Category: Words of Wisdom

The Day You Find Out Why

Leave a comment

image1

ypowr is the power of your purpose.

When your purpose is clear and you are so in tune with that purpose, every single thing you do is energized by that purpose. Everything you say, everything you think, every single thing that you do is powered by that purpose.

When your purpose is clear, you identify a life long goal. And in doing so, you transform your life into a journey which fulfills you every single step of the way. There is no longer a finish line, there is no longer failure… what remains when your purpose is clear are: love, positivity, progress, forgiveness, and everything else that is beautiful in this world.

Why are you here? — Spend some time thinking about this question every day and see how your life transforms for the better.

Great Parent = Great Leader?

Leave a comment

“No idea is born fully formed. It emerges a little bit as a child is born – kind of messy and confused – but full of possibilities. And it’s only through the generous contribution, faith and challenge that they achieve their potential.” – Margaret Heffernan

I need to treat ideas (my ideas and the ideas of my team) the way I plan on treating and raising my children. Ideas and children need to be surrounded with positivity, love, respect and all that other fluffy stuff. Yes, they need the hard stuff – the discipline, the management, the planning, the analysis, the strategery 😊, and the “sweat equity”. But I am a huge believer that “all the HOWs [hard stuff] will be meaningless, until your WHYs [fluffy stuff] are powerful enough.” – Darren Hardy

I’m not a father just yet, but here’s a thought/idea: I could only imagine that if I am a great father, I will be a great leader for my team. I think that the exact same behaviors are needed to be successful in both roles.

But hey, we’ll see – I’m not a father just yet. This idea may change after a few years of fatherhood. But IF this idea does hold up to be true and I am able to raise my team the way I raise my children, I am excited to see what the future looks like.

 

A Hero

Leave a comment

“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

When was the last time you were a hero? How much heroics will you display today? Believe it or not, it doesn’t take much to be a hero. It doesn’t take much to be a hero, yet being a hero and doing something heroic adds so much love and positivity into this world. And we need this, right? We need more love and we need more positivity, which means we need more heroes. And you know we’re all heroes right? So, IMO, all we really need to do is: (1) be ourselves and (2) allow others to be themselves. Seems simple, when I break it down to these two things, but don’t be mistaken. A lot of things (good things) need to be present for us to (1) be ourselves and (2) allow other to be themselves. And I won’t go into these different things, but I will talk about one component that I think is something we can focus on today.

In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, the thing that separates the hero from the ordinary man is what? Time. Yup, time – five minutes to be exact. So if we want to be a hero today, let’s all pay closer attention to devoting more time to the more important things that make up our day. And for me and the work I do at the Y, what this looks like is me having a conversation with a member or one of my staff for at least five minutes. And it won’t be about work stuff, it’s going to be about life, something they’re passionate about, their family, something/anything that isn’t work related.

And so much good comes from this. I am strengthening the structure and the foundation of our team. And our foundation, our core values at the Y are: Caring, Honesty, Respect and Responsibility. And this is important because IMO, strategy follows structure. Meaning, we need to make sure that the basics are mastered, that our foundation is strong and that our core values are alive and well before we do anything else. We can create the best strategy this world has ever seen, but if our structure isn’t sound, that strategy will fail. With that said, I also see the need of a sound strategy for a team to follow – all teams need a game plan to be successful right? It’s all about balance.

Ok, so now what?

Think about your family, how will you be a hero for your family today? What does it look like – what is it exactly that you will do? How will it make your family stronger? What about work – how will you be a hero at work today? What good will that do for your team and your organization?

Being a hero is all about adding more love and positivity in this world. And sometimes being a hero means caring and listening for five more minutes. And remember: “we can do no great things in this world, only small things with great love.” Thanks for reading this J

 

 

Thinking For A Change

Always Think “Big Picture”

Leave a comment
Thinking For A Change

Thinking For A Change

Part I of this book had some really good shtuff in it, but I wasn’t able to make time to write about the key points that stood out to me. I will do a better job for Part II: Eleven Thinking Skills Every Successful Person Needs. I will actually use these types of posts as my “notepad” when I complete the assigned readings for my Leadership & Critical Thinking course. As most of my posts about the books in my “Bookshelf,” I will just report (in bullet form) the more interesting points that I found in each chapter. Hopefully these bullet points serve a purpose for you; whether they be good conversation starters or even serve as “thought provokers.” Definitely, comment on any of these posts with your thoughts and we can have a discussion 🙂 Enjoy!

Skill #1

  • “Where success is concerned, people are not measured in inches, or pounds, or college degrees, or family background; they are measured by the size of their thinking.” – David Schwartz (59)
  • “We all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same horizon.” – Konrad Adenauer (61)
  • How many thousands of people had seen what Eratosthenes saw and never made the same connection? (61)
  • When somebody like Jack Welch tells a GE employee that the ongoing relationship with the customer is more important than the sale of an individual product, he’s reminding them of the big picture. (62)
  • Spend time with big-picture thinkers and you’ll find that they: (1) Learn continually, (2) Listen intentionally, (3) Look expansively and (4) Live completely. (63-65)
  • Big-picture thinkers are never satisfied with what they already know…. they often are able to connect the unconnected. They are life-long learners. (63)
  • If I’m going to learn and grow, I must know what questions to ask and know how to apply the answers to my life. (63)
  • Big-picture thinkers recognize that they don’t know lots of things. (64)
  • Big-picture thinkers realize there is a world out there besides their own, and they make an effort to get outside of themselves and see other people’s worlds through their eyes. (64)
  • You can spend your life any way you want, but you can spend it only once. (65)
  • [Big-picture thinkers] experience fewer unwanted surprises, too, because they are more likely to see the many components involved in any given situation: issues, people, relationships, timing and values. They are also, therefore, usually more tolerant of other people and their thinking. (65)
  • Leaders must: (1) See the vision before their people do, (2) Size up situations, taking into account many variables, (3) Sketch a picture of where the team is going, (4) Show how the future connects with the past to make the journey more meaningful, and (5) Seize the moment when the timing is right. (66-67)
  • “He that is everywhere is nowhere.” – Thomas Fuller (67)
  • “You’ve got to think about the ‘big things’ while you’re doing the small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.” – Alvin Toffler (67)
  • One of the most important skills you can develop in human relations is the ability to see things from the other person’s point of view. (68)
  • see what other see… that is a powerful thing. (68)
  • The better the grasp team members have of the big picture, the greater their potential to work together as a team. (68)
  • The person who forgets the ultimate is a slave to the immediate. (69)
  • With preparation, the most important things will be done well. (69)
  • If you want to cultivate the ability to think big picture, then you must get used to embracing and dealing with complex and diverse ideas. (71)
  • Learn from Every Experience: Failing Forward (71)
  • Teachability is an attitude, a mind-set that says, “No matter how much I know (or think I know), I can learn from this situation.” That kind of thinking can help you turn adversity into advantage. It can make you a winner even during the most difficult circumstances.” (71)
  • If you want to be a big-picture thinker, you will have to go against the flow of the world. (73)

Start With Why — Chapter 1: Assume You Know

Leave a comment
Start With Why

Start With Why

I started read this book and I want to post the more interesting elements that grab my attention. And I’ll do it in bullet form 🙂

  • behavior is affected by our assumptions or our perceived truths; we make decisions based on what we think we know. For example; “not too long ago, we all believed that the world was flat, that if we traveled too far we would literally fall of the edge of the earth. It wasn’t until that minor detail was revealed — the world is round — that behaviors changed on a massive scale… The correction of a simple false assumption moved the human race forward.”
  • whatever the result (of our decisions), we make decisions based on a perception of the world that may not, in fact, be completely accurate.
  • so how can we ensure that all our decisions will yield the best results for reasons that are fully within our control? Logic dictates that more information and data are key… More data, however, doesn’t always help, especially if a flawed assumption set the whole process in motion in the first place.”
  • assumptions, even when based on sound research, can lead us astray
  • “… they engineered the outcome they wanted from the beginning. if they didn’t achieve their desired outcome, they understood it was because of a decision they made at the start of the process.”
  • “when faced with a result that doesn’t go according to plan, a series of perfectly effective short-term tactics are used until the desired outcome is achieved. But how structurally sound are those solutions?”
  • “… great leaders understand the value in the things we cannot see.”
  • “there are those who decide to manipulate  the door to fit to achieve the desired result and there are those who start from somewhere very different. though both courses of action may yield similar short-term results, it is what we can’t see that makes long-term success more predictable for only one: the one that understood why the doors need to fit by design and not be default.”

I Was On the Radio!

Leave a comment

HELLLLOOOO!!

It’s been so long since my last post, but I’ve been super busy! It’s not that I stopped caring about my “ypowr” or WordPress, I just had something else come up; something new and exciting! On May 21, 2012, I started my new job as Program Director for Health & Wellness at the Central YMCA in San Jose, California!!!! Woot woot!! It’s such an awesome position and I am very blessed to have been given the opportunity. It’s a lot of work, but I’m lovin’ it!! I’ll let you all know more about it on my next post, which will be a video post!

But this post is about my experience on KSFS: The Cycle. My good friend Mr. Conclara was (and I saw “was” because he just graduated, woo!!) a student in the Broadcasting and Electronic Communication Arts (BECA) Program at San Francisco State University and actually hosted a radio show (The Cycle) every Tuesday during his final semester. He asked me if I would be a guest on the show and I immediately said yes. So here’s is the recording, I hope you all enjoy it!

Sorry again for not posting much lately, but I’m back on it! I promise! Cheers!

Just click on this link and enjoy: KSFS: The Cycle

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses!

Leave a comment

My whole life I’ve made soooo many excuses. I’ve made so many excuses for everything: why I didn’t finish my homework, why I didn’t pass a class the first time around, why I’m so bad at saving money, why I’m not where I want to be physically, why I haven’t gotten into PT School yet, excuses for anything and everything. Excuses, Excuses, Excuses!

And when I really, really, REALLY think about all these excuses (especially the ones that I’ve made recently), I can’t help but think how stupid those excuses were. Why do I continue to doubt myself? Why do I continue to hold myself back?

In the book Goals! How to Get Everything You Want — Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible, Brian Tracy talks about the “80/20 Rule.” This rule says:

“in most cases, 80% of the reasons you are not attaining your goals are internal. they are within you rather than in the world around you. only 20% of the obstacles are contained in your external situation or in other people.” 

Well, I want that to end today. No more excuses.

What are some of the excuses that you come up with everyday? Why do we do that to ourselves?

“… and when you get to the point where all you want to do is be successful as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful…” – Eric Thomas