"When the student is ready…."

“When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

Why?

Because the teacher doesn’t want to teach people who don’t really want to learn.  He or she would be wasting their time.

“The Master said, only one who bursts with eagerness do I instruct; only one who bubbles with excitement, do I enlighten.  If I hold up one corner and a man cannot come back with the other three, I do not continue the lesson.” – Epictetus, The Analects of Confucious

Do you want to learn?

Has the teacher showed up for you?

Where breakthroughs come from…

“When you look at most of the breakthroughs you have had in your life, most of them probably came out of an area of life that just wasn’t working.  There was pain and you had to navigate through it.

When you have to figure something out, tap into resourcefulness, or develop a skill, talent or capability to get through difficult situations, it breeds a breakthrough.” – Joe Polish

In order to have a breakthrough, something’s got to break.

Has that been true in your life?

Feeling engaged and alive

“The source of continuing aliveness was to find your passion and pursue it, with whole heart and single mind.” – Gail Sheehy

I have found this to be true for me.  If I am doing what I love (in my business or my play) and challenging myself, I never get bored or tired.

Do you feel “aliveness” each day?

Four kinds of people in the world…

“There are four kinds of people in this world;

Those who make things happen,

Those who watch things happen,

Those who wonder what happened,

and those that don’t know anything happened.

I knew from a very early age that I wanted to be first on that list.” – Mary Kay Ash

If you reflect on your life so far, what kind of person are you?

Unlearning and relearning

Will Rogers was famously repeating a quote by Artemus Ward when he said-

“It ain’t so much the things we know that get us in trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.”

We all learn things that aren’t right.  We learn parts and fill in the rest.  We learn from people who have just one perspective.  And sometimes, like with modern news media, we learn things that just ain’t so because the source has an agenda for us.

We decide what is true and start rejecting counterpoints and alternate ideas way too soon in life.

Consider that some of the things you know, just ain’t so. 

Be willing to unlearn and relearn better.

Rationalize – Rational-lies

Most of us rationalize bad behavior and habits.  We justify.  We tell ourselves rational-lies so we don’t feel guilty and can feel superior and smart instead.

But this is our ego making us do this.  Our ego wants to be right, even if we aren’t.

The first part of being a better human is to recognize the truth and see when we are wrong or doing less than our best – to be honest with ourselves.

It’s a challenge and one that never ends.

What truth about yourself have you been unwilling to see and accept so far?

Why I still write Think Daily each day

I have been writing Think Daily and Think Daily for Businesspeople faithfully each weekday for over 15 years.  It has taken a lot of time and thought and countless hours from my mornings, mostly on Saturdays and Sundays.  I do not make any money at all from it, though I am sure my company has received plenty of leads and referrals for basement waterproofing, crawl space repair, foundation repair, basement finishing, attic insulation, and more.

I write Think Daily because it has contributed significantly to my salvation from my lesser instincts and to my acumen as a thinker and leader.

It’s one thing to hear a good idea.  But in order to write, you have to know it and be clear about it.

Accepting the challenge to do this has put me in a position to get better – and I am getting better and better each year.

At the same time, you are witnessing my education, I hope you are also getting better, and becoming a person who is more able to free yourself of your own limiting and harmful thoughts, and to produce better results with less strife than the year before.

That’s what Think Daily is about, and I hope you will tell all the people you know about it.

Saving others

In my life I have jumped in and tried to help others – to “save” them in some cases.  In some of these cases, I have gone all in and dedicated considerable resources to take someone’s problems away.

I looked at their situation and assessed it as a disaster, an injustice, and/or a great pain that had to be fixed.

But most of the time I found that the problems were caused by the person in trouble, and that they cared far less about the issue than I did.  If they cared as much as I did they would not be in that situation in the first place.  Often my help/work was not appreciated, and the party was back at their old bad habits soon enough.

So I learned from experience – 

“A bad situation” or a “disaster” is a definition, and everyone’s definition of it is different.

Don’t try to save people who are not trying themselves.

This is what I have learned firsthand.

Now I look for people who are really trying to help themselves/their families and need a boost.

Genius or Good Character? (revisited)

Last week I posed a question – “Would you choose genius or good character?”

If I had to choose, I’d choose good character.  Without good character you will have many problems in life.

Fortunately, having good character is a choice.  Being a genius – less of a choice.  (Being well educated (a choice available to all today) and being a genius are different.)

However if you are a genius it does not mean you can’t have good character or that you are less likely to have good character.

So have good character and if you are not a genius, at least educate yourself well.

Would you choose genius or good character?

If you had a choice to be a genius with bad character flaws or have good character, which would you choose?

The genius will not have many friends and be frustrated that his talents will never be fully appreciated or used because people don’t want to work with him.

The person of good character will have many friends, be loyal and work hard on the right team for the right reasons, and be appreciated and trusted.

Which would you rather be?

Good character?  Me too.