Now, let’s get caught up.

The economy is still sucking wind although I am hearing some signs of life out there in the business world.  The sales world is still tough, as if you didn’t know, and our approach and activities are more important now than ever.

But things have changed a bit in my world which explains this sabbatical from writing. Here are just a few of the changes.  I got married – I got healthy – I became a grandmother (gigi) and I moved — to a farm.  One of these changes is enough to speak and write about for months.  Now when you add all four, ok it’s daunting and exciting all wrapped up in one crazy tortilla!  But it has changed me – greatly.  And within this crazy tortilla comes a change of voice perhaps.  May this blog reflect a voice filled with gratitude and wisdom to humbly help you through a tough day or a much needed belly laugh to ride the wave you were given today.

Changes are a comin’.  In the weeks to come I want to update the name and look of this blog.  For those that know me well, you know it has to feel and look right.  Can you imagine what my garden and chicken coop are going to look like?  I actually bought pictures to put up in the chicken coop. Oh gawd!  But that’s another story for another day.

Thank you for being in my blog community.  It feels good to be back!

Eloise

We can talk a great game in this life.  But… living up to our words when “I don’t feel like it”  is a little taste of hell.  It’s hard because its emotional and it gets broadcast into my behaviors.  ”Actions speak louder than….?”  You know the old saying, right? Showing respect when I agree with you is easy. Being respectful to others when we don’t agree is where the rubber meets the road.  It separates the mature from the not so mature.

I have Ed Stark to thank for my life lesson.  (By the way, some of you are lucky enough to learn life’s lessons from parents. Most of my lessons came from other people outside my immediate family.)  He was my immediate boss at the insurance company where I worked while in my senior year of high school.  I had quite a mouth on me that worked in the halls of my high school, but when it came to a work environment…well…not so much.

He asked me to stay after work one day and once his office door shut, I knew I wasn’t getting a promotion.  I can’t even tell you what he said to me that day, but I knew I had some changin’ to do.

Ed taught me about people. He taught me to be thankful and respectful of them.  He taught me to help them before they ask.  He taught me to demonstrate my gratefulness that I was in a job that paid well and allow  me  to learn.  And above all else, he emphasized…”quit talking and start doing…show people that they matter.”  It’s called respect.  And respect has this wonderful quality — it trumps  having to be right all the time.

I had a choice to make.  And on THAT day I choose respect and thankfulness.  In the many years since my senior year, I have not always made the right choice, but I am quickly brought back to my time with Ed Stark.

Be thankful today and demonstrate it to everyone who crosses your path.  Try it without saying a word!

My best to you,

Eloise

Which brings me to …a quote that inspired me yesterday.

“Strong reasons make strong actions!”  Wm. Shakespeare

Trying to win a marathon?  Start a new business? Change your eating habits?  These and endless pursuits like these require loads energy to accomplish.  All of these are tough.  That’s why most people fail at them.  Their reasons aren’t strong enough to keep them focused long enough to impact their actions.

I remember back to my corporate life and how I achieved my goals.  I had a big WHY!  When I was on straight commission, (which means everyday you wake up unemployed:) I was excited to sell and achieve because financially, I had kids to help put through college.  There were  days that were tough but I was always willing to get up the next day and go again.

In my own business now, I wanted to write a book.  It took money and alot of time and discipline.  Why do it?  Believe me, many days I sat and wondered, why do this?  But I knew down deep I had a story to tell — a viewpoint to help people consider a different way to think and act.  When the books were delivered by 18 wheeler truck to my house…I cried.  So when I receive notes and emails on what the book means to you, I will always tear up because it reminds me of my reasons why I wrote it.

Today and tomorrow…I hope your reasons become so big that you have no choice but to engage in massive action!

Surf’s Up,

El

I can’t remember now how many presentations I have given where I have looked into the eyes of hundreds of people and challenged them with the words from my book…”So, which size wave are you riding?”  How smug of me.  I keep making this mistake in my life when I think I am the teacher and you are the student.  I am not.  When I get seduced by the “wisdom that spews from my mouth”…I get caught everytime.  Everytime!

For 18 years I have built a speaking and training company.  It has been apart of me and one that I am proud of.  But last year it was time for me to learn exactly what I have built…not a business but a practice.  It depends on me showing up for the revenue engine to continue to run.  That is a perfect plan except when I can’t show up.  This past year for health reasons I had to come off the road for almost 10 months.  Excuse me…but where are the checks that are supposed to come in the mail?  Answer –they don’t.

Now you add the economic downturn into the mix and think about revving your revenue engine up again.  Whew!  My speaker buddies who live and die with bookings are all looking at each other saying, Where have all the meetings gone?”  Sure, there are still meetings but the days of unlimited budgets for companies to “invest in their people” are long gone.  One prospect I approached for doing some sales training and buying books for their team of 30 responded this way:  ”Eloise, it’s not that we can’t afford it, we just can’t afford the appearance of it.  When we are asking our people to cut back and not even take clients to lunch anymore, we just can’t spend money on anything very visible. Not now!”  Whaaaaat?  So all recognition budgets – training budgets – personal development budgets are gone.  Sigh….what interesting times we live in.

But is this the end of this tale of woe?  Oh hardly, my friends….There are new waves sets on the horizon everyday.  So stay tuned and keep watching over your right shoulder.  New waves equal new ideas…. Stay Tuned!

So, which size wave will we ride?

Surf’s Up,

Eloise

Now out of the corner of my eye the other sales person is racing over to the pants section to find the “care label” to win this battle.  Gee, I didn’t even know we were fighting.  She yells out across the store that the label says I am to dry them on low.  So now Debbie glanced back at me trying to find some more ammunition to win this war that I didn’t even know we were fighting.

After a moment, the light bulb went off in her head and she asked. “Do you have your receipt?”  ”No. I doubt it but these pants were ordered from your store because you didn’t have my size.  Any chance you would have it in your computer?”, I asked.  And now Debbie in all her glory stood taller, and with a gleam of joy emerging from her eyes proudly announces…”Yes, it is in our computer BUT the only way to pull it up is to know what day I bought it, the exact time I bought it, who the sales clerk was, and which cash register it was – the left or the right one.”

OK.  Now I want to fight!!  But instead I will wear my too short pants and remember with a gleam in my eye that Debbie and her assistant work at the mall making $7.35 an hour.  Good bye!

They step up to that medal stand with that shiny gold medal being draped around their necks just as their alarm clocks start buzzing  –only to discover it was just a dream.  And when all of us are still snuggled in our warm beds, these Olympic warriors go to work – again at 4 am.

Can dreams become reality? I mean really, can they?

For every skier who hurtles down the slopes, for every hockey player who suits up, and for every ice skater who takes the ice in Vancouver, there is someone standing in the shadows who knows the answer.

The Olympics is a world stage to show what you are made of.  It is time to push yourself past fear, past doubt, and past pain. It’s where ruthless determination puts you in the category of….well… just average.

Why? Because every athlete who shows up is determined.  Everyone in the opening ceremonies has a will to win.  Everybody is focused on doing whatever it takes.

So what will be the difference between the skiers, the hockey players, and the skaters who watch the medal ceremony from afar with red-rimmed eyes and those elite few who feel the weight of the medal around their necks?

The answer is lurking out of view, off to the side, standing in the shadows.

Here’s a safe bet –some of them wanted to quit at some point.  I betcha some of them had no idea what they were getting into and never understood what true commitment really meant.  They can talk a great “dream speech” but for some of them, there came a moment where quitting was a wonderful and sane choice.

But then, something stepped out from the shadows…that magic elixir to regain their insanity once again to this Olympic madness.

The path to dreams is never a straight one.  Take the unfolding story of Lindsey Vonn, the gorgeous blond, the “Michael Phelps” hopeful of these Olympic games. She may have to live the agony of defeat before she ever hits the slopes (imagine skiing with razor blade pain shooting through your shins!).  Her demeanor spoke volumes at a news conference yesterday.  Will she be able to put on her ski boot and race to fulfill her life goal?  Yesterday, she couldn’t bear to answer the question.  She could not even bear to get her leg x-rayed for fear that it might be broken.  She didn’t want to know.  She tried to sound determined. Who could blame her?

But off in the distance, was her chance.  Because in the shadows, there lurking out of the limelight was….her COACH.

The person who has belief when you don’t. The coach!  The person who can see your weaknesses when you won’t. The coach!  The person who dreams of your Olympic medal ceremony every night and wakes up early with you, ready to take the next step that you cannot even see.  It’s the coach!

This year, while watching the winter events, keep a close eye in the shadows for the person who takes every ski jump with you as if they are on the slope. Or the coach who holds their hands to their heart when you fall on your triple axle in the short program and feel all is lost.  Because there in the shadows is the person who will fight off your fear and dispel doubt that your kick ass long program will give you another chance to win!

So, lets give a shout out to all the coaches of these Olympic games who turn great athletes into elite ones.  We will be looking for you…in the shadows, beaming with pride.

To all my African American friends who heard the comments, “For an hour, I forgot he was black!”   I was stunned, were you?  But then a few days later as the buzz started to build over Chris Matthews comments made the night of the State of the Union address, this funny predicament started to occur.  Because he is clearly a Liberal Democrat cheerleader, people on that side of the aisle didn’t blast him for those comments.  Instead, they gave Chris this huge dose of grace saying “he didn’t mean anything by it,” or “he didn’t intend for that to be a negative comment.”

Even one of my African American democratic buddies on Facebook said, “Please friends, don’t ever forget that I am black.”  But no one shouted for his resignation.  No one shouted for him to retract the statement.  Instead, people immediately gave him grace.

I am not a democrat.  But that’s not the point.  As a life observer I am interested in the power of judging one’s intent.  Seems to me that we are much more able to do it when we align with the person in question.  That alignment allows us to give them the benefit of the doubt.  That alignment frees us to widen the latitude of misspeaking because there are so many other reasons to love them.

But what happens to that grace when, heaven forbid, we disagree and are out of alignment with the person?  Does that  give us the right to harshly condemn and go tone deaf to the apologies of the offending party?   Where did the grace go?  If it’s true we all screw up, why can’t grace be extended to people you don’t align with?  The bible so beautifully teaches (and I’m paraphrasing here) ..so what if you love the people that love you back.  The real strength is in loving the ones who don’t love you.  Now that’s real love!

Take a look around.  People say dumb stuff all the time.  Look at Ministers.  We hear them speaking for God in absurd ways, deciding to enlighten us all as to why God allows bad things to happen.  We heard it as recently as the earthquake in Haiti.  And, as sure as shooting, (that’s just a term), some jumped all over that minister while others, because of their alignment were in quiet agreement.  The day that that statement was heard through the press a favorite blogger of mine wrote a beautiful piece admonishing others to show him compassion instead of criticism – empathy instead of hate – even when we disagreed passionately with his statements, let alone the timing.

In today’s Sunday paper an article just made my pulse quicken.  It is about a minister (another one) who keeps preaching for people to give to his ministry because he will be giving back to them a promise of billions.  People keep giving and he keeps promising.  Here again, the alignment to this minister is allowing the grace to flow when his promises are starting to ring hollow.  Many people in his congregation however are starting to smell a rat. And so is the Attorney General’s office.  But people, through their alignment, will give him the benefit of the doubt for another year and continue to open their purses.  I add this story to lend some balance to this post.  Sometimes, our alignment can cloud our judgement and the free pass we give to some needs to be reexamined.  This alignment business is tricky.

This grace stuff is hard- in politics or religion.  It pushes a person to move about the noise and always stay hyper aware when the temptations to be more competitive than kind are seducing and enticing you. Politics today is a breeding ground for all things judgemental.  Just because we choose to give grace to the humans around us doesn’t mean that we can’t have our opinions on where the direction of the country should be headed.  I have many friends and relatives that are on both sides of the looking glass.  And even through our frustrations on both sides, we are challenged to rise above the noise.  It’s not always easy.  Especially when I know I am Absolutely right. (ahem..just kidding.)

I am challenged to give grace.  I am nudged to encourage you to do the same.

Till the next time crazy words come out of another human’s mouth,

Be graceful,

Eloise

So, let me say welcome to all my new readers, the “Exhibitionists” from RCMA.  I had a blast with all of you in my session.  Your comments and “surfer spirit” allowed some great energy to flow and weird ideas to percolate.

Stay tuned and keep RCMA weird!

From Surfer GIrl

Eloise

You can design them with a clear background or a white backing which they recommend to make your message pop.  Check them out the next time the urge to purge your old look overtakes you and you feel the need to express your inner weirdness!  I knew I loved you.

Go to www.PlasticPrinters.com

Eloise

But….be careful. You can be tricked.  It feels good to be able to help others and be at their beck and call.  But eventually, the jig is up.  You start getting pulled in a million directions – everyone else’s directions until one day your tank is way beyond empty.

Is it time for us to narrow our focus a bit and concentrate on a few friends instead of the legion?  It’s easy to type but a bit harder to live.  Why? Because of the evilness of guilt.  How could we possible say no to Judy?  To Philip?  I have been there for them through menopause and prostrate cancer!

This scenario could of been my friend Gary’s.  He woke up one day and said I can’t keep trying to save the whole world – I need to focus my efforts in the lives of six.  He called this, conveniently, his Target Six.  It is these six close friends that he has committed to staying in close contact with and makes a point to never go three or four days without checking in.

For the others who didn’t make it in, he has allowed himself to feel free to stand back and see them on a more infrequent basis.  He will tell you it was hard at first.  The folks in his outer circle of six definately felt the difference, but all understood and respected his decision.

The coolest part is the relationships that have developed through the Target Six .  It’s funny but now the Target Six stay in touch with each other and know that Gary will be there through cancer, divorce, and raising crazy teenagers.  (are there any other kind?)

This year, I am going to take Gary’s advice and focus.  I ask for you to consider his story as one you might embrace.  Whatever number you decide, those people will feel a stronger bond with you and you will feel that in your target circle, there is more of you to give.

Thanks Gary, from one of your Target Six.  I am honored.

Eloise