The Invisible Mentor

Archive for June, 2009

What does the word contemplation mean to you? How often do you take time for contemplation? Once a day? Once a week? Never?

How do you know if you are on track? How do you know if something in your  life is working or is not working? Do you ever take time to reflect on the things that you hear, see, feel, sense and taste? What do you do to engage all your senses?

Achieving success and unleashing your inner genius requires nuturing your soul, as well as feeding your mind. You have to take care of all of you, both the inner and the outer, the seen and the unseen.

Below is a poem about contemplation by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German writer who lived in the 18th and early 19th century. Is the poem really about contemplation, or is it about something else? What do you think?

Book of Contemplation – Five Things

WHAT makes time short to me?

Activity!

What makes it long and spiritless?

‘Tis idleness!

What brings us to debt?

To delay and forget!

What makes us succeed?

Decision with speed

How to fame to ascend?

Oneself to defend!

By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Now that you have read Book of Contemplation – Five Things, what are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree with the point of view? Now read the quotation below by Heraclitus, how do you feel about it?

“Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.” Heraclitus

Are people with a good character likely to manage their time effectively, and make decisions quickly and decisively? How would you connect the poem and quote? There are no right or wrong answers. The point of this exercise, is to look at life more broadly and with different lens so that when you are faced with challenges, you will identify solutions that are superior because you have such a unqiue look on life.

Combining works by Goethe and Heraclitus, or other great thinkers, can only lead to superior thinking. Try comparing and contrasting the works of other greats thinkers, what discoveries do you think await you?

No related posts

Photo Credit: Avil Beckford

If you love to read books, challenging economics times should not be a reason for you not to enjoy your pastime. Listed below are websites where you can download free ebooks, from the classics to more contemporary works. Take some time to explore these websites because I am sure that you will find many books to please your literary palate.

Project Gutenberg

Scribd

Read Print

Wowio

Questia

YouPublish

Anova

Great Books and Classics

Get Free Ebooks

Ebook Mall

As a bonus, in the related posts and articles by Zemanta sections are additional places for you to find free ebooks. Feed your mind and let me know what you think. If you know of other places to find free books or other resources to expand your mind please let me know.

Related Posts

Best Places to Get Free Books – The Ultimate Guide

Five Best Places to Read and Download English Classic Books

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• Free eBooks (justgottasharethis.info)
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Photo Credits: Avil Beckford

Note: I have written this blog post based on information that I have researched on Earl Nightingale, and I have added my perspective to drive home his point. I have really appreciated Earl Nightingale’s The Strangest Secret and Lead the Field, two of his audio programs. This blog post is my attempt at distilling what he would blog about for his success tips.

Earl Nightingale‘s Success Tips 101

1. The key to success is that “we become what we think about”
2. You have to pay the price to be successful “As ye sow, so shall you reap”
3. Returns = Success: Enrich others and you will be enriched
4. Know where you are going
5. People who are successful have goals. Have a definite goal, focus on that important goal, channelling all your energies into accomplishing it
6. Act promptly and decisively
7. Knowledge is power when you take ACTION, always apply knowledge
8. We can do more than we think we can, so each day do just a little more that you have to do, even if it’s only one percent, because with the cumulative effect you reap big rewards
9. Read broadly and “study the world’s great religions, philosophy and psychology“
10. Be curious

What do you think about the success tips listed above? Do you agree or disagree with them? Think of someone who would make a great Invisible Mentor for you. Study that person and list 10 tips that you believe that person would deliver. How does it feel to do that exercise? The point of this exercise is to learn more about others so that when you are problem solving you have a larger body of knowledge to draw on. This exercise also expands your thinking.

Recommended Reading and Listening

Click here to listen to The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale

Related Posts: A Modern View

Everyone loves a good quote because they come in handy when we are communicating, whether it be orally or written. But many of us always stick to the same quotes. And, there are times when the popular quotes are the best ones, but as a practice, whenever you read, look out for phrases that resonates with you, and in no time you will have a list of quotes that are different.

I conduct many interviews and I am often looking for phrases that strike a chord with me. The following 10 quotations resonated with me during interviews and I included them in my book Tales of People Who Get It. The only place you will likely find these quotes are in my book.

1. “Problems are often complex, and you have to find a multifaceted solution.” Peter Bouffard
2. “If  you are having a challenge on a business level, do not look at how to change others, or even how to change the situation. Look at a way to change yourself.” Lydia Danner
3. “You cannot carry the requirements of a prior position into a new one without first assessing the new situation and its needs. You can bring some things with you if they fit the new framework; the rest you must toss aside.” John Gardner
4. “If you are trying to start a business or trying to do something new you’re innovating. When you innovate you are in a leadership role. in that role,  you have to involve other people and give them ownership, and create what I call “roving” leadership where you let people pick-up things and run with them.” Suzanne Gibson
5. “Without your colleagues you are nothing and trying to truly understand them as individuals is the most respectful thing you can do as a leader. And mutual respect provides the foundation for motivation in almost all cases.” Simon Grant
6. “People who are sitting in their offices at 10:00 p.m. trying to finish a report that is so important, should ask themselves if five years from now if they are going to have any recollection of what was so important about the report.” Claire Hoy
7. “A woman can make a difference even if she finds herself caged in her poor community. She has herself. No one can take that from her – only herself.” Anthea Rossouw
8. “I do not have to do anything extraordinary. All I need to do is wake up and see what’s been here waiting for me all the time. It’s already here and all is well.” Maria Nemeth
9. “I always make time for my family, and the trick is to do the unexpected, not just the expected.” Joe Martin

When you reflect on the above quotes, how do you feel? Do any of the quotes resonate with you? Which ones? Do you have a collection of quotes that you like? What is your favourite quotation and why?

Interesting articles by Zemanta

• Quotes Uncovered: Who Said “No Cigar”? (freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com)
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On Father’s Day, after a friend dropped me off at the Davisville Subway Station in Toronto, on impulse I decided to go to Mt. Pleasant Cemetery to take photos. While I was walking the few blocks to the cemetery, a lady told me that she was going on a walking tour organized by the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). She explained that they would be pointing out the places where prominent people who helped to shape Toronto were buried.

History was not my favourite subject in school, but as I grew older I appreciated the importance of history and what it teaches us as we  move forward. Always looking for content to educate others while educating myself, I decided to participate in the ROMwalks Tour.

Not only did I get a history lesson, but I was able to take some wonderful photos. The Mt. Pleasant Cemetery is not your typical cemetery. It is a place for both the living and the dead and it was designed that way. The designer H. A Englehart said ”Show me your cemetery and I will tell you about your society.” Do you agree with Englehart? Could you get a sense of a place and its people by the look and feel of its cemetery?

When designing Mt. Pleasant Cemetery H. A. Englehart wanted to create a:

• Special cemetery that followed the topography of the area
• Park-like place that was people friendly
• Place where people could walk and job
• An open space with no fences around the burial plots (there was one exception, James Michie)
• Space with lots of trees

At 200 acres, there are 200 different varieties of trees located in the cemetery.

What comes to mind when you hear the word cemetery? Would you want to jog and walk in a cemetery?

The first time I went to Mt Pleasant Cemetery I was absolutely terrified. While growing up in Jamaica, I associated cemeteries with death and ghosts. Deciding to go to the cemetery to take photos was a way of stepping outside of my comfort zone and doing something that did not feel comfortable. Even though I was not alone on the walking tour I realized that I had nothing to fear. I was fascinated by the people who helped to build Toronto, and I was very proud of them for being socially responsible by giving back to the city. Many of these people were benefactors. Most of the names you will recognize if you are a Canadian. William McMaster donated the funds to purchase the 200 acres of farmland for the cemetery.

When was the last time that you did something that was not comfortable?

A few of the people I learned about on the walking tour include: Timothy Eaton, William Lyon MacKenzie, William M. Christie, Egerton Ryerson and Hart Massey.

St Andrew Society Monument

When you look at the images, what comes to your mind?

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Photo Credits: Royal Ontario Museum Doug McG (Flickr)

Other photos Avil Beckford

Review of The PhotoReading Whole Mind System by Paul Scheele

PhotoReading, a term coined by Paul Scheele, is “mentally photographing” the printed page at rates exceeding 25,000 words per minute. According to Scheele, “The PhotoReading process bypasses the conscious mind and sends the information to storage bins in the other-than-conscious. This means that when you are PhotoReading you will have little or no conscious knowledge of the materials. It is all there some place, but consciously you may not know it. Don’t worry, as long as you can “activate” it to the conscious mind so that you can use the information however you use information.”

The PhotoReading System which is comprised of five steps: preparing, previewing, PhotoReading, activating, and rapid reading, are actually options that you can use depending on what your needs are.

Preparing
In the preparation stage, explicitly state your purpose for reading the material then enter into a state of relaxed alertness.

Previewing
Survey your reading material quickly, looking for about 20 trigger words, words that are repeated, in the sub-title, highlighted and so on. Decide if it’s necessary to read further.

PhotoReading
Ask yourself why you want to PhotoRead the material, relax your body, calm your mind and confidently flip through your reading material.

Activating
Allow time to elapse before you enter into the activation stage. Let the information incubate, then probe your mind by asking yourself questions about the material. Super read the parts that attract you.

Rapid Reading

Quickly move through your reading material from start to finish, at a speed comfortable to you. Zip quickly through the information that you’ve established to be unimportant and spend more time on more important information.

Scheele suggests that to manage your time effectively, you should sort all your reading material into levels of priority, handle paper only once, always have reading material with you – you never know when you’ll have a few minutes, and preview everything that’s important.

Five – 1 Great Ideas

1. When the best readers read, they do so in an active, purposeful, questioning and fully engaged manner
2. To effectively read, you must begin with a clear sense of purpose, why are you reading the material and what do you hope to accomplish?
3. Set specific reading goals
4. After you’ve read important information, create a visual diagram of the key ideas

The PhotoReading Whole Mind System has some very good information, but the concepts may be somewhat foreign to most people. I recommend that you read it, but I think that for you to understand and use the new concepts, you’ll need to follow-up with a seminar on the topic.

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How Did They Do That? An Interview With Dan White

Dan White, Founder & President, WNBC Business Solutions

Challenge: I allowed a contract employee to have too much control over one aspect of my business. The contract employee ran the tax business and did not regularly relate to me what was going on. The contractor fell behind, in some cases, more than a year. I had 82 angry clients. I now had to get a year’s worth of work done in three months.

Solution: I took back control of the business, and the contractor decided to leave the company. I set up a customer relationship management system to automate all processes. I could now see everything that was going on in the company. I hired a team of tax consultants to do one year’s worth of work in three months to satisfy the 82 angry clients.

Lessons Learned

1. I am accountable and responsible for everything that happens in my business
2. I learned that I wasn’t a good leader because a leader is not necessarily someone who inspires, motivates and set a good example, but one who takes the team into battle and make sure that they arrive home safely
3. I should not delegate the critical functions in my business without knowing what’s going on
4. I should not give anyone too much freedom without making sure that I am very comfortable with what is going on at all times

Formula For Success

Recognize a need, have a solution and understand where the customer/prospect is going to find the money to pay for the solution. There is a shortage of money. Governments create a scarcity of money. If a person doesn’t have something that is less wonderful they are not going to buy your solution because they simply do not have any spare money.

If you were Dan White, what would you have done differently? How much power do you give to employees and contractors? Is there an implied trust between employer and employee or employer and contractor? What lessons have you learned from Dan’s experience?

This is an excerpt from October 2005 Ambeck Edge

Purple Cow

Ideas abound and are everywhere. You will see them if you are open.

Where do you get your ideas from?

My friend Elizabeth Winter from Contact Professionals Alliance read my blog entry about Gelett Burgess‘ poem The Purple Cow and suggested that I do a follow-up post. Burgess became associated with the poem and he was not happy about it, so he wrote a follow-up verse to The Purple Cow.

If you remember from yesterday, here is the original poem:

The Purple Cow: Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who’s Quite Remarkable, at Least

I never saw a purple cow
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one!

And here is Burgess’ follow-up:

Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background that I Rue

Ah, yes, I wrote the “Purple Cow”—
I’m Sorry, now, I wrote it;
But I can tell you Anyhow
I’ll Kill you if you Quote it!

When you read  Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background that I Rue, what comes to mind? For me, I immediately think of regret. How many times have you done something that you later regretted doing? Or are you someone who doesn’t believe in regret?

If you did something remarkable, something pioneering, in the eyes of others, and you gained “notoriety” for it, would you be able to deal with all the attention? Do you think you would later regret your actions? Think on this! Do you think Burgess’ response to being associated with his poem is reasonable? If you were Burgess, what would you have done differently?

Related Post

What Does Gelett Burgess’ Poem The Purple Cow Mean?

Photo Credits

Avil Beckford & Clarecia Christie

Sometimes it is okay to go down the rabbit hole because you never know where it might lead. Acting on your curiosity often leads to wonderful discoveries. I was reading John Forde’s e-newsletter article “Short Words, Bigger Word Power,” in which he talks about his friend David Deutsch giving him Gelett Burgess’ essay “Short Words Are Words of Might.”

I have never heard of Gelett Burgess, and the name of the essay intrigued me so I wanted to find out more. I conducted an internet search and came across the poem The Purple Cow and got the idea for this blog post.

The Purple Cow

(Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who’s Quite Remarkable, at Least)

I NEVER saw a Purple Cow;

I never hope to See One;

But I can Tell you, Anyhow,

I’d rather See than Be One.

By Gelett Burgess (1866 – 1951)

What is a purple cow? Cows are not purple, so a purple cow must be an anomaly. Reading the Wikipedia entries for the many ways in which the purple cow phrase is used, it states, “the examples retain the common theme of a sense of something out of the ordinary.” The poem also reminded me of Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, which I read over five years ago.

The subtitle – Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who’s Quite Remarkable, at Least – for the poem is very telling. A Purple Cow is a metaphor for something that is out of the ordinary, something remarkable. Would you want to have experiences that are out of the ordinary? I would! And, would you want to be a Purple Cow?

Standing out is not necessarily a bad thing. What if you were a pioneer? Wouldn’t it feel great to be a leader, to establish a trend, to be first to market?

Today, too many people conform, and many do not want to take a chance and be that Purple Cow, to stand out from the rest. To conform is to be comfortable, and many of us like to feel comfortable. How about for today, we step outside of our comfort zone, and do something that is not very comfortable, do something remarkable.

I may be out to lunch, and that is okay, but, what does The Purple Cow poem mean to you? And would you want to be a Purple Cow, even if it is only for today?

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Gelett Burgess and the blurb

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Phot Credits: Public Domain

I just made a  major mistake, and I am writing about it so that others may learn from it. I have been conducting interviews with people who are great Invisible Mentors because I know that I can learn from them, and I know that you can learn from them as well. I registered with a free conference call company so that I have the capability to record the interviews.

Just before I called in (the first time I was officially using the service), my instincts told me to have a low tech back-up where I put the telephone on speaker phone and use my digital recorder to record the interview. I decided not to listen because I had tested the recording function for the conference call service and it worked well.

During the call something happened and the call got cut off. I dialed back in and so did my interviewee, and we continued with the interview. I am a very good listener, but I was very relaxed, and didn’t pay as close attention as I should because I was recording the interview, so I thought that I could always listen to it if I missed something important. I became a “slave” to technology, instead of using my excellent listening skills. I temporarily forgot that technology is a tool and not a crutch. How many times have you made these types of mistakes?

When I went to the conference call service’s website to download the interview, I was able to only download the portion of the interview after the call got cut off. I panicked and called them, and at that time, I was told that the second call overwrote the first. What did I expect from a free service?

I screwed up, I dropped the ball. I was devastated because it was a great interview. Here are the things that I did wrong:

1. I didn’t prepare the way I usually do by going into the Alpha Brainwave state. If I had, I would have remembered all the interview
2. I didn’t practice active listening, I slacked off and relied entirely on technology
3. I didn’t follow my instincts, which told me to use a back-up device, which I had handy
4. I relied on a free service for something that is very important to me

How did I solve the problem? I contacted the interviewee and admitted that I screwed up and asked if I could conduct the first portion of the interview again. She was very gracious and said yes.  Most of the people who I interview want to help others, and believe in the Invisible Mentor concept, so they have a very helpful and accommodating disposition. Despite this, the next time that I conduct an interview, I have to set aside the “ego” and listen to the inner voice that is my guide. I also have to practice what I preach about about active listening and not rely on, or use  technology or other things as a crutch.

Has anything similar happened to you? How did you deal with it?

Photo Credit: Public domain