Close up: Are We Maximizing Our Efforts?

My wife and I have been married for over 20 years and after that many years we both know each other pretty well. I have habits and interests that amuse my beautiful spouse and I know a few things that are characteristic of her.

For instance, whenever she has the camera on any of our many trips, she will take at least one close up photo of a seagull, dove, flower or if we are at the tidal pools, a starfish. Our photo albums are filled with these close up pictures! As you look through our photo albums you will see wonderful human interest photos and beautiful landscapes and bam, you are staring down the nostril of a seagull! When we sit down and reminisce, we always chuckle at these pictures. It has become a little joke between us. As you can imagine, I feel I have a personal relationship with all sorts of these birds!

So when I was eating breakfast on my balcony the other morning I was visited by a whole bunch of my friends!  It always amazes me that you can be completely by yourself on the balcony without food but as soon as you bring a tiny bit of food out there you are assaulted by 20 of these flying garbage disposals.

As I always do, I warned them that they wouldn't get a bit of food. I know, insert funny mental image here! I went so far as to chase them all off but to no avail. As my wife can attest, I am not the most tidy eater in the world and just one little tidbit of food attracts a hosts of breakfast guests.

What I admired the most about the doves was their persistence.  They never give up!  You can drive them away but they slowly come back to see if you are really serious about not giving them food.  Time after time they would come back.  One had a stub for a leg and that didn't seem to bother it at all.  It was like it was telling me that having a stub leg had nothing to do with eating at all! As long as it could get to the general area, it had a great chance to get a free meal just as the other "whole" doves had at that time! This dove wasn't making any excuses!

How about us?  Are we limited in what we can accomplish by what we perceive as handicaps? Are we frozen by fear or insecurity that might keep us from really fulfilling our full potential? Perhaps we are complacent in our efforts to learn, grow, help or experience.

I have to say that sometimes I can be complacent, especially in my efforts to maximize an experience.  Not my wife!  When the perfect situation opens up for us to have the perfect experience I tend to stay put but my wife goes forward and asks the right questions at the right time and 98% of the time succeeds in her quest to improve our experience! Note to self: follow my wife's example!

Stub, the dove, as I have affectionately called it, can't use its severed leg as an excuse not to maximize its effort to obtain food. It has much more riding on its actions -- its life! It makes its own opportunities and maximizes its efforts by showing up for an opportunity for food even when the human is explaining that there is no way that is going to happen!

Do we maximize our efforts by showing up for opportunities even when someone tells us that there isn't any chance? Does our attitude dictate that we stay put or do we maximize our effort by showing up for an opportunity to learn, grow, help or experience?

Will Marré tells about his grandson's attitude after a seemingly horrible accident. It is an encouraging read.

I took some photographs of the doves on my balcony and I think I'm going to put one on my desk to remind me of Stub's example of persistence and no excuse attitude.  It's a close up.

Until next time,

Jerry de Gier

Core Values -- Where Do We Get Started?

I am on a business trip in Hawaii -- I know, rough assignment! After checking into my hotel I decided to get a bite to eat and went to one of my favorites restaurants on Waikiki, the Tiki Grill.  It is an open air restaurant that has a nice combination of food, atmosphere and music.

It's fun to sit back and watch the tourists and the locals interact -- you can always tell the tourists because they are the ones that are taking too many pictures or are ridiculously over dressed in their Hawaiian garb that they bought from Walmart or Costco.

I observed a couple sitting next to me and they were taking pictures and having fun. They finally asked me to take a picture of them before they left for the evening. I obliged them and we began a conversation based on "where are you from" and "how long are you going to be on the Islands?"

It wasn't very hard to pinpoint where they were from because of their accent (from an American point of view!).  They were from the Margaret River area which is about an hour or so south of Perth in Western Australia. It is one of the prime wine-growing regions in all of Australia.

We had a wonderful conversation that starting out with wine and soon began (as all conversations do) to encompass politics, healthcare and education.  We began to talk about each other's country from our point of view and asked for clarification from their native point of view.  As always, we learned that not everything that we hear on the news is giving us the complete picture.

The final topic of conversation was education.  The couple from Australia included a teacher and she was concerned about the lack of attention that is given to education in Australia.  I was surprised to hear about it because in my opinion, it described some of the challenges that exist in the American school system as well.

The Aussies described overcrowded classrooms, malnourished children who could not learn, overpaid and overstaffed administrations and the lack of funding for basic programs.  Wow!  That sounds like American classrooms in many areas of the country. She went on to say that she uses her own money to feed the malnourished kids so that they have the strength to learn. She also said that a lot of the problems come from broken families and drug use.

I told them that because of my job as a counselor, I see adults that are still hung up in their teen years and are trying to raise a family based on that juvenile point of view.  In other words, they are still struggling with issues that happened to them years ago and are unable to teach a family properly because of where they are emotionally and mentally.

About this time, a resident Hawaiian couple leaned over and said, "can we make a comment?"  They told us that in their jobs that they see it all the time.  The teenager is using drugs because the parents are using drugs. The teens are disrespectful to teachers because the parents are disrespectful to teachers.  The list went on and on.

What it showed me is that the problems of the family breaking down, education losing focus and politics running amok are universal in nature. It is the trouble with human beings not the system that is operating in that country.  We all have the same problems with different political and governmental systems in place.

What needs to change is the mind and hearts of human beings so that each generation can pass on a bounty of right thinking and right behavior and not pass on all the negative traits that we hear so much about on the news today.

That starts by each one of us taking responsibility for our thoughts and actions -- easier said than done.  By putting the right information in our minds, we get the right reaction out of them. What's going into your and my mind?

Jennifer Marshall states that we should expect more from our educational system. The author urges us to take accountability for our children's education. The subject  is not without controversy -- take a read!

In Nebraska, the governor has signed anti-bullying legislation last May. This is one school's attempt to integrate core value education into their curriculum.

It is interesting to read that it is hard to control people's perceptions.  Mike McKinney highlights 5 different leaders of industry that have learned specifics lessons in life.  One of the lessons learned is that our behavior over a period of time can truly affect how people perceive us. When we are constant in conduct, people tend to be more ready to follow that right conduct.

We concluded the evening at the Tiki Grill by realizing that most people want to do what it takes to correct these problems but simply do not know how to get started.  We also agreed that we needed to start doing things that would help facilitate these corrections.  How about you?  Are you willing to take the steps to change within your sphere of influence? The change starts when we take responsibility for our thoughts and actions -- we need to educate ourselves in order to display right values.

When we continue to display right attitudes and conduct, those within our sphere of influence can more readily follow that right example.  Are we prepared to make the sacrifices of change?

We have to be prepared to do just that!

Until next time,

Jerry de Gier