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Do you know someone who is an energizer? When somebody is an energizer, when they come in the room, energy starts to increase. People’s energy picks up. Do you know other people who, when they come in, the energy just gets sucked out of the room? Ha! You know, there are people like that. Things just seem down when they come around. And those are the kind of people that you should be nice to, and love them, but don’t hang around them. The question is: Are you an energizer? Does people’s energy increase when you’re with them? When you come home, does the energy pick up or are you the wet blanket that just slinks in? I think it’s so important that you be an energizer and you gather people around you who pick up your energy. Because what really makes organizations great, and families great, is positive energy. And it takes energizers around people to make the energy come out in them, too. So that’s my message today. Be an energizer. When you come in a room, light it up! Make something happen. You don’t have to be an extrovert to do that. Just by your interest and your energy in terms of what you do can make a difference, people can see that, even if you aren’t being Mr. or Ms. Exuberant. Life is about positive energy. So energize people! Energize yourself!
You know, I think sometimes you really can make your dreams come true. Margie has often said, “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” As you think of your New Year’s resolutions, go ahead and dream about the person you want to be or the thing you want to do. When you start to send energy out to dream, people just may show up in your life to help you accomplish it. That’s what happened when Spencer Johnson and I wrote The One Minute Manager. In May 1982, the book was coming out and in September, Spencer Johnson and I met at the La Jolla Cove. We had The New York Times book review section and a bottle of champagne, and we set our goals and our dreams for this book. We dreamed that we would be able to sell 500,000 copies—no business book had ever sold that many—and we dreamed that it would be on The New York Times bestseller list for six months. We celebrated, we clicked the glasses as we were sitting there with the bestseller list, and it was just really a fun time. This was on a Sunday. On Monday I was getting on a plane in San Diego going to Chicago, and I introduced myself to the guy sitting next to me in First Class. I said, “What do you do?” and he said, “I’m a regional sales manager for B. Dalton.” I said, “You sell books?” and he said, “Sure, we have 750 stores.” And I started talking to this guy and I designed a whole strategy to get to the business and economic buyers of B. Dalton and Waldenbooks and all the bookstores. And I said to this guy, “You weren’t supposed to be sitting here, were you?” and he said, “How did you know that? They goofed up my ticket and at the last minute I was upgraded to First Class.” I said, “You had no choice. I sucked you into this seat with the energy from my dream and our vision about this book.” So dream big in 2010! And let other people know what your dream is so that maybe they can help it come true. Have a wonderful dreaming year and let’s see what kind of things you can accomplish at work and at home and in the community. Be the best you can be in 2010.
This morning I was listening to Tony Robbins. I went and got a tape of Tony after being with him recently. He was saying a lot of people acquaint happiness with having no problems. He says that’s crazy. It reminded me of one of Norman Vincent Peale’s favorite stories. Norman was walking down the street in New York City when he ran into a friend of his and said, “How are you doing?” Norman thought it was just a casual greeting, but the guy took it as an invitation and he lay down all of his problems at Norman’s feet. After about twenty minutes, he was finished and he said, “Norman, if you can solve all of my problems, I’ll give you a check for $5,000 to give to your favorite charity.” Norman said that he had never turned down such a challenge, so he ruminated and he cogitated and he agitated and he came up with a solution. He said, “I was just at an organization the other day where people have no problems. Would you like to go there?” And his friend said, “That’s exactly where I want be.” And Norman said, “I’ll take you there tomorrow. It’s called Woodlawn Cemetery. The only people I know who have no problems are dead.” Problems are a way of life, so if you equate your happiness to not having any problems, you’re going to be naïve for the rest of your life. Happy people know how to deal with problems. They don’t get bogged down with problems. They solve problems. They work on problems. But they don’t let problems take over their life. You know, sometimes you put a problem on your back and it drags you down. What you have to do is to say, “How do I solve this?” Happiness and problems go together. So as Tony said, it’s your attitude—it’s what you bring to a problem—that can result in a positive solution, So if you have any problems today, great! You’ll probably have a happier day.
Like this:
You know, one of the things that bugs me is how much the press goes too far in trying to catch people doing things wrong and find out where they stumbled, where they’ve made mistakes. It seems to be relevant now with the Tiger Woods saga, but this “gotcha” mentality is something that has been going on for a long time. It doesn’t matter what position, what office, what they’re trying to do. They love to make sure they can dig somebody a hole and try to push them into it.
I heard a great quote the other day that originally came from Teddy Roosevelt. He said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the person who points out how strong people stumble, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is no effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
So it’s really tough. Like I say, if you’ve never made a mistake in your life or done anything stupid, then you probably lie about other things, too. The important thing is not doing a stupid thing, but realize when you’ve done it and own up to it, give an apology, and move on. I think it would be really good if we could spend more time catching people doing things right rather than wrong. So take care of yourselves. You might make a mistake, but give it your best.
I’ve always enjoyed and promoted the concept of “Catching People Doing Things Right,” and over at LeaderChat.org they are running a new Twitter contest…
Starting on Tuesday and lasting for 72-hours, The Ken Blanchard Companies will give you a chance to “catch someone doing things right” by entering that person in a drawing for a copy of one of my latest books. The book will contain a personalized inscription congratulating the winner on being caught doing things right. The contest ends on Friday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time and you can enter as many people as you would like. Here’s how to participate:
1. Go to www.Twitter.com and post the name of the person you would like to catch doing things right along with a very short description of why. Include the following code in your message @leaderchat
For example: Nick Peterson—for doing an outstanding job all year and helping to make this our best year ever! #@leaderchat
2. Push the UPDATE button!
It’s as simple as that. Every day between now and Friday we’ll randomly choose one lucky person among those entered to receive one of the personalized books. Each day’s winner will be posted at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time at www.leaderchat.org
Don’t miss this chance to say “thank you” to someone who really deserves it. Participating is a fun, low-cost, and very thoughtful way to let someone know that you appreciate them!
PS: If you don’t have a Twitter account yet, you can sign up at Twitter when you get there. Just follow the instructions and you’ll be online in minutes.
Charles Handy is an Irish writer and good friend who looks at himself as a “social philosopher.” He has written wonderful things on leadership and organizations. My wife Margie and I had dinner with him and his wife Elizabeth recently. They do something very interesting—they help people decide who they are and where they are going in life, and they put it into photographs. One of the processes was interesting and I would love you all to think about it: What three roles do you have in life? One could be as a father or mother, one could be a salesperson, or a golfer, or whatever—I don’t know. And if you were going to design a picture, where would you place those roles in the room? What would be in the front of the picture, what would be in the middle, and what would be in the back? How you arrange these roles in the picture is really how you are rank-ordering them in your life. Then stop and really take a look at your present life and what you are spending your time on. Some people might put their role as a parent up front, and yet they are really not spending the time they should on that. One man had his role as an executive way in the back of his photo, and he had being a writer and a poet in the front. After he looked at it, he ended up quitting his job and concentrating on what he said he really loved to do—write poetry and also be with his family. So it’s interesting. What three roles do you have and where would you want to put them in a picture? I’m going to think about mine and I would love for you to think about your own.
You know, not long ago I woke up and I had a little “pity party.” I was kind of feeling bad. I had been traveling a lot, and that day I was flying out of state to do something I had agreed to do over a year earlier. And I was thinking, “Wow, I’ve had enough of travel.” I’d just as soon have stayed home with Margie and our dog Joy and gone up to the office and hugged everybody. So I was having a pretty good pity party. And then I just kind of backed off. I read my mission statement and my obituary and my values—and I realized that there must be some reason I was going there. Maybe somebody really needed the message I was going to bring; maybe somebody really needed something I could help them with. You know, if you’re going to make the word a better place, you do it by the moment-to-moment decisions you make as you interact with other people. So I just kind of pumped myself up and said, “Okay, Blanchard, you’re here to make the world a little bit better, so stop with the pity party. You’ve just got another new audience—a new group of people.” And maybe, just maybe, I did make a little bit of a difference in someone’s life.
So if you ever have those feelings, you know—“Monday, oh my God. I’ve got to go back to work,” or whatever—the reality is that we’re really wonderfully blessed. We have to keep on reminding ourselves when we get into our pity party to just get up. Because somebody always has it worse than we have it. Somebody has some problems and maybe we can help—whether it be a customer or coworker, family member, or friend. So no more pity parties. Although it is good to recognize that we can all fall into that mood, the way out, especially this week, is positive thinking, giving thanks for what you do have, and realizing that we are really here to make a difference.
My wife Margie and I needed to fly to New York in early September, and we had made a plan that we weren’t going to fly on September 11. But you know, life is not always in your own hands. I learned that from Don Shula really clearly when he talked about the importance of being audible-ready. That means you have to have a plan, but when plans go awry, you have to be able to “call an audible.” You have to go with the flow.
So on September 10 when we were on our way to our first stop in Dallas, there were all kinds of problems with the Dallas airport, and we had to land in Oklahoma City because we had to get more gas. We eventually got to Dallas at about nine o’clock that night. Of course, our connecting flight to New York had already taken off. So we stayed at the airport hotel right there. The next morning, September 11, we flew safely to New York City. I think one of the things that makes you relax and be more easy in life is if you have an audible-ready attitude. Shula said that when you call an audible in football, it doesn’t mean you don’t have a plan. When things change, you just have to call a different play. You can’t get all uptight and ticked off because you didn’t get to go with your original plan. Some people at the airport were really bent out of shape because their plans were changed. They got themselves all out of whack about something they couldn’t control. So sometimes things change and you have to just go with the flow.
One thought we have to keep at the top of mind is we are going to make it through this challenging time, and we’re going to do it together. We are. And we can’t get discouraged. We’re figuring this out together. Positive thinkers are winners. Why? Because they get positive results. And we’re going to get those. It’s going to be a story. It’s going to be a celebration. So don’t get down—keep up. We’re doing it all the time. You have a great, positive day, and remember we can do everything together. Remember that quote, “None of us is as smart as all of us.”
I’ll never forget when, right after my dad died, I took my mom up to Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power. They watched that all the time in Florida and that was their favorite Sunday activity, watching the Hour of Power with Reverend Schuller. She had never been up there and this was the last service in the old chapel. Halfway through the service, everybody got up and walked into the new Crystal Cathedral, which is just absolutely beautiful. And the sermon from Reverend Schuller that day was “Every Ending has a New Beginning,” which is a wonderful thought. So as the next season or the next year ends for us and other people, we have new beginnings.
It was also amazing thinking about visualization. I was sitting there with my mom, and it’s a magnificent place, and I leaned over and I said, “Someday I’m going to be up there with Reverend Schuller.” And this was 1979. And my mom said, “How are you going to do that?” and I said, “I don’t know.” And then when The One Minute Manager came out in 1982, the next year, there I was up there with Reverend Schuller and my mom was out there in the cathedral, watching. So life is a very special occasion. I visualize a wonderful fall for all of us.
I have a great saying for you today that my friend Pat Zigarmi gave me last year when I was recovering from my hip surgery. This is a good one for all of us:
“Peace: It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.”
How is that? That’s really pretty powerful. Because with all the stress and the movement with the economy and everybody working hard and all, you have to find a way to stay peaceful in the midst of turmoil. That happens by quieting yourself periodically as you work through the day and know that you’re doing good things—you’re making a difference in people’s lives. Calm yourself down, take a few deep breaths, and recognize that peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. Have a great day.
