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Your Life Resources

The life you live is a choice and you should strive to be balanced and happy.  What’s the point of being successful if you can’t enjoy it with the people you care about.  Sometime we back ourselves into unnecessary corners. When  you are working, do your best maximize the value of your time for the benefit of the organization.  When you are at home, be present and focused with your family and friends.  Know the role you are playing in any given situation and do your best.

Leadership Thought #452 – 4 Things to Get You Through Tough Times

I was talking to my son the other day about his schoolwork and some frustrations he was having. He is a good kid and is in all honors classes. I have noticed though, as the years go on, that school which was once relatively easy and fun for him has become much more of a chore. While not commenting on the varying degrees of teacher quality we have encountered along the way (which is troubling), I believe he is going through something we all go through in life. Rarely is our individual curve always upward sloping and everything comes easy for us. Sure, some people are seemingly blessed in certain aspects of life, but for the most part we all hit periods of frustration, disappointment, and/or low motivation. When you have a passion or care about something it is much easier to marshal the energy required to work through the rough patches. When it is something you have to do rather than want to do, it isn’t always so easy.

During the conversation with my son, we discussed four things that help you get through these difficult periods: Ability, Humility, Effort and Attitude:

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Ralph Waldo Emerson on Friendship

I felt like doing something different with this blog. I am a huge fan of the literary works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and was recently revisiting and discussing his essay on friendship as part of a class I am teaching. I’ve always believed that a life is defined by the quality of one’s relationships. We all want the same thing: some level of connectedness with other individuals that that both allows and encourages us to live the best life we can. While at its very beginning and final end, life may be a solo journey, the rest of it is full of human interaction. Our level of happiness during the balance of our existence is most often dictated by how we navigate the dense forest of interpersonal relationships. As usual, Emerson is much more eloquent than I am on this topic and here are a few excerpts from the essay:

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Leadership Thought #451 – Beware Of Being Put On A Pedestal

Beware of putting yourself or anyone up on a pedestal. There are right ways and wrong ways to feed someone else’s or your own ego. Just because an individual has experienced significant success in one aspect of life, doesn’t mean they are equally competent in all other things human. It doesn’t do that person or you any good to blanket the praise. It is one thing to appreciate and respect individual accomplishment. It is another to think that similar success could be achieved in whatever else that person attempted. In fact, it can be dangerous as we heed advice or jump to conclusions about different situations based on who we choose as our role models. For example, Bruce Springsteen is a very talented songwriter and musician, but there is most likely a difference between his songwriting and his own reality. He is not a deity, he is a man. Thinking he has life all figured out isn’t fair to him or you. No one of that stature can ever live up to the hype.

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  • Myself and Other More Important Matters

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    One of the world’s most influential living management thinkers, Charles Handy has year-after-year been listed alongside business gurus including Peter Drucker and Tom Peters in the prestigious Thinkers 50 list. His views on management — and life — have inspired and enlightened others for decades. Now, in Myself and Other More Important Matters, the bestselling author […]

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    Reading Excerpts

  • Myself and Other More Important Matters by Charles Handy

    Click for hard copy Chapter One – Are You Sure? The two zones of work and friendship operate best when they don’t overlap, because the perceptions of who we are do not become confused. The truth is that we all behave differently, in a way are different people, in different circumstances. Those who claim that […]

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  • Reflections On Life and Leading Book Excerpts – Part 2

    Very few of us have a life curve that is only upward sloping. The difference is that “lucky” people just do not let their periods of adversity define them in unhelpful ways. They just keep plugging away, learning from their mistakes, continuing to believe in themselves, and taking calculated risks anyway. Their worldview is usually […]

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  • Reflections on Life and Leading Book Excerpts – Part 1

      Your Life: I have always thought that the whole concept of work life balance is a bit of an illusion. It is difficult for me to imagine someone who has a life that is always completely in balance. Things don’t always work out this way. It’s like the idea of a fifty-fifty partnership or […]

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