Category Archives: Uncategorized

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you only have today.” – unknown

We just wanted a cup of coffee to go, in a Styrofoam cup – that’s all. We were headed home along a scenic but remote stretch of highway after spending several delightful days in Colorado when we entered the small village of Westcliffe (you can look it up on the map). It would be our last opportunity to purchase almost anything for about sixty miles of winding roads. But all we really wanted was a cup of coffee. Instead, we were about to be treated to the best cup of freshly ground and brewed coffee you could ever imagine, served in real cups and saucers, plus a delicious breakfast made from scratch especially for us, and above all an unforgettable encounter with an incredible lady.

It looked like a good place to grab some coffee on the run, a tiny café on a corner called the Stage Stop that advertised smoothies and gourmet coffee. Perfect we thought; we’ll just run in real quick – that is, until we met Shelley Shelley, the lovely, bubbly proprietor who greeted us the second we stepped inside. Shelley Shelley was her real name, by the way, first and last. She was an attractive middle-aged single mom who – as we learned from our conversation – had moved to Westcliffe, Colorado from San Diego, California to raise her son in what she described as “a Norman Rockwell setting where he could grow up in the same house with the same friends, and learn the right kinds of values.”

A feisty gal with big dreams, nothing holds Shelley back. She once dreamed of showing her son around America, so what did she do? She learned to drive a “big-rig” and for a year worked as a long-haul truck driver so her son could see America, home-schooling him along the way. Nowadays to support their “Norman Rockwell” lifestyle she makes smoothies, brews up special gourmet coffee, and cooks up delicious meals from scratch for local citizens and strangers like us. But above all she’s an inspiration to each and every person who walks through the door of her tiny café.

Some people go through life as victims. Others see it as opportunity – people like Shelley Shelley, “dreaming as if she’ll live forever, but living as if she only has today.” We walked in just to get a cup of coffee. We left inspired; ‘cause that’s what she does.

“Don’t fail to do something just because you can’t do everything.”
– Bob Pierce, Founder of World Vision

You’re probably familiar with the starfish story, the one about all the starfish that had been washed up on the beach during high tide only to be left there in the sand to die as the tide went back out. A young boy playing on the beach recognized the fate of the starfish and began to methodically pick them up one at a time and toss them back into the sea. A man who had been observing the boy approached him shaking his head. “What’s the point, boy, don’t you see there are thousands of these starfish lying along the beach? There’s no way you’re going to make a difference.” Undaunted, the boy replied to the man as he tossed another starfish into the ocean, “Yeah, but it made a difference to that one.”

During World War II my grandmother committed herself to writing letters to servicemen stationed overseas, primarily to those who at one time had been students in the Sunday school class she taught. Now, my grandmother’s letters were no small feat. They were labors of love, written in her small handwriting on multiple pages front and back and often times around the edges. In them she would share news from home, stories she remembered about that person’s family and childhood, and offer words of encouragement and inspiration. Each letter she composed represented hours of tedious work. Yet, I doubt seriously that my grandmother’s letter writing made much of a difference in defeating Hitler and saving the world. But I am pretty sure it made a difference to each one of those servicemen who received them, maybe to some it made ALL the difference.

Too often, I’m afraid, we find ourselves overwhelmed by the challenges and problems that exist in our lives and the world around us, becoming paralyzed by the enormity of it all. We’re like the man observing the boy on the beach tossing starfish back in the sea. “What’s the point?” we ask ourselves. “Surely my little contribution won’t make any difference.” Oh, but it does! In fact, for some it might make ALL the difference. So . . . “Don’t fail to do something just because you can’t do everything.”

Around where we live – and to the great delight of our dog, Cowgirl – there happens to be a large population of cottontail rabbits. So you can imagine how excited she gets when we put on our jogging shoes and prepare to take her out on a morning jog. It has become quite a sport for us to see how many rabbits we can scare up each morning. Usually it’s only one at a time, but occasionally there will be two or three together. Once we kicked up as many as five at one time. You never saw so many rabbits scampering off every which direction scattering like a covey of quail. (Not to worry, all you rabbit lovers, Cowgirl’s on a leash so the rabbits are never in any real danger.)

One thing I’ve noticed about Cowgirl is that when there is only a single rabbit to chase she’s totally focused on what she’s doing. But when two or more pop up at the same time she seems to dart after the first one she sees, until a different one catches her attention and she changes directions to pursue it. The end result is that in the confusion of trying to chase more than one rabbit they all tend to escape.

Isn’t that true for most us? When we try to chase more than one rabbit we jeopardize our chances to catch any of them. I do it all the time, new opportunities pop up out of the weeds like the rabbits in our neighborhood and instead of keeping my focus on the one I’m already chasing I try to go after them all and lucky to catch any. It’s the risk we take in our attempts to multitask as our culture seems to think is so important. But we’re not as equipped to do multiple things at once as we might think. Case in point, why do you think it is against the law to talk on a cellphone while driving through a school zone, or why texting while driving may soon become totally outlawed?

Several months ago I found myself stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on a major thoroughfare and accidentally rear-ended someone. Why? I’m embarrassed to admit this but I was reading an email instead of paying attention. Fortunately no harm was done, but I was nevertheless compelled to stop and confer with the victim of my negligence which simply cost me more time than if I had waited to read the email.

Wouldn’t we all catch more rabbits if we would just chase one at a time?

“Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’, and your ‘No’, ‘No’.” – Matthew 5:37

For almost thirty years Jerry and I were the closest of friends. We talked daily during the business week sharing information and ideas, and almost always having a few laughs. Although we were in the same business we never worked together, in fact we were competitors – at least the companies we worked for were competitors, and bitter ones at that. Yet, we were constantly engaged as partners in joint endeavors. It was a great relationship; we were both like-minded and trusted each other without question, to the extent that in the absence of one of us the other had total authority to make decisions regarding the partnership. In other words – now think about this!! – he had authority to make decisions on my behalf about my firm’s capital, and I had authority from him to do the same. In all those thirty years not once did we have an argument, disagreement, or misunderstanding. It was a relationship not bound by legal documents but rather by trust between two honest gentlemen. We simply let our “Yes” be “Yes”, and our “No”, “No”; and it worked without a glitch – for thirty years.

Establishing trust is not complicated. It is simply requires telling the truth and doing what we say we’re going to do. Why then do we trust so little? Why, when we listen to all the political promises being made during this election season, are we so skeptical? Why must every contract, agreement, or major transaction require reams of legal documents? Why are relationships like Jerry and I had all those years so rare, being the exception and not the rule? Why is trust between one human being and another so often violated? I wonder, for trust is one of the most powerful assets one can ever attain in business and in life.

“Establishing trust” is listed as one of the top core competencies for executive coaching by the International Coach Federation (ICF). Understandably so because only by trusting can one person communicate openly and freely with another, which is essential for a coaching relationship to be effective. I’m grateful for my old friend Jerry who exposed me to the meaning and power of trust. For us it became second nature, “Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’, and your ‘No’, ‘No’.”

“If a person takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow close at hand.”
– Unknown

Once upon a time during my corporate days I would sometimes do something that drove my staff crazy, and that was when I would cave in on a dispute in which we were clearly in the right. Why would I do such a thing, they must have wondered? I can’t say that I blame them either, for we had done all the right things. What they didn’t know – although I think they learned over time – is that those decisions to forfeit or compromise were actually carefully calculated on my part. Was it worth the price of “political capital” to win a battle that could cost us the war later on? Those kinds of calls are tough to make, but without considering the longer term implications such a decision might have, a short term victory just might backfire. Once decided, then, my next challenge would be to convince the staff that it was a prudent decision; otherwise they might have less incentive to keep doing the right things that they do so well day in and day out.

Present and future are not mutually exclusive; they are in fact joined at the hip. Most of us have all we can say grace over just to get done each day what needs to be done, then we pray to God to “give us this day our daily bread”, but to what end? The end, of course, is to sustain ourselves and our families. But it’s much more than that; for we have hopes and dreams to pursue, ideas to try, goals to achieve, and a greater purpose to fulfill. It is thoughts about what is distant, you see, that motivates us to accomplish what is close at hand.

Since becoming an executive coach I have yet to be hired by a client for any purpose other than the pursuit of future goals and objectives. It’s the fun stuff about business and leadership, visioning and strategizing. But neither have I yet worked with a client where at least half our time together was not spent discussing immediate issues and concerns. Long term growth may have been the purpose in our working together, but inevitably short term matters arise that require immediate attention. It is part of the process, and why present and future are not mutually exclusive; why they are joined at the hip.