or my parents or siblings to war or terrorism. No one I know has ever gotten ebola or river blindness. I have multiple changes of clean, dry clothes, a car that runs, a girlfriend that loves me, and a dog that thinks I am a giant biped dog with whom he gets to live. Continue reading
Two flies were sitting in a corral on a pile of cow manure. They were going to town, eating their fill, just enjoying life. They saw a pitchfork leaning up against the fence. The two flies decided rather than flying up there, they could just leisurely walk right up the handle to the top to bask in the sun for a while.
When they got to the top, they were just about to stretch out and relax, when they saw the farmer walking straight toward them. Continue reading
Stress is the dissonance between your expectations and your reality. That’s it.
When you feel stressed, anxious, out of control of the situation, it’s almost uniformly because you want one thing but get another.
You want a smooth commute. You expected to get to work in 20 minutes. But the reality is, there’s traffic ahead and it’s going to take you 40 minutes. Your expectations and your reality don’t line up, and you feel it in the form of stress. Continue reading
No one knowingly starts dating an abusive person. You start dating them because they’re attractive. They make you feel special. The abuse comes later when you’re invested.
You’re not a moron, and you’re not weak. You’re not gullible. You had a good reason for making the decisions you made early on.
You listened to his lies, knowing that your friends thought you were crazy for believing him, but you thought you knew better. Continue reading
I launched into a new month-long challenge today. I’m going to stop complaining for the month of February.
And just like Black History Month, I chose the shortest month of the year. Except I am not going to give a speech and tell you all that I’ve noticed what a great job Frederick Douglass is doing (yes, in the present tense).
I am a true believer in the power of our minds to shape our realities. Continue reading