“If you have to be right, you’re doing it wrong.” — Dr. Rick Kirschner

When it comes to people skills, Dr. Rick Kirschner (Dr.K) sets the bar.  He’s co-author of the best-selling book, Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst , and for three decades he’s helped advance the field of personal and organizational development.

Dr. K’s super skill is interpersonal communication, and he specializes in persuasion and influence.  As an author, speaker, and coach, Dr. K has helped thousands of people turn conflict into cooperation, improve their personal influence and impact, and deal with unwanted communication patterns in their personal and professional lives.

If you haven’t seen Dr. K’s work before, prepare to be amazed.  You’ll wonder where he’s been all your life.  The beauty is that not only has he mastered the domain of interpersonal skills, he’s blazed a trail and has shared his work through many blog posts, and through his information products.  As you explore Dr. K’s work, one thing to keep in mind is that the time you invest improving your communication skills will pay you back on a daily basis.  It’s one of the simplest, but most effective ways to improve the quality of your life.

As you read his work, you’ll realize not only is Dr. K the real deal, but he’s a nice guy, and he genuinely likes to see people succeed.

25 Lessons Learned from Dr. Kirschner
Here are 25 lessons learned from Dr. K you can instantly use to improve your communication skills:

1. Persuasion is like magic.  When you don’t know how it’s done, it creates a sense of wonder.   It’s like magic.  Once you know how it’s done, it loses some of the wonder.  However, you can shift focus to mastering the techniques and enjoying the process.
2. Know the three steps to persuasion.  According to Dr. K, there are three steps to persuasion:  1) Meet people where they are, 2) First understand them, and 3) Then speak to their needs, interests and motivations.  See Persuading with Integrity: A Toolkit Series.
3. Focus on behavior over personality types.  Rather than focus on personality types or personality profiling, focus on context and behaviors, and remember that people change their behaviors based on the situation or context they are in.  Dr. K says, “My approach is behavior based rather than personality based, in that it is based on the useful assumption that a person’s needs (and thus, style of communicating) change depending on the context (time of day, location, who they are interacting with, what they want or don’t want, etc.) Sometimes more extroverted, sometimes more introverted. Sometimes more direct, sometimes more indirect.”
4. Recognize a person’s needs-style: “task focus” vs. “people focus.” You can improve your ability to influence if you blend your behavior with a person’s needs-style.  To understand a person’s needs-style, you need to listen to what a person talks about and how directly they talk about it.   When a person is “task-focused,” they talk about what they are doing.   When a person is “people focused”, they will talk more about the people around them or their feelings about the situation.  Dr. K says, “A person focused more on a task than on people may pay more attention to the end result of the task than the details they encounter along the way. … A person focused more on people than on a task may express more interest in the opinions and feelings of others, or in their own opinions and feelings.”  See How to Hear What a Person Needs in their Interactions with You: Blend with Need-Style.
5. Recognize the four communication needs: action, accuracy, approval and appreciation.  According to Dr. K, there are four basic intents or communication needs: 1) action, 2) accuracy, 3) approval, and 4) appreciation.   You’ll recognize the need for action when a person is focused on the end result of an interaction or an idea.  You’ll recognize a person has a need for accuracy when a person is indirect and focused on the details of an interaction or an idea.  You’ll recognize the need for approval when a person speaks indirectly and expresses concern for the opinions and feelings of others.  You’ll recognize a need for appreciation when a person is focused more on her own thoughts and feelings than the thoughts and feelings of others.  Remember that behavior keeps changing so you’ll need to keep paying attention in order to notice the change.  See Recognizing Communication Needs.
6. Speak to the four communication needs.   Once you recognize which of the four communication needs somebody is speaking with (action, accuracy, approval, or appreciation), you can speak to the need.  To speak to action, get to the point (“cut to the chase”.)  This might include being commanding or authoritative.  To speak to accuracy, speak indirectly and give the details (go “step-by-step”)   This might include asking questions or making long statements to establish facts or stimulate thinking.  To speak to approval, speak in a friendly, indirect, and considerate way (use relationship language, like ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘you and me’, and ‘the team’.)  To speak to appreciation, speak directly, with energy and enthusiasm (create a spotlight effect.)  See How to Speak to the Need: Blending with Need-Style – Part 1 , How To Speak to the Need: Blending with Need Style – Part 2 , How To Speak to the Need: Blending with Need Style – Part 3, and How To Speak to the Need: Blending with Need Style – Part 4.
7. Blend your behavior to improve rapport.    Blending is one of the simplest things you can do to improve your communication effectiveness.  Dr. K recommends blending your behavior to reduce differences and send signals of similarity.  You can blend with your body by matching body posture and facial expressions or you can blend with your voice by matching tone, volume, tempo, etc.  You can also blend by matching somebody’s communication needs.
8. Know what you want.   There are multiple ways to achieve what you want.  In order to stay flexible in your approach, you need to first figure out what you want to accomplish.  This is especially true when it comes to communication and persuasion.  Dr. K says, “That’s why the challenge in life, and in communication specifically, is to define a direction, and organize yourself around that outcome.  You need to know what you are aiming towards, what you intend to achieve, and why you intend to achieve it, or you just keep cycling back to the easy stuff, the complaints, problems, and obstacles that you can’t seem to avoid.” See Top Ten Interpersonal Skills -3- Know What You Want.
9. Assumptions create self-fulfilling prophecies.   When you make assumptions, it’s usually easy to find evidence that supports you assumption because the blinders are on.  The key is to recognize that you have assumptions and test them.  Dr. K says, “Once you make an assumption (about yourself, about others, about situations, etc.) you inevitably will act as if your assumption is true.  And your actions will have effects, in that you will find evidence in order to have the experience that your assumption is true.“
10. Make useful assumptions rather than limiting ones.  Assumptions help us deal with overload and help us avoid being overwhelmed.  Knowing that we make and use assumptions every day, make useful assumptions over limiting ones.  According to Dr. K, “A useful assumption gives you enough informed perspective on your own behavior and the behavior of others that you can engage in behaviors that lead to worthwhile outcomes.  A limiting assumption holds you back, ties you down, and traps you into self-defeating and counterproductive behavior.”  See Top Ten Interpersonal Skills -1- Useful Assumptions.
11. Assume positive intent.  One useful assumption is assuming positive intent.  If you assume the worst in people, you’ll bring out the worst.  If you treat somebody like a jerk, chances are they’ll act like a jerk.  Instead, expect the best and improve the chances that you’ll get their best behavior, at least when dealing with you.  Dr. K says, “…people do what they do for a good reason.  Even the worst behaviors serve a purpose the person considers a good one.  People engage in behaviors based on their intent, and do what they do based on what seems to be most important in any given moment.”  See Top Ten Interpersonal Skills -2- Assume Positive Intent.
12. Start with your points then find supporting data.  When you need to persuade, don’t throw a bunch of numbers at people.  Make your point, then back it up with data.  Don’t  make people fish through the numbers to try and figure out what your point might be.
13. Appeal to logical listeners using facts and figures.  When you’re persuading logical listeners, facts, data, and statistics can be effective.   It’s effective because they are making decisions based on reason and they are making sense of the data you present to support your argument.  To be effective, make sure your facts and figures are easy to understand.
14. Appeal to emotional listeners using vivid language.  When you’re persuading emotional listeners, they will likely tune out facts and figures unless it’s interesting or shocking insight.  For emotional listeners, use examples, metaphors, and vivid imagery to be more effective.
15. Add persuasion signals to increase your persuasive power.  Persuasion Signals are “signals” or short-cuts for the listener on how to act.   While a logical thinker will be looking for facts and details, an emotional thinker is looking for shortcuts and signals about the worth and meaning of an idea.  According to Dr. K, there are seven persuasion signals to draw from:   1) The Signal of Affinity, 2) The Signal of Comparison, 3) The Signal of Conformity, 4)  The Signal of Reciprocity, 5) The Signal of Authority, 6) The Signal of Consistency, 7) The Signal of Scarcity.
16. Know the ten types of difficult people.    Dr. K and team identify 10 types of difficult people in the Dealing with People You Can’t Stand.  The ten types of difficult people are: 1) Grenade Person, 2) Know-It-All, 3) Maybe Person, 4) No Person, 5) Nothing Person, 6) Sniper, 7) Tank, Think-They-Know-It-All, 9) Whiners, 10) Yes Person.  The types are actually names of behaviors and you can use the types as a lens to understand both yourself and the behavior of other people.
17. Shared values hold you together.   “I believe the most powerful common ground in relationships is that of shared values. If you and another person believe or think the same kinds of things and experiences are important, you’ll be able to work together to problem solve and share the positive results after. If you deem the same things to be the important things, when divisions arise, your shared values will hold you together.”  See When is Like Attracted To Like?
18. Build relationships on common ground.    According to Dr. K, the key to long-term relationships is building on common ground.  Dr. K says, “Couples who build their relationships on the common ground of values can survive all kinds of life cycle events, even thrive, in spite of the differences that inevitably arise. But couples that lack shared values are likely doomed, regardless of how much else they have in common, to fight over and eventually move away from each other because of the lack of this basic bond.” See When is Like Attracted To Like?.
19. Blend with behavior when values are different. When you’re faced with a conflict of values, one of the best ways to stay connected is to blend with behavior, since clearly you aren’t connecting at the values.  Dr. K says,“That’s where we send signals to others that we are on the same side. Since we people are more alike than different anyway, finding common ground ought to be a fairly simple proposition. Yet most people find it incredibly hard to do when their attention is on the differences that divide us one from another. That’s why the idea of blending is to move to common ground as quickly as possible.”  See When is Like Attracted To Like?.
20. When somebody decides not to help, find somebody else.   Sometimes in customer service, you might find somebody who has already decided not to help.  In those cases, see if you can escalate or find somebody else to talk to that might empathize with you.  See Persuasion in a Last Ditch Effort.
21. Focus on logical consequences over punitive responses. Rather than punish people after the fact, give them a way to succeed up front, by setting expectations up front.   Make the path and consequences as clear as you can.  According to Dr.K, “Logical consequences, on the other hand, are imposed results.  If you do X, I’ll do Y.  If you do A, I’ll do B.  When you tell a child, or a person acting like a child, what they can expect as a result of their actions, you are telling them about a consequence of their action.  If you then do what you say you will do, they learn to respect your word about those consequences.  This is very different than a punitive response to something you don’t like, which has the form of, “Because you did X, I’m going to do Y.”  The problem with punitive reactions is they don’t provide people with an opportunity to change.  They do, however, give people a reason to resent you, rebel against you, and polarize the situation against you further.”  See How To Stop An Ex from Further Breaking A Broken Home Part 2.
22. Free up your inner-change artist with “What if?” and “What, then?” questions.   Dr. K says, “What matters is, where do you want to go, and what is one small step forward that you can take in order to get there.  To create positive change.  And the beauty of life is there is always a next step.   How is it possible to find that small step forward?  Well, change artists do it by asking themselves ‘What if? and ‘What, then?’ questions.” See Are You a Change Artist?
23. Backtrack before asking questions.   Backtracking is simply echoing back what you heard.  This shows that you’re listening and that you care.  Backtracking helps you build trust and it helps the other person feel heard.  By backtracking before you ask questions, it shows that you are fully engaged and attempting to clarify and understand.   This also gives the other person a chance to correct you to make sure you’ve heard something the way they intend.  This sets the stage for asking more effective questions, while staying connected.
24. Ask what behavior would you replace it with? Rather than focus on what you don’t want somebody to do, focus on what you would like them to do instead.  Dr. K says, “Remember, nature hates a vacuum and you cannot replace something with nothing. That makes it more difficult to create positive change for you and for your organization.  If you don’t want him to do what he’s doing, what behavior would you him to replace it with?.”  See How to Communicate With A Coworker Taking Credit for Others’ Work.
25. Expand the scope of your input.  If you only listen or watch or pay attention to what you already know, then you limit your world.   Expand your horizons by taking in input from a variety sources outside yoru comfort zone.  Dr. K says, “Change the stations, read watch or listen to something that you disagree with. Challenge your views in order to gain access to information that exists outside of your comfort zone. This way you can expand the scope of your input. You can bring into your awareness other options, other interpretations and possibilities. These other possibilities provide you with what you need to better understand your world and give you sufficient information to influence it for the better.”  See Persuading with Integrity: Recognizing Influence.

These lessons are just a tip of the iceberg.  Dr. K is a true wealth of pragmatic insight you can apply in work and life.

Kirschner’s Motivational Model
One of the ways to make sense of what you see is to use a lens.  Dr. K has a lens for understanding people’s drivers and motivations.  It’s Kirschner’s Motivational Model:

Dr. K’s motivational model is a set of six motivational sets.  Each set is a spectrum of what we move toward, and what we move away from.   According to Dr. K, our drivers are a blend of the motivational sets above, and our motivations are ultimately contextual and depend on what we’re doing and who we’re with.

Quotes
Dr. K has a great way of sharing insight in the form of pithy prose.  Here is a handful of some of his quotable quotes:

• “A good model allows us to do things, try things, organize our perceptions to find out useful and interesting things. And the cool thing about a model is that it doesn’t have to be true, it just has to work.”
• “Change artists start with the really big What If’s, and work their way back to the details of their own lives.”
• “Change is inevitable, but progress is not.”
• “Change your mind. Change your life. Change your world.”
• “Don’t get mad. Get smart!”
• “Every question, every statement, has a consequence and in this way you can and do shape the thoughts of others. You always have an impact!”
• “Every time you ask a question or make a statement to someone, you are participating in his or her thought process.”
• “First, change your attitude, and then change your behavior.  To change your attitude, and thus stop suffering, you must learn to look, think and feel differently about difficult behavior.”
• “Flexibility means having more than one choice, and getting feedback instead of failure.”
• “How are you going to change what you’re doing in the present in order to get that different outcome in the future?”
• “I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, ‘Think outside the box.” Here’s my version of that. ‘Don’t get in the box in the first place.’”
• “If all you know is what you don’t want, you will get more of it.”
• “If there’s going to be a future worth living in, I think you will find more than enough agreement from most everybody that much needs to change.”
• “If you don’t want ‘that’, what do you want?”
• “In your life, think of the opportunities squandered, the resources wasted, and the money and income lost because the right person at the right time lacked the persuasive skill to persuade the key people to take the necessary actions.”
• “It’s based on my observation that  people do what they do for a good reason.  Even the worst behaviors serve a purpose the person considers a good one.”
• “Just as people choose what to wear from a variety of clothing styles (such as formal-wear, office-wear, or weekend-wear), so people choose from a variety of behaviors that are situationally dependent.”
• “Not all situations are resolvable.  And some are just not worth it.  Cutting your losses remains a viable option when dealing with difficult behavior.”
• “Persuasion finds it’s power in meeting people where they are and then engaging them in such a way that they move with you when you move forward.”
• “Recognize that fear is as irrational as it is necessary, and perhaps wisdom is learning the difference  about when to act on it versus when to act in spite of it.”
• “Sometimes, that means you must accept the unacceptable, in order to move with it and take charge over it. Only then can you redirect whatever is aimed at you towards your desired result.”
• “What if anything is possible, and all that’s required of any of us is to be true to ourselves and find our next small step forward?”
• “Why more than one choice?  Because if you only know one way to do something, you’ll always have to do it, even if it doesn’t work!”
• “You cannot not influence people.”
• “You’ve got to know how to protect yourself from unscrupulous people with hidden agendas who use ignorance and emotion to bring about negative ends.”

Catalog of Dr. K’s Resources (Sites, Books, Videos)
Dr. K has a wide range of resources, from blog posts to books.  For simple scanning, I organized Dr. K’s collection of resources into the following buckets: key links, audio, books, eBooks, ten-minute tune ups, videos, and popular posts.

If you happen to have a story or lesson on how Dr. K made an impact on you, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

My Related Posts

• Lessons Learned from Guy Kawasaki
• Lessons Learned  from Seth Godin
• Lessons Learned from Tony Robbins

“It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.” — Johann Schiller

For this Father’s Day, I thought one of the best things I could do is distill some of the lessons I’ve learned from my Dad.

I didn’t always know which plays I would need from my Dad’s playbook growing up.  Some plays make more sense to me now that I have more experience under my belt and I’m still learning.  Maybe some day  I can even snatch the pebble from his hand.

Before we dive into the playbook, let me first step back and paint the broad strokes.  In terms of guiding principles, my Dad’s guidance is simple and sound – follow your purpose, drive from happiness, and be who you want to be, while creating the experiences and quality of life you want.   That’s the frame I come back to, whenever I get lost in the details of life.

Lessons Learned from Dad
Here is my collection of lessons from my Dad.  It continues to evolve and unfold, just the way life does:

1. Aim past your target.   If you want to hit your mark, aim past your target.  If you fall short, you’ll land closer.  My Dad is a Bruce Lee fan so if you’re a fellow Bruce Lee fan you might recognize the point.
2. Anything worth doing is worth doing well.   Whenever my Dad got into a new hobby, he jumped in with both feet and it became an obsession.  This helped feed the passion, but also quickly find his limits or potential.  As you can imagine, this lead to a lot of adventures, but the thing I really learned was to dive in to something over just dabble.
3. Avoid toxic environments.  Don’t let the wrong people or the wrong environment bring you down.  When a place becomes toxic, it spreads.  Don’t stay.
4. Be able to count on yourself.  Sometimes it’s all you.  The more you can help yourself, the more others will help you.
5. Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.   Don’t fall for it.  The trick is to be a healthy skeptic without becoming a callous cynic.
6. Bet on skill.   Whether it was archery, martial arts, music, or business, my Dad always showed me how skill made the difference.  Creativity or sheer will power only went so far, and it was skills that either leveled the playing field or won the game.
7. Bottom line it.    “Results talk, while B.S. walks.”  So simple, but so true.  Find a way to cut through jargon and get to what’s really on the line, or what’s really promised, or what something really means.  Don’t get snake-oiled into situations or things that you could cut through by getting to the bottom line.
8. Collect the things that count for you.  My Dad is a collector.  From coins to baseball cards to guitars to motorcycles to tools, he’s had lots of collections.  I learned to collect and take care of things when I was younger.  At this point, I don’t really collect anything other than insight.  I’m way more into experiences and people, but I will say I enjoyed the journeys of the various collections I’ve had.  I guess I’m a collector of experiences now.
9. Do the things you don’t want to, so you can do the things you want to.  This is a way to look at discipline and duty with a healthy respect.
10. Don’t focus your attention too much on the future things and the long shot moves.   The future is unpredictable and always will be.  While we can plan for it, we have to live for right here and now and make the most of what we’ve got.  My Dad says, “Don’t focus your attention too much on the future things and the long shot moves.   Make frugal changes that can easily be accomplished right around you.  If you are going out to eat often, get your kitchen and dining room in order and make your meals at home.  … If you buy lunch at work, make something and bring it.  Not only are these things cheaper to do, but they also give you an opportunity to consume a cleaner, healthier diet.”
11. Don’t let the means get in the way of the goal.  I remember one day when my brother told my Dad why he wanted to make a lot of money.  He said he wanted to make a lot of money so he could drive a Ferrari, my Dad challenged him.  If he really just wanted to drive a Ferrari, then maybe he could be a parking lot attendant at the country club, and not need a lot of money after all.   Knowing why you want to do something is often more revealing than simply knowing what you want to do.
12. Don’t bet on faith, luck, or magic, but don’t rule them out.   Science and engineering have a strong say … but so do the things we have yet to explain or understand.
13. Don’t just see what’s in front of you.  See what’s all around you.   This comes in handy in a lot of scenarios, especially when you’re in unfamiliar territory or in a dangerous place.  My Dad has good peripheral vision and I’ve developed mine.   This is especially important on the road too.  For example, don’t just watch the car in front of you.  Watch the cars way ahead and look for signs.  If the cars ahead are slamming their breaks, chances are the car in front of you will too.  Looking ahead has saved me from many accidents.
14. Don’t wear clip-ons.  Learn how to tie a tie.  My Dad made it a point that I learn how to tie a tie.  It felt sort of like a rite of passage, and was a big step up from my former clip-on ties.
15. Dress the part.  When you’re a biker, dress like a biker.  When you’re in the office, look sharp.
16. Earn it.   Don’t expect hand outs.  Work for what you want.  I learned how to be a work-horse and how not to be afraid to roll up my sleeves and get to work.  I’ve also learned to deal with the fact that lots of things in life don’t come easy, and that if something is really worth it, then work for it.
17. Find your all consuming passion.   My Dad’s passion is music.  It always has been.  Whether it’s playing in bands or collecting guitars or hanging with musicians – it’s a part of his life.  As a part of that life, we had Magic Slim and the Tear Drops at our Fourth of July parties on the lake.   One of our big road trips growing up was the Chicago Blues Festival.  One of my Dad’s guitars, a Flying V, was sold to G.E. Smith of Saturday Night Live.
18. Focus on what you control and let the rest go.   Don’t stew on the stuff that’s beyond your control.  If you want to make things happen, focus on what you control.
19. Fight back.  The easiest target is one that doesn’t fight back.  Fight back with skill and make any bully think twice.
20. Find a way.  There’s always a way and there’s more than one way to skin the cat.   Never get stuck.  If you really want it, you’ll find a way.
21. Have a navy blue blazer.  A navy blue blazer always look sharp and it’s perfect for lots of occasions.
22. Have your heroes.   My Dad has a lot of heroes and he learns from them.   He studied the science of batting from Ted Williams.   He learned the fighting strategies and philosophy of Bruce Lee.  He learned the musical ways of Jimi Hendrix and other legends.  One of the most amazing heroes I learned about from my Dad was Mas Oyama.  Apparently, Mas Oyama was able to kill a bull with his bare hands.    Just when I thought I knew the limits of human possibility, my Dad would find another person who pushed the limits of what’s possible.
23. If your house can be your home, work for it.   “If your house can be your home, work for it.  If your house will never be anything more than what you were hoping was a good investment, figure out how to maximize your investment as quickly as possible and get out.”
24. It’s all how you look at things.  My Dad says, “While you cannot escape reality, perception does rule.”
25. Judge a person by their character, not their color.   This might just sound so obvious, and of course, since I grew up that way, it is for me.  My Dad taught us to care what somebody makes of their self and who they are, over their lot in life or the color of their skin.
26. Know what you’re getting yourself into.  While it’s great to jump in to things, my Dad always encouraged me to figure out what I was getting myself into.   A lot of problems are easier to avoid in the first place, than they are to get out  of once you are in them.
27. Lead a purpose-driven life.  When you know what really drives you, your priorities float to the top.  When you’re on your mission, you have more energy and staying power to go the distance.  When you don’t know your purpose, then priorities, focus, and clarity are really tough to sort through.  It’s easy to get clouded by all the things that come your way.   When you know your purpose, you can carve out your own path through the fog.
28. Make your money work for you.  My Dad always encouraged me to buy things that would go up in value over buying things that immediately depreciate.  I find that just knowing how quickly something will go down in value helps me make a more informed decision.
29. Marketing is a valuable skill for life.   I was not a fan of marketing growing up since my main experience was used car salesman and guys selling vacuum cleaners.  My Dad’s point was don’t let the foul taste of bad marketers ruin the value of marketing.  Accept that marketing is an important part of life.  Be able to sell yourself and your ideas.  Know what’s relevant and know what people really value.  Be able to match your skills, service, or product to a person’s genuine needs.  I learned this lesson time and again and I get why marketing really is so valuable.
30. Nothing beats the open road.  Growing up with a biker Dad meant I got an early taste for the open road and the simple life.  I’m at my best when I’m on the road.
31. Oak Breaks, but willow bends.  Flexibility is one of the most important ways to survive in the world.  My Dad drew from Chinese philosophy, among others, and this was a timeless piece of advice.
32. Plan for it. There are many situations in life where having a plan will serve you way better than winging it or making up things on the fly, especially when it counts.  One of my Dad’s super skills is planning for things.
33. Push past your limits.  Never give up.  You don’t really know what you’re capable of until you’ve really given all you’ve got.   Even when you think you’ve given all you’ve got, you’ve still got more.
34. Stay true to you, but blend in with skill.  Sometimes you have to be a chameleon and blend in.   The rules of conduct can change based on where you are or who you hang with.  For example, for my Dad, the construction scene was different than the biker seen, was different than the office scene.
35. Surround yourself with smart people.   Smart people raise you up and help you grow to your potential.
36. Survival changes the rules.  When you’re in an organized sport, you follow the rules.  When you’re fighting for your life, the rules go out the window.  This was consistent with Bruce Lee’s point that when it’s about survival, you play to your strengths and you do what works.
37. The day goes on with or without you.  My Dad says, “and yet the day was born anew with all its grand and graceful beauty; your trials and tribulations cannot keep it from its duty.”
38. The things that don’t contribute to your happiness have to go.   My Dad says, “There are a lot of challenges ahead of us all right now, and many may require sacrifices that we did not think would be necessary, but the most important thing to remember is that this is your life.  Be happy! The things that don’t contribute to your happiness have to go.   Happiness is not fun, it’s a complete sense of spiritual fulfillment.   So, if you’re looking at a problem and you can see a solution that leads to peace and happiness, work for that.  If on the other hand you can see that it’s just one more thing that needs to be done and when it’s done all it is is done, look for the most logical exit and get away from it.”
39. Think before you speak.  This was my Dad’s advice to help avoid the scenario where, “When you open your mouth, stupid comes out.”   Not everything should be stream of conscious.
40. Use the right tool for the job.  My Dad has an extensive set of tools and every tool has a specific purpose.  Having the right tool for the job often makes all the difference for success.
41. Use your mirrors.  It’s such a simple thing, but incredibly effective.  My Dad taught me to quickly and correctly line up the side mirrors on my car by making sure that I can just barely see the tail end of my vehicle in the mirrors.  Whenever I get a rental car, or if somebody bumps into my side mirrors, I can quickly fix the mirrors using this simple rule.  I also used to have to use my mirrors a lot when I backed up before I got my Jeep, so I learned to trust my mirrors.  With my Jeep though, I don’t really need my mirrors much when I backup since it’s so easy to see out of the Jeep.
42. Walk through the scenario.  To create an effective plan and test his plan, my Dad would walk through the scenario in his mind in detail.  By painstakingly walking through, he would catch mistakes or think of things beforehand instead of regret them later.  As I learned to practice this skill, I found it improves with time and it gets easier to walk the scenario as well as come up with “what if” possibilities and create fallback plans.   What’s nice is that when things go wrong, you can draw from a plan versus make things up from scratch.
43. Write with skill.   You don’t have to be a Twain or a Shakespeare, but be able to write with clarity and make a point.
44. You can do without it.  Whenever we would ask for something, my Dad would ask us if we really needed it.  Short of the basics like water, air, food, shelter, and health, the answer would usually be no.  There’s a lot you can do without.  The key is to distinguish between whether you really need something or just want something.  Everything comes with a  price, so this helps you make more effective trade-offs.
45. You have to be smarter than the paper bag.   There’s an expression that goes “you can’t fight your way out of a paper bag.”   My Dad always encouraged me to outsmart the situation over get beat by it.   When you’re in a situation and it feels like you’re failing or flailing, stop, take a step back and try to come up with a smarter play for the scenario.
46. Your living environment sets the stage for your living experience.  My Dad says, “Realize that your living environment sets the stage for your living experience so nurture it.   You really can make a cave look like home and if you do, going home to the cave can be a heartwarming experience.”

Happy Father’s Day, Dad– Love, JD

“Peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable.” – John Wooden

John Wooden was a living legend.  He was also one of the most successful basketball coaches of all time and he lived a simple life focusing on personal excellence, personal integrity, love, and balance.

When I first heard John Wooden during an interview, what struck me was the simple rules he lived by that helped him make meaning and find happiness.   It was the first time I heard somebody say that success is “peace of mind.”  His way to achieve it was simple too  – give your best where you can.

What I liked most about his approach is his pattern of focusing on what you control, and realizing that the rest is a by-product that may or may not go your way.   For example, you can play your best game, but still lose.  You can build your character, but your reputation may not match.  You can make your best plays, but that doesn’t mean the score will show it.  Rather than chase or focus on the by-products, focus on the “getting there” and playing your best game, from the inside out.

If you want to start with the personal side of Wooden, I recommend watching John Wooden’s Love Letter (4:35).

25 Lessons Learned from John Wooden
Here is my collection of lessons learned from John Wooden:

1. A doer makes mistakes.  If you’re not doing, you’re not learning.   Everybody makes mistakes.  It’s what you do with them that counts.
2. Academics are enduring.  Getting an education is a #1 priority.  Wooden made it a point to his players that they were first and foremost a student (the student part of “student athlete”).  Wooden said, “If you let social activity take precedence over the other two (education and sports), then you’re not going to have any for very long.”   Wooden also said, “Sports are kind of like passion and that’s temporary in many cases, but academics — that’s like true love and that’s enduring.”
3. Agree to disagree, but don’t be disagreeable.  According to Wooden, “We can agree to disagree, but we don’t need to be disagreeable.”
4. Be on time, no profanity, and don’t criticize.  Wooden learned this from his Dad.  He had three rules for the students he coached: 1) never be late (start on time and close on time), 2) not one word of profanity, and 3) never criticize a teammate.
5. It’s not whether you won or lost, it’s if you played your best game.   If you won, but didn’t play your best, then you didn’t really win.  If you lost, but you played your best, then you didn’t really lose.  Wooden said, “Never mention winning.  My idea is that you can lose when you outscore somebody in a game, and you can win when you’re outscored.”
6. Coach for life, not just the game.   Wooden promoted the idea of a “teacher coach.”  Wooden said that as a coach, you “teach” sports.  However, according to Wooden, a coach has to be more concerned about the overall learning, than just the sport or just winning the game.  Wooden said, “It can be done in a way that’s also helping them develop in other ways that will be meaningful forever.”  It’s about building habits and practices that support students for life.   Wooden credits the fact he was a teacher before he became a coach, helped him organize his time better and learn that he has to work with each individual a little differently.
7. Don’t let your limits limit you.   Don’t let limits get in the way.  Wooden — “Don’t let what you cannot do, interfere with what you can do.”
8. Don’t whine, don’t complain, and don’t make excuses.  This is another trio of rules Wooden learned from his Dad — “Don’t whine, don’t complain, and don’t make excuses — you get out there and whatever you’re doing do it to the best of your ability.  No one can do more than that.”
9. Everybody is unique.  As a teacher, Wooden learned early on the importance of paying attention to each individual.  He learned that he had to work with each individual a little differently, and that no two are identical.  They can be alike in many respects, but they aren’t identical.  He learned that each student or player would have different strengths and weaknesses and that he would have to vary his approach to help them unleash their best.
10. Failure is not fatal.  Keep going.  Don’t let setbacks stop you.  Carry your lessons forward, and change your approach.  Wooden said, “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”
11. Focus on character over reputation.  Your reputation may vary.  It’s your character that counts and it’s what you can control.  Wooden said, “If you make the effort to do the best of which you’re capable, trying to improve the situation that exists for you, I think that’s success and I don’t think others can judge that, and I think that’s like character and reputation.  Your reputation is what you are perceived to be, and your character is what you actually are, and I think the character is much more important than what you are perceived to be.”
12. It’s the company you keep.   Wooden enjoyed being a teacher and a coach because he felt he was in great company and he was shaping the future.  Wooden would say, “those under your supervision are the future.”  According to Wooden, “A coach is like the teacher who once was asked why she taught; they asked me why I teach and I replied, where could I find such splendid company …”  They aren’t just students or players, they are future doctors, etc.
13. It’s the journey.  It’s the getting there that’s fun.  Wooden said, “Cervantes said, ‘The journey is better than the end.’ And I like that. I think that is — it’s getting there. Sometimes when you get there, there’s almost a letdown, but it’s the getting there that’s fun.”  Wooden would say, ““I liked our practices to be the journey, and the game would be the end … the end result.”
14. Journal for reflection and growth.   According to Wooden, he journaled for all his players, and this is a difference that made the difference.   The journal is how he could focus on little distinctions and really fine tune the practices and drills to be more specific and relevant for each player.  It’s how he personalized the practices.  It’s this personalization and paying attention to strengths and weaknesses that really helped him bring out the best in each player.
15. It’s courage that counts.  Courage is what keeps you going.  Wooden said, “Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
16. Keep your emotions in check.   Wooden was strict about keeping his players’ emotions in check.  He didn’t want anybody to be able to tell whether his team had won or lost, just by looking at them.  He didn’t want his team to get overly emotional about their wins, or overly emotional about their losses.  Instead, he wanted a focus on whether they played their best and that only each person would know whether they really gave their best for the situation.
17. Make each day your masterpiece.  Wooden made the most of each day, by design.  Wooden – “Make everyday your masterpiece.”
18. Make the effort to be the best you can on a regular basis.  According to Wooden, “If you make your effort to do the best you can regularly, the results will be about what they should be, not necessarily what you’d want them to be, but they’ll be about what they should, and only you will know whether you could do that … and that’s what I wanted from them more than anything else.”
19. Never try to be better than someone else.  This is another lesson Wooden learned from his Dad – “You should never try to be better than someone else.  Always learn from others and never cease trying to be the best you can be.  That’s under your control.  If you get too engrossed and involved and concerned in regard to things over which you have no control, it will adversely affect the things over which you have control.”
20. Patience is a part of progress.   Success comes slowly.  Expect change to happen slowly and to have patience along the way.  Wooden said, “Whatever you’re doing, you must have patience” and “there is no progress without change, so you must have patience.”
21. The score is a by-product.  The score is hopefully a by-product of doing the right things.  Don’t focus on the score, focus on what you’re doing and give your best.  Wooden said, “I wanted the score of a game to be a by-product of these other things, and not the end itself.”
22. The best player is the one who gets closest to reaching their full potential.  According to Wooden, whoever gets the closest to reaching their full potential is the best player.
23. Success is “peace of mind.” Wooden had a simple measure of success – peace of mind.  According to Wooden, “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
24. Lead by example.  Wooden said that way back, during his early years of teaching, a specific saying made a great impression on him – “No written word, no spoken plea, can teach our youth what they should be, nor all the books on all the shelves, it’s what the teachers are themselves.”
25. You’re part of a team.    Wooden truly believed that the sum of the whole is more than the parts.  Wooden would say, “A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player.”

Success Defined
Some people define success in a way that’s perpetually beyond reach.  Wooden defined success in a way that’s within your grasp:

Peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable.

Pyramid of Success
John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success consists of a set of philosophical building blocks for winning at basketball and winning at life.

The building blocks of the pyramid are as follows:

• COMPETITIVE GREATNESS
• POISE, CONFIDENCE
• CONDITION, SKILL, TEAM SPIRIT
• SELF-CONTROL, ALERTNESS, INITIATIVE, INTENTNESS
• INDUSTRIOUSNESS, FRIENDSHIP, LOYALTY, COOPERATION, ENTHUSIASM

12 Lessons in Leadership
Here are John Wooden’s 12 lessons in leadership:

• Lesson #1: Good Values Attract Good People
• Lesson #2: Love Is The Most Powerful Four-Letter Word
• Lesson #3: Call Yourself A Teacher
• Lesson #4: Emotion Is Your Enemy
• Lesson #5: It Takes 10 Hands To Make A Basket
• Lesson #6: Little Things Make Big Things Happen
• Lesson #7: Make Each Day Your Masterpiece
• Lesson #8: The Carrot Is Mightier Than A Stick
• Lesson #9: Make Greatness Attainable By All
• Lesson #10: Seek Significant Change
• Lesson #11: Don’t Look At The Scoreboard
• Lesson #12: Adversity Is Your Asset

For more information on Wooden’s 12 lessons in leadership, see his book, Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization.

Top 3 Quotes
Here are my top three John Wooden quotes:

1. “Make everyday your masterpiece.”
2. “Be quick but don’t hurry.”
3. “The most important word in our language is love.  The second is balance — keeping things in perspective.”

More Quotes by John Wooden
Here are additional quotes by John Wooden organized by A-Z:

1. “A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.“
2. “A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player.”
3. “Ability is a poor man’s wealth.”
4. “Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.”
5. “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
6. “Be prepared and be honest.”
7. “Be quick but don’t hurry.”
8. “Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.”
9. “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
10. “Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.”
11. “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”
12. “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”
13. “Flexibility is the key to stability.”
14. “I liked our practices to be the journey, and the game would be the end … the end result.”
15. “I’d rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.”
16. “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
17. “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.”
18. “It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.”
19. “It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.”
20. “It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
21. “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
22. “Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.”
23. “Never mistake activity for achievement.”
24. “Our tendency is to hope that things will turn out the way we want them to, so much of the time, but we don’t do the things that are necessary to make those things become reality.”
25. “Sports are kind of like passion and that’s temporary in many cases, but academics — that’s like true love and that’s enduring.”
26. “Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
27. “Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
28. “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”
29. “Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”
30. “The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.”
31. “The most important word in our language is love.  The second is balance — keeping things in perspective.”
32. “The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”
33. “There are many things that are essential to arriving at true peace of mind, and one of the most important is faith, which cannot be acquired without prayer.”
34. “There is no progress without change, so you must have patience.”
35. “Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.”
36. “What you are as a person is far more important that what you are as a basketball player.”
37. “Whatever you’re doing, you must have patience.”
38. “Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character.”
39. “You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.”
40. “You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.“

Catalog of John Wooden’s Resources
Wooden has a large collection of books and videos to draw from.  For simple scanning, I organized Wooden’s collection of resources into the following buckets: Sites, Books, and Videos..

My Related Posts

• Lessons Learned from John Maxwell
• Lessons Learned from Seth Godin
• Lessons Learned from Tony Robbins

“Success is not a destination thing, it’s a daily thing.” – John Maxwell

When I think of leaders and leadership, I think of John Maxwell.  He is a speaker and author, and leadership is his super skill.  He leads by example but more importantly, he’s created an amazing knowledge base of leadership patterns and practices through his books and speaking engagements.

He takes up multiple shelves at the bookstore.  In fact, he’s written more than 50 books.   The beauty of his books is that he talks with you, not at at you, while at the same time challenging you to become a better version of yourself.   His books equip you with a wide range of ideas and language to help you frame out and master key areas of your life including your attitude, relationships, leadership skills, and success.  Along the way, he shares stories to bring the ideas to life and to share how he learned these lessons from the school of hard knocks and from multiple mentors.

From failing forward, to going on your success journey, to building a positive attitude, to winning with people, Maxwell covers a variety of  personal development and leadership skills that you can use in work and life.

I hope you enjoy these lessons as much as I’ve enjoyed putting them together …

25 Lessons Learned from John Maxwell
Here are 25 key lessons that capture and distill what I think are some of the most important insights from John Maxwell:

1. Leadership is influence.   Maxwell defines leadership as influence.  It’s simple, effective, and precise.  In The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Maxwell says, “True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned.  It comes only from influence, and that can’t be mandated.  It must be earned.  The only thing a title can buy is a little time – either to increase your level of influence with others or to erase it.”
2. Leadership isn’t a position, it’s a process.   Leadership starts right where you are, from the inside out.  Maxwell says,  “Most people who want to get ahead do it backward. They think, ‘I’ll get a bigger job, then I’ll learn how to be a leader.’ But showing leadership skill is how you get the bigger job in the first place. Leadership isn’t a position, it’s a process.”
3. Just do it.  Forget motivation and just do it.  Maxwell says, “The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation.   Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what?  After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it.”
4. Your attitude towards life is still under construction.  According to Maxwell, your attitude towards life is constantly being shaped by the following factors:  personality (who are you), environment (what’s around you), word expression (what you hear), adult acceptance/affirmation (what you feel), self-image(how you see yourself), exposure to new experiences, association with peers (who influences you), physical appearance (how you look to others), and marriage, family, and job (your security and status.)  Maxwell believes that your environment shapes you more than your personality or other inherited traits, and that your outward actions are a direct reflection of your self-image (we tend to act consistently with how we see ourselves.)  In Attitude 101, Maxwell says, “Whether you are eleven, forty-two, or sixty-five, your attitude toward life is still under construction.  It’s never too late for a person to change his attitude.”
5. Use principles to guide you.   Drive from durable principles instead of a bunch of rules and policies.  According to Maxwell, “policies are many, principles are few, policies will change, principles never do.”
6. Leadership is a collection of skills.  Leadership is something you can learn and improve at.  Maxwell says, “Although it is true that some people are born with greater natural gifts than others, the ability to lead is really a collection of skills, nearly all of which can be learned and improved.”
7. Build trust through competence, connection, and character.  You won’t follow somebody you don’t trust.  As a leader, you have to build trust.  Maxwell says, “There are three qualities a leader must exemplify to build trust: competence, connection, and character.”
8. Success is a journey, not a destination.   Don’t think of success as a place.  Think of it as a path.   Success is a journey you can enjoy a day at a time.  Take the right people with you on your success journey.   In Your Road Map for Success, Maxwell identifies 10 things to look for when figuring out who to invest in or who to bring with you: 1) make things happen, 2) see and seize opportunities, 3) influence others, 4) add value, 5) attract other leaders, 6) equip others, 7) provide inspiring ideas, 8.) possess uncommonly positive attitudes, 9) live up to their commitments, and 10) have loyalty.
9. Success is a daily thing.  You can be successful one day or one decision at a time.   Maxwell says, “If you can handle today correctly, tomorrow will take care of itself.”
10. Success is a decision at a time.   Maxwell says, “You don’t become a success when you get your diploma.  You became a success when you decided to go to college.  When you get your diploma you get the rewards of success.”
11. 7 Steps for success.  In Success One Day at a Time, Maxwell shares 7 steps for success:  1) make a commitment to grow daily, 2) value the process more than events, 3) don’t wait for inspiration, 4) be willing to sacrifice pleasure for opportunity, 5) dream big, 6) plan your priorities, and 7) give up to go up.
12. Look for the landmarks of success.  The highest levels of success require a series of significant trade-offs.   Maxwell identifies the following trade-offs that serve as landmarks: 1) achievement over affirmation, 2) excellence over acceptability, 3) personal growth over immediate pleasure, 4) future potential over financial gain, 5) a narrow focus over scattered interests, and significant over security.
13. Leadership is a visual thing.  The greatest leadership is by example.  Maxwell says, “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”
14. Everybody needs encouragement.  No matter who you are, you still need encouragement.  Maxwell says, “Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.”
15. Don’t take yourself too seriously.  In Your Roadmap for Success, Maxwell says we need to be able to laugh at ourselves, “… success depends more on your attitude than it does on how important you think you are.  Life should be fun.  Even if your job is important and should be taken seriously, that doesn’t mean you should take yourself seriously.  You’ll go farther in life and have a better time doing it if you maintain a sense of humor, especially when it comes to yourself.”
16. Use failure as a springboard.  Unsuccessful people avoid taking any risks to try and avoid failure.  Successful people turn failure into feedback.  They don’t dwell on mistakes or the negative consequences of failures.  Instead, they focus on the rewards of success and on learning from their mistakes.  In Your Road Map for Success, Maxwell shares 10 ways to fail forward effectively: 1) appreciate the value of failure, 2) don’t take failure personally, 3) let failure redirect you, 4) keep a sense of humor, 5) ask why, not who, 6.) make failure a learning experience, 7) don’t let failure keep you down, 8.) use failure as a gauge for growth, 9) see the big picture, 10) don’t give up.
17. Win with people.   Growing people is the key to growing your success.  Maxwell says, “The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership” and “true success comes only when every generation continues to develop the next generation.”  In 360 Degree Leader, Maxwell says, “Great leaders don’t use people so they can win.  They lead people so they can all lead together.  If that is truly your motivation, you can become the kind of person that people want to follow – whether they are beside, above, or below you in the organizational hierarchy.”  Maxwell makes people development a priority.  To avoid spreading himself too thin, he focuses 80 percent of his time developing only the top 20 percent of the people around him.  Maxwell says, “your time is limited, and it makes more sense to help a few learn how to fly and reach their potential rather than show a big group only enough to whet their appetite.”
18. Let people fly with you for a while.  In Maxwell’s experience, the most effective way to mentor and ramp people up is the same way craftspeople have done for years: 1) do it, 2) I do it — and you watch, 3) you do it – and I watch, 4) you do it.
19. 10 principles for personal growth.  In Your Road Map for Success, Maxwell shares 10 principles for improving your personal growth: 1) choose a life of growth, 2) start growing today, 3) be teachable, 4) focus on self-development, not self-fulfillment, 5) never stay satisfied with current accomplishments, 6) be a continual learner, 7) concentrate on a few major themes, 8.) develop a plan for growth, 9) pay the price, 10) find a way to apply what you learn.
20. Don’t make happiness your measure of success.  Happiness is fleeting while success is a stable path.  In Your Road Map for Success, Maxwell writes, “The continual search for happiness is a primary reason that so many people are miserable.  If you make happiness your goal, you are almost certainly destined to fail.  You will be on a continual roller coaster, changing from successful to unsuccessful with every mood change.  Life is uncertain, and emotions aren’t stable.  Happiness simply cannot be relied upon as a measure of success.”
21. Achievement over affirmation.   Focus on achievement rather than worry about fitting in.  Maxwell says, “Affirmation from others is fickle and fleeting.  If you want to make an impact during your lifetime, you have to trade the praise you could receive from others for the things of value that you can accomplish.  You can’t be ‘one of the boys’ and follow your destiny at the same time.”
22. 4 kinds of people when it comes to relationships.  In Success 101, Maxwell says there are 4 kinds of people when it comes to relationships: 1) some people add something to life (we enjoy them), 2) some people subtract something from life (we tolerate them), 3) some people multiply something in life (we value them), 4) some people divide something in life (we avoid them.)
23. Lead yourself exceptionally well.  Leadership starts from the inside out.  Lead yourself first.  In Success 101, Maxwell identifies 7 areas that successful people must self-manage: 1) you emotions, 2) your time, 3) your priorities, 4) your energy, 5) your thinking, 6) your words, and 7) your personal life.
24. Treat people like a “10.” Who gets your better effort? … a leader who treats you as a “2” or a leader who treats you as a “10”?  Maxwell says that in his experience, people usually rise to the leader’s expectations – if they like the leader.   Treat people like a 10 if you want their best.  Maxwell says one way to do this is to focus on a skill or strength that somebody has that is a “10.”  If you can’t find a “10” in terms of skill, then rather than write somebody off, look to a non-skill area where the person can grow into a “10”, independent of skill, such as attitude, desire, discipline, and perseverance.
25. Focus on production over politics.   In the 360 Degree Leader, Maxwell says there are two ways to get ahead: production and politics.  Maxwell says avoid office politics and instead focus on production.  Maxwell says that people who rely on production: depend on how they grow, focus on what they do, become better than they appear, provide substance, do what’s necessary, work to control their own destiny, grow into the next level, base decisions on principles.  On the other hand, people who rely on politics: depend on who they know, focus on what they say, appear better than they are, take shortcuts, do what’s popular, let others control their destiny, hope to be given the next level, base decisions on opinions.  Maxwell shares 6 ways to avoid politics: 1) avoid gossip, 2) stay away from petty arguments, 3) stand up for what’s right, not just for what’s popular, 4) look at all sides of the issue, 5) don’t protect your turf, and 6) say what you mean, and mean what you say.

Success Defined
Maxwell defines success in a very simple, but elegant way that’s empowering:

“Success is … knowing your purpose in life, growing to reach your maximum potential, and sowing seeds that benefit others.”

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
One of Maxwell’s greatest contributions to the leadership body of knowledge is the identification of 21 laws of leadership:

1. THE LAW OF THE LID — Leadership Ability Determines a Person’s Level of Effectiveness.
2. THE LAW OF INFLUENCE — The True Measure of Leadership is Influence — Nothing More, Nothing Less.
3. THE LAW OF PROCESS — Leadership Develops Daily, Not in a Day.
4. THE LAW OF NAVIGATION — Anyone Can Steer the Ship, But It Takes a Leader to Chart the Course..
5. THE LAW OF ADDITION — Leaders Add Value by Serving Others.
6. THE LAW OF SOLID GROUND — Truth is the Foundation of Leadership.
7. THE LAW OF RESPECT — People Naturally Follow Leaders Stronger Than Themselves.
8. THE LAW OF INTUITION — Leaders Evaluate Everything with a Leadership Bias.
9. THE LAW OF MAGNETISM – Who You Are is Who You Attract.
10. THE LAW OF CONNECTION. – Leaders Touch a Heart Before They Ask for a Hand.
11. THE LAW OF THE INNER CIRCLE – A Leader’s Potential is Determined by Those Closest to Him.
12. THE LAW OF EMPOWERMENT – Only Secure Leaders Give Power to Others.
13. THE LAW OF THE PICTURE – People Do What People See.
14. THE LAW OF BUY-IN – People Buy into the Leader, Then the Vision.
15. THE LAW OF VICTORY – Leaders Find a Way for the Team to Win.
16. THE LAW OF THE BIG MO – Momentum is a Leader’s Best Friend.
17. THE LAW OF PRIORITIES – Leaders Understand that Activity is Not Necessarily Accomplishment.
18. THE LAW OF SACRIFICE – A Leader Must Give Up to Go Up.
19. THE LAW OF TIMING – When to Lead is As Important as What to Do and Where to Go.
20. THE LAW OF EXPLOSIVE GROWTH – To Add Growth, Lead Followers – To Multiply, Lead Leaders.
21. THE LAW OF LEGACY – A Leader’s Lasting Value is Measured by Succession.

If you’re familiar with the original 21 laws, you’ll note the following changes:

• Law 5 – THE LAW OF E.F. HUTTON -> THE LAW OF ADDITION.
• Law 13 – THE LAW OF REPRODUCTION  -> THE LAW OF THE PICTURE
• Law 16 – THE LAW OF MOMENTUM -> THE LAW OF THE BIG MO

You can explore the 21 laws in depth in Maxwell’s book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You .

The 21 Indispensible Qualities of a Leader
Maxwell identified 21 qualities of a leader:

1. CHARACTER: Be a Piece of the Rock
2. CHARISMA: The First Impression Can Seal the Deal.
3. COMMITMENT: It Separates Doers from Dreamers.
4. COMMUNICATION: Without It You Travel Alone.
5. COMPETENCE: If You Build It, They Will Come.
6. COURAGE: One Person with Courage Is a Majority.
7. DISCERNMENT: Put an End to Unsolved Mysteries.
8. FOCUS: The Sharper It Is, the Sharper You Are.
9. GENEROSITY: Your Candle Loses Nothing When It Lights Another.
10. INITIATIVE: You Won’t Leave Home Without It.
11. LISTENING: To Connect with Their Hearts, Use Your Ears.
12. PASSION: Take This Life and Love It.
13. POSITIVE ATTITUDE: If You Believe You Can, You Can.
14. PROBLEM SOLVING: You Can’t Let Your Problems Be a Problem.
15. RELATIONSHIPS: If You Get Along, They’ll Go Along.
16. RESPONSIBILITY: If You Won’t Carry the Ball, You Can’t Lead the Team.
17. SECURITY: Competence Never Compensates for Insecurity.
18. SELF-DISCIPLINE: The First Person You Lead Is You.
19. SERVANTHOOD: To Get Ahead, Put Others First.
20. TEACHABILITY: To Keep Leading, Keep Learning.
21. VISION: You Can Seize Only What You Can.

You can explore the 21 qualities in depth in Maxwell’s book, The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader : Becoming the Person Others Will Want to Follow .

Top 10 Quotes
Here are my top 10 favorite quotes by John Maxwell:

1. “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”
2. “Do not take the agenda that someone else has mapped out for your life.”
3. “Growth inside fuels growth outside. “
4. “Learn to say ‘no’ to the good so you can say ‘yes’ to the best.”
5. “Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.”
6. “People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
7. “The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.”
8. “We all stand on the shoulders of the past generation.”
9. “We cannot lead anyone farther than we have been ourselves.”
10. “You must manage your thought life daily and then you can manage your life.”

More Quotes by John Maxwell
I’ve included some of my favorite John Maxwell quotes below.  For simple scanning, I’ve organized them using the following categories: Choice and decisions, Communication, Daily Impact, Growth, Leaders and Leadership.

Books
John Maxwell has so many books that I organized them into categories.   I organized them by the following categories: 101 Series, Power Series, Workbooks, Attitude, Leadership, Relationships, and Success.

Catalog of John Maxwell’s Resources
Maxwell has a wide range of resources, from blog posts to videos.  For simple scanning, I organized Maxwell’s collection of resources into the following buckets: Key Links, Videos, and Popular Posts.

My Related Posts

• Lessons Learned from Seth Godin
• Lessons Learned from Tony Robbins
• Lessons Learned from Guy Kawasaki

“When the student is ready, the master appears.” — Buddhist Proverb

Mike Kropp has been one of my best mentors at Microsoft. He’s been my mentor for several years, growing my skills and maturing my thinking.

In my experience, Mike is one of the most effective leaders at Microsoft. He makes things happen with skill. He sets a high-bar for himself and he leads by example. He’s always testing himself and improving. He drives from impact, and he empowers people to make things happen. When it comes to employee engagement, he’s a tough act to follow.

Mike also has very seasoned executive skills from real-world experience, the school of hard knocks, and his amazing mentors. These skills are gold, and I’ve greatly appreciated the lessons he’s shared with me over the years. Mike also has unique experience in that he’s successfully started businesses from scratch within Microsoft. If you know what it takes to start a business at Microsoft, that’s a non-trivial statement. True to his nature, Mike started the patterns & practices team at Microsoft to share proven practices for customer success. He’s a coach at heart. In fact, he’s been a soccer coach for years. He brings this coach mindset to work to help people play their best game, and lift people up to be their best.

Top 3 Lessons
These are my top 3 lessons from Mike:

1. A sense of urgency.    There’s no time like the present.  A sense of urgency leads to inspired action.  People take decisive action and make moves like they mean it.  When there’s no sense of urgency, there’s no compelling reason to take action and ideas and change die a slow crippling death or get lost in analysis paralysis, or people get bored and move on to new things.
2. Win the hearts, the minds follow.  Mike’s super skill is connecting with people’s passion and creating a compelling future.  He doesn’t start with the business case.  Instead, he starts with, “How is the world going to be different?”  It’s about dreaming big and putting together dream teams.  If the vision isn’t compelling, let’s not even start.  If the vision is compelling, then let’s find a way to carve it up and make it happen.  Now we can go to the details of the business cases.  Let’s not kill great ideas out of the gate before exploring how we can make the world a better place for our customers.
3. It’s all about impact.   Make an impact.  As a colleague put it, “this is your footprints you leave on the world.”   It’s all about impact.  Mike taught me the value of impact over efficiency.  First make impact, then you can optimize it.  Otherwise, you’re optimizing things that might not matter.  When you drive from impact, you inspire yourself, and you inspire others.  Small wins snowball into bigger successes and this creates momentum.  Your momentum feeds your passion, and the cycle starts all over again.

42 Lessons Learned from Mike Kropp
Here are 42 nuggets or stratagems, where each one is a useful arrow to have in your quiver:

1. Live each day like it’s your last, but plan to live a 100 years.   What are you waiting for?  Take action now and start making impact today, but balance that with the fact you might be around a while.  In other words, don’t put your dreams on hold.
2. What are you about? It all starts from here.   Lead from the inside out.  What’s your personal brand stand for?  Know your values.  Play to your unique strengths, and compensate for your weaknesses, where you need to.  Play where you can make the most impact, in a way that you can have the most fun.  Another way to think of what are you about is in terms of value to the company, your customers, or your tribe – what is the perceived future contribution you will make?  This is where your capabilities and brand paint a picture.
3. Ask better questions.   Before you can find the right answer, you need to ask the right questions.  One cutting question is always, “Who’s the customer?” or “What’s the customer experience?”  Asking better questions is a skill, and you get better with practice.
4. Do what you say you will do (DWYSYWD.) This is leadership 101.   If you say you are going to do something, then do it.  It doesn’t take long to erode your credibility by saying one thing, but doing another.  When you do what you say you will do and you’re open and transparent with people, you build trust.  People feel like you got their back.  This means they will go out on a limb for you.  They don’t have to worry whether you mean what you say, or whether you’ll pull the rug from under them.  This is vulnerability-based trust in action.
5. Know the system you’re in.  Find the “centers of gravity” and know the levers in the system.  The centers of gravity are the key opinion leaders or people with power.  Walk the system end-to-end, identify the key levers in the system, and the key players in the system.  Walk the life cycle or map the system over time.  Know how decisions are made, how to influence the outcomes, and shape the impact.  Build allies before you need them and align your work to other workstreams where you can.
6. Use the system to educate.   Use the outside system to educate the inside system.   For example, rather than argue your opinion, leverage customer stories and data to educate on the inside.  Otherwise, it’s an uphill battle of proving your own credibility over just leveraging the system.
7. Don’t flip the bozo bit.   Always deliver compelling value, and focus on quality over scope.  Once you flip the bozo bit, it’s tough to flip it back, and people write you off.
8. “Would you bet your job on it?” People quickly go from over-confident to more thoughtful, when Mike asks this question.  To be clear, it’s not a threat, it’s a quick check to see how confident somebody really is when they make bold promises or pie-in-the-sky thinking without any accountability or thinking through any ramifications.
9. Get their fingerprints on it. If you want support for your plan, from the people that will do the plan, then get their fingerprints on it.  Otherwise, you are on your own.  You can set yourself up for success if people who own parts gets on board.
10. Have the right people in the room. Without the right people in the room, you have buy-in.  Without the right people in the room, you won’t think about the problem with the right lens or perspective.  Having the right people in the room means that you have the right coverage of the problem.
11. The tyranny of “OR.” Rather than think “this” or “that” … challenge yourself to find the “AND.”
12. Survival of the fittest.  Mike often reminds us of the realities of business and competition with a dose of Darwin – “scarce resources drive the competition that leads to survival of the fittest.”
13. Read the situation.  The writing is often on the wall, if you look for it and are open to it.  Test the waters – ask questions.
14. Build a coalition of the willing.  Part of winning over your naysayers is having the right allies on board.  By getting the opinion leaders supporting your idea, you build momentum in the system, and this will help you deal with your worst critics.  An effective coalition isn’t a numbers game – it’s a perception game and it’s about having the right people backing your plan.
15. Are you a quarterback or a blocker? Know whether you’re the one makes the passes or whether you’re the one blocking for somebody else.  It’s a simple metaphor but it can help remind you of your role or how you help out in the current situation.
16. Bow to the revenue god.   Just like you can’t argue with results, it’s tough to argue with revenue.  Profit speaks volumes.  If you’re trying to make a business case, or push your next big idea, you have to stack it up against the profit plan.  Passion is necessary but insufficient.  Profit is a key part of any sustainable business efforts – otherwise, you’re somebody else’s funding or cost or problem.
17. Make a product, the Star.  If a product group doesn’t support you, you’re done.  This is an important point, especially at Microsoft.
18. Know the waypoints.  You can use waypoints as a way to check direction and show signs of progress.  In GPS terms, a route is made up of two or more waypoints.  You can use this metaphor to think about how to chunk up a path from point A to point B.  When you chart a path, you figure out the waypoints to get there.  You can add milestones or checkpoints or other ways to check progress and direction along the way.
19. Know your Achilles heel.  Everybody has one or more things they wish they were better at.  Know your Achilles heel and pair up with people that help make your Achilles heel irrelevant.  If your Achilles heel is a real liability, then work at it, but don’t spend all your time trying to make it a strength.  Instead, spend that time investing in your strengths to make your true strengths that much better.
20. Speak softly, but carry a big stick.  Getting louder isn’t how you command respect or authority.   Think back to school to the teachers that controlled their classrooms effectively.  They didn’t do it by yelling.  In fact, the teachers that constantly yelled were the ones that were usually out of control.
21. Just enough process.  How much process do you need? … Just enough, and no more.  Process won’t make up for good people and it can get in the way of good people getting their job done.  Whatever process you use, make sure it’s more value than tax or overhead for the business, the people, and the outcomes.
22. Sometimes the best job, is the one you already have.   You can always start by making the most of what you’ve got.  Knowing your job and being great at your job sets a foundation to shape your job.
23. Don’t confuse concept with implementation.  Recognize a good idea when you see one.  Just because an idea doesn’t work out, doesn’t mean it was a bad idea.  Sometimes the market isn’t ready.  Sometimes the system you’re in wants something different.  If you factor out the implementation from the idea, then you can test different implementation paths.
24. Run the decision into the ground.  A lot of ideas sound like good ideas until you consider what it takes to make it happen, and what the impact will actually be.  Drill into the business decision.   An analogy is running a cost down – such as estimating the developer cost of a work item.   This is how you get clarity, know the trade-offs, and get a better handle on the work involved.   A simple way to test somebody’s decision is ask them, “Would you bet your job on it?”
25. Go up to the balcony.  You always think you have more power than you do.  Go up to the balcony.  Get a new vantage point. Take a vertical slice of the problem and reflect on what’s at stake, who has interests, and who has the power.
26. Distinguish between adaptive and technical challenges.  When you’re up against a challenge in the system, first figure out whether it’s an adaptive challenge or a technical challenge.  The most common mistake leaders make is to treat an adaptive challenge like a technical challenge.  A technical challenge means you can apply your current know-how and authorities can do the work.  In an adaptive challenge means you have to learn new ways, and the people with the problem do the work.  If you recognize an adaptive challenge, you can slow down and read the situation.  This will help you see where things are stuck and where the real levers are.
27. Give them something they can react to.  It’s hard for people to react to a blank slate. When you lead, you often have to create the strawman for people to react to.
28. The Baby’s ugly.  When somebody has an idea, it’s their baby.  You might have feedback for their idea.  However, what you might think is feedback, might come across like you’re calling their baby ugly.
29. Managers clear the path for team.  Leaders find the path through the jungle.   Managers clear the path for the team.  It’s about enabling, empowering, and optimizing.
30. It isn’t personal; it’s business.   When you get run over by the system or caught up in politics, remind yourself that it’s not about you.  Attacks can often seem personal, but it’s part of the game.   Just like in soccer, people go after the person with the ball.  It’s not personal; it’s about getting the ball.  If you separate yourself from the situation, then you can better think about the plays and the motivations that are really driving the situation.
31. Balance connection and conviction.   Don’t tip the scales too much to one side or the other.  Balance your conviction for making things happen, with connection to the people around you.  When you’re conviction is out of balance, you make things happen while burning bridges, making enemies, and leaving dead bodies.  When your connection is out of balance, you try to make everybody happy and you lose yourself and your way in the process – and you end up not making anybody happy.
32. Shipping is a team sport.   It’s not about shipping through heroic efforts.  It’s about playing well with others.  Effective teamwork is a part of the process by design.
33. When people know the frame, they self-correct.   Focus on the goals and feedback loops.  When people know what success looks like, and they get effective feedback, they can self-correct.  The anti-pattern is to micro-manage and get in people’s business, instead of set the frame and get out of the way.  Part of an effective frame is co-creating goals so that people buy in.  When they don’t buy in, they vote with their feet, and go somewhere else, or they drag their feet and slow everything down.  What you really want is people racing to the finish line, because they can see the end-in-mind.  This is how amazing results happen.
34. If you set the frame, you win.   People tend to operate against a frame, whether it’s explicit or not.  In any system, if you get to set the frame, this is like setting the rules.  It’s carving out what’s in the frame, and what’s not, as well as what the outcomes are.  When you set this frame, and people buy into this frame, you win.  You’ve basically created the end-in-mind.  The rest is execution and implementation details.
35. Productize, then commoditize.  Productize first.  The market will naturally drive things towards a commodity, as more competition enters the market and it’s easier to reproduce without any qualitative difference.
36. Make a good decision quickly, or the next one will be free.  Moving up the stack means making effective decisions and using good judgment.  If you can’t make decisions, they’ll be made for you.
37. Focus on empowerment and accountability over making people happy.  Happy will be a by-product.  Chasing happy is a slippery slope.
38. Two things get in the way of progress.  There are two things that commonly get in the way of progress:  charters (who owns what) and business models.
39. Don’t react.   When something unexpected happens, don’t react.  Think it through so you can respond.  Respond over react.  This is especially true in re-orgs where the natural reaction might be to just react.
40. Three ways to look.  There are 3 ways to look at any situation.  You can see it as a do-over, a challenge (change and adapt), or a leadership opportunity (lead through ambiguity.)
41. With the org, because of the org, or despite the org.   When you get something done at a corporation, you can think about whether it was with the org, because of the org, or despite the org.  You can use this same check for a team, too.  Was it with the team, because of the team, or despite the team?   This helps you get clarity on whether the org or team is enabling or crippling.
42. There’s no wood behind the arrow.  This is about backing things up with real action or real results or real impact.

Maximize Your Strength Quotient
Build teams to maximize strength quotient.  You do this by first discovering your strengths, and then surrounding yourself with strengths that create a whole greater than the sum of the parts.  That’s where the magic happens.  For example, you mind round out a team of strengths to cover some important bases:

• ship / deliver (execution makes life easier)
• customer focused
• strategically sound
• detail and business orientation
• tell your story (internal and external communication)

I saw first-hand how the collective team was a powerful combination for strategy, results, and impact.

Managing Up
When it comes to managing up, Mike has two simple rules that have served me well:

• Speak in their language.  If you don’t speak in their terms or bridge, they’ll just tune you out.
• Think about what their job is trying to accomplish.  How is what you’re doing relate to why they care and what’s keeping them up at night

While they are simple rules, they are very effective.   They are both great reminders to map the value of what you’re doing back up the chain, and be able to articulate the value in a way that makes sense to key decision makers.

Guiding questions for Choosing Jobs
Mike uses a very simple set of guiding questions to evaluate a job.  I’ve used these time and again as a guide for myself and a guide for others:

1. What problem do I get to work on? For example, needs to be hard, challenging, and attract killer talent.
2. Who do I get to work with? For example, surround yourself with smart, capable, and amazing learning machines
3. What impact do I get to have? For example, you might set your bar on world-wide impact.  This is easy to say… but harder to do and find.
4. Do I trust who I work for? For example, do you really trust them?  This is the “Who’s got your back?” test.

Going from Vision to Results
Vision is how you keep your course.  Mike sticks to the basics and focuses on first getting clarity on the following:

1. how to get there (the map or path and how to chunk it down)
2. execution plans
3. accountability

Framing and Storytelling to Execs
Mike shared some very pragmatic guidelines for effective storytelling with execs:

• They get it. In fact, not only do they get it, but they tell the story to others.
• Emotional connection.  It has durability at the emotional level (life changing)  The caveat is to be careful about creating an emotional response.
• Keep it simple.  The key here is to think about who you are talking to.  For example, you can use metaphors to quickly paint ideas or relate information.
• Jump to instances.  Light up abstractions with concrete examples and instances (for instance, blah, blah, blah.)

As you can see, Mike is a wealth of wisdom and I continue to learn all that I can from him.

“A mother understands what a child does not say.” — Author Unknown

In the spirit of Mother’s Day, this one’s for Mom. Everything I needed to learn in life, I didn’t learn in kindergarten.  No, I got an earlier start. I learned from Mom. (Besides, in kindergarten, I was way too busy with the arts – finger painting, tasting glue,  drawing hand turkeys, etc.)

The most important thing my Mom taught me is to follow my dreams—in a big way.  Dream big, follow my dreams, and give it all I’ve got.  If I reach for the stars and get lucky, then count my lucky stars. If I fall down along the way, get up and try again. It’s that simple.

Lessons Learned from Mom
There’s no way I can boil down what my Mom taught me into a simple set of lessons…wait a minute, that’s not what my Mom taught me. My Mom taught me to give it my best shot, so here it goes:

1. You’re special.  At least to one person in the world, right from the start, I mattered.
2. Love is unconditional.  “I’ll always love you.”   My Mom always made sure that I knew her love wasn’t based on my performance in school or my achievements in life.  That’s what unconditional is all about.  She did also tell me that you could love somebody without liking them, so that got me thinking early on.
3. Your dreams can come true. The little dreamer in me started early on.  My Mom filled my early days with Disney, and I can still hear Jiminy Cricket sing, “When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.”  Wherever we went, if there was a fountain, my Mom would let me throw a penny in and make a wish.  If there was a star in the sky, we would sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  Whenever I blew out candles on a birthday cake, I made a wish. Mostly I wished for a better world or a better life for everyone, but now and then I wished for a super power or a new bike.  P.S. – My Mom says don’t tell anybody your wishes or they won’t come true
4. You can be whatever you want to be.   My Mom taught me early on that I can be whatever I want to be.  I remember I took this to heart, and I planned to be the first person to find Santa’s North Pole and make a map.  She never told me to be a doctor or a lawyer.  Instead, it was be whatever I wanted to be, and it was up to me to figure out the answer to, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
5. Just do your best.   “As long as you do your best, that’s all I ask.”  Mom knew how to set the bar, and how to have me reach for the stars.  “You can do better.  Try again.   Practice makes perfect.”  I continue to compete with myself and see if I can set a new bar.  It’s a process.
6. A job well done is it’s own reward.  This goes hand in hand with doing your best.  Be proud of what you do.  Stand behind it.
7. The world doesn’t revolve around you.    It’s not always about me.  When things go wrong, the world’s not out to get me.  When things go right, sometimes it’s just luck.
8. No fear.  “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite” and “…if I should die, before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”  I thought bed was supposed to be a safe haven, except for the monsters under there.  No, I had to worry about bed bugs and dying in my sleep.  Once I got over that, I could face anything.
9. Look both ways before crossing the street.   This is timeless.  I use this every day.  Thanks Mom.
10. If they jumped off a bridge… Just because everybody else does it doesn’t make it right.  Don’t be a copy-cat.  As a kid, it was easy to fall into, “monkey see, monkey do”, but my Mom always knew the right question to ask, “If everybody jumped off the bridge, would you do it too?”  Of course, the wise-guy in me would have to ask back, “Which bridge?”
11. Two wrongs don’t make a right.  “Do the right thing.”  As a kid, this math was hard to follow.  When my sister and I fought, I didn’t think of getting her back as adding another wrong … I thought of it as making things even.  My Mom thought otherwise.  Eventually I figured out the math.
12. See the funny side of things.  My Mom’s super skill is a sense of humor.  What would Lucy Ricardo (of I Love Lucy) do?  Life has a lot of sitcom and comedy moments.  You can see the good.  You can see the bad.  You can see the sad.  Rather than wait until someday when you can look back on this and laugh, just find a way to laugh now.  A sense of humor is the best recipe for dealing with life’s worst tragedies.
13. Do unto others.  My Mom taught me empathy and compassion.  She would ask, “How would you like it if they did that to you?”  If I wasn’t sure, she would show me, then ask, “Now, how does that feel? How do you like it?”  It didn’t take long to learn that if she had to ask, I didn’t want to know.
14. Don’t dwell on it.  My Mom wasn’t a psychologist, but she knew it didn’t help to dwell on things.  Whether it was think about something else, or go do something else, my Mom taught me to be more action-oriented than stew in my own juices – and “Don’t mope.”
15. Sticks and stones.  Moving around as a kid was tough.  As the new kid, the break in period always meant making new friends and foes.  Name calling came with the territory.  My Mom gave me a simple defense, “I’m rubber, you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.”  This wasn’t always strong enough, so my Mom gave me a backup –  “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”  Of course, some kids would respond to the challenge and whip out the sticks and stones.  Ah, the games kids play
16. Don’t be a sore loser.  “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”  As long as you played your best, that’s what counts.  Of course, winning always felt better
17. Clean up your mess.  “Your room isn’t going to clean itself.”  This was so true.  Pick up after yourself.
18. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.  My comic books always showed ads for pet sea monkeys living it up, and x-ray glasses that had me believing I would see through clothes or see through walls.  My Mom thought they were dumb ads, but eventually I got sea monkeys.  She was right.
19. It’s the thought that counts.  Little things mean a lot. My Mom actually meant this.  She liked the lopsided ashtray I made her in school, more than anything I could buy in a store.  She didn’t like it when I picked the neighbors flowers for her though.
20. Things can always be worse. Between “Don’t cry over spilled milk,” and “I’ll give you something to cry about,” Mom had a way of helping me keep things in perspective.
21. Share.  Mom kept the rules simple here. Share what you have.   It’s the right thing to do and the nice thing to do.
22. Play fair.  “You don’t want to win that way; play fair.”  My Mom knew that it was more important to play by the rules, than win the game.  Everybody should get a fair shot.
23. Life’s not fair.  Ha, don’t I know it.  I’m glad my Mom taught me early on so I didn’t grow up with any false expectations.  It’s still great though when Karma does it’s thing or “what goes around, comes around.”
24. You’re part of the problem or part of the solution.  “Don’t just complain—do something about it.”  Whenever I catch myself on the problem side of things, I quickly figure out how to get on the solution side of the equation.
25. You’ll have plenty of time to rest when you’re dead.  This is one of those lessons that always keeps me going.  If I ever forget why I should ‘”carpe diem”—seize the day—this hits the spot.
26. Take your time. If something needed to be done well or if I was learning something new, my Mom would remind me to “take your time.”  Sometimes I have to catch myself and remember, take my time.  It worked back then, and it still works now.
27. Know who your real friends are.   “If you can’t be yourself with your friends, then they aren’t really your friends.”  So true, Mom, so true.
28. You have to earn it.  “Don’t wait for it to just fall into your lap.”  If you really want it, then work for it.   Go out and get it.
29. Try it, you might like it.  My Mom always encouraged me to eat my vegetables with, “Try it, you might like it.”  As long as I genuinely tried it with an open mind, she was fine.  It’s when I shut my mind to the idea, that she wasn’t happy, “How can you know if you didn’t try it?”  Many vegetables and I never got along, but it’s not for lack of trying.
30. There’s always somebody worse off than you.   Appreciate what you’ve got.  Enjoy it while you’ve got it.  A lot of people are worse off.  Take care of things.  Don’t fall into the pit of, “You’re never satisfied.”
31. You’re smarter than that. This was my Mom’s way of saying, “Use your head,” and, “Use common sense.” (Well, she said those too.)  My Mom knew the power of thinking, long before knowing about our lizard brain.
32. I’m handsome.  My Mom says so
33. Don’t come crying to me.   My Mom taught me to be responsible. “You made your bed, now lie in it. “  This was tough love in action, but it taught me to be responsible for my actions.
34. Listen to me when I’m talking to you.  “I feel like a broken record.”   My Mom taught me to show respect and pay attention when somebody’s talking to you, and, “Don’t look out the window.”
35. Money isn’t everything.   Growing up, we didn’t have money so this was an easy lesson.  My Mom never cared about material things.  She likes the simple things in life and the little things in life. And the little things really do mean a lot.  As long as you have what you need to get by, you’ve got what you need.  When you don’t drive from money or material things, then you have to know what you really want, and drive from there.
36. Do what it takes.    My Mom set the example here.  Whatever needed to be done, she did, to support the family and make the best life for us that she could with what she had.  Sometimes, I think it was pure will.  I think this is where I learned my determination and how to be a work horse.
37. Believe in magic.   Maybe this was when the kids first put the magic hat on Frosty and he came to life one day, but my Mom taught me to see things with magic and wonder.  In fact, she would say, “If you knew how it was done, it wouldn’t be magic.”  She was right.  As I’ve unlocked a lot of life’s mysteries, I’ve had to find new magic … and luckily life never ceases to amaze me, especially physical prowess and amazing feats of nature.  When you believe in magic, you see magic; when you don’t, you won’t.
38. Do as I say, not as I do.   It’s not the preacher it’s the practice.  It’s not the messenger, it’s the message.  Nobody’s the perfect display of all the right things to do.  While sometimes “what’s good for the goose, is good for the gander,” I like that my Mom taught me to judge a book by its contents, not by it’s cover, and to evaluate an idea on its merits.
39. “Because I said so.” I was good at asking, “Why?”  Mom had a simple answer.   When that didn’t work, she would say, “To make you ask questions.”  That usually worked or at least got me thinking.  When I really needed to know why, she would take the time and explain.
40. Read a book.  My Mom taught me to read early.  All those bedtime stories and Dr. Seuss books really paid off.  I learned that reading is the way out and the way ahead—it levels the field. And it’s a great way to learn new things, expand your horizons, and see a bigger world than your immediate box.  One of my Mom’s super skills is reading, and I think that gave me a big advantage in life.
41. There’s a nursery song for any occasion.  If it was raining, my Mom would sing, It’s Raining, It’s Pouring. If the sun popped out, it was a perfect day for my Mom to sing, Itsy Bitsy Spider.  For no special reason, you can always bust out I’m a Little Teapot or Frere Jacques.
42. Family first.  Family is priority.  It’s your immediate tribe.  Mom’s a defender of her tribe and a protector of her nest.
43. Kids come first.   It’s such a simple rule, and a good way of saying, you’re kids aren’t here to live out your unfinished dreams or be a mini-me.  Make the world a better place, and give kids the best life they can have.
44. Do the right thing.   My Mom is a big believer that you don’t need other people or school to figure out the right thing to do.  Just do the right thing.  She looks inside for what’s right.
45. Do what makes you happy.  Mom always knows just the right question, “Are you happy?”  That’s all she cares about, and that’s her measure of a good life.  More importantly, she thinks everyone owns their own happiness and doesn’t have a right to complain—just do something about it, and definitely, “Don’t whine!”
46. Get some fresh air.  Don’t sit inside and waste the day.  Go outside and enjoy the day.  Get some fresh air.
47. If you’re stronger than them, it’s your job to protect them.  Whether you’re older, stronger, smarter, richer or whatever, take care of the weaker ones; take care of the ones that need your help.
48. Say you’re sorry.    Mom kept this rule very simple—when you make a mistake or do something wrong or hurt somebody, say you’re sorry, and “Mean it!”
49. Use two hands.  Whenever I practiced my fancy-pants waiter skills, Mom worried about her dishes.  Yeah, two hands seemed to work better in a lot of scenarios, even beyond dishes.
50. Take two trips.   Don’t ask me why I was compelled to overload myself for the sake of making one overflowing, off-balanced, pathetically slow trip, rather than just take two fast, simple trips.  Mom was right, yet again.
51. Set the example.   If you can be the role model, be it.  Sometimes this means being the bigger person.  Sometimes this means paving the way.  Sometimes this just means being the friend you want in others.  Either way, my Mom was quick to remind me when I need to set the example, and I think it’s a great lesson.  It’s easy to complain … it’s more effective to be the change you want to see.
52. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  It’s true.  Whatever you bounce back from, you grow a little stronger.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom – Love, JD

“Busy does not equal important. Measured doesn’t mean mattered.” – Seth Godin

There’s a hidden message in this post – it’s your free prize inside.  Whether you find the free prize or not, this post will make you think.  About your life.  About work.  About just about everything.  Why?  Because it’s a distillation of lessons from a man named Seth.  Seth Godin is an author, an agent of change, a meaning maker, and an Idea Merchant.

I have to say, this was my most challenging “greatness distilled” post to date.  Seth is a fountain of insight, and I wanted to do more than show the tip of the iceberg.  At the same time, I wanted to take the balcony view, look across his forest of ideas, and make a map of the most meaningful insights.  I won’t claim victory, but I smile inside as I think in the spirit of Seth, I won’t let perfect get in the way of the good.  I’m hoping people will share their lessons from Seth with me, and the map will go beyond my sketch and take a life of its own.  For now, this is my “Seth on a page.”

As you explore Seth’s work, find what you can use for the business of life, or the game of work.  If you walk away with the goal of finding 3 ah-has, you’ll change your frame … and a key to life is that if you change your frame, you change your game.

25 Lessons Learned from Seth Godin
Seth is full of lessons and insights.  Here are 25 lessons to chew on:

1. Have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets. Seth says — “Life is like skiing.  Just like skiing, the goal is not to get to the bottom of the hill. It’s to have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets.”
2. Be remarkable.  Boring is invisible.  Remarkable products and remarkable people get talked about.  Seth on remarkable — “How can you squander even one more day not taking advantage of the greatest shifts of our generation? How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?”
3. Success is a skill.  Seth’s philosophy on success is — “it’s possible to enjoy your job, to do the right thing, to be transparent, to give more than you get and to be successful, all at the same time.”  It takes work.   Surround yourself with people who are succeeding.   You become who you hang with.  By surrounding yourself with people who are succeeding, you’ll learn what’s working and what’s not.  You can model their success and open doors that you might otherwise not see.  Seth on successful people – “”Successful people rarely confuse a can-do attitude with a smart plan. But they realize that one without the other is unlikely to get you very far.”
4. Being the best is the best place to be.  It’s better to be the best.   People pick the market leaders and they narrow their choices to the top.  Seth says, “Being the best in the world is seriously underrated.”   According to Seth, best in the world is relative – “It’s best for them, right now based on what they believe and in their world, the one they have access to.”  In the Dip, Seth shares 7 reasons why you might fail to become the best in the world:  1.) You run out of time, 2.) you run out of money, 3.) you get scared, 4.) you’re not serious about it, 5.) you lose interest or enthusiasm and settle for being mediocre, 6.) you focus on the short term instead of the long, 7.) you pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the world.
5. Be missed.  Seth on how to be missed — “Connect, create meaning, make a difference, matter, be missed.”
6. Everybody is an expert about something.  You’re an expert at something.  Make meaning.  A SQUIDOO lens is a way to make meaning for others.  Seth on lenses – “A lens gives context. When it succeeds, it delivers meaning.”
7. Success is a hierarchy.   Seth teaches us the hierarchy of success: 1.) Attitude, 2.) Approach 3.) Goals 4.) Strategy 5.) Tactics 6.) Execution
8. Don’t do A as a calculated tactic to get B.  Do A because you believe in it.  Seth on success – “If we define success as the ability to make a living doing what I do, I’d say the following: 1.) No ulterior motive. I rarely do A as a calculated tactic to get B. I do A because I believe in A, or it excites me or it’s the right thing to do. That’s it. No secret agendas, 2.) I don’t think my audience owes me anything. It’s always their turn, 3.) I’m in a hurry to make mistakes and get feedback and get that next idea out there. I’m not in a hurry, at all, to finish the “bigger” project, to get to the finish line, 4.) I do things where I actually think I’m right, as opposed to where I think succeeding will make me successful. When you think you’re right, it’s more fun and your passion shows through, 5.) I’ve tried to pare down my day so that the stuff I actually do is pretty well leveraged. That and I show up. Showing up is underrated.”
9. Be in it for the long haul.  Things rarely come easy.  Make the journey worth it.  Chip away at success.  Seth says — “Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision and make something for the long haul. Because that’s how long it’s going to take, guys.”
10. Quit the right things and lean into the right Dips.  Winners quit the right things all the time.  Recognize when you’re in a Dip.  Pick the right Dips.  In the Dip, Seth teaches us 3 curves: 1) the Dip, 2) the Cul-De-Sac, and 3) the Cliff.  The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery.  The Dip is where success happens.  Stick it out, only if you’re going to get the benefits of being the best in the world.  The Cul-De-Sac is where you work and work and work, but nothing much changes.  These are dead-end jobs.  The Cliff is a situation where you can’t quit until you fall off.  If you’re in a Cul-De-Sac or Cliff, you need to quit.  You need to quit these so you can refocus on something with promise.
11. Decide if you’re a freelancer or entrepreneur.  In the Bootstrapper’s Bible, Seth teaches us that a freelancer sells their talents.  While they may have a few employees, they’re doing a job without a boss, but not running a business.  There’s no exit strategy or pot of gold, but they make their own hours and be their own boss.  Examples include layout artists, writers, consultants, film editors, landscapers, architects, translators, and musicians.  Seth writes that an entrepreneur is trying to build something bigger than themselves.  They take calculated risk and focus on growth.  An entrepreneur is willing to receive little pay, work long hours, and take on great risk in exchange for the freedom to make something big, something that has real market value.
12. It’s like walking through a maze.   Seth on building a business from scratch — “Learn as you go.  Change as you go.  Building a business from scratch is like walking through a maze with many, many doors.  Once you open one, 100 new doors present themselves.  As you move your way through the maze, you need to stop and check your location.  Look at a map.  If you’re in the wrong place move.  But if you’ve discovered a new place, there’s nothing wrong with exploiting it.”
13. Everyone is not your customer.  Seth teaches us the key to failure – “the key to failure is trying to please everyone.”  Listen to your real customers.  It’s not the media, the investors, or the early adopters.  Seth on everyone is not your customer – “The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics that never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors that want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers …”  Seth on figuring out what your customers really want — “Most people have no clue what they want, and if you ask them, you’ll get a lame answer. Most people don’t know they want Pretty Woman or Slumdog Millionaire. They don’t know they want Purple Cow or one of your killer articles. So if you want to have an impact, all you can do is lead. You can’t ask.”
14. Feed, grow, and satisfy the tribe.  Build your tribe.  According to Seth, “You can lead a tribe of people, connect them, commit to them and create a movement.”  Seth on building your tribe – “It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about. Everything the organization does is to feed and grow and satisfy the tribe.”
15. Small is the new big.  Focus on relevant, specialized, and unique.  It’s the difference that makes the difference.   According to Seth, small helps you be remarkable – “Small means that you will outsource the boring, low-impact stuff like manufacturing and shipping and billing and packing to others, while you keep the power because you invent the remarkable and tell stories to people who want to hear them.”
16. Find the new scarce.  Where there’s scarcity, there’s value.
17. It’s the FREE PRIZE INSIDE.  Seth teaches us how to create a remarkable product – “The thing that makes something remarkable isn’t usually directly related to the original purpose of the product or service. It’s the FREE PRIZE INSIDE, the extra stuff, the stylish bonus, the design or the remarkable service or pricing that makes people talk about it and spread the word.”
18. The third century is about ideas.  We went from farms to factories to ideas.  Seth on the third century – “Fact is, the first 100 years of our country’s history were about who could build the biggest, most efficient farm. And the second century focused on the race to build factories. Welcome to the third century, folks.”
19. Spread your ideas. Be an idea merchant.  Spread your ideas.  Seth on being an idea merchant — “If you can get people to accept and embrace and adore and cherish your ideas, you win. You win financially, you gain power and you change the world in which we live.”   According to Seth, spreading is a formula of 8 variables: Sneezers, Hive, Velocity, Vector, Medium, Smoothness, Persistence and Amplifier.
20. Don’t wait for perfect. Test your ideas.  Learn and respond.  Don’t wait for perfect to land in your lap, and don’t let it get in the way of sharing a good idea.  Seth on testing ideas – “I’m in a hurry to make mistakes and get feedback and get that next idea out there.”  Seth on perfect — “Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.”  Seth on doing it well now, is better than perfect later — “The minute you start walking down a path toward a yak shaving party, it’s worth making a compromise. Doing it well now is much better than doing it perfectly later.”
21. Don’t get paid to alter your behavior.  Be authentic.  There are two types of sneezers – the promiscuous sneezers and the powerful sneezers.  Promiscuous sneezers can be motivated by money and rewards to sell ideas to a hive.  Powerful sneezers have authority by setting a trend and can’t be bought.  A powerful sneezer can be worth many more times a promiscuous sneezer. Seth on staying a powerful sneezer — “After I left Yahoo!, I had many opportunities to serve on boards and do endorsements. I  chose not to. Why? Because I didn’t want to squander the powerful sneezing points I’d earned by writing my last book. … In every case, you’re getting paid to alter your behavior. That makes you more promiscuous and less powerful.”
22. The goal of reading is to choose what to change.  Find 3 take aways when you read a business book.   Seth on how to read a business book – “Decide, before you start, that you’re going to change three things about what you do all day at work.  Then, as you’re reading, find the three things and do it. The goal of the reading, then, isn’t to persuade you to change, it’s to help you choose what to change.”
23. The world changes whether you like it or not.   The world’s getting bigger and smaller.  Seth on how the world is changing – “The world’s getting bigger because you can look everywhere, but it’s also getting smaller because categories are getting specialized.”
24. The game of marketing has changed.  It’s not price – it’s relevancy, difference, and value.  Marketing is now tribal leadership.  Small is the new big.  Fire customers that aren’t right for your business.  Attention is an asset.  Permission marketing works better than spam – “Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don’t.”  You take word-of-mouth marketing to the next level with IdeaViruses.  Tell the stories people want to believe.  Products that are remarkable get talked about.     Be authentic.  You can’t fool people.  According to Seth — “You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time.  And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.”  Marketing is an investment.  Seth says, “If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense.  Good marketers realize that it is an investment.”
25. Feed, grow, and satisfy your business.   Plan for the money.   If there’s no money, you’re out of the game.  In the Bootstrapper’s Bible, Seth shares 9 rules to take care of your business: 1.) find people who care about cash less than you do, 2.) survival is success, 3.) success leads to more success 4.) redo the mission statement and the business plan every three months, 5.) associate with winners, 6.) beware of shared ownership, 7.) advertise, 8.) get mentored, and 9.) observe those little birds that clean the teeth of very big hippos.

Top 10 Seth Godin Quotes
Here are my top 10 favorite quotes by Seth:

1. “Expectations are the engines of our perceptions.”
2. “Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death.”
3. “Go ahead, do something impossible. “
4. “You can’t shrink your way to greatness! “
5. “Don’t try to please everyone. There are countless people who don’t want one, haven’t heard of one or actively hate it. So what?”
6. “Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”
7. “Why waste a sentence saying nothing? “
8. “If you could do tomorrow over again, would you?”
9. “Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.”
10. “Are you a serial idea-starting person? The goal is to be an idea-shipping person.”

Quotes Organized by Category
I’ve included some of my favorite Seth Godin quotes below.  For simple scanning, I’ve organized them using the following categories: General, Business, Change, Greatness, Ideas, Leadership/ Management, Marketing, Mediocrity / Status Quo, Strategy.

Catalog of Seth’s Resources (Sites, Books, Videos)
Seth has a wide range of resources, from blog posts to books.  For simple scanning, I organized Seth’s collection of resources into the following buckets: sites, books, eBooks, videos, and popular posts.

My Related Posts

• Lessons Learned from the Dip
• Lessons Learned from the Bootstrapper’s Bible
• Lessons Learned from Tony Robbins
• Lessons Learned from Guy Kawasaki

Photo by jurvetson.

“Kid, you’ll move mountains!  Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So…get on your way!” – Dr. Seuss

When I was a kid, Dr. Seuss was a constant source of inspiration for me.  His stories filled my head with endless possibilities.

Between Great Day for Up and The Cat in the Hat, I was pretty much prepared for making the most of any day.  I think his real masterpiece though was Oh! the Places You’ll Go!   This is the book that convinced me I could move mountains and that life is what you make of it.

21 Lessons Learned from Dr. Seuss
There are so many great lessons from Dr. Seuss.  Each of his book is such a treasure trove of ideas and actions for a better life.  What I did here is boil down a set of 21 lessons that highlight his key themes across his works and quotes:

1. Be a thinker of great things.  Dr. Seuss teaches us, “Oh, the things you can think up if only you try!”
2. Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.  Sometimes you just don’t know what you’ve got until after it’s gone.  In Bartholomew and the Ooblek, King Didd got what he wished for, but the sticky Ooblek goo was worse than the fog, snow, sunshine, and rain that it replaced.  The King quickly wanted his old weather back and he learned to appreciate it.
3. Be your best you.   In the words of Dr. Seuss, “There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”  Make the most of what you’ve got.   In Yertle the Turtle, we see “feather envy” and it’s a gentle reminder to be careful what you wish for and appreciate what you’ve got.
4. Bend your world in wonderful ways.  Nobody bends it like the Cat in the Hat.   From the metaphors you use, to the thinks that you think, you can shape your world that’s right in front of you.
5. Don’t put yourself in a box.  You’re only limited by your own imagination.   The Cat in the Hat teaches us how to let our imaginations run wild.
6. Don’t waste your time worrying who’s better than who.  In Yertle the Turtle, Dr. Seuss teaches us that “You have better things to do than argue who’s better than who.”
7. Dream it and do it.  You can move mountains when you put your mind to it.  Direct your life like a blockbuster and make things happen.
8. Edutainment wins over boring and ho-hum.  With whacky words, wondrous worlds, and fantastical characters, Dr. Seuss taught us the edutainment is how you change a child’s life.  Reading is only boring if you make it so.
9. Kindle your curiosity.  Keep your mind open and your eyes peeled.  Stay curious and follow your growth.
10. Life happens in moments at a time.  Don’t miss out on life by tuning out the little things along the way.
11. Own your fun.   There’s more to do than play in the rain.  When you’re bored, you’re boring.   The Cat in the Hat teaches us to be the maker of our own fun.  Make each day your own special blend of whatever it is that best floats your boat.
12. Play at your day.  You can play at your day, in every way.
13. Persistence pays off.  Be relentless in your pursuit of things.  In Green Eggs and Ham, it was through persistence that Sam-I-Am finally got the unnamed character to try the green eggs and ham.  In real life, Dr. Seuss’s first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected 27 times before being published by Vanguard Press.
14. Treat people fairly and squarely.  In The Sneetches and Other Stories, Dr. Seuss shows us that we can’t judge people by their lot in life or whether they have a star on their belly.  In Yertle the Turtle, it’s a reminder not to climb over people on your way to the top, because they’re same people you’ll see on your way back down.
15. Try it … you just might like it.  In Green Eggs and Ham, when the unnamed character was surprised to find out that he actually likes green eggs and ham once he tried them.  You just never know until you try.
16. Saying you’re sorry can help make things right.   In Bartholomew and the Oobleck, when the king finally said the magic words, “I’m sorry,” and “it’s all my fault,” he helped make things right again.
17. See the bright side of things.  It’s a great day for up, when you can see the sunny side of things.  Sure sometimes you’ll have to work at it, but positivity is a skill.  Do it daily.
18. Setbacks happen.  Deal with them and move on.   Make trouble think twice about messing with you.
19. Some people are much more unlucky than you.  When you’re down in the dumps and things get real bad, remind yourself that somewhere, somehow, someway … somebody is much “more unlucky than you.”
20. Success is a journey and we all have our own paths.  Make your journey count.  Don’t let fear stop you.  Don’t let conventional wisdom stop you.  Lead the life you want to live, and when there’s no path, make one.
21. Your voice counts.  In Horton Hears a Who, Dr. Seuss shows us how one little voice can tip the scale … after all, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

Top 10 Dr. Seuss Quotes
Dr. Seuss has so many quotable quotes, from enjoying your day to being more you.  He has such a way with words.  Even when he reminds us of something we already know, he has a way of saying it that makes an old song sound new.  Here is a sprinkling of some of my favorite quotes:

1. Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
2. Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.
3. Only you can control your future.
4. So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.
5. The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
6. Today is gone. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.
7. Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.
8. Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
9. You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose.
10. You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

It’s inspirational gold.  There is nobody youer than you, and the more that you learn the more places you’ll go.  Bravo.

Dr. Seuss Quotes
If you’re not familiar with Dr. Seuss’s quotes, then you’re in for a treat.  It’s easy to read his words, and he’s a master of saying a lot with so little.

A nice simple way to leverage his quotes is to pick one or two of your favorites.  Sometimes the right quote is just what we need to hear and it can be the perfect catalyst that we need in our life.  Enjoy!

Aloneness

• All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you’ll be quite a lot.
• I’m afraid sometimes you’ll play lonely games too, games you can’t win because you’ll play against you.
• You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.

Be Yourself

• If you’d never been born, then you might be an Isn’t! An Isn’t has no fun at all. No, he disn’t.
• You are you. Now, isn’t that pleasant?
• You’re in pretty good shape for the shape you are in.

Everybody Deserves a Shot

• A person’s a person, no matter how small.
• I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights.

Fun

• Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.
• From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.
• I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
• If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good.
• It is fun to have fun, but you have to know how.
• We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.

General

• Be awesome! Be a book nut!
• Christmas doesn’t come from a store, maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more …
• I do not like green eggs and ham I do not like them Sam I am.
• I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. Because an elephant’s faithful, 100 percent.
• I’m glad we had the times together just to laugh and sing a song, seems like we just got started and then before you know it, the times we had together were gone.
• Oh, the things you can find if you don’t stay behind!
• Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.
• So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. And remember that life’s A Great Balancing Act.
• They say I’m old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!
• Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny more interesting than either parent.

Life Happens

• I’m sorry to say so but, sadly it’s true that bang-ups and hang-ups can happen to you.
• Things may happen and often do to people as brainy and footsy as you.

Make Things Happen

• I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I’ve bought a big bat. I’m all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!
• There’s no limit to how much you’ll know, depending how far beyond zebra you go.
• Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So… get on your way.
• Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

Positivity

• And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!
• If you keep your eyes open enough, oh the stuff you will learn. Oh the most wonderful stuff.
• It’s opener, out there, in the wide, open air.
• Just tell yourself, Duckie, you’re really quite lucky.
• You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.

Thinking

• Think and wonder, wonder and think.
• Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the things you can think up if only you try!

Dr. Seuss Books
One of the best ways to get to know Dr. Seuss is through his books.  Here is a round up of his books::

What has Dr. Seuss taught you about life?

“Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will.” – Vernon Howard

What did you learn last year that surprised you the most?  … What did you learn last year that really mattered?  To keep track of the distinctions I learn, I keep an insights journal.  In my insights journal, I write down my one-liners of “ah-has.”   I track anything from quotes that hit home to dots that finally get connected   I keep it simple – a tickler list with just enough to jog my memory.

Rather than share my journal for the year, I’ve taken the time to distill some of the things I found to be most useful.

The Vital Few
This is my short list of new lenses for looking at things:

1. “Just like skiing, the goal is not to get to the bottom of the hill.  It’s to have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets.” – Seth Godin
2. “If you lead your life the right way, your dreams will come to you.” – Randy Pausch
   “Use the process of life to figure out who you are and create the experiences you want … decide who you are and who you want to be.” – Conversations with God
3. You’re the average of the 10 people you spend time with.
4. “We’re all fellow travelers to the grave.” – Disney’s A Christmas Carol

Key Surprises
This is a handful of things that surprised me the most:

1. Our larynx slows us down.  To read faster, don’t say the words, even inside your head.  See One Speed Reading Trick that Does Work.
2. The secret of positivity is non-negative thinking. The secret of positivity is isn’t thinking positively – it’s not thinking negatively.  Simply practice non-negative thinking.  See Argue Your Way to Optimism.
3. Synthetic happiness. You can create your own happiness and it’s just as real as the real deal.  See Synthetic happiness.
4. Your brain can change within seconds.  “The human brain can adapt to changing demands even in adulthood, but MIT neuroscientists have now found evidence of it changing with unsuspected speed.”  See Adult Brain Can Change Within Seconds.
5. Mirror cells.  Mirror cells can help you read other people’s minds.   See Cells That Read Minds.
6. Seeking.  Seeking is the curiosity /expectancy state / granddaddy of emotional systems/ motivational engine.  See Seeking is the Granddaddy of Emotional Systems.

Key Ah-Has and Random Insights
These are some of my favorite prompts, ah-has, and distinctions from last year.  These are some things I caught myself saying to other people or thinking about:

1. Be YOUR best in YOUR world.
2. Legacy is a byproduct / side-effect.  To leave a legacy – make the most of the time you’ve got with who you’ve got.  It’s a slice in time.  Nothing lasts forever.  It happens as a side-effect.
3. It’s not the trains you miss, it’s the trains you catch.
4. Follow the growth.
5. Sayings are how we share insights and principles.
6. Diversify yourself.  You’re a portfolio of skills, experiences, and achievements.
7. I like writers who say a lot, without writing a lot.
8. Execution is mindset, energy, time, and technique.
9. Success is about getting up to bat and giving your best.  It’s a numbers game.
10. Improve efficiencies or get priced out of the market.
11. Know what the market wants.
12. The market doesn’t always want the right things.
13. Don’t dwell.
14. Compete with yourself is the way to grow.  It’s competition and fun.
15. Don’t fall into the pit of self-entitlement.
16. Succeed … at what?
17. I think part of the trick is factoring insight from action. The next trick is changing the 80/20 thinking/doing to 80/20 doing/thinking.
18. Mentors are the short cuts.
19. User empowerment over Command and Control.
20. Smart people on a cadence.
21. Whenever you look for it, there it goes.
22. People work by time and cost, not effort.
23. People listen to reason and results.
24. Have “right” on your side … truth knowledge.
25. When you anticipate more, you react less.
26. Rapport before influence … AND … the KEY to rapport is empathy.
27. Shift from debate to dialogue.
28. If you miss the train, catch the next one.
29. Lead with your “why.”
30. Respond over react.
31. “Funding your life style” as a frame to choose paths.
32. Lead your life insight out.
33. Audience is a strategic question.
34. Know you natural strengths and leverage those.
35. Spending all your time living in the future? How to make the most of what you’ve got right now?
36. Frame it, then explain it
37. Become more of who you are and make more of what you got.
38. It’s all talk until it’s a project.
39. Draw the pie, show your share
40. Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should.
41. The Business of Life
42. Micro-experiences and immersive experiences.
43. Vision, Goals, and Constraints.
44. Think tanks and thought leaders
45. Bite off less.  Focus over quantity.  Quality over scope.

Ways and Frames to Look at Things
This list is a cornucopia of mental models, techniques, and lenses you can apply in all sorts of scenarios:

1. Filter Failure – it’s not information overload; it’s “filter failure.”
2. Boy, warrior, king, sage.
3. The Five Strengths in Buddhism – faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom.
4. 10-10-10, by Suzy Welch.  Use different time frames to get perspective: 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 years.
5. Cynefin Framework – a way to sort issues and describe problems, situations, and systems: Simple, Complicated, Complex, Chaotic, and Disorder.
6. Porter’s Five Forces — a model for industry analysis.
7. Needs-based communication, by Dr. K — Need for action, need for accuracy, need for approval, need for appreciation.
8. 24 Signature Strengths — Martin Seligman.
9. Dialogue, Debate, and Discussion.  Dialogue is listen with an open spirit, debates is a verbal fight, and discussion is breaking apart the issues.
10. “… practicality, flexibility, speed, and efficiency” – Bruce Lee.
11. Big 5 Personality Traits – Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
12. 16 personality factors (Wikipedia.)
13. Goal people vs. River People
14. The effort effect – “The key, she found, isn’t ability; it’s whether you look at ability as something inherent that needs to be demonstrated or as something that can be developed.”
15. Have, Do, Be over Be, Do, Have.
16. Useful, Updated, and Unique.  – Seth Godin.
17. How much mass do you have to move? … and is it worth it?
18. Napoleonic law vs. case law.
19. “Never defend against any of their comments. Simply redirect the comments back to the person.”  – Steve Pavlina
20. Solopreneur – a one-man band in today’s business landscape.
21. “People hate being sold, but they love to buy.” – Brian Clark
22. There’s no appetite.
23. Know whether you’re the quarterback or the coach.
24. “People will pay more to be entertained that they will pay to be educated.” – Johnny Carson
25. Complexity of mind – “An unquestioned assumption is as if it is part of the person, a “subject.” It is not an “object,” i.e., something outside of oneself that can be examined, considered, or evaluated from some different perspective.”
26. Appreciative inquiry – DISCOVER, DREAM, DESIGN, and DESTINY.  It’s question-drive, outcome-based and you focus on what you appreciate/value.
27. Sell the sizzle, not the steak.
28. The Rule of 3 – the military uses it – 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food, 3 months without hope, love, or compassion.
29. Butterfly effect – one tiny thing can make a huge effect that you can’t measure or predict.
30. The letter of the law vs. the spirit of the law.
31. SPIN principle: Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff
32. You’ll see it when you believe it.
33. 5 Levels of Mental Focus – lifetime, yearly, weekly, daily, currently.
34. Monkeysphere we can conceptualize up to150 people.
35. Prima facie – on its first appearance, or by first instance; at first sight.
36. Exact vs. ambiguous when organizing information.
37. The realization of “no-self – “Not I” – Vernon Kitabu Turner
38. Holland Codes for Career Choice.
39. Personality Types (Analytical, Amiable, Driver, and Expressive)
40. The Pomodoro Technique – chunk up tasks by time.
41. Dialogue Mapping – map out comments as a conversation or meeting unfolds.
42. Compete – compete on truth, – compete on reputation / brand, – compete on value, – compete on perception, – compete on idea
43. Boundary Object – “Artifacts, Documents and perhaps even vocabulary that can help people from different communities build a shared understanding.”
44. Knowledge, competencies, and attitudes.
45. Think Like a Black Belt – Choose to comply, defuse, escape, defy, or fight.
46. Adam’s MasterMind Matrix
47. Impact factor, by Eugene Garfield – a proxy for relative importance – a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals.
48. The 3 C’s – Creativity, Character, and Completion and Disney’s 4 C’s – Curiosity, Courage, Confidence, and Constancy.
49. OODA  Loop – Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.
50. Crossing the Chasm – “there is a chasm between the early adopters of the product (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists).”
51. Inflection points, by Andy Grove – “An inflection point occurs where the old strategic picture dissolves and gives way to the new.”
52. Situationism – “Situationism in psychology refers to an approach to personality that holds that people are more influenced by external, situational factors than by internal traits or motivations.”
53. Barnum / Forer Effect – “The observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people (astrology, fortune telling, religion[citation needed], and some types of personality tests).
54. Deliberate practice – “Research shows that 10 years (or 10,000 hours) of practice can make anyone a top performer in pretty much any field, from sports to music to business.” – Hunter Nutall
55. Coalition of the Wiling – “We should focus more on advancing … than trying to convert the majority … to whatever it is that we happen to be doing at this very moment.  The people who are motivated and interested in coming along with us will come along.”  — Jeremy Miller
56. Ennegram of Personality – The Reformer, The Helper, The Achiever, The Individualist, The Investigator, The Loyalist, The Enuthusiast, The Challenger, The Peacemaker.
57. “The leader-follower dynamic is not a case of two (or more) independent brains reacting consciously or unconsciously to each other. Rather, the individual minds become, in a sense, fused into a single system. We believe that great leaders are those whose behavior powerfully leverages the system of brain interconnectedness.”  – Dan Goleman, Social Intelligence and Biology of Leadership
58. “… we vastly underestimate the extent to which success happens because of things the individual has nothing to do with.” – Malcolm Gladwell, What is Outliers About?
59. “To improve ourselves, we have to act like each M & M matters. Like each decision has important consequences. … No single M & M caused anyone to have diabetes. No one experienced a heart attack because they were 20 minutes short of their exercise goal. And yet our lives, our waistlines even, are the result of thousands of such decisions and behaviors.”  — Peter Ubel, eBay and the Brain: What Psychology Teaches Us about the Economic Downturn

Photo by exfordy.

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen … but do you know Davey Stone, George Bailey, Ralphie Parker or Emmet Otter?   They’re the stars of some of my favorite holiday classics.  Holiday classics are a great source of inspiration and insight.  As with any movies, holiday classics are stories with conflict and resolution.  Themes range from fitting in to standing out.  Some of the best stories are where the villain becomes the hero and defeats their inner demons.  Another common theme I see is find your version of happiness.

The beauty of the holiday classics is that they make you feel good.  From finding your inner child to unleashing your better self, there’s a common theme of making the most of what you’ve got, enjoy what’s right in front of you, and lead the life you want to live.  In this post, I share my key take aways from these holiday movies.

Lessons Learned from 25 Holiday Classics
Here are my lessons learned from 25 holiday classics.  If you already know the movie, then the take away might make sense for you.  If you don’t know the movie, I’ve included links to Amazon, Wikipedia, and IMDB so you can check it out.   Feel free to share your favorite holiday movies and lessons learned in the comments.  Enjoy!

1.		Eight Crazy Nights. Davey Stone had a few lessons to learn: Don’t let the past keep you from seeing what’s right in front of you, don’t push away the people that are there to help you, and don’t be your own worst enemy. I think the lesson we learn watching Davey is similar to Peaceful Warrior – “the people that are the hardest to love, often need it the most.” Eight Crazy Nights (Two-Disc Special Edition) (Amazon) Eight Crazy Nights (Wikipedia) Eight Crazy Nights (IMDB)
2.		A Charlie Brown Christmas. Don’t let the commercialism get in the way of meaning or significance for you. Just because you might be surrounded by it, doesn’t mean you can’t carve out a part for you. A Charlie Brown Christmas (Amazon) A Charlie Brown Christmas (Wikipedia) A Charlie Brown Christmas (IMDB)
3.		A Christmas Carol. Bob Marley teaches us that we wear the chains we forge in life.  Ebenezer Scrooge teaches us that you can change your life over-night and it’s never too late to change. He also teaches us to live the life you want to lead, and live each day how you want to be remembered. My favorite version was always Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, but now I’m seriously a fan of Disney’s A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey.  Other variations include The Muppet Christmas Carol, A Flintstones Christmas Carol, Scrooged, Mickey’s Christmas Carol, and of course, the 1984 version of A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott. I also like the made for T.V. movies and when sitcoms do their version of a A Christmas Carol. Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (Amazon) A Christmas Carol (Wikipedia) List of A Christmas Carol Adaptations (Wikipedia)
4.		A Christmas Story. Any time I mention this movie, somebody says, “you’ll shoot your eye out.” Poor Ralphie, but I don’t think that was the lesson. I think it’s more like — life happens. You never really know what you’re going to look back on as the best times of your life or the funniest. Some things that aren’t funny at the time, just might turn out funny later, either when you flash back or when you make a movie (apparently the movie is based on the author’s child hood.) A Christmas Story (Full-Screen Edition) (Amazon) A Christmas Story (Wikipedia) A Christmas Story (IMDB)
5.		Bad Santa. Believing in somebody can bring out their best. Kids can remind us what really matters and what the right thing to do is. Also, conmen are people too, and everybody makes mistakes. The real question is, how do you write your story forward? Bad Santa (Amazon) Bad Santa (Wikipedia) Bad Santa (IMDB)
6.		Elf. I think this is about unleashing your inner-elf. Elf (Infinifilm Edition) (Amazon) Elf (Wikipedia) Elf (IMDB)
7.		Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. You accomplish more together than apart. If you’ve seen it, you know that to make a washtub base you have to put a hole in the washtub. They bet everything they had to get each other Christmas presents — Emmet put a hole in his Mom’s wash tub and his Mom sold his tool chest. It turns out, all they really wanted was each other. In retrospect, what were they thinking? Some bets just aren’t worth it. Luckily this one worked out, but I’m glad we didn’t see the version where Emmett and his Mom can’t make a living anymore because they bet their wash tub and tools. Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas (Amazon) Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas (Wikipedia) Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas (IMDB)
8.		Frosty the Snowman. When I was younger, I thought it was about believing in magic and how a snow man that comes to life would be cool to hang out with. Now that I’m older, I think it’s – remember the magic of when you were a kid, and how that brought things to life. Frosty teaches us that every day is a good day and forget anything bad. The first words out of Frosty’s mouth were “Happy Birthday” and he was all about having fun and celebrating life while he’s got it. Frosty the Snowman (Amazon) Frosty the Snowman (Wikipedia) Frosty the Snowman (IMDB)
9.		Home Alone. Don’t forget your kids when you go on vacation … bad stuff happens. Home Alone (Amazon) Home Alone (Wikipedia) Home Alone (IMDB.)
10.		How The Grinch Stole Christmas. You can’t really steal Christmas, since it’s not the toys and the food.  Everybody has a soft spot, even the Grinch. Sometimes it’s shutting people out that turns them sour, just like letting them in can bring out their best. Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas (Deluxe Edition) (Amazon) How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Wikipedia) The Grinch, with Jim Carrey (Wikipedia.)
11.		It’s a Wonderful Life. Focus on what’s right in your life, over dwelling on what’s wrong. It’s a Wonderful Life (60th Anniversary Edition) (Amazon) It’s a Wonderful Life (Wikipedia) It’s a Wonderful Life (IMDB)
12.		Jingle All the Way. To your kids, you’re the most important hero. You don’t have to be perfect. Just know they look up to you. Jingle All the Way (Family Fun Edition) (Amazon) Jingle All the Way (Wikipedia) Jingle All the Way (IMDB)
13.		Lemon Drop Kid. Even con men can do right … and make people laugh along the way. The Lemon Drop Kid (Amazon) The Lemon Drop Kid (Wikipedia) The Lemon Drop Kid (IMDB)
14.		Little Drummer Boy. Step up to the plate and be your best, or in this case, “play” your best. The Little Drummer Boy (Amazon) The Little Drummer Boy (IMDB)
15.		March of the Wooden Soldiers. Team up. It’s a better together story where good triumphs over evil. March of the Wooden Soldiers (Colorized / Black & White) (Amazon) Babes in Toyland (Wikipedia) Babes in Toyland (IMDB)
16.		Miracle on 34th Street. Stay curious and believe in possibility. Miracles happen. Your beliefs can limit or enable what’s possible and what you perceive. Miracle on 34th Street (Amazon) Miracle on 34th Street (Wikipedia) Miracle on 34th Street (IMDB)
17.		National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Everybody has their own version of what a perfect holiday means. Don’t impose you’re your “perfect” on others. When things don’t go as planned, roll with the punches and make the most of it. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (Special Edition) (Amazon) National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (Wikipedia) Christmas Vacation (IMDB)
18.		Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey. It’s the differences that can be your strengths. For Nestor, his ears became his strength when he could hear the angels sing, while everybody was blinded from the storm. The Year Without a Santa Claus / Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey / Rudolph’s Shiny New Year (Amazon) Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Story (Wikipedia) Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Story (IMDB.)
19.		The Polar Express. Stay young at heart. Sometimes the best experiences in life start with belief. My favorite line is, “At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I’ve grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.” The Polar Express (Two-Disc Widescreen Edition) (Amazon) The Polar Express (Wikipedia) The Polar Express (IMDB)
20.		Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Nobody wants a Charlie-in-the-box and if an elf really wants to be a dentist, just go ahead and let them be one. The real lesson in Rudolph is “do your thing” and play to your strengths. Be proud of who you are and whatever makes you stand out. More importantly, find your place for it. Rudolph found the place for his shiny nose was the front of the pack. The elf that wanted to be a dentist found he could be a dentist right there at the workshop. Bumble (the abominable snowman) found his special ability was placing the star at the top of the tree (“look at what he can do!.”) It’s also a reminder that nobody’s perfect, but everybody can find their place. Santa even found a home for all the misfit toys from the cowboy who rides an ostrich to the train with square wheels. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Red-Nosed Reindeer (Wikipedia) Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (IMDB)
21.		Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town. You can melt cold hearts with acts of kindness. While Kris had limited luck melting Burgermeister’s heart, he had more luck with the Winter Warlock and turned him into an ally. Even though Santa visits only once a year, he really wants the holiday spirit to last throughout the year. The Original Santa Clause Is Comin’ to Town (Special Collector’s Edition) Santa Clause is Comin’ to Town (Wikipedia) Santa Clause is Comin’ To Town (IMDB)
22.		The Bishop’s Wife. Get your priorities straight. While you chase your dreams, never lose sight of what’s most important. The Bishop’s Wife The Bishop’s Wife (Wikipedia) The Bishop’s Wife (IMDB.)
23.		The Santa Clause. If you suddenly gain a lot of weight and suddenly grow a white beard that you just can’t seem to trim, consider a job as Santa for a while. There’s more though. Don’t put kids in the middle of things, especially during the holidays when it’s about being together. If you give yourself to a higher-cause, it can be your greatest source of fulfillment, whether that’s self-less service, doing the right thing, or living your purpose. The Santa Clause (Full Screen Special Edition) The Santa Clause (Wikipedia) The Santa Clause (IMDB.)
24.		The Year without a Santa Clause. This is the one with Heat Miser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_Miser) and Snow Miser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Miser ). (It’s a clay animation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_animation ), but I’ve actually seen people in real life that look like Heat Miser and Cold Miser.) Anyway, the lesson we learn here is, about how to deal with conflict and negotiate effectively. When Heat Miser and Snow Miser, wouldn’t cooperate, Mrs. Clause told their mom, Mother Nature who forced them to compromise. It’s also about letting people know how much they matter. Santa found his inspiration and got his groove on, when a little girl wrote how she would have a Blue Christmas without him. The Year Without a Santa Claus (Deluxe Edition) The Year without a Santa Clause (Wikipedia) The Year without a Santa Clause (IMDB)
25.		White Christmas. Don’t let miscommunications and mix-ups, mess up an otherwise good thing. Be careful about jumping to conclusions about people’s intentions. You may not like their behavior, or it may seem off, but it’s really tough to judge, especially if you’re not in their shoes. Be less quick to judge and quicker to forgive and forget and make room for happiness. White Christmas White Christmas (Wikipedia) White Christmas (IMDB)