Archive for September 2009

The Ten Commandments for Leadership


Having a positive attitude is one of the keys to success. While surfing the web, I found a list of 10 Commandments for Leadership

“1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

2. If you do good, people with accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

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

Succeed anyway.

4. The 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 people with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest ideas.

Think big anyway.

7. People favor underdogs, but follow only topdogs.

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 them 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.

It all boils down to having a positive self-image and a secure base of operations. A positive concept of “self” is derived from inner conviction and consistency.”

© copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, 2001
www.paradoxicalcommandments.com

 

“Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don’t have any problems, you don’t get any seeds.”

- Norman Vincent Peale

 

Mother Daughter Relationships – Are We the Same or Totally the Opposite?


 

Mother Daughter Relationships – Are We the Same or Totally the Opposite?

 

Coming to terms with your Mother? My mother has passed away but there are some things I wished could have been better or different. One of them was the ability to have a decent conversation with her. We never really discussed anything. It was always easier for her to chat with my brothers then it was with me. I lacked a lot of insight when it came to communications in my relationships. Certainly our relationship would have been very different if I would have known now what I know today

 

My mother was raised in an era that generated barefoot and pregnant women. The women were supposed to be dependent on the man to bring home the bacon. She was to cook a meal for him, wash his clothes and keep a clean house and obey. This was all based on IF she keeps her man home.

 

I acquired a different lifestyle completely opposite of hers. I sowed my wild oats as they say, totally changed directions and then went back to college, earning some degrees.

 

Today, I would hope that she would be smiling at me from Heaven because of my achievements. Or then again, she may be watching my feet still to see if I did anything different to them yet. Maybe I should have a foot pedicure and make my feet look pretty. I think now that was what she was trying to really say when she would tell me “you have ugly feet”. 

 

We never discussed feet any further than that, because I never knew what she meant by that and would just shut down. Our conversations would then become stuck. I took it personally, thinking she was rejecting me and developed a complex about my feet. I have ugly feet and she is letting me know it; instead of us trying to discuss what I could do to make them prettier.

 

I think this was supposed to be my mother’s way of trying to help me out with my appearance.  Mothers are all about appearances. They really want us to look our best.

 

Debra Tannen is a linguist and has caught my interest. She studies conversational styles between people and how this affects our relationships. Collecting examples of conversation, she figures out the other person’s point of view. She has studied mother – daughter relationships and has a book out. You’re Wearing THAT?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation You can find her website here. https://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/tannend/book_argument_culture.html

 

 

 

“The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation — or a relationship.”

 Deborah Tannen quote

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