A couple of months ago, I met a delightful woman who is just a few years younger than my father. Her name is Ellen Curry. She speaks with a crisp British (born in Rhodesia – Zimbabwe) accent and hails from Canada. She is kind, outspoken, and loves life. As you listen to her speak, you know that she thinks deeply, cares tremendously for people, and loves to have fun. Little did I know how much!

She has recently written a book filled with stories of her adventures throughout her life including presenting flowers to the Queen Mum in 1940, the sweet love story of her fifty-eight year romance with her husband, Brian, running the Comrades Marathon (a 55 mile run that takes place in South Africa) and breaking the Guinness Book of Records for longest scuba dive in 1982.

Ellen’s philosophy in life is to think only positive thoughts. When she was twelve, she was given a letter her grandmother had written her just a couple of weeks before she was born. In it, her grandmother told her to remember three rules in life:

1. Always treat people the way you want them to treat you.
2. When you start something, always finish it. Winners never quit and quitters never win.
3. Never be afraid to try new things. That is how you learn.

What inspirational rules to live by, don’t you think?

I can’t wait to get to know Ellen better than what I learned by reading her book. As I suspected, she just loves to have fun and pursue her passions in life. I know I could learn much from her, and I’m anxious to get started.

Her book, Be Careful What You Think, is an enjoyable afternoon’s read, and an inspiration to all of us to remember that our attitude determines what we get out of life. Why not make it positive!

Ellen Curry immigrated to Canada from Rhodesia in 1961 with her two small sons and Brian, the love of her life. They were soon followed by both Brian’s mother, and Ellen’s mother. Ellen owned and operated her own Scuba Dive Store/School in Oshawa, Ontario for 10 years. She currently spends half her year in Sun City, AZ – golfing, hiking, canoeing, camping and swimming, and the other six months in Cobourg, On, Canada.

You can find Ellen’s book on BarnesandNoble.com.

Most of us here in the Midwestern state of Nebraska have a pretty high work ethic, and it is deeply ingrained in those of us who are over the age of 50. We work hard, sometimes to the detriment of health, family, and fun. We will do this, even if we don’t really enjoy what we do in that 40 – 60 hours every week. And we will remain “loyal” to companies that are increasingly looking at employees as a drain on profits, and who are beginning to treat the value that their employees bring to them as insignificant to their futures.

This thought brings in to focus several coaching questions I am asking more and more: “Does the person or organization you are serving value what you do for them?  If not, what makes you continue providing that service? Are you enjoying what you do? What makes you think that work must be drudgery?

This year, I began asking myself the same questions. I am easing into my seventh decade of life, and I’ve worked hard for over 45 years. Sometimes the people/organizations I worked for valued my service, sometimes they didn’t. I decided that it was time for me to play, and to only do those things that I value, are fun to do, or that I enjoy and are valued by others.

Remind me some time to tell you why I had to redefine that last sentence.

By redefining what was acceptable to me in my work and home environment, I am finding that I am playing more, taking up hobbies I had set aside in my early twenties and learning new ones. I have more time for friends, and find it easy to say “yes” to my adult children when they need and value my time. I assumed that by stepping away from those tasks in my work that take an enormous amount of time, and don’t appear to be valued by others, I would eventually be forced to close my business. However, what I have found is that I am getting more clients who want to play with me.

Here is what I’ve learned:

• Life is too short to not enjoy each and every moment of it.
• What I value is not necessarily what others value, and it’s important to remember to put on your own oxygen mask first.
• If others don’t value what you do for them, and it isn’t fun for you, stop doing it.
• Laughter throughout your day is as good for you as a daily apple.
• Like small children, when we play and explore the riches life has to offer, we learn and grow in miraculous ways.

If you enjoyed this post please share it with others using the share links below. I would also be honored if you would subscribe to my blog! Here’s how:

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To hire me for Leadership and Executive Coaching programs, Retirement Coaching, Personal Growth Coaching, Reiki, email me at Georgia@CollaborativeTransitions.com

Thank you for reading and for being part of this community – it means so much to me.

You can find me on Twitter at @feistycoach and on LinkedIn, and Facebook.  Please let me know you’re a reader when we connect!

I was talking to my son’s partner this morning about his sister, and her feelings of entitlement (his words). He says “she thinks the world revolves around her. When she wants something, she thinks that the rest of us should drop everything and come help her, even when we are busy.”

Couple this conversation with my attendance at a meeting Unity of Phoenix here in Arizona, where we had the opportunity to meet and listen to Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurologist who experienced his own NDE (near death experience) and subsequently changed his belief system around God and Heaven. He is the author of “Proof of Heaven”, and has appeared across the country talking to people of his experience. This was to be followed by an appearance of Anita Moorjani, author of “Dying To Be Me” one week later. I wasunable to attend her presentation, but read her book over the last few days.

Anita Moorjani and Dr. Alexander both point out the truth of life after death, the coming home to the experience of unconditional and complete love. They both used the words in explaining their realization that “each of us is the center of the universe, connected to everyone and everything around us.”

My ever seeking mind begins to noodle the question: What is the difference between being the center of the universe, and the world revolving around me? And, how does it relate to leadership, if it even does? These thoughts have been chasing each other like young pups at play all day. Let me share some of them with you…

When you believe that the world revolves around you, there are expectations of being served. You make demands, some of them possibly unreasonable, and expect them to be met. Many times you don’t know how or when to be grateful, wanting only more.

When the world revolves around you, there is no question as to who is right in any situation – you are, and listening to what others have to say has little or no impact on you.

When the world revolves around you, others become less than, allowing you to impose your will upon them, even when you cause pain and create a sense of deprivation.

When you are the center of the universe, you recognize you co-create your own world. You know that everyone around you is there for a reason – for you to learn from, for you to reach out and help, for you to serve.

When you are the center of the universe, you listen carefully to what others have to say. You allow the people around you to be autonomous, to grow into their authentic self with your encouragement.

When you are the epicenter of the universe, you work hard, but take time to focus yourself, creating balance and internal peace.

When you are the center of the universe, you know that you are loved just because you are alive, and you give the same to others. You are mindful of others, and you touch them softly with your life sustaining energy just by being in the room with them. You work hard, and care deeply for the people around you. You draw those same types of people to you, and together you create a world that works well.

Yesterday, our minister told a story about a young man just entering in to seminary:

He arrived at the college in a stretch limousine paid for by his father. As he stepped out of the car, he perused the dormitory building he was to stay in for the next three years, and spotted a grey-haired man walking around the grounds.

The student called out “Do you work here?”

The grey-haired man turned and walked over to the car. Responding to the question, he said “Yes, I work here. How may I help you?”

The student signaled the driver to open the trunk, and asked the elderly gentleman to help him with his bags. The grey-haired man pulled to large and heavy bags from the trunk, and worked hard to carry them into the building and up three flights of stairs to the student’s room. The student followed with his briefcase, and is overcoat folded neatly over his arm.

When the bags were set into the room to accommodate the student’s wishes, the student reached into his pocket and pulled out a quarter. He gave the quarter to the elderly man, and thanked him for his help. The grey-haired man smiled gently at him, and said “I am here to serve.”

The next morning, the new students gathered early in the chapel of the seminary. As the clock came up on 8:00am, a man in white robes and vestment walked to the front of the chapel. The student’s eyes widened and flustered, he turned to the student to his left and whispered “Who is that man?”

You guessed it. His neighbor quietly whispered back to him – “That is the President of the College.”

After the services, and an extensive welcome to the seminary, the student waited anxiously near the front as people greeted the President. Finally, it was his turn to speak and he apologized profusely for his actions of the previous day. The President smiled gently and said, “I am here to serve.”

As leaders, I believe it is important to begin each day remembering we are the center of the universe. How we lead determines the world we live in, the success of the team we lead, the depth of the impact we have on those around us.  Great care should be taken to not slip into believing that the world revolves around us, but to recall that we are always working for the greater good, and success is achieved utilizing the skills and knowledge of everyone. We are here to serve, not to be served.

I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas surrounding this topic.  I am fairly certain that I’m not done thinking about this, and I would love to round out my thoughts by hearing from the Universe.

I’ve found throughout my coaching career that there are certain steps we walk people through to help them move forward. They are fairly well documented in hundreds of books on the market. Mark Hopkins has taken us beyond the common – and moved us outside the proverbial box – in his book for entrepreneurs, “Shortcut to Prosperity: 10 Entrepreneurial Habits and a Roadmap For an Exceptional Career”.

Throughout the first 6 chapters, you will nod your head and acknowledge that you’ve heard this before:

1.      Discover your passion by looking at what makes you angry or what excites you.

2.      Determine if you have a fixed or growth mindset. Why? The more you learn, the more prosperous you will be. Now, what interests you?

3.      All leaders or entrepreneurs must be self-aware. You need to know what makes you tick. Review your values and principles. Be aware of your strengths, talents, aptitudes.  Keep a journal.  It will provide you with internal insights you might discard on a day to day basis, but being able to observe a pattern will serve you well.

4.      Create a vision. Make it big enough, outrageous enough, to create a palpable stretch to achieving it; moving from current reality to a specific vision for the future. Mark terms this creative tension – giving you only two choices to relieve the tension: Take the steps to move your current reality toward your personal vision or give up. Without a personal vision, it is unlikely you will be able to create your best life.

5.      Learn from the best, keep your mind wide open, a smile on your face, commit to thousands of hours mastering your craft and indulge your curiosity in order to find your passion. 

6.      Intentionally increase your confidence by tackling each opportunity as a challenge to make it a remarkable success. Consider it a quest, one right step at a time. Find a coach/mentor to help inspire, encourage and support you.

It is at this point that we begin to step outside the box. Others may have spoken about this, but you rarely see these steps in other books of this nature.

7.      Learn to spot an opportunity, determine the risks and rewards, and if it makes sense – run with it! Now you have the foundation; learn to color outside the lines. 

8.      Be authentic and show people that you care by developing strong and lasting relationships. This creates trust and people have your back.

9.       In this shortcut, we learn about netgiving.  Oh, how I wish people would always use this term rather than networking (this makes me shudder).  It’s all about influencing others to make a difference. It is about love.

10.   We all need a mentor – at least one, maybe more. Mentors inspire, encourage and support you. They often tell you things you don’t want to hear. The fundamental lesson here is that you don’t have to fall into the trap so many fall in to, i.e., I have to go it alone. Don’t be afraid to ask for help; it facilitates your growth and helps you understand the dynamics of the path you have chosen.  

So where is the magic that takes us outside the box? The magic for me came in the final chapters of the book. I have long said that success in life is all about relationships. Not just for entrepreneurs, the community this book is aimed at, but for every person I know. 

I also believe that every person, regardless of intellectual abilities, business savvy, or position, has the ability to be a leader. And, in shortcut #8, Mark speaks about leadership – and the art of caring about others.  He goes on to talk about giving, and love for your fellow human beings.

This is the magic that doesn’t just take you outside the box; it removes the box. This is prosperity. It is the prosperity we all want. It is the concept of Be-Do-Have rather than the in-the-box definition of success – Have, Do, Be.

The Author: Mark Hopkins earned engineering degrees from Cornell and Stanford and then spent the next twenty-five years deciphering the factors that make some people prosperous, successful and happy After building a leadership career with companies like Hewlett Packard and Emerson Electric, Hopkins founded Peak Industries, a medical device contract manufacturer, which he grew to $75 million and later sold to Delphi. He then founded Crescendo Capital Partners, a private equity firm, and Catalyst, a private foundation supporting Colorado-based nonprofits and micro-lending in the developing world. 

The Book: Shortcut to Prosperity: 10 Entrepreneurial Habits and a Roadmap For An Exceptional Career. www.shortcuttoprosperity.com

by guest blogger, Mark Hopkins

Sir Richard Branson, Chairman of the Virgin Group, posted an urgent blog request http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/blog/lost-my-diary not long ago asking for help in finding his misplaced journal. He uses it to keep a record of projects and ideas he has while he is on the move. When I saw the post, I felt a great affinity with him. The recommendation to keep a journal (or a personal blog) is one of the most heartfelt that I have for anyone pursuing a more gratifying and prosperous life. 

I started keeping one when I was in college, thanks to a recommendation from a friend. In retrospect, I can say I learned more from my journals than I did from any other source. Because, for me, the most valuable knowledge was the self-discovery of what I liked, what I was good at, what was important to me, and ideas on how I might go about pursuing what I wanted. I was learning enough about how the world worked from my studies and the people around me. What I really needed to know, and couldn’t learn any other way, was how I worked. And my journal helped me rediscover that well into my professional life. Eventually I used the journal to determine that I got bored in every job I ever had. And that helped me realize that the rigorous pace and constant new challenges faced by an entrepreneur could be a good fit for a guy like me.

Start a journal. It’s easy—because, if you are like most people, you are your own favorite subject. It is simply a matter of making the time to do it. Find some dead time in your schedule and start using it to document what you are thinking about—what you are learning about yourself. Airplane time, commute time, contemplative Sunday afternoons are all great times to make a few notes. Keep your journal handy to use to capture insights and ideas as they happen.

Just try not to lose it.

Mark Hopkins earned engineering degrees from Cornell and Stanford and then spent the next twenty-five years deciphering the factors that make some people prosperous, successful and happy After building a leadership career with companies like Hewlett Packard and Emerson Electric, Hopkins founded Peak Industries, a medical device contract manufacturer, which he grew to $75 million and later sold to Delphi. He then founded Crescendo Capital Partners, a private equity firm, and Catalyst, a private foundation supporting Colorado-based nonprofits and micro-lending in the developing world.  He is the author of Shortcut to Prosperity: 10 Entrepreneurial Habits and a Roadmap For An Exceptional Career. www.shortcuttoprosperity.com

Linda Adsetts and The Group are here with their weekly Go for the Joy message. Enjoy!

Listen To The Whispers by Christina Fajardo

Each day unfolds and some things need to be done, perhaps not that day but soon and something tugs me off track. Lately, my creative juices have kicked in and my web-site has been calling to me.

I am involved in a local, rather large wellness show and the group that is participating in a booth, needed someone to do a web-site. So now I had two web-sites calling to me. The timeline required they be up and running and look good. Meanwhile, life is speeding up and there are still the regular commitments to see to.

Another day dawns and some things need to be done on that day, there is no putting it off any longer. So I sit down to write, pay bills and sort through accounts and then Jack, our furry companion sits and stares at me. I can hear his thoughts, “when oh when are we going for a proper walk?”

I resolve to pay more attention to the important things. I decide that all of that stuff, can wait for a bit. It always gets done. Jack and I drive to our favourite park, where the eagles soar. He runs and chases squirrels and I take a deep breath and feel my shoulders drop, my body relaxes into peace, as I watch the eagles play in the sky.

Sometimes, you just have to do what you got to do and as I have discovered, once my joy vessel is all filled up, I get all the other stuff done lickety split! It is easy peasy!

I don’t know whether resolving to do something is always appropriate. Sometimes you just have to follow the energy. I have found that often it is more beneficial to do follow the energy! If I pay attention, I can feel what needs to be done first. My awareness is there to keep me on track, if I pay attention.

In life there is always room to veer off track a little, unless you are driving a race car at 200 mph! I fortunately am not in that line of work. I can veer a little here and a little there. The side tracks offer a perspective that wasn’t there before. Suddenly I see my life in a new way and I know just the thing to do. An idea blossoms as I watch the eagles and I can’t wait to get home to implement it!

The Group has been telling me for over 5 years to Go For The Joy! They have always encouraged me to find my centre, let go of the small stresses and the things I cannot change. This is easier said than done sometimes but if I pay attention they always are willing to remind me again.

“And we are willing to remind anyone that will pay attention and listen to the small whisper and if you don’t we can always ramp it up a notch or two. (laughter)

Each of you has the ability to hear us. Each of you has the built in awareness to hear, really hear your world. It is always sending you information and you could be like the elephants that know to go for higher ground.

Most of you ignore the signals. You find yourself in a traffic jam and berate yourself-I just knew I should have gone the other way!

What if you started to pay attention, really pay attention to those subtle signals that send you off another road, have you pick up the phone to call someone, end up in just the right store for just the right item at just the right price and the examples are as endless as the possibilities.

Most often you are just inconvenienced and stuck in traffic but sometimes it could make a big difference, perhaps even save a life.

We see the infinite possibilities that exist and we know that you are also hooked into them to. All you have to do is start paying attention and give yourself a big pat on the back when you do!

High Fives!
Go For The Joy
The Group

~~~~~~~~~~~

Linda Adsetts is a  healer, medium, psychic reader, channeller and writer. She receives channelled guidance and inspiration from The Group, a gathering of spirit who teach that our souls’ path is best expressed when we come from a place of joy. You can read how Linda got started down this fascinating path here and on her website where she shares daily messages from The Group.

Join her each Friday on Bliss Habits for an inspiring take on each of the habits.

Copywrite 123rf.com Used with Permission

Great leaders genuinely care for and love the people they lead more than they love leading itself. Leadership without love degenerates into self-serving manipulation.

RICK WARREN, Ladies’ Home Journal, Oct. 2008

A year or so ago, I participated in a very long LinkedIn conversation about whether or not you bring love to the role of leader. Of course, the answers were all over the place, and in some instances people were pretty adamant about their particular belief system. Today, I’d like to explore this question from a different perspective – and see what you think!

Leadership is all about relationships. It is about how we create the relationship and keep it growing and flourishing within the setting in which it occurs (work, Home or community). Not only is it about our relationship with others, it is always about our relationship with ourselves.

Over the last six months, I have been spending a great deal of time with Don Miguel Ruiz studying and living the Five Agreements and the Mastery of Love. The Toltec wisdom he imparts is very simple – and one of the most difficult things I have done (and continue to do) in my entire life. Today (in some parts of the world) is Valentine’s Day, and I thought it would be fun to take the Don’s thoughts on love, and apply it to leadership: 

• Love has no obligations – And because of that, love has no resistance. Whatever we do is because we want to do it. It becomes a pleasure; it’s like a game, and we have fun with it. There is a certain energy that surrounds leadership activities when we love what we do, and we are participating in the creative joy of innovation, of making things happen. We are able to play in the energy of every moment and have fun with the possibilities that exist for us and for our teams.
• Love has no expectations – When we don’t expect something to happen, if nothing happens, it’s not important. Leaders encourage their team mates to experiment, to take risks, and to fail. The support that is given here is incredible. It leads to exponential learning and to huge success. It builds trust.
• Love is based on respect – When we respect others, we don’t try to control them or do for them what they should do for themselves. This is huge in my mind. I believe we are seeing changes in many of our corporations, but we are still besieged with a lack of respect for the people in the lower echelons of the hierarchy. This leads to rules, rules and more rules rather than encouraging the staff to be creative and find the best possible way to do the things they are responsible for.
• Love is ruthless – We have compassion for others, but we don’t feel sorry for them. We know they are strong enough, intelligent enough and good enough to make their own choices. If they fall, we will give them a hand up and a great deal of encouragement. Great leaders show compassion for their co-workers when they fail, but they never feel sorry for them. If the co-worker is feeling shame, anger, or embarrassment, they are working on their own baggage, and the leader is not responsible for that. We let them know it is okay for them to feel those emotions, and when they are ready to explore what can be learned from the experience, we are there to share what we know, and provide the support and encouragement they may need to grow from the experience.
• Love is completely responsible – We assume complete responsibility for our actions, even if we don’t want to. A good leader will never walk away from the consequences of their actions. They will apologize if they have wronged someone, they will make restitution as necessary.
• Love is always kind – And kindness makes you generous and opens all the doors. Kindness comes in many forms. It can be seen in the art of listening to what a co-worker has to say – not just hearing the words, but also the passion that surrounds them; asking questions and seeking to understand. It can be seen in making arrangements for a young mother to work from home so that she might care for an ailing child. It allows the leader to give because they choose to give, not through obligation or legal requirements. It allows for the possibilities.
• Love is unconditional – There is no if; there are no conditions. There are no reasons, and no justification. Others are free to be the way they are. We don’t have the right to change anyone else. If others are going to change, it is because they want to change. Leaders know that when they place conditions on how they view others, they are trying to control them. For me, this is all about recognizing that every person has their own baggage they are working through – even the leader. We MUST allow each person to work through it on their own.
• Love embraces justice – If others make a mistake, they pay only once for that mistake. Many of us know the feeling of working in a company for a length of time, growing personally and steadily getting more knowledgeable and skilled at what we do – only to be told we will not be considered for a promotion because we can’t be relied upon to get things done on time, even though the last time we missed a deadline was 9 years ago. Good leaders pay attention to what their co-workers do well, and whether or not they learn from their mistakes. They never “hold a grudge.”

There are always two halves to a relationship. Of those two halves, a leader is responsible for only their half. They are not responsible for the other half. They recognize that they don’t know anything about that other person because they don’t participate in their thoughts; they don’t know what they feel or what they believe, or all the assumptions the other person makes. If the leader takes control of the whole relationship, the other half becomes dis-engaged. It doesn’t work.

I like the concept of leadership taking on the connotations of a love affair. When it does, we can share, we can enjoy, we can create the most wonderful vision of where we want to go and how we are going to get there.

What do you think?

If you enjoyed this post please share it with others using the share links below.

Thank you for reading and for being part of this community – it means so much to me.

Georgia Feiste, President of Collaborative Transitions Coaching, Inc., located in Lincoln, NE, and Phoenix, AZ, is a personal growth and leadership coach, writer, and workshop facilitator.  She is also a Usui Reiki Master and EFT practitioner.  Her passion is success grounded in purpose and passion, standards of integrity and priorities in life.  You can also find Georgia on her website, Collaborative Transitions, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.   Georgia may also be reached at (402) 304-1902 if you wish to schedule a 30 minute complementary consultation.

I’ve just finished Stephen King’s book “11/22/63” about time travel. There King talks about how time harmonizes, with reminders and synchronicities pointing out the paths that sit side by side waiting for choices and decisions to create shifts.

He also speaks of the butterfly effect. Wikipedia tells us “in chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, where a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane’s formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before.”

Early in January, I started a conversation around a Kindness Challenge in 2013. In that short blog I spoke to you about “cause” and “effect”, a simplified version of the butterfly effect. And, I have written several related blogs about this challenge since then.

As synchronicity would have it, on Sunday our minister at Unity Spiritual Center challenged us to hold to five intentions as we live as leaders in our communities. The fourth intention he shared clearly speaks to the cause and the effect, and our ability to grow character-based leadership within our communities, our companies, and in our families.

The purpose of this intention is to teach us how to develop and improve an experience of love. It is important to understand the relationship between actions (cause) and their effects.

The cause of problems is a negative bodily, verbal, or mental action that we created in the past; other people’s actions are only secondary conditions that enable negative patterns of the past to unfold. If the circumstance does not provide the conditions, someone or something else will. Once the cause has been established, unless we heal it through practice, nothing can stop the effect from occurring sooner or later. Instead of blaming others for my problems, we use these opportunities to deepen our understanding.

In utilizing this practice to recognize the lessons in all our experiences, we can come to view everyone and everything as a teacher. With this viewpoint in place, any and every situation can become beneficial to our growth as a leader.

My friends know how I like to “noodle” thoughts and ideas around in my head for a while until they all make sense to me and then I will share them with someone. You all are the lucky recipients today!

The butterfly effect is all about one person taking one action that reverberates around the world. As leaders, we have the unique opportunity to take small multiple actions each day that will transform the people around us over time. Thanks to chaos theory, we know that changes in the outcome are not proportional to the action that has been taken in the initial condition. Very small actions (variances) can amplify into unpredictable results (effects) (Doherty and Delener, 2001). The study of fractals, an object whose form is the same regardless of scale (Mandelbrot, 1977) and can exist in any dimension and anywhere between dimensions (Singh and Singh,2002) tells us that we can replicate actions (behavior) throughout an organization, and can facilitate improvement and growth through iterative feedback, creating order within the chaos.

What does all this mean to us as character-based leaders?

It means that over time,

1. the conscious and intentional practices of our values and principles, accompanied with
2. character traits such as humility, altruism, vision, trust, empowerment, service and commitment, will lead to
3. these behaviors showing up at every level in the organization because those behaviors were patterned into the organizing principles at the very beginning.
4. The relationship between leader/follower will spiral outward as the relationship adjusts for growth through feedback and modifying influences. This system amplifies when the feedback creates a learning experience for the leader, and ultimately results in a new leader line.
5. Note that feedback can be both positive and negative. Positive feedback amplifies the growth while negative feedback stabilizes the growth.

And, finally, because of the ongoing iterations and fractal reproductions, the longer the tenure of a character-based leader, the greater number of followers should exhibit those same leadership attributes.

Sometimes the simplest things elude us, don’t they? As I stated in my Kindness Challenge 2013 blog – I would like to see a kinder, more compassionate, leadership style in our corporations, education system, our government, our places of worship and community gathering places. We can accomplish this effect by taking up the cause of kindness with a strong helping hand of compassion.

To answer my own desires about the growth of a kinder, more loving world, I must be like a mustard seed that starts small but grows large; like leaven that works its way throughout the dough; like a butterfly flapping its wings in Texas.

What butterfly effect did you create today?

If you enjoyed this post please share it with others using the share links below. I would also be honored if you would subscribe to my blog! Here’s how:

• § Subscribe Here to have my blog posts easily delivered to your email in-box the morning they are published.
• § To receive posts via “READER” Subscribe Here.
• § To receive my monthly newsletter, Subscribe here at the top right hand corner.

Thank you for reading and for being part of this community – it means so much to me.

You can find me on Twitter at @feistycoach and on LinkedIn, and Facebook.  Please let me know you’re a reader when we connect!

Georgia Feiste, President of Collaborative Transitions Coaching, Inc., located in Lincoln, NE, and Phoenix, AZ, is a personal growth and leadership coach, writer, and workshop facilitator.  She is also a Usui Reiki Master and EFT practitioner.  Her passion is success grounded in purpose and passion, standards of integrity and priorities in life. 

Photo: Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

As a leader, do you make time for the people that matter to you? These could be your teammates, your children or your spouse, or your friends?

Time is the most precious commodity we have. Time is limited. And, yet, there is always enough time to be with the people who need us most.

I may catch you by surprise here, but I have a confession to make. I often write about the things that I need to learn the most. My perspective is that if I’m having problems with this, others will too. So please indulge me by letting me share my epiphany of the morning:

Background. I sometimes get short-tempered with people, and my dog, if they require too much of my time or are taking up my time when I think they aren’t doing enough for themselves.  My husband hurt his knee several days ago, and he has been limping around, lying in bed, and generally moaning and groaning about how much it hurts. He refuses to go to the doctor to see if there are some major issues that may need to be addressed, and he refuses Advil or Tylenol to ease the pain. I am frustrated around the time it takes in taking care of him (little things like doing all his chores – which aren’t many, serving him meals, putting pillows under his leg while he sits down to watch TV, etc.).  I have been wondering why I feel that frustration, and feeling more than a little disconcerted with myself given my intention to be a loving spouse.

Most of you know that I’m all about personal growth and that it is an ongoing process that we are never really done with.  I’ve been continuing my education by taking classes in intuition and leading from the heart. My classes on Saturday and yesterday were about paying attention to what your heart is telling you (intuition), and your questions will be answered. This morning during my meditation, I clearly heard the song “The Cat’s In The Cradle”.

Epiphany. My biggest doubt and fear that gets me in the most trouble is that “people won’t have time for me, or that they will believe I am not worth spending time on or with”. It stems from an experience I had at the age of 3 where my father forgot me during a stressful time in his life. This is the image I hold in my heart when people I don’t know well tell me they can’t do something or don’t have “time” to spend with me at that particular moment. And of course I doubt and fear it – because I am it on occasion.

I know I’m not the only one who has ever felt that way, or has ever stopped a conversation, or been short with someone because they “didn’t have time”, and that’s why I wanted to share this with you today.

As I said earlier, time is a precious commodity. And, it shouldn’t be wasted. Put your phone on hold, turn away from your computer. Sit quietly in your chair, or go for a walk with the people who ask for your time. Listen with every fiber of your being. Ask questions. Pay careful attention to the answers. Listen to the space between the words, and find what is in their heart. Your teammates, your spouse, your children and your friends will thank you and feel blessed that you were willing to take the time to be with them.  You will find you have not wasted a minute.

What is your best time story?

I’d love to hear from you, and how you applied what you learned from it.

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