Personal Story

There’s a brook along the road on my drive home from work. I stopped there today, parked my car, and I walked out to the middle of the brook. You can do it if you’re very careful, and you select the stones that rise just above the shallow eight inches of the babbling brook.

I walked out to the middle, and I stopped. And I crouched down. A few feet away, the brook gets deeper, maybe three to four feet. And the rapids are moving quicker. The sound is intensified, so strong and so loud, you can’t even hear the cars passing on the highway just 40 yards away.

There’s a brook by the side of the road. Sometimes, on the way home, I stop here.

It only takes a minute to get out of the car, you walk out, you tip toe across the little stones that extend and rise above the brook. It’s shallow here, maybe eight inches deep.

So I picked it, and select the large rocks, and I’m standing now in the middle.

The sound is beautiful.

As I look to my right, upstream, I see a driftwood. It’s floating down right now.

I wonder what’s going through that driftwood’s mind. Aimlessly, without a care in the world, just floating.

Ever notice that sometimes it’s just hard to get it done? Sometimes it’s hard to get a job, or an event, or an activity you had planned to do, and just do it.

Sometimes, that thing called procrastination bites you in the ass, and you can’t move forward. And no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you think about it, it eludes you.

Now you’re a smart person, you’re capable, you get a lot of things done all day. But sometimes the one event, one activity, one task just can’t get done. So how do you get it done? Here’s a little trick that might work.

How do you regain your confidence when you feel it slipping away, right out the window?

There’s a woman who had lost her confidence in her early 20s. She felt inadequate, and she felt she was a failure. When she joined in in conversations, she felt that the words she had to contribute were not worth speaking at all, that she had nothing to say.

She was a married woman, and she gave birth to twins. At the same time she had the twins, her father also came down with dementia.

How do you make decision?

Do you gather information? Do you research? Do you educate yourself? Do you read all the best information? Put the best information at your fingertips? Do you call friends? Experts in the field? So that before you make the decision, you have all the right information?

Then when you have that, what’s your next step?

I learned from a very successful man, success as being defined as a person thousands of people would listen to, how he did it.

And he called it, "The council of elders."

As we age, and most people retire, many people tell me that they have nothing to do, they’re bored, and they have no clue how to spend the day. And then I meet others who are so busy, they’re busier retired than they ever were when they were working.

I read an article recently that said for the Baby Boomer generation, one out of eight will end up with Alzheimer’s.

Now, I don’t know if that’s going to happen, but I do know that I know a few friends whose parents have Alzheimer’s, which means they have no memory of certain events, and it’s greatly affected their life.

So how can we work on improving our memory, that’s easy and simple, and doesn’t take any extra effort from you?

Listening may be the least practiced and most important skill you can master.

I was a salesman in my past life. And in competing with five of the largest companies in a certain field, it was my turn to give my presentation. When I went up to the podium to present, my client started to attack, and made an accusation of my company and myself.

My mom would say to us when we were little, “If you don’t have something nice to say, say nothing at all.”

You ever notice in life, when you get in conversations with people in your family or good friends, that something will be said that’s hurtful or insensitive? Immediately, the natural thing to do is to respond, to react to what was said, and come back and protect yourself. And it’s said in the way of an attack.

You’re walking along the ocean shore in Truro, Massachusetts, and Cape Cod. You feel all alone in the world right now.

You went for a walk, to kind of gather yourself, but still, you feel alone.

The area in Truro is distant from the parking lots, so very few people ever venture out that far.

So you see no sun bathers. All you see are a few seagulls.

But basically you’re alone. Or are you?