Looking for a job is very stressful so it can be tempting to take the first one that comes along. That's why it's good to take the time now to know what you love so you can streamline your efforts and find work you love.

1. No time

I hear people say they don't have time to think about what they should do with regards to their work. My response is they can't afford to not take the time. It's your life. It only changes when you do.

2. Each new day brings a new perspective

When you wake up each day, what are the questions you ask yourself? Here's one that you might find useful:

• What am I grateful for today? Ask new questions when you wake up and you will gain a whole new perspective

3. The path to authentic work is self awareness

Do you really know yourself? Ask yourself right now; what is it that is missing from my life and what can I do about it? Make sure the missing link is something you really want otherwise you won't do anything about it.

4. Your work becomes your center

When one follows their calling, their work becomes their center of balance. This helps through all the challenges in one's life. I know it has helped me and it can help you too. Remember, what we do determines who we are.

5. You are responsible for your own happiness- It can start with your work

No one will run up to you on Monday morning and ask if you are happy with your work. This must come from within you. It all starts with a honest self-assessment of what you really want to do.

6. Have you defined what success means to you?

Answer the following question: What does success mean to me?  Now, examine your answer. Is this your definition or does it come from someone else? Many people live their lives striving for a vision of success that was determined by someone else. This can make following one's passion and one's work challenging.

7. Don't settle

Don't settle for a mundane life filled without joy. It all can start with your work. Remember, what you do determines who you are. What are you passionate about today and why?

8. Rock your boat now

So many people come to me wanting to change, discover and live their passions. Many take the first step but sadly many go away afraid of what others will say and afraid that it might rock their boat of life. Doing what you love the rest of your life will rock your boat but it will also give you new direction. The sailing won't be easy but it will be the best journey you will ever take. What first step can you take today?

9. Look for patterns

Look for patterns in your life and what they mean. For example, what does it mean every time you walk by a specific building or store and you feel new energy. What happens when you watch a certain movie and or are around a specific type of person and suddenly you feel new hope. Pay attention now to these signals. They are the keys to a new path.

10. Have Integrity

Be consistent, be open, be truthful with yourself as to what you want and why. This makes the journey towards vocational passion easier.

I'll be cheering you on as you go

Craig Nathanson

Craig is a 25 year management veteran, Executive coach, college professor, author, and workshop leader. Also, Craig Nathanson is The Vocational Coach helping people and organizations thrive in their work and life.

Craig Nathanson is the founder of The Best Manager , workshops and products aimed at bringing out the best in those who manage and lead others.

Ask yourself: Are you stuck in denial, apathy, self-doubt or blame? If these few samples of obstacles to everyday courage resonate with you, then you’re stuck in the past unable to embrace the major transitions going on in our culture for the past several years. Please know that it has not been easy for me either nor did I heed the advice when I heard the prediction that major changes were coming along with human suffering at all levels.

In October 2006 at my Newfield Network coaching conference in Colorado I heard scholar and author Richard Tarnas speak. He shared his research and predictions about the human suffering that was coming in 2008 and lasting through 2011. While my work focuses on understanding how StuckThinking™ keeps us from utilizing our courage, Richard writes in Cosmos and Psyche about living in delusion. “A state of delusion about one’s actual condition in the world is carefully maintained by filtering out and denying all information that might cast questions on the validity of one’s rigidly protected belief system, thereby creating a closed feedback loop.”

If you sense you are stuck in delusion about the changes going on then this is an opportunity to claim and apply your everyday courage. It is a time to start new beginnings (and for women to collectively come together). Richard continues with his predictions “...it seems altogether likely that another feminist propulsion will infuse itself into the culture and that women will emerge from the next decade and a half with considerable more political and economic power than now.”

Are you stuck in sorrow or blame or are you inviting new beginnings? Simply put: It takes everyday courage to come from your heart to face hardships without delusion.

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks!

Sandra Ford Walston is known as The Courage Expert and innovator of StuckThinking™. She is an organizational effectiveness consultant, speaker, trainer and courage coach. She is the internationally published author of bestseller COURAGE The Heart and Spirit of Every Woman (2001), the follow-up book STUCK 12 Steps Up the Leadership Ladder (2010) and the recently released FACE IT! 12 Obstacles that Hold You Back on the Job (2011). She is certified in the Enneagram and MBTI®. Please visit www.sandrawalston.com.

Follow me on Twitter @courageexpert and Facebook

© Sandra Walston

All Rights Reserved

A key component to moving into a strength focus begins with the first of 4 UNFEAR practices that I share in my book.

Accept what is real.

Unless and until we accept the circumstances of a given situation, we are reacting from fear and through fear based behaviors.  Forward movement is limited or impossible without first giving acceptance.

To operate from a place of strength, it is necessary to first accept our talents, our desires, our natural propensities, our weaknesses, our deficiencies, our circumstances, as well as the demands being placed on us.  If we dwell on what's not working, we waste energy and time that could be better spent finding solutions or being productive. As long as we are stuck in resistance patterns we are creating pain.

Many people have a hard time accepting their own talents and gifts. It is easier to play a victim role and reap the benefits of being a victim. How often have you given a compliment to someone only to have that compliment rejected? How many times have you been guilty of the same?

In order to move from a place of strength, we have to give up the rewards of  being a victim and embrace those aspects and characteristics of ourselves and our jobs in which we excel. Once we have done this it is easier to recognize and address areas where we experience lack and to find ways of mitigating the impact of weaknesses by getting help.  Admitting to weakness and asking for assistance is a strength behavior.  It opens the door for others to contribute and assist, adding their strengths to the equation. It also allows management teams to find alternate solutions and to work  around or to reassign tasks in a timely manner.

By accepting what is real, we are freed to move forward in strength.

---------------------

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks!

Karlin Sloan is the founder and CEO of Karlin Sloan & Company, Ms. Sloan provides organization development consulting, training and executive coaching to clients the U.S., Europe, South America and Asia.  She is the author of Smarter, Faster, Better; Strategies for Effective, Enduring, and Fulfilled Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2006) and Unfear (January 2011).

FIVE TIPS TO REDESIGN OLD SCRIPTS

1.  Be willing to endure the anguish that comes with transitions. Psychologists suggest it takes three weeks to start breaking old habits. Becoming an observer of your stories requires concentration. Placing judgments on peers is easier than turning the spotlight in strict honesty on one’s self. But, if you make this shift to focus on your actions, eventually, you no longer avoid your patterns — you “own” them and you claim how they affect others. The tragedy for most people is that intentions, such as New Year resolutions never measure up. For example, you may work in an environment that bleeds your heart rather than feeds it (clock watching). Ask:  how can I say no to courage?

2.  Take action to implement this redesign. The script you learned a long time ago in your head becomes conditioned to a pattern that dictates your thinking and your behavior. For example, you might discover that your mindsets reveal how you tend to blame. Driving your day to day actions (or inactions), such as the conversations you choose to have or not have become outdated and don’t work anymore. Your courage meter comes in to play when you determine how you hold yourself 100% accountable for your actions. Ask: How do I hold myself accountable for my missteps and how long does it take for me to step up?

3.  An act of “courageous will” is required to change, so pay attention. Make a decision to live your life by staying focused on when you’re happy. Analyzing yourself allows you to discover when your “being” (spirit) is in joy. Then, you can begin to sustain this feeling and enjoy being. Will you consent? If you are willing, transformation occurs as an organic process. It’s a simple process if the proper attention is applied.

The GE Chairman & CEO’s 2004 Dartmouth's commencement speech was not filled with “big” words or haughty comments. He said, “The challenge you must accept, right now, is to make yourself better every day. …Your curiosity and desire to learn things on your own terms is really a key to success. … You must have courage.” Ask yourself: If I had no limitations, what would I be doing?

4.  Find someone you trust to share in a dialogue. To change your cycle from mediocrity, struggle or suffering can be a difficult process. People share with me that at times they feel alone (not lonely) on their journey. Finding someone you can share your progress with keeps the new intent alive, serves as a means of accountability and supports you to raise your level of being present. One professional friend said, “Find someone you are willing to trust. Someone who doesn’t just back up your every comment or thought but someone to dialogue with who will challenge your thinking to keep you in the NOW and not in your old scripts.”

Are you becoming the person you were created to be or just limping along? A colleague called me on the telephone to share a transformation in motion. His schedule for the day had four back to back appointments with a one hour drive in between each appointment. At that moment, he recognized an old script playing in his mind. His ego was whimpering “poor me” complaints in the form of “This is too much and I am getting too old to do this type of heavy driving day.” He continued, “Sandra, you’ll appreciate that when I invited my ‘observer’ to be in the now, I shifted my perspective and changed my script. I immediately released the tension in my shoulders and gazed off the road to notice the wonders and beauty of the unique Napa Valley.” This is a simple example of becoming more intensely present to attract a new circumstance. He was no longer identified with his scripts. Ask: How does your joy show up at work (home)?

5.  Declare your courageous intention. Commit to a period of time to live life deliberately, such as 60-90 days. Ask: How willing am I to summon my courage?

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks!

Sandra Ford Walston is known as The Courage Expert and innovator of StuckThinking™. She is an organizational effectiveness consultant, speaker, trainer and courage coach. She is the internationally published author of bestseller COURAGE (2001), STUCK: 12 Steps Up the Leadership Ladder (2010), and FACE IT!: 12 Obstacles that  Hold You Back on the Job (2011). She is certified in the Enneagram and MBTI®. Please visit www.sandrawalston.com.

Sandra Ford Walston, The Courage Expert

Innovator, StuckThinking™

Follow me on Twitter and Facebook

© Sandra Walston

All Rights Reserved

Who’s kidding whom? Something’s not right in the conversation. You have an uneasy feeling that what you’re saying does not match up to what you’re thinking. You’ve felt it before but you play the game (and play it well).

You’re stuck in a pattern; perhaps you’re too polite or too charged. You no longer feel comfortable speaking the stark naked truth. The “whole truth” lies hidden and false statements easily take truth’s place. It’s been such a routine you hardly know you’re stuck.

So, how do you get unstuck?

Interactions at work or in personal relationships generally trap people in fixed roles. Speaking with intimacy (confidence) is not easy. Throttling downward on a roller coaster with your heart in your throat seems more appealing than baring truthful feelings. It’s scary to admit, “I don’t trust my boss,” “This isn’t the right relationship for me,” or “I don’t want to be alone.”

Recently, a coaching client shared an incident with me. A colleague mustered the courage to share her opinion about a concern she’d been hiding (and losing sleep over). Expressing the naked truth made her feel vulnerable (even though this openness was a precious and rare authentic moment). After a few days, my client responded in an equally open manner (so far, this exchange is couched in courage). What came next caught my client off guard and abruptly ended the intimate conversation. The peer withdrew her head back into her shell and replied, “Well then, I just won’t be honest anymore!” This is a common response when people are learning how to create frank and open conversations.

In life, you get to choose whether you wish to censor your “truth.” But, you can’t penalize the other person for having the backbone to bare it all. It takes courage to break out of old assumptions and really listen to colleagues or friends. At work, the required exit interview uncovers the complete truth. The person comes out of his or her shell to expose the bare truth because they believe it’s needed and appropriate, albeit too late to construct changes. Choosing to reveal whole-truths by acknowledging the limitations of difficult situations or relationships takes courage!

Communicating with courage means you know what the mere truth is for you and you honor your voice by declaring your intent. Tolerance and openness takes commitment and practice; otherwise, we die not knowing our truth (much less the other person’s spirit). That’s why denial is saying no to courage. Most of us do not want to know what we know. Oscar Wilde said, “The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.”

What I am suggesting is simple speech, candid speech, telling it like it is in a mature and caring way—from your heart and spirit (the original definition of the word courage) versus adolescent huffing and bemoaning. In 2011, will you strip off complacency and ask: “How am I conforming? How am I selling my soul?” Answer yourself with a declaration to be honest in your thoughts, statements and actions toward others—and so to yourself.

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks!

Sandra Ford Walston is known as The Courage Expert and innovator of StuckThinking™. She is an organizational effectiveness consultant, speaker, trainer and courage coach. She is the internationally published author of bestseller COURAGE and the recently released STUCK: 12 Steps Up the Leadership Ladder, and soon to be released, FACE IT!. She is certified in the Enneagram and MBTI®. Please visit www.sandrawalston.com.

Sandra Ford Walston, The Courage Expert

Innovator, StuckThinking™

Follow me on Twitter and Facebook

© Sandra Walston

All Rights Reserved

true human beings know.

The moment you accept

what troubles you’ve been given,

the door will open.

-- Rumi

“When one door closes, another door opens.” How many of us have heard that statement when facing a particularly difficult obstacle? If you are in the midst of dealing with a difficult member of your team, confronting a challenge with your boss or moving through an acquisition, that goodwill statement probably does not help much to quell anxiety. After all, the real issue is not about whether the door is opening or closing, but how you deal with the place in between. You may know this place as “closing off” or “going underground”— I have even heard it called “the room of a thousand demons.” It’s as if the door is locked from the inside. I speak of this stuck or trapped state of inertia as “hell in the hallway.”

Some doors close in a necessary and positive way, such as when you transfer your skills to a new company or complete a certificate that enhances your résumé. More commonly in our minds, the closed door represents a negative event such as relocating from a wonderful organization or an inability to come to an agreement with a complicated, tough project issue. During these times, we often find ourselves trying to heave the next door open by force. Determined to do whatever it takes to overcome this barrier, you might be vaguely aware that you are forcing the issue. If you are alert, your use of force (sense of discomfort) will tell you that this opportunity is probably not the right choice for you.

Hell in the hallway, despite the frustration and sense of loss, provides a chance for introspection. This will shed light on your true heart and spirit intentions.

If you are the type of talent that holds yourself to a higher standard, then you most likely put yourself under undue pressure. This pressure to achieve and succeed insists that you push wholeheartedly to open a door. The paradox is that by tapping into the reservoir of courage that already exists in each and every one of us we can open and close all doors with greater ease.

Consider slowing down to examine your spiritual and professional path by asking a difficult question: What is the courageous conversation I am not having? Will you discover that you are stuck in apathy, self-doubt, blame or full-blown denial that is holding you in the hallway without even noticing the doors? Once you have declared your willingness to confront your personal obstacles you have moved into courageous intention and the path ahead is immediately clear. Fear is nothing more than being stuck, and being stuck is inertia. So will you stay in the hallway or make a choice to open the door? “Choices determine consequences,” Dr. Hawkins writes in Truth vs Falsehood: How to Tell the Difference, “which is a mechanism that is really impersonal and operates automatically…. One then realizes that there is no hand on the tiller but one’s own and that ‘I myself am heaven and hell.’” What positive lifestyle choices have you made to align your life with your heart? You must act to begin the courage process. 

Recall and list some of the times you found yourself in the hallway wondering if and where the next door would open. What patterns do you see? What are your feelings?

Courage opens doors. You have the answers that brought you to the hallway; they have always been accessible. Perhaps you’re where you are because, in reality, most growth in consciousness comes in the lonely hallway. Pacing in the hallway, reassessing your goals, delving deeper into your values — this may be the place where you discover where you’re stuck in your thinking.

Grant yourself perspective, the ability to see, be in and use the hallway as a positive growth opportunity. It is never the place to stay, but rest and reflect. Time in this hallway acts as a foil to the animated energy we need to claim the courage to act on what we know must be done.

Awaken from the poppy field of inertia, find your essence — your core — by applying courage! Giving yourself permission to claim and apply your courage empowers you and invites new challenges. It is a perfect starting place if you want to multiply your talents and effectiveness, find your life’s meaning and escalate your success at work. The door is open. What are you waiting for?

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks!

Sandra Ford Walston is known as The Courage Expert and innovator of StuckThinking™. Her second book, STUCK: 12 Steps Up the Leadership Ladder, is now available. She is an organizational effectiveness consultant, speaker, internationally published author of bestseller COURAGE, trainer and courage coach. She is certified in the Enneagram and MBTI®.

Please visit www.sandrawalston.com.

Sandra Ford Walston, The Courage Expert

Innovator, StuckThinking™

Follow me on Twitter and Facebook

© Sandra Walston

All Rights Reserved

Blind spots are ways that our mind becomes blocked from seeing reality as it is - blinding us from seeing the real truth about ourselves in relation to others. Once we form a conclusion, we become blind to alternatives, even if they are right in front of their eyes.

Emily Pronin, a social psychologist, along with colleagues Daniel Lin and Lee Ross, at Princeton University's Department of Psychology, created the term "blind spots."  The bias blind spot is named after the visual blind spot.

Passing the Ball

There is a classic experiment that demonstrates one level of blind spots that can be attributed to awareness and focused-attention. When people are instructed to count how many passes the people in white shirts make on the basketball court, they often get the number of passes correct, but fail to see the person in the black bear suit walking right in front of their eyes. Hard to believe but true!

Blind Spots & Denial

However, the story of blind spots gets more interesting when we factor in our cognitive biases that come from our social needs to look good in the eyes of others.

When people operate with blind spots, coupled with a strong ego, they often refuse to adjust their course even in the face of opposition from trusted advisors,  or incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

Two well-known examples of blind spots are Henry Ford and A&P:

• Ford's success with the Model-T blinded him to the desires of his customers. That gave the fledging General Motors an opportunity to capture a winning share of the automobile market with a broader range of models and options.
• A&P stuck with the grocery chain's private label products even as their customers defected en masse to supermarkets that carried the national brands they saw advertised on TV.

Recovery

The good news is that companies can recover from denial; even when they seem permanently wedded to their histories, their philosophies, or their belief systems. IBM, which had been caught up in its own "bureau-pathology," learned to conquer arrogance and overcome its history and culture, under the leadership of Louis Gerstner.

Intel, DuPont, and Coca-Cola, are more examples of corporations caught in denial traps when launching new products. They demonstrated that when corporate management has strong convictions, or worse yet, hubris about their points of view, they can become blind to their customer's needs - needs that are right in front of their very eyes.

Seeing the real truth is an art and a science. When we get the balance right between what we think is true and what is really true - we are managing our blind spots with integrity, and wisdom.

Fortunately, these well-known brands did not live in denial very long. It was only a passing phase, and they recovered from it by revisiting reality with an open mind. Blind spots explain why the "smartest people in the room" (as Enron's top executives were famously called) can sometimes be very dumb. They do not see the light - they are not open to changing their minds.

The Power of Coaching to Dissolve Blind Spots

Denial and Blind spots are one of the primary reasons why Executive Coaching is so vital for leaders, and why peer coaching is equally important for employees to practice. Coaching can effectively uncover and deal with blind spots and denial and give the decision-makers a fresh perspective on how to handle executive challenges.

Coaching can also help individuals gain a broader and more 'realistic perspective' about situations and themselves. Executive, Team and Organizational Coaching can help leaders calibrate with the world around them, giving them reality checkpoints that position them  to navigate the real world with wisdom and insight.

From time to time, we all need a wake-up call to be sure that we do not allow ourselves to confuse our denial maps with the actual territory.

Check Yourself

Here are 7 Common Blind spots:

1. Denial of Reality - Feeling so strong about our own beliefs that we deny the beliefs of others, or deny facts right in front of our eyes.
2. Control - Seeing ourselves as being more responsible for things than we actually are, or having more control over things and events than we truly do.
3. Made-Up Memories - Making decisions based on memories that did not happen. Often we confuse our imaginations, or our dreams, with reality.  
4. Reality Distortions - Distorting reality to conform to preconceptions.
5. Know it All - Thinking that we know more than what we really do. (We simply don't know what we don't know.)
6. Listening Only to Validate What We Know -  Failure to listen to others.
7. Undervaluing What We Do Know - Listening too much to others, and allowing others' beliefs to talk us out of our beliefs; or in some cases cause us not to trust our instincts.

Neuro-tips: Removing Blind Spots 

Tip #1 - It Takes Thought to Learn
The brain does not always allow us to hear all the facts if they do not fit our prior understanding of a concept. To learn new facts, you must be actively open to accepting opposition.

Tip #2 - Effectively Working Together
Partners who were considered controlling were perceived as critical and rude, and their advice was generally rejected and not trusted. When the same partners showed appreciation, a feeling of rapport and trust developed, creating a deep 'WE-centric' bond.

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks!

Judith E. Glaser is the Author of two best selling business books: Creating WE: Change I-Thinking to We-Thinking & Build a Healthy Thriving Organization - winner of the Bronze Award in the Leadership Category of the 2008 Axiom Business Book Awards, and The DNA of Leadership.

We all have moments when we feel victimized, whether it is a small thing (I missed the bus; I am doomed to a life of lateness) or a big thing (I was hit by the bus and lost my ability to walk). With both big and small things, we need a chance to process our feelings about the event and the result, and then we need to look at what happened in reality and move on to the future.

Have you ever hung on to being wronged? Have you ever spoken to someone who plays the role of the eternal victim? Not only is this a sad state of affairs for them, but for you as the listener as well! Often the reward for victimhood can be attention, sympathy, or bonding over mutual sadness.

In organizations, we have patterns of victimhood or patterns of empowerment. Take some time and watch your own company patterns; you may be surprised.

Sometimes when we talk about our power, we are rejected by those who wish we would stay in a state of victimhood so they can take care of us, relate to us, or even keep us less powerful in order to feel superior.

To get rid of victimhood, we need to shift our sense of powerlessness to one of empowerment. If we go back to the attributes of resilience, we need to tap our positivity, pro-activity, and reframing in order to get out of a victim stance and into one of action. I promised you some actions/ tips this week - and this is an excellent one to try yourself or to use with your work team.

TRY THIS:  Victim Thinking to Power Thinking
Make three columns on a piece of paper. Headers of the columns are: COMPLAINTS -  REQUESTS OR CHOICES - ACTIONS. In the complaints colum, write down a list of anything that you are unhappy with in your work. It could be a new strategy, a colleague you have trouble working with, a policy you don’t like, the hours you keep, anything at all. To move out of the dis-empowered perspective, for each one of these items, think about your choices—are you willing to accept this reality and move on, or do you need to take action? The final column is for any next steps or actions you'll take. You’ve made the choice…now what are you going to do?

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks!

Karlin Sloan is the founder and CEO of Karlin Sloan & Company, Ms. Sloan provides organization development consulting, training and executive coaching to clients the U.S., Europe, South America and Asia.  She is the author of Smarter, Faster, Better; Strategies for Effective, Enduring, and Fulfilled Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2006) and Unfear (January 2011).

I lived in Kansas at the time, and my husband Rich was getting his Ph.D. in Medicinal, Bio and Pharmaceutical Chemistry - and I took a job at the Bess Stone Center, a Center for Mentally Disabled Adults. On my first day at work, I was introduced to Larry, a 24-year-old mentally challenged adult. He was very tall and thin. Perhaps the most striking feature of his appearance was the wide suspenders that held up his pants. His teeth protruded and his head was over-sized. "His name is Larry," Mary Jean said to me. "He is 24 but has the mind of a 2-year-old." He doesn't talk. He just grunts. As she spoke those words, his head tilted, and I immediately knew he understood her harsh words. Larry looked different, and even though his outward appearance was unusual; I was about to learn that there was much wisdom beneath his surface.

Larry, who did not possess the ability to communicate through words, put his talents to work. He made an invention by inserting the 'foil' from the inside of a ketchup bottle top into a clothespin. Larry could gaze into the small foil 'rear view mirror' for a fully encompassing view of the world. He used his invention to watch the man who came to polish our floors once a week. Larry watched the up-and-down motion in his 'rear-view' mirror, and once his mind mapped the rhythm he was able to imitate floor polishing even when the polisher was not there.

I asked him if he wanted to 'try it' and sure enough, Larry polished the floors everyday and became one of the best floor polishers ever. Then he took me outside and motioned with his arms that he wanted to polish the grass. After it clicked in, I realized he wanted to transfer his new found skills to learn to mow the grass. And he did. He became the best grass mower we had ever seen.

Larry's energy and passion for learning became contagious. Soon enough, everyone at the Bess Stone Center became alive in a new way. Bertha wanted to play the piano, and she did, in her own way. Albert wanted to have 'money in his pocket' and so Mary Jean gave him money to carry to the store for food shopping. Mark wanted to build a house, and so we gave him some wood to build a miniature house which upon its completion was donated by the Bess Stone Center to its 'sister home' for mentally disabled children. The local newspaper heard about the change at Bess Stone and wrote a feature story, which greatly inspired our small town in Kansas

Larry taught me about trust. Rather than see him as a 'retarded adult' with no capabilities to do much of anything, I saw him as a whole, creative human being. At the movement of contact, I experienced him as someone special, someone I wanted to get to know and understand, and someone of value.  Larry changed my life. He was one of the reasons I wanted to understand more about how our minds work, how our brains work, and why we do what we do.

Music to Your Ears

Three minutes went by and a middle-aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried on to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw money into the till and without stopping, continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly, he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3-year-old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped and looked at the violinist. Finally, the mother pushed hard, and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. Several other children repeated this action, yet all the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only six people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston, and the seats averaged $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell played incognito in the Metro station and was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. 

Think about the labels that frame your world - narrow your appreciation, and stop you from seeing others through a lens of their strengths.

• How do labels influence you?
• What do you perceive and why?
• Do you stop to appreciate what is going on around you?
• What blinds you? What influences your sense of reality?
• Do you recognize the talents of others in an unexpected context?

If you believe someone would enjoy and benefit from this post, please share it. Just click on the + Share button and you will see lots of options for sharing it with friends including email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks!

Judith E. Glaser is the Author of two best selling business books: Creating WE: Change I-Thinking to We-Thinking & Build a Healthy Thriving Organization - winner of the Bronze Award in the Leadership Category of the 2008 Axiom Business Book Awards, and The DNA of Leadership.

There is a time to follow and a time to lead– Discern the time for each in life; your happiness may be riding on it.  Now, on to Fabre and his caterpillars…

Jean Henri Fabre was a French entomologist. He conducted research in regard to the inherited behavior patterns of certain insects.  I recently heard about his findings in regard to the Processionary Caterpillar named for reasons made obvious by the photo below.

Fabre conducted a study where he put pine needles, the caterpillars food, in a pot and  placed the caterpillars in a circle around the pot. For seven days the caterpillars continued in an eternal circle around this pot; each following the caterpillar in front. Sadly they all died with the food they needed just three inches away inside the pot they mindlessly circled around. 

The problem was that the caterpillars followed the caterpillar in front of them.  Each as trusting and clueless as the next one–which of course led them on a path of “Activity” but not “Accomplishment.” Interestingly, the caterpillars leave a trail which gives feedback to any caterpillar who comes upon it.  They can tell an old trail from a new trail, how many caterpillars were in a procession, and they follow the trail that was “marked” by the greatest number of caterpillars.

Sometimes we do that too, don’t we?  The masses can’t be wrong, right? Notice if there are places in life where you follow the trail of many or follow in the footsteps of ______.  We can easily be hypnotized by group thought. In my practice, I have worked with people trying to create new paradigms for themselves. Some have had to face breaking away from the “trail” of abuse, addiction, or rigid religious dogma. Others have had lighter trails to step away from, like moving to a new part of the country away from family or pursing a line of work or education different from peers or previous generations.

Standing apart and forging your own trail is not always easy, but will lead you to your most authentic and happy place.

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Rena M. Reese is the founder of Soul Salon International, an inspirational multimedia company. She is the author of several inspirational titles, a consultant/coach, a professional speaker and the host of a weekly radio program called The Soul Salon. For more inspiration and information about her speaking and classes, please visit www.SoulSalonInternational.com or follow her on Twitter: @TheSoulSalon