Say it Better

"One for One"

Of course your business name is an attention grabber.  But does your business slogan:

1. Capture attention?

2. Differentiate your business from the competition?

3.  Evoke a rational and an emotionally positive response?

4. "Tip" your customer over from seeing into buying?

Or, like me, have you not yet crafted that subtitle that appears after your business name - one that cements your relationship with your customers - making them proud to buy and to tell others?

Toms Shoes sets the bar rather high with the motto, "one for one." It's the owner's commitment to give one pair of shoes to someone who badly needs them  - each time someone buys a pair.  Watch this (and flinch) to see why that promise is a life-changer.  

Who knows? A global firm may feature your small business in their advertisement to enjoy the Halo Effect. And bloggers may cover your unique story - tied to the news hook of your slogan. That can raise your profits and your capacity to do good. 

Here's to more "creative capitalism" business models that you and I can adapt to our kind of work - turning a profit while doing good.

Next: Tie your slogan to an experience that builds customers' involvement. Better yet, that brings out their better side. 

Isn't it amazing what magic the right words can conjure up?

the meaning of love ...

.. is learned and shown in many ways, yet none can ring more true than this. Puts my difficult day into proper perspective, and perhaps yours.

In life as in art ...

it is often a matter of where you draw the line.

He got a standing ovation

even before he started his lecture. I only hope I’d be half as wise, brave and funny as this 46-year-old Carnegie Mellon University computer-science professor, and video game trailblazer, Randy Pausch was last Tuesday afternoon.

Pausch is one of several U.S. university professors invited to give a best “last lecture.” This is not a call for professors’ best insights on their area of teaching.

It is to answer the question, “What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?”

Here’s two pieces of advice he offered as he presented a series of large screen images of his life:
1. “Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things."

2. Be more patient. "Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you."

Then there’s his “deathbed conversion:” "I just bought a Macintosh."

He started his talk though with a big screen image of his CT scans, pointing out the 10 tumors on his liver. This inventor of “Alice” the software enabling people to "easily create 3-D animations” that was downloaded a million times in a year, this father of three has been told he has only a few months left to live.

"In the sex war ...

...thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female."

So wrote the often witty English writer, Cyril Connolly. Thanks Mardy.

Turning towards the positive, to savor your weekend and onwards, there's this (do tell me if you know the source) ....

To realize the value of ten years:
Ask a newly divorced couple.

To realize the value of four years:
Ask a graduate.

To realize the value of one year:
Ask a student who has failed a final exam.

To realize the value of nine months:
Ask a mother who gave birth to a stillborn.

To realize the value of one month:
Ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one week:
Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize the value of one hour:
Ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realize the value of one minute:
Ask a person who has missed the train, bus or plane.

To realize the value of one second:
Ask a person who has survived an accident.

To realize the value of one millisecond:
Ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics.

Time waits for no one. Treasure every moment you have.
You will treasure it even more when you can share it with someone special.

To realize the value of a friend:
Lose one.

What happens when we understand?

Here’s some pithy perspectives on the effect of understanding. For some a hat tip to Mardy Grothe.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
- Carl Jung

If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.
- Lyndon Johnson

Everyone hears only what he understands.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather what he does not say.
- Kahlil Gibran

“Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.”
- George Washington Carver

Want to be Happier?

Simplify. It’s clarifying. Then one can focus. Focus on what is really going on. What you feel right now. What most matters to you. What best serves the situation. Gratefulness. "First things first" will be apparent. After all, "Life is short, and many of us tend to clutter our lives with things that we do not really want to do.”

Smile.

Focus next on self-esteem.

We earn self-esteem when we learn self-confidence and self-respect. That may be the first step towards living a happier life.

Self-confidence comes from our feeling of competence in responding to the difficulties and the opportunities we encounter in our work and personal life. Self-respect means we feel worthy of being happy. That’s what psychologist Nathaniel Branden’s believes. He wrote, “Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.”

Self-esteem helps us become independent thinkers, according to Tal Ben Shahar, author of the practical new book, Happier.

Paradoxically it also enables us stay open to hearing others’ differing views, I believe. This path towards a positive and resilient outlook begins with giving oneself the permission to feel.

“Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning.”

Want to grow up into happiness? Here are two tips I’ve found especially helpful from, “the teacher of Harvard University’s most popular and life-changing course. One out of every five Harvard students has lined up to hear him.”

1. Sweat it out. Enjoy an immediate, free mood elevator by getting in vigorous motion more often. A Duke University study showed that working out for 30 minutes three times a week” is equivalent to popping Zoloft.”

2. “Accept life as a roller coaster. Optimistic people have ups and downs like everyone else, Ben-Shahar says. "The difference is that happy people realize that if they're sad, they'll get over it," he says. "There's a misconception that being happy means being on a high and having positive moods all the time. That's not what happiness is. If you're happy, you have a life — overall — that you find both meaningful and pleasurable." Methinks Gretchen would agree.

There’s more to the growing popularity of the practical application of positive psychology to everyday life and its “cash value.”

Daddy, I Love You

For those of us blessed to be born into a family with a father who loved and respected us, this is a precious day. Love is when the heart loses its mind. To love and be loved is to feel the sunshine from both sides.

Thank you, Arnold P. Anderson, for the living example of love that you are ... and generosity, love of nature's beauty, curiosity, humor, wisdom, ingenuity, honor and strong sense of justice. Fine living is sitting with you and Lestelle on the back veranda, eating fresh corn and strawberries, watching the pines sway and squirrels run the electic lines.

Five Tips For Being Happier

From Michael Wiederman’s recent article in Scientific American Mind, ”Why It’s So Hard to Be Happy” you get five tips for being happier.

Here’s one key takeaway for me, living in Marin County where the extremely wealthy live among some who are barely getting by in homes they bought long ago and immigrants who stand on street corners, waiting for a pick-up job:

“…. the greater the income disparity within a community, the less its residents were satisfied with their lives, ” discovered Michael R. Hagerty of the Graduate School of Management at U Cal Davis.

Wiederman concludes, “When we are aware that others are better off than we are, our own satisfaction suffers.”

Thank you Steve.

Now take free test to find out how happy you really are -then build a more resilient, joyful life for yourself by reading the groundbreaking book, Learned Optimism by Marty Seligman.

Savor the Turn of Phrase

Like eating popcorn, the habit of reading chiasmus is impossible to resist, as Dr. Mardy Grothe has demonstrated to several of us devoted subscribers to his free newsletter.

Here’s some favorites, culled by Mardy.

• "The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him,
and to fly from all that pursue him."
- Voltaire

• One afternoon, John F. Kennedy and his crusty father Joseph were proudly watching First Daughter Caroline at play.

As they sat, no words passed between the two men for quite some time. Finally, the elder Kennedy observed thoughtfully, "Caroline's very bright, Jack."

Then, after a pause, he added, "Smarter than you were at that age."

JFK adopted a similar demeanor and said, "Yes, she is."

Then, after a pause of his own, he added: "But look who she has for a father."

• On May 6, 1862, Henry David Thoreau died at age 45 in his family home in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau was a deeply spiritual person who read the Bible and the sacred writings of other religious traditions, but he rejected the trappings of organized religion.

As he lay dying of tuberculosis, friends and family gathered around him. When Thoreau's aunt, a strict Calvinist, asked, "Henry, have you made your piece with God?" he replied:

"I was not aware we had ever quarreled."