 The turn of each year typically features a fairly predictable re-hash of resolution-making and self-help-inspired actualization pep talks.
Many people find this annoying. Which has no bearing on how applicable it is. The fact is, the opening of a new calendar is an excellent time to identify areas for improvement, both in our personal and professional lives. Whether it takes the form of goal-setting (tips for doing that here!) or "resolutions" or updating a resume/business plan, there is enormous power in articulating your intentions -- especially in ways that are constructive and set you up to succeed. Now, we at Write and Polish are a little biased on this point -- one of our primary foci in marketing is that the words you choose matter. So, of course we think that how you express your plans and needs and hopes has a bearing on the results that you see. But, time again, our experience has found this approach borne out: words of negativity undermine the credibility of the speaker, and betray a mindset of low expectation. In contrast, the quotation above represents, in our opinion, easily half of the battle when it comes to success. It has been a favorite of ours for years. A real estate agent friend recently shared some advice that she received years ago: no matter the market, when people ask, "How's business?" always answer, "Unbelievable!" That way, even if it's down, you've told the truth, but avoided surrounding yourself with a Pig Pen-like cloud of pessimism and bad feeling (which, by the way, is contagious). Excellent advice! So, if you are flirting with making resolutions this year, we suggest that one of them be to choose your words to be constructive, optimistic and collaborative whenever possible. Consider it a corollary to the old bromide about asking before speaking: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? Though the vagaries of circumstance will always tend to hijack your long-range plans, each time you possibly can, choose to make 2013 a good year -- starting with the words you select. Our best to you and yours!
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THE LAST LECTURE by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow
"Don't Complain, Just Work Harder: Too many people go through life complaining about their problems. I've always believed that if you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you'd be surprised by how well things can work out." "Don't Obsess Over What People Think: I've found that a substantial fraction of many people's days is spent worrying about what others think of then. If nobody ever worried about what was in other people's heads, we'd all be 33 percent more effective in our lives and on our jobs." "The Lost Art of Thank-You Notes: Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other. And despite my love of efficiency, I think that thank-you notes are best done the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper." "Treat the Disease, Not the Symptom: Years ago, I dated a lovely young woman who was a few thousand dollars in debt. She was completely stressed out about this. Every month, more interest would be added to her debts. "To deal with her stress, she would go every Tuesday night to a meditation and yoga class. This was her one free night, and she said it seemed to be helping her. She would breathe in, imagining that she was finding ways to deal with her debts. She would breathe out, telling herself that her money problems would one day be behind her. "It went on like this, Tuesday after Tuesday. "Finally, one day I looked through her finances with her. I figured out that if she spent four or five months working a part-time job on Tuesday nights, she could actually pay off all the money she owed. "I told her I had nothing against yoga or meditation. But I think it's always best to try to treat the disease first. Her symptoms were stress and anxiety. Her disease was the money she owed." THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY by Henry James
"…I am very sorry. It is not my fault; I can't marry you simply to please you. I won't say that I shall always remain your friend, because when women say that, in these circumstances, it is supposed, I believe, to be a sort of mockery. But try me someday." "…there are more iron pots, I think, than porcelain ones. But you may depend upon it that everyone has something; even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little hole, somewhere." THEODORE ROOSEVELT'S LETTERS TO HIS CHILDREN by Theodore Roosevelt
"Among other places that [Quentin] visited was Schmid's animal store, where he left his little snake. Schmid presented him with three snakes, simply to pass the day with -- a large and beautiful and very friendly king snake and two little wee snakes...as Quentin and his menagerie were an interruption to my interview with the Department of Justice, I suggested that he go into the next room, where four Congressmen were drearily waiting until I should be at leisure. I thought that he and his snakes would probably enliven their waiting time. He at once fell in with the suggestion and rushed up to the Congressmen with the assurance that he would there find kindred spirits. They at first thought the snakes were wooden ones, and there was some perceptible recoil when they realized that they were alive. Then the king snake went up Quentin's sleeve -- he was three or four feet long -- and we hesitated to drag him back because his scales rendered that difficult. The last I saw of Quentin, one Congressman was gingerly helping him off with his jacket, so as to let the snake crawl out of the upper end of the sleeve" Vanity Fair, February, 2009
ASSASSINS OF THE MIND by Christopher Hitchens "At a dinner party that will forever be green in the memory of those who attended it, somebody was complaining not just about the epic badness of the novels of Robert Ludlum but also about the badness of their titles. (You know the sort of pretentiousness: The Bourne Supremacy, The Aquitaine Progression, The Ludlum Impersonation, and so forth.) Then it happily occurred to another guest to wonder aloud what a Shakespeare play might be called if named in the Ludlum manner. At which point Salman Rushdie perked up and started to sniff the air like a retriever. 'O.K. then, Salman, what would Hamlet’s title be if submitted to the Ludlum treatment?' 'The Elsinore Vacillation,' he replied—and I find I must stress this—in no more time than I have given you. Think it was a fluke? Macbeth? 'The Dunsinane Reforestation.' To persist and to come up with The Rialto Sanction and The Kerchief Implication was the work of not too many more moments." N.B. We presume that the latter two plays must be The Merchant of Venice and Othello, though Hitchens does not reveal the answers. We, being demonstrably not one-quarter as clever as Salman Rushdie, must confess that I Googled 'Shakespeare' and 'Rialto' to come up with Merchant.... Time Magazine, February 26, 2009
WHY WE'RE GOING NUTS OVER NUT ALLERGIES by Alice Park "Given all the attention paid in recent years to food allergies, the number of people in the U.S. who die from them — 15 to 20 a year — is relatively small. More people die each year from bee stings. 'But we don't remove flowers from schools or playgrounds,' Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School, commented recently in the British Medical Journal." STATE OF FEAR by Michael Crichton
The author, about the thesis of his novel: "I don't know what it is. We seem to be very ready to think it's all coming to an end. At least take in the possibility that actually everything might be going to be OK." MY AMERICAN JOURNEY by Colin Powell
Powell's Rules
COLD CASE by Linda Barnes
"What a country, huh? Nobody's fit except the very rich and the hard-timers [inmates], sharing the twin luxuries of time and easy gym access." "When the phone rang, I almost let the machine handle it. I practice, but I never quite manage the seemingly simple process of call screening. I think it's because my mom always grabbed the phone first ring, answering in a quavery alto, convinced my cop Dad was lying in a gutter bleeding to death. Never happened. He was never injured in the line of duty. Nicotine killed him, not lead." |
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