What an incredibly sad attitude to have.

Although it’s true that people are born with different talents, different abilities and different potential, it’s also true that we as human beings are incredibly versatile. There are skills and lessons that we all can learn to continue growing and developing both as leaders and as people. We can learn how to be kinder, how to show respect, how to build conversations, and how to trigger the senses in people that motivate them.

Remember that some of the greatest leaders weren’t always the ones who were born with the most charisma. Sometimes they were humble men like Moses who simply stood up and cared for the people around them. I repeat this often, but it’s important to note that leadership isn’t a position, a title or status. It’s influence, and influence can only be achieved by building the respect of those around you, by giving them a reason to let you influence them.

Today’s post is a short one, but I want to pose a powerful question for you: Who would you be if you stopped making excuses about who you are and simply started learning everything you can?

Have the courage to learn something new today, to change the way you to speak to someone or to adjust some other habit that you’ve been holding onto.

I fear that far too often, folks believe that memorizing the slogan from the bottom of a motivational poster or sitting a leadership book on their desk is enough to motivate and rally the folks around them. Yet in my experiences both serving in the military and working an office job prior to the military, I find that there is quite often a drastic disconnect between the level of inspiration that followers take from that and the level of inspiration that the leader thinks is being transferred.

Followers don’t care if you have a witty response to their complaints. They don’t care if your cliché is the perfect response to their pain or heartbreak.

Normally I wouldn’t be so concerned about the level of quotes being shared in a chat, but in a chat focused on folks who are self-proclaimed leaders, I expected more. I expected the creativity necessary to build substantial conversations, to dissect the issues, and to share experiences.

When I expressed these thoughts in the chat, I was met with several weak responses:

• Denial: Some folks denied the issue completely and instead justified the use of these mindless quotes. In their eyes, a cliché was the fastest way to express a thought given the character limitations of Twitter.
• Defensiveness: Instead of welcoming the critical feedback, some assumed that my intentions were less than pure and began to attack the premise of my complaint. However, strong leaders accept criticisms regardless of the intent. Sometimes our most disgruntled customers and employees are the ones with the greatest clarity.
• Excuses: Some began to blame the medium stating that because the conversation was taking place on twitter, it was difficult to carry on real conversations.

As leaders, we should be exhibiting the creativity necessary to build real conversations, to discuss real issues, to share real experiences and to create real friendships with like-minded individuals. We should not find ourselves justifying the status quo with denial, defensiveness and excuses.

I’ll be joining in that same chat next Tuesday as I was privileged to meet some terrific people there, but I’ll be working hard to sift through the fluff and hone in on the stuff that matters: the real conversations.

Stop by the comments section below and let’s have a real conversation about it. Have you experienced leaders that we’re filled with all the right things to say but who lacked the character that truly inspires followers?

In my life, I have wished for a million things, I have dreamt a thousand dreams; I have pursued hundreds of passions and goals and yet, never for a serious minute in all of my fantastic 30 plus years have I wished to have a child.

How do you convince yourself not to fear something, which your whole being warns you against? How can you think of it as a natural phenomena when in all logic and rationale, it sounds abnormal and monumental? How do you embrace these challenges and calm your fears?

There is no easy answer but my point is this: there are sacrifices for every choice we make in life and my only aim is to make a conscious and honest choice when it comes to the ultimate decisions which forever change the course of my life.

~ Farnoosh Brock

I’ve upset my wife on more than one occasion with my disdain for children. I think that newborn babies are ugly. In fact, my sister-in-law (my brother’s wife) has been upset at me on more than one occasion for expressing how I felt about her ugly newborns.

Children are bratty, snot-nosed inconveniences. The way they want to play and get into things doesn’t jive with my lifestyle of reading, studying, working and growing. Their loud, obnoxious presence is like nails on a chalk board.

My friends show me pictures of their children and only out of dutiful, society-dictated courtesy, I smile and respond positively toward them. Yet inside, I can’t help but think that their kids are nothing more than undisciplined hooligans.

And then came Emma.

I was hesitant about having children. I’m sure that after reading the first few paragraphs you can understand my feelings on this. But Diane, my wife, wanted children and since I love her more than anything, it was no sacrifice at all to oblige her.

When she was born something strange happened. I still felt the same way I always felt about children, yet somehow Emma became an unwritten exception to my disdain.

Now I’m the one boring others with pictures of my little angel. I’m the one bragging about how smart my girl is. I enjoy picking her up, spinning her around in circles or tickling her and listening to her squeal. We wrestle around on the floor and we smile and we laugh together.

I don’t have a logical answer for you. I don’t have some sage advice. I can’t compete with the rhetoric in your post. I simply can’t. I don’t know how.

All I can do is attempt to express how I feel.

Nicholas Z. Cardot

P.S. Want to see a picture of my daughter?

Creating resolutions for a new year is a tradition with which most of us are familiar. Yet more often than not, people fail to achieve their goals. You fail to make it out of the holiday season without breaking your diet or you find yourself simply forgetting all about your goals.

Perhaps you stick with it a week, two weeks or even a month but you still find yourself failing to accomplish whatever it was that you had set out to do.

I find great wisdom in the old cliche, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Instead, friends, it was built day by day.

Don’t get discouraged when you determine to start being open and honest with a spouse and your relationship isn’t restored overnight. Don’t get discouraged when you set out to improve your grades and you don’t pass an exam the day after you determine to study more.

Changes don’t happen in a day. They happen day by day.

So whatever your goals happen to be, it’s vital that you find a way to keep it in front of you day after day. Place a sticky note on the bathroom mirror or on the refrigerator. Set a reminder on your phone to go off each day or an alert to popup on your computer.

Success is a day by day journey. Stick with it.

Motivation is only as powerful as the goal that you’re driving toward. An individual who maintains the highest possible level of motivation toward beating a high score on a video game will never accomplish as much as the one who who only gives 75% of themselves over toward being a positive influence on their community. Even though the motivated person might achieve their goals more thoroughly, he’s not really accomplishing anything worthwhile. And although our half-hearted friend might not achieve his full potential, at least he’s going after something worthy of his time.

At this point, it probably sounds like I’m advocating that you develop excellent goals and that you pursue them with only a marginal level of motivation. After all, that is better than getting highly motivated about wasting time, right?

Right. It is better than wasting time.

Wrong. That’s still not what I’m advocating.

I’m challenging you to go big or go home. Grab on to a focus that’s worth spending your time on and then go after it with every last ounce of your being.

Care to join me for that journey?

What would life be like if we just stepped back and enjoyed a warm cup of coffee or a slow conversation with a friend? Wouldn’t it be nice just to step back from the race towards greater numbers and to enjoy the blessings we have to enjoy right now?

Try for just a few minutes. I think you’ll like it.

When they first stepped ashore, these marines were met with an eerie silence. Those who recount the story tell how our men believed that the naval bombardment had destroyed everyone on the island.

Although the island only covered a few square miles, the Japanese had built a system of interlacing tunnels below it that went on for hundreds of miles. As our boys pushed onto the beaches, the Japanese hunkered down inside their tunnels waiting for us to fill the beaches…waiting to ambush us.

Once the beach was filled with American warriors and military equipment, the Japanese unleashed a fierce barrage of heavy machine gun fire and a deadly wave of harsh artillery slaughtering our fighting men by the masses.

The Haunting Memories of a Lost Brother-in-Arms

Among those soldiers who stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima that day was a Navy corpsmen named John Bradley. Doc Bradley, as they called him, was assigned to serve as the medic for a small group of marines.

Before charging onto the island they had given him the option to choose who he wanted to serve as his partner during this battle. It wasn’t difficult to make that decision. He chose his best friend, Ralph “Iggy” Ignatowski. Unfortunately, however, Doc Bradley’s battle buddy would never make it home from that island.

I have tried so hard to block this out. To forget it. We could choose a buddy to go in with. My buddy was a guy from Milwaukee. We were pinned down in one area. Someone elsewhere fell injured and I ran to help out, and when I came back my buddy was gone. I couldn’t figure out where he was. I could see all around, but he wasn’t there. And nobody knew where he was.

A few days later someone yelled that they’d found him. They called me over because I was a corpsman. The Japanese had pulled him underground and tortured him. His fingernails… his tongue… It was terrible. I’ve tried hard to forget all this.”

—John Bradley

His wife, Betty, will tell you that Doc Bradley wept in his sleep for the first few years of their marriage. He struggled to ever share what happened but after years of dealing with the memories and nightmares, he finally opened up to his son, James Bradley.

To understand the true gravity of what Ignatowski endured on that horrific island, consider the following quote taken from Wikipedia:

According to James Bradley, as recounted in Flags of our Fathers, official reports revealed Ignatowski was captured, dragged into a tunnel by Japanese soldiers during the battle, and was later found with his eyes, ears, fingernails, and tongue removed, his teeth smashed, the back of his head caved in, multiple bayonet wounds to the abdomen, his arms broken, and his severed genitalia stuffed into his mouth. John Bradley’s recollections of discovering and taking care of Ignatowski’s remains haunted him until his death.

Of the six men whose pictures were captured in the most famous photograph of World War II, only 3 made it off the island alive. Of those three, only 1 lived what we would call a normal life. But even that one soldier would be haunted for a lifetime with the memories of his lost comrade.

John Bradley is an American hero. It wasn’t until after his death when his family was sorting through his belongings that his family would find out that he had earned the Navy Cross. He had served valiantly and had done great things for our nation.

Yet he lived life consumed with the agony that he had left his battle buddy even if it was only for a short moment.

Battle Buddies: The Lesson that History Teaches

Today as we enter the Military, we’re trained from the very first day on the importance of having a battle buddy. We look to protect each other, to grab each other and drag each other back to safety if one of us get shot or wounded. As a soldier, this relationship is absolutely vital. In some circumstances not only my success but also, as we just saw above, my life may even depend on it.

This relationship between two combat soldiers is the same as the relationships that we need to be building in all areas of our life.  To really excel in a career or with a personal set of goals can be a grueling battle.  It’s nearly impossible for someone to do on their own.  That’s why you need battle buddies.

For some of you, your battle buddy might be your husband or wife. They’re always there for you to talk to and to encourage you as you work to do your best in life. They encourage you, motivate you and work to give you the strength to keep moving forward.

For others, this battle buddy might be a close friend, someone in whom you can truly confide. For yet others, it might be a stranger to whom you extend a hand of kindness much like in the case of the good Samaritan.

The truth is that I want to be your battle buddy and I want you to be mine. I want each of you to reach out to every person you can with a helpful hand. Live sacrificially.

Note #1: To read the full story of John Bradley’s heroism, read Flags of our Fathers written by his son, James Bradley. It’s one of the best World War II books I have ever read.

Note #2: In this post, I’m using a story of a real hero and we’re looking together at something that he did that he spent his entire life regretting but I’m trying to be very careful that I don’t come across as critiquing him…because that’s certainly not my intention. Rather I hope that I express the type of attitude that simply says, “Let’s learn from a hard lesson that this great American can teach us.”

Trust is a fundamental building block for any relationship. In the Army, trust is the driving force that fuels loyalty to those who give orders. I’ve encountered some leaders whom I absolutely trust with my life. If they handed me a squirt gun, I would follow them on a mission against hell itself. There are others, however, with whom I would be terrified to lay siege to a Lego castle.

When you trust someone, you’ll follow them, communicate with them, and work with them regardless of the obstacles. When you are trusted, you are empowered to do great things because you have a team working to support you and your driving mission.

Trust, Power and Responsibility

Trust is power and just as Peter Parker’s Uncle said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Those who are trusted already understand the principle that trust and responsibility go hand in hand. You earn trust by demonstrating responsibility day after day. You can’t earn someone’s trust by demanding it as many believe. You earn it by living daily with the integrity that demonstrates you’re trustworthy.

We often grow frustrated because we each have a built in desire to be trusted but those around us tend to trust us in different levels. The easiest way to illustrate this is to point out the teenager longing to be trusted with the car keys or with some other important responsibility. They’re frustrated that their parents don’t fully trust them but they fail to undertand that they can’t simply demand trust. They must earn it.

I’ve learned that we as adults do the same thing. We attempt to force people to trust us with quips like, “Why don’t you trust me!?” The truth is that statements and sentiments like that are very much not helpful. Instead, we should simply be focusing on patiently proving ourselves and daily demonstrating ourselves as trustworthy.

A Simple Challenge

So here is my simple challenge for you today. Don’t demand trust from those around you but instead spend your time developing your character, demonstrating integrity and living an honest and upright lifestyle.

This is the key. Take it and unlock a whole new world.

My parents asked “Jasmine, what’s wrong, are you ok?” and I replied “I don’t want you to die”.

That day, at school, we had learned about the dangers of smoking and how it could eventually lead to a slow and painful death and my parents were smokers at the time and so to think about what could happen to them, reduced me to tears.

For months I urged my parents to stop smoking, I begged and pleaded, I attempted to educate them about what would happen and I even produced pictures of the affects of smoking on the body.

My Dad eventually began to ignore me, refusing to stop smoking and so I decided to try and persuade my Mum to stop smoking instead. One day, when asking her to quit the filthy habit, for me, her daughter, so that she would live long enough to see me get married or have children, she replied

“If I stop smoking, it won’t be for you, it will be for me.”

Through her own efforts my Mum (and my Dad with a little persuasion) eventually stopped smoking and although that was 4 or 5 years ago, her words have stuck with me and it leads me to what I’m going to tell you today.

How to Get Motivated

You may think that you’re a nice person and in fact, you probably are but if you ask me, nobody does anything unless it benefits themselves. When was the last time that you did something nice for someone? Have you ever helped an old lady with heavy shopping get across the street? You may have done it so that you don’t have to see her suffer as she attempts to struggle across the street in pain. See, even the nicest actions have self-beneficial reasons behind them.

1. Think about your reasons: For my Mum it was so she would become healthier and live longer but for you, the reasons for doing something could be completely different. All it takes is being able to acknowledge your motives and that way you know what you’re getting out of it and will be more inclined to actually do something.
2. Visualize: Now that you know why your doing it, it’s important that you visualize the benefits. Finding it difficult to be bothered to do gardening? Think about the beautiful, lush garden that could come out of it. Struggling to get motivated to write a new blog post? Imagine the comments that could come out of it or think about the affect it could have on a reader.
3. Don’t Delay: I’m convinced that I see something telling me why ‘guest posting is awesome’ every day and for weeks I’ve planned to write this with no avail. Before I began to write this I said to myself “Jasmine, just write the post already!” and seeing as though you’re reading this, it worked!

Unlock The Motivation Inside

We all do things for different reasons and hopefully the ideas for motivation that I’ve listed should help a little. One important thing to remember is that you should convince yourself to do something as opposed to people having to force you to get motivated because if they force you into something, you’ll grow to resent them.

In the mornings, I’m lucky. Not many people are awake so I usually get the elevator all to myself. In the afternoons, not so much.

I used to hop into the elevator with another person, push the button to my floor and then stare off into the elevator wall careful not to make eye-contact. If you make eye-contact then you feel obliged to smile or say hello and that’s just awkward.

But why? Why is it so awkward for us to look a perfect stranger in the eyes and provide them with a warm smile and a pleasant greeting? Why are we afraid to stand up with confidence and reach out to the people around us with the warmth that we all want others to share with us?

I decided a while back that I would do exactly that. As I pass people throughout the day, it’s my goal to provide them with at least a little bit of encouragement. I now create conversations in the elevator, usually very simply ones as I’m only going up eight floors.

And you know what? It’s great. Try it. I dare you.