Inspiration

I came across this story from a friend, and I wanted to share it with you. It made me ask, "What has to happen to get your attention?"

A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something. As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag's side door! He slammed on the brakes and backed the Jag back to the spot where the brick had been thrown. The angry driver then jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up against a parked car shouting, "What was that all about and who are you? Just what the heck are you doing? That's a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost a lot of money. Why did you do it?" The young boy was apologetic. "Please, mister...please! I'm sorry but I didn't know what else to do," he pleaded. "I threw the brick because no one else would stop!" With tears dripping down his face and off his chin, the youth pointed to a spot just around a parked car. "It's my brother," he said. "He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can't lift him up." Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, "Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He's hurt and he's too heavy for me." Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat. He hurriedly lifted the handicapped boy back into the wheelchair, then took out a linen handkerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes and cuts. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay. "Thank you and may God bless you," the grateful child told the stranger. Too shook up for words, the man simply watched the boy push his wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home. It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door. He kept the dent there to remind him of this message "Don't go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention!"

What are some times that something extreme has happened to you that your attention?

Making Relocation the Catalyst for Life Changes and Self Growth

If you are being forced to relocate to another part of the country, or even another part of your state, you may not be feeling very happy about your move right now. You might even feel like the bumper sticker that says, "Why does life keep teaching me lessons that I have no desire to learn?"

I don't know why life teaches us lessons that we have no desire to learn. What I do know is that those times in life when we are faced with a hard lesson are the times when opportunity is always greatest. As Willa Cather said (somebody should make this into a bumper sticker too!), "Some things we learn best in calm, and some in storm."

Put another way, when life gives us a chance to learn a lesson, we have the chance to open a present. We don't know what may lie inside the wrapping paper. Does the package contain something exciting and wonderful? Or something boring and mundane? Or does it, perhaps, contain a book we've read before? Been there, done that, didn't want to do it again.

The thing about this present, though, is that what it contains has not yet been decided. You are sitting there, with a present in your lap, and as you unwrap it, you get to decide what that package contains. That's not the way opening presents normally works. But it is the way this present works. That's what is so magical about a life change like relocation. It truly will be what you make of it.

So how do you change your outlook from self-pity to excitement and anticipation of good things to come? Try these strategies.

1. Change your self talk. Scientists are beginning to study the effect that the thoughts you have in your brain have on the rest of your body. Have you ever heard of the placebo effect in medical studies? Sometimes, when doctors tell patients they are being given a strong medicine, the effect of each patient's faith in that strong medicine is so powerful that even the patients in the control group get better, or at least have significant improvement in their symptoms. (The control group in a medical study contains patients who aren't really being given medicine but who are instead being given, for example, sugar pills, or the equivalent depending on the treatment that is being studied -- so that doctors can see what the true effect of taking the medicine is compared to taking nothing.)

Placebo studies show us the power of thoughts in the brain to change actual, physical realities. You may be thinking that your job outlook does not depend on your thoughts. But, when your thoughts are positive, you behave different than you do when you have negative thoughts. You may see opportunities that you wouldn't have noticed if you were walking around in a cloud of self pity. You may think more creatively about your options, finding opportunities to learn new things that will help you to advance in your career, or you may suddenly notice that you are moving to a city in which there are many businesses that fall into your industry, giving you the chance to move horizontally, to a similar job in a company with a different corporate culture, if that is what you are looking for.

2. Set goals. Once you have started to think about what a positive change your relocation will be, try getting more specific. Visualize where you want to be and what you want to be doing, at set mileposts that are still down the road. Think of what you would like to be doing in a year, and what steps you will have to take to get to that point. Don't self-censor your dreams! You may think that your dream is unlikely to come true. That doesn't matter. In the words of Robert Browning, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what is heaven for?" Or, more prosaically, as Leo Burnett put it, "When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either."

Setting goals is a way of keeping your eye on the ball, so to speak. If your goal is to advance within your company, you will want to make sure to set yourself up to get the kind of experience that would be looked for by someone doing a job search for the position you are hoping to get. If you need additional education, you will need to find a way to make that happen. Start with your goal, work backward, and you will have a road map, or guide, telling you what steps to take at each stage of your journey.

3. Get more information. If your upcoming move is getting you down, it may be because you do not have enough information about the place where you are going. Getting information is a good way to put your worries to rest when positive thinking is not enough to dispel them. If there is some burning question on your mind that has you bothered, find out the answer. What are the schools like in the area? Is public transportation reliable? How are you going to keep in touch with the friends and family you are leaving behind?

One way to quickly change your own attitude about your move is to set aside your career for a moment and think about your personal interests. Do you have a particular church that you want to look for in your new neighborhood? Are there hobbies that you enjoy that you may find new chances to spend time, because of a neighborhood group or resources in a city that is different from the one where you used to live?

4. Find things that you can look forward to about the move itself. Do you love to travel by train? See if you can find a way to arrange your move so that you can go by train. If you are traveling across the country, think of it as a vacation -- a road trip that you are taking for fun. Even if the move was imposed on you, nobody is stopping you from having fun with it. Be a tourist along the way. Stop at museums in strange cities, or go to see the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, or the Smoky Mountains. Take pictures. Collect postcards. Document your trip in a scrapbook. You may feel that this is the last thing you want to remember. But guess what? When you start to act as though it is an enjoyable even that you want to preserve for posterity, that's what it will become -- a special time to spend time with your family, get to know them better, and see a part of the country that you may never have seen before.

Finally, my last and, in my opinion, most profound suggestion and challenge to those facing a tough move: make a list of all the things that you hate about this relocation. Then turn each negative into a positive. Suppose that you are moving from the Southwest to the Midwest. Yes, you hate long drives, but you'll get to stop in Chicago and visit the Field Museum. Yes, you dislike cold, icy winters, but you will love going to the lakefront in the summer. Yes, you got passed up for the promotion you wanted in your old department, but you are being given a chance to shine in front of a new group of people who don't know anything about you except that you were handpicked to come and be with them. Be your own spin doctor, and before you know it, you will find yourself believing the spin -- and really, truly making the best out of this move.

Art Decker is a division manager with Self Storage Company, which operates a group of websites, including a California self storage locator. Art leads a busy life and often travels from Texas to Washington D.C. As a result, Art has had the opportunity to witness many people amidst relocation and has paid attention to how and why some people have an easier time adjusting to a relocation than others do.

Here's part 2 of the story. Again, if you know the lecturer, share his or her name with us in the comment section! Enjoy these tips on how to deal with stress:

And then he shared some ways of dealing with the burdens of life:

1. Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.

2. Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

3. Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

4. Drive carefully. It's not only cars that can be recalled by their maker.

5. If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

6. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

7. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

8. Never buy a car you can't push.

9. Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on.

10. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

11. Since it's the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.

12. The second mouse gets the cheese.

13. When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

14. Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

15. You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.

16. Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.

17. We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.

18. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

I got an email from my Uncle Ron last week. It contained a story that really made me think (I don't know the author, so if you do, comment and let me know). Here's the story:

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?" Answers called out ranged from 8 ounces to 20 ounces. The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. "In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes." He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. "As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden. "So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can. "Relax; pick them up later after you've rested. Life is short. Enjoy it!"

What kind of stress are you carrying? What do you do to take a rest? If you haven't, subscribe to our blog, because Part 2 of this story has some tips for relieving stress.

Earlier this week we had some very windy weather. As I rushed down to the basement floor from my top floor office suite, I could hear the tornado warnings blaring outside. Right before I headed downstairs, I searched my bookshelf for something that would take my mind off of the weather outside and keep me entertained while I sat out the storm. I chose Every Day is a Gift, and rushed out of my office.

As I sat in the corner of the basement break room, I started reading a chapter called, "Someday Isle". It really touched me, and I'll explain why. First, though, here's the chapter from Barry Gottlieb's book Every Day is a Gift:

I have often heard it said that one of life's greatest tragedies is when someone dies at a young age. I believe an even greater tragedy would be to live to one hundred, without ever having really lived. Someday Isle is well known to most people. It is a place that we dream of and talk about, but where we never seem to arrive. Someday Isle is all of those things we wanted to do in our lives; all those places we wanted to visit; all those things we wanted to have. But we put them off because of "Someday I'll." Someday I'll try whitewater rafting ... Someday I'll finish school ... Someday I'll move out of this neighborhood ... Someday I'll have a family ... Someday I'll be somebody. Think about it. What have you been putting off doing that you have always wanted to do, to have, to be? Ask yourself, what is keeping you from doing these things? Do you have limiting beliefs or fears? Are these limiting beliefs or fears real, or are they just excuses? What if you didn?t have any excuses? What would you do? I am aware of terminally ill cancer patients that have formed "Adventure Clubs." These patients have been told they are going to die, some in a few months, others in several months, and a lucky few within the next 2-5 years. These patients started adventure clubs to seek out and do everything they were afraid to do when they were "well." They went white water rafting, sky diving, rode roller coasters and ate spicy foods they never tried before. They visited places they always wanted to see, but never made time for. They simply made the best out of every day they had left, without fear or limiting beliefs. They would tell their loved ones they loved them, every day. They didn't hold back! You already know this, but chances are you may have lost sight of it. Nobody is promised tomorrow. We are all going to die one day. You don't need to have a terminal illness to decide you want to live each and every day to the fullest. YOU have that choice today. You always have!

As I sat in the basement hearing the wind howl, I thought of what I would regret if that was my last day on Earth. A lot of "Someday I'll" things that I thought about - travel the globe, digitally record my Dad's stories, learn cooking secrets from my Mom, read the books I've been meaning to read - had potential to become "I never ended up doings".

As the sirens quieted, the wind died down, and we all emerged from our hiding places, I had a renewed interest in turning "Someday Isle" things into "I Did" things.

So, what is on your bucket list? What are some things that you have done that have fulfilled you?