Erudite Relics of Loc Huu Ho

1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway

2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

3. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

4. That good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

6. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

7. People favor underdogs but follow only the top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

9. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

10. Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

The Paradoxical Commandments were written by Kent Keith in 1968, when he was 19, a sophomore at Harvard College. They were part of The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council, his first booklet for high school student leaders. Here is how it all came about. Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine by John Lennon

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

Remember the days when we were all sent to time management courses? We were under the impression that all we had to do to be effective was better manage our time. Today, the message is managing your energy, not time is key to high performance and renewal.

The impact of the recession has resulted in most organizations expecting higher performance, but with fewer employees. The usual method – working harder and putting in more time – is no longer working. Many of us are exhausted, disenchanted and disengaged. And we are getting sick.

It is time to rethink work and how we do it.

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz wrote an excellent book: The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal. Although it was written in 2003, the concepts are still valid today – maybe even more so.

The central thesis is that performance, health and happiness are grounded in the skillful management of energy. The authors remind us that managing time efficiently is no guarantee that we will bring sufficient energy to whatever it is we are doing.

To be fully engaged – and I would say to have spirit at work – we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused, and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest.

We know that energy diminishes with overuse. Too much energy expenditure and insufficient recovery leads to burnout and breakdown. The authors remind us that, “It is not the intensity of energy expenditure that produces burnout, impaired performance and physical breakdown, but rather the duration of expenditure without recovery.” We need to balance our energy expenditure with recovery time.

Here are a dozen tips to help you manage your energy: Read the rest of this entry »

Can the choice of atti­tude in your life have an affect on the things that hap­pen to you? I’m a firm believer that it can. Time and time again I’ve been wit­ness to these effects. Both with me and with oth­ers. When­ever I choose to have a good atti­tude, I real­ize that the level of neg­a­tive stress in my life is greatly reduced. At the same time, I notice that I rec­og­nize more oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ing them­selves when I have a bet­ter or pos­i­tive atti­tude.  On the flip side, it’s inter­est­ing how peo­ple who choose to have a bad or neg­a­tive atti­tude seem to have more “bad luck” occur­ring in their lives. Why is that?

A fel­low in one of the offices I work in has an issue.  He has a dis­tinct prob­lem see­ing any­thing pos­i­tive in his life.  Both in him­self and in any of the sit­u­a­tions he’s involved in, he is the first to point out the prob­lem and pro­ceed by com­plain­ing about it. Using phrases such as, “Can you believe they left it like that?” or “What were they think­ing when they did that?” or even a phrase such as “I don’t know why we should con­tinue to put up with that?” (for the nth time).  I’m sure no one read­ing this post knows of any­one like that.

With that in mind, I decided to do some research­ing online for sites and arti­cles about how to have a bet­ter atti­tude. Below are some of the ones that had some valu­able infor­ma­tion on the sub­ject. Enjoy them and pass it on! Read the rest of this entry »