Pushing an Elephant

“We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.” -John Newton

The band R.E.M. released a song back in 1999 titled The Great Beyond. In it there was a line which went, "I'm pushing an elephant up the stairs, I'm tossing out punch lines that where never there". According to lead singer Michael Stipe, the song is "about attempting the impossible..."

Each day you get up, you have an opportunity to try the impossible. Each of us have different levels of achievement and it isn't about your 'impossibility' being any harder then my 'impossibility'. It is about what you believe you can do in your own life. To seek the impossible and achieve it. Know that we are not in a contest to see who had to work harder or who has the "larger elephant to push up the stairs." It is about you believing in your own abilities to push the largest elephant you can up those stairs. To achieve the greatest when others say it is impossible.

Focus on the impossible, be the visionary of your own life. Know that if you let go of yesterday, focus on today and be patient with what is coming tomorrow, you will have better success in accomplishing your dreams.

Stay inspired my friends.

Life of Integrity

"Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity." -W. Clement Stone

Webster's dictionary defines integrity as "a firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values." The synonym for integrity is honesty. So why does there seem to be a lack of it in business and around us in general? An article in the Executive Travel Skyguide titled Leaders Wanted argues that "We are in an ethical crisis. Our capitalist system, which depends on checks and balances, is being tested by corruption, greed and manipulation."

In our society, competition and the wanton desire to get ahead of others tends to pull the worst out of some people. I certainly wouldn't label all businesses or business people out there as suffering from from this culture. But the culture of dishonesty and immoral business behavior is not a 'business' climate but a 'personal' climate.

It isn't your business place that causes you to lack integrity because you have choice in how you conduct yourself. "Integrity is a value, like persistence, courage, and intelligence. It is your choice of values and resolution to live by those values that form your character and personality. And it is integrity that enhances all your other values. The quality of person you are is determined by how well you live up to the values that are most important to you. Integrity is the quality that locks in your values and causes you to live consistent with them." (Importance of Integrity)

Search for and apply with integrity all that you do in life. Do not be overcome by the short term and many times disasterous results of taking the 'low' road. You'll be more successful in the long term, you'll be much more respected and you'll just be a better person. For those that lack integrity within their lives are known, others know who they are and frankly they don't have many true friends.

Be the better person, have the better life within.

Stay inspired my friends.

Doing Life Together

"To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together; to wish to do greater; these are the essential conditions which make up a people." -Joseph Ernest

I am sure you have heard that phrase before, doing life together. It is a phrase that I was reminded of just recently. I was listening to a young couple talking about how their life together was so much more by being part of a larger group. That doing life together with others had changed their lives.

The phrase is most often used in biblical terms, meaning that God never intended for people to do life alone, but to do life together in community. In the medical world, it is said that "...even though research shows that people with strong social ties live longer than those who are isolated," says Shelley Taylor, a psychologist at the University of California in Los Angeles. "Making time for close relationships is as vital as many other things people do, perhaps more important," Taylor says.

I am not talking about living alone versus living in a coupled relationship. I am talking about keeping yourself connected to other people as opposed to living life as a hermit; alone in that respect.

But why stay connected with others?

For one, to live a long life we want the quality of that life to be great. The more contact we have with others as we age, the better we can be at retaining mental sharpness. This provides us with more ability to have that quality of life. A public-health study involving more than 116,000 participants found that people with strong relationships had less mental decline and lived more active, pain-free lives without physical limitations.

It is said that your brain needs you to get out and have 1,000 daily surprises. The stimulation of interacting with others and the new, exciting things that happen. Those are the 1,000 daily surprises. Staying socially connected at work, at home, at church or just in public down at the local coffee shop is important to your life. All of these things help provide those daily surprises.


So maybe you should stop in at the local diner, have a meal, strike up a conversation with others and just do life together and not be alone so much.

Stay inspired and connected my friends.

Serving Daily

"Consciously or unconsciously, every one of us does render some service or other. If we cultivate the habit of doing this service deliberately, our desire for service will steadily grow stronger and we will make not only our own happiness, but that of the world at large." -Mahatma Gandhi

In our daily lives, it is a fact that in one way or another, we serve people in many different ways. Acknowledging that serving others is one step in cultivating your own attitude into something great. Once you realize the servant nature of our lives, where we help others, success in your own life becomes quite evident.

The reward of that servant minded life may not seemso great in the beginnning. And believing in yourself as one who can do great things in service to others isn't an easy concept. You have to understand how you serve others and how much it impacts their lives. You should constantly work on improving how you service others and the success will follow.

When I travel on business, it is the little things I do that impacts the lives of other people. Whether it is opening a door for someone else, buying a cup of coffee for a coworker, or simply listening to their story - these things impact others. I have learned through out the years that these are things of service. I try to improve on them and notice as well when I forget or fail to perform them.

In the long run it simply becomes second nature.

Is it success? to me it brings me a feeling of success and has brought me great things in life so far. Sure, success is in the "eye of the beholder" and my eye is quite happy with what it sees.

Take a few minutes to stop and examine those things in life you do for others. Find ways to perform small things and see the reaction you get. See what it does to you personally in both happiness and success.

The video below comes from a series of commercials about an insurance company. It is not my intent to endorse this company, but every once in while we can learn a life lesson within those sixty seconds.

Stay inspired my friends.