The Value of Lemonade Stands

One of the 24 Values In Action from Positive Psychology research is Persistence (Perseverance and Industriousness)(p.229).  This weekend I stopped to buy a glass of lemonade from two children in my neighborhood.  I had backed out of my garage and did not notice the lemonade stand until I was about turn the corner.  I pulled over – not because I needed lemonade – but because they had taken the time to ask their parents to set the stand up for them.

Lemonade stands are not something parents force a kid to do.  Generally, kids ask for help to put a stand together.  Asking for a lemonade stand does not mean you are necessarily industrious, but it does help you learn in a safe environment what it might take to succeed in life.  I live in a gated community.  I do not live on a heavily trafficked street, yet these two children decided to try, in the 100 degree heat, to sell their tasty libation.  They could have been in the pool, in an air conditioned family room watching television, or on the computer playing games.  Instead, they chose to put themselves ‘out there’ and try their hand at a small business. 

I like that for whatever the reason we live in a country with a ‘lemonade stand’ metaphor.  When some business person wants to prove they were industrious from a young age, they like to talk about the newspaper routes and lemonade stands they started. As they get older and traverse greater challenges in less safe business environments, there are lots of stories of turning ‘lemons into lemonade.’  The metaphor of turning something naturally sour into something sweet and enjoyable is the perfect metaphor for teaching resilience.  Resilience is the attribute that supports persistence, perseverance and industriousness.  We are never too young, or too old, to learn to build such great attributes. 

Happy Monday.  Thank you, Andrea T. Goeglein, PhD

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Two academic resources to check out:  Character Strengths and Virtues by Christopher Peterson and Martin E. P. Seligman and Resilience by Karen Reivich

 

 

Seth Godin's Blog

This information is too important not to take a quick break from my morning prayer and quite time to spread the word. Seth Godin is a master in his field -- marketing with integrity with a focus on new technologies. His blog, however, has so much good information, I recommend everyone sign up for it. Although he makes daily entries which I am not a fan of, his are short, to the point, and generally actionable.

Take today's entry as an example. You can change the words a little and the situation, yet this advise would apply to any part of your life and any relationship.

The relentless search for "tell me what to do"
If you've ever hired or managed or taught, you know the feeling.

People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: "If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I'm safe."

When asked, resist.

Dr. Success Challenge: Don't resist signing up for Seth's blog. www.sethgodin.com will get you there.

Resilience is a Noun. To Prosper is a Verb. Get Moving.

Author Thomas Friedman cautions that the world is getting hot, flat and crowded in his current book of the same title, and I postulate that the answer is to love, to learn and to prosper.

They don’t call me Dr. Success for nothing, so let me be direct. Being resilient and developing your resilience is not some optional human characteristic that you can debate about, deciding whether to invest the time to strengthen it. It is a “human operating system” necessity. This is not new information. What is new is that the number of people who are being called to be resilient has increased, and a whole new generation has a need to be informed. The information is old, the need is current, and the demand is great!

So what exactly is resilience? Why not look at your own life to answer that question. Have you ever taken a test, failed, and thought the world would never be the same? Have you ever fallen in love, thought you knew exactly how your life together would play out, and then the relationship ended? Have you ever had the perfect job, or perfect boss, or perfect client – and then lost one or all of them? Well, the fact that you have carried on, after you thought you would not be able to do so, is an example of you being resilient.

Dr. Success Challenge: Now is the time to recall as many “I can’t go on” instances in your life, to embrace both the feeling of not being able to go on, and then completely acknowledge the reality that you obviously did go on.

I also want to offer you a shortcut to getting back on the road of life success. When you believe that things can’t get any worse and you doubt you can go on, take some time and observe all the love that surrounds your life. Look under every rock for it. If you have a pet, start there. The love of a pet is usually the least conditional and the most apparent. Then move on to the humans in your life – don’t stop at just those you might live with either. Look for all the people who spontaneously smile just because you enter a room. If you just said to yourself, “What people spontaneously smile when I walk into a room?,” do this: consciously smile at every single person you see, every day, no matter what. I will lay odds that you’ll start to get a lot of people smiling when you enter a room.

Next, make an effort to learn from any and all current frustrations and disappointments. When you enter into a conversation, instead of leading with what is frustrating or disappointing to you, lead with what you are learning from the situations. You will not only be helping yourself build resilience, you’ll also begin to help others see what is possible in their own lives. And in the end, helping others is what it is all about.

Your resilience will be built stronger and more reliable as you help others be more resilient in their lives. This is not simply about paying it forward, this is about creating true prosperity. Remember to love yourself, remember to learn from your past experiences and remember to prosper really means to be strong and flourish. Get moving.

Thank you Stew Gibbons for the beautiful photograph of an Alaskan mountain scape shown at the top of this blog.

Synchronicity and Black Swans

At this moment, Dr. Success does not feel much like offering a challenge. Instead I will make a request at the end of this post.

I spent the morning writing which always makes me happy. I had been adding some thoughts about synchronicity to my work on resilience, when I received an email from my dear friend Claire. The following is the section of my work on my computer screen as I navigated away to check her message:

“The Black Swan

Here is a riddle, “What do earthquakes, tsunami, avalanches, hurricanes and economic meltdowns have in common?” Answer: You know they might happen but you never know exactly when, why or how destructive the impact until after they have occurred. That riddle is the best way to explain how we began to feel about business, and the economy upon which the hotel business is dependent, by March 2008. Gas prices were rising (not a good thing when you own a hotel in a drive-to market), real estate prices were falling sharply (not a good thing when you own a hotel which is primarily considered a real estate asset), and business travel was being curtailed in response to decreased business results (really not a good thing when you own a hotel). The economic indicators were not good and everyone knew that in March, yet the vast majority of the best economic minds had not foreseen the economic meltdown that visibly surfaced for everyone to see in October 2008. We were particularly stunned since October 2008 was our best October occupancy since owning the hotel. As one of the many life ironies, Richard and I were listening to a book on CD as we drove back and forth from our home to the Prescott hotel. The book we were listening to was entitled The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

The premise of the book Black Swan is that life and world events are far more random than predictable. We generally say that we agree with that premise, yet our day to day lives are filled with actions that scream that we don’t believe in the premise one bit. We buy stock believing we can accurately predict the direction its value will move, we make long-term plans believing we are prudent to do so, and we even choose educational paths believing we know what will be needed in the future. While we are busy crawling our way from one guesstimate to the next, some event occurs that jumps out of supposed nowhere, and the real actions we need to take at that moment become clear. Notice I wrote “at that moment”. “

Claire’s message was that her granddaughter Annie was in the hospital. Annie had just been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. This was not totally unexpected since Annie has been monitored for many years. You see Annie comes from a family that appears to be a medical anomaly for diabetes. Her older brother Bobby was diagnosed at 20 months of age some eight years ago, her Uncle Christopher and Mom Rebecca were diagnosed five years later in -- the same week. All type 1, all one family, all without any noticeable family history prior to Bobby’s original diagnosis. Some of life's black swans just keep pooping on your head.

So here is the Dr. Success Request. If you feel so moved, please make a donation (http://www.curetype1.org/). And if you happen to be in the neighborhood on Friday, July 24, join me at the Ladies Luncheon for the Drive for the Cure at Wente Winery. I have the honor of keynoting that event and the topic will be Resilience, Heroes and Hope. At this moment admittedly I need all three and so do my friends the Stearns, Lien's and Wolfe's.

With appreciation for the good medical care available in our country, Andrea

Resistance, Resilience, transitions and Allowing

Dr. Success™ Challenge: If you feel stuck in any area of your life right now, find a book that inspires you (means you need to take action instead of complain). After reading the book, find five people to speak to about what you read, learned and what action you will be taking because of your learning.

Last night I went to dinner with a young, female entrepreneur who invested her life savings about 36 months ago to create a multi-city marketing service focused on the commercial real estate business. You are smart so you figure out the end of that conversation! However, after she explained the series of events that converged (yes, usually it is not one thing) and the compounding challenge of her businessman father’s multiple stokes at 58 years old, she ended the conversation laughing and saying, “I know it will all work out. This is just this moment in time. It is not the end of anything.”

From there is began to tell me what actions she has taken, and will be taking – starting with a meeting with an investment group today – to move her original company to a totally web-based platform. In addition, she described investing her time in the creation of a social networking system focused on a personal passion.

Here is what I know as sure as I know how to breathe: She will not only survive, she will thrive. Anyone want to bet me on that one?

Of course, I immediately recommended a book, Jill Bolte Taylor’s, Stoke of Insight. I also recommended she check out www.Ted.com for Jill’s presentation on her life experience.

All of my adult life, books have guided my day-to-day existence. Whether I was in school, exploring my personal development or working with clients, the books I have been attracted to at the moment have some purpose greater than just my reading them. I have taken it as my version of life imitating art. Last night’s dinner is no exception. Several other things that occurred this week have caused me to want to suggest some “oldies, but goodies”.

If you are currently experiencing business and/or life changes that don’t seem to make any sense given all the goal-setting, preparation and hard work you have done, read or re-read Shifting Sands by Steve Donahue. If these current unexpected changes are causing you to slow your pace of commitment to your business goals, read or re-read How High Can You Bounce by Roger Crawford.

Don’t tell me you can’t afford to buy anymore books. If you are fortunate enough to be in the United States, you most likely live in a community with a public library. Start using and supporting your public library.

Happy reading, Andrea

The Answers to Life are In the Questions You Ask

The Answers to Life are in the Questions You Ask

How do you know…?

In my profession it is not unusual to have someone ask a question as a way of seeking advice. I will be asked a question such as, “How do you know if a job offer is the right one to take?” Or, “How do you know if this person is the right person to go into a partnership with?”

This week I received a different kind of question via email. It read more like a riddle than a question at first, but the longer I sat with the message, the more confident I became in my response.

The email question:

What is the difference between persevering, beating a dead horse and letting go?

My response was and is: The difference between those three is the level of spiritual strength. You persevere to achieve a valued life task (a goal), you beat a dead horse when you are afraid of what is next (fear), and you let go when you have released the fear (connecting with your spirit instead of your ego).

A week later the same person sent another question:

What’s the difference between denial and positive thinking?

Those of you who work with me and my philosophy could probably answer that one…

Answer: Whether or not you take ACTION!

There are a host of wonderful books about the art of asking questions to achieve results in work as in life. One I would highly recommend is Change Your Questions, Change Your Life by Marilee Adams. You can order the newest edition by clicking this link: http://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Questions-Life-Paperback/dp/1576756009/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239204209&sr=1-1

With appreciation for all the questions I am asked,


 

 



Andrea T. Goeglein, Ph.D.
Dr. Success™
866 975 3777
Join a class: http://www.servingsuccess.com/events.php

Self-Declared Spring Break

Being an entrepreneur during a recession has many negative implications. And being true to my title of Dr. Success, there is always a benefit to be found in every less than desirable life situation. A moment ago I posted the following away message on my business email:

"I have decided to use the week of April 6 - 12 as a self-declared Spring Break. I will honor all confirmed appointments and look forward to doing so. However, if you are not on my calendar and you are not contacting me about a minimum 5-digit check you would like to hand me at this moment just because I have done such wonderful work in the past...I'll get back to you next week. As always, love, learn and prosper. Andrea"

You see, I could look at my calendar and wonder where has all the business gone...or I could look at my calendar and declare a spring break. I have made my choice. I encourage you to do the same.

Remember to remember...You are as happy at any moment as you allow yourself to think you are.

With much appreciation, Andrea

http://twitter.com/DrSuccess
www.ServingSuccess.com
866 975 3777
702 869 3729

Resilience is Success

As I move from meeting to meeting during this first business week of this beautiful new year of hope, I am struck continually by the unending conversations of sluggish sales, lower donations, lower expectations.

In an email this morning I was reminded that the month January is named after the Roman god Janus who was depicted with two faces, one looking backward and one looking forward. I thought how very appropriate for where we are at this point in our history.

I would like to challenge everyone to spend the next few days transforming the conversations you create. Whenever you begin to look backward, stop, take a breath an notice what you were about to contribute to in your world. Was that your goal? Are those words serving your goals? Are you willing to try another way?

What would you say if you were looking forward with hope? Think of a resilient contribution you could make to the conversation.

Remember, the only time we ever really lose, is when we don't get back in the game.

Wishing you resilience, Andrea
Dr. Success
http://www.servingsuccess.com/