Short and sweet today:

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things that I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.

— Reinhold Niebuhr

“I only allow that which is good into my life. No one can depress you. No one can make you anxious. No one can hurt your feelings. No one can make you anything other than what you allow.” – Dr. Wayne Dyer

Excellent slide presentation with great statistical numbers you can use to show customers/clients/bosses/aunts/exes/whomever that social media is here and it’s here to stay. Get involved and grow your business/online worth/popularity. Ignore it at peril.

(WARNING: This is the R-rated version. If you are afraid of having to get your eyeballs washed out with soap, try this G-rated link: F-word Free Version) (more…)

It’s finally over. It always seems to feel that way come Presidential Election Day here in the states. After months and months of non-stop campaigning and debating and character assassinations, we have a new president. Despite how any of us wanted it to work out, a colleague of mine summed up the result quite eloquently:

Gruss Gott wrote:

No child anywhere in the World will doubt that with hard work they can be President; if only they have democracy like America.

America has just peacefully overthrown its existing President and replaced him with a black dude with an arabic sounding name.

Let there be no doubt that America is the greatest idea in government that the World has ever seen and that the people of America have tonight fulfilled its founders genius and shouted it to World.

Congratulations America!

Now we must earn the opportunity we’ve given ourselves.

I love to follow Tim Ferriss’ lifestyle and blog. Who wouldn’t? Well, perhaps I shouldn’t go overboard, some of might not be able to. I mean he is still single, no kids (the we know of) and pretty much does what he wants when he wants, where the majority of us are still tied down to a location, person or family. Anyway, before I get carried away on a tangent, when I checked out his blog today looking for some excerpts from his book, I was happy to see a great new post about implementing 4HWW in corporate environments.

Tim uses Best Buy as a corporate example and I was amazed to read how they implemented a strategy based upon the experiences of a new 24-year-old hire instead of a old, grizzled and wizened CEO. What Best Buy implemented is called ROWE or Results-Only Work Environment. Developed by Carl Ressler and co-developer Jody Thompson.

An excerpt from Tim’s interview:

In a ROWE, each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. Currently, there are two authentic ROWEs—Fortune 100 retailer Best Buy Co, Inc. and J. A. Counter & Associates, a small brokerage firm in New Richmond, WI. At both organizations, the old rules that govern a traditional work environment—core hours, “face time,” pointless meetings, etc.—have been replaced by one rule: focus only on results.

…productivity has gone through the roof…

and

On the personal side, ROWE has transformed people’s lives. We’ve heard stories about ROWE saving marriages, allowing people to be better parents (and opened the door for some to actually be parents), get in shape and give back to their community.

That’s pretty powerful stuff. I would think that adopting this way of running a business probably pads the bottom line too with saving money on training rehires and the fact that work will actually get done as opposed to “pretending” it’s getting done.

For the full text of Tim’s entry, click here.

Not sure where I came across this, but I thought it was great. Read and think about it …

The F-Word

What word in the English language scares us the most?

Death? – No
Cancer? – No
Terrorism? – No
The word we fear the most is: failure.

WHY ARE WE SO SCARED OF FAILURE?
Because failure means rejection. It means weakling. It means second class. It means useless person. Right? WRONG! Failure doesn’t mean any of these stupid things.

THE TRUTH IS: FAILURE IS ESSENTIAL.
Without failure, very few scientists would achieve anything. Without failure, most of our famous actors or pop stars would be nobodies. Without failure, many of our richest entrepreneurs would be broke. For example, according to a recent survey, more than 50% of the richest businessmen in Europe & America were failures at school. And almost 30% have suffered bankruptcy on their way to the top!

WHY IS FAILURE SO VALUABLE?
Because failure is the No 1 learning method. We fail. We learn. We do better. For example, if you watch a child doing a jigsaw puzzle, you won’t see him slot everything in correctly, first time, will you? Of course not. He’ll make mistakes. He’ll try this piece, then that piece, then another and another, until he gets it right. Well it’s the same for us adults when we do something. We need to make mistakes before getting it right. See what I mean? Failure isn’t a bad thing: on the contrary, providing we learn from it, it’s actually very beneficial.

FEAR OF FAILURE MAKES US FAIL AGAIN AND AGAIN
Fear of failure stops us from succeeding. Why? Because it paralyzes us! We become afraid to take risks. We become afraid to commit ourselves. But unless we take the occasional risk – unless we commit ourselves to something – we will never succeed at ANYTHING!

CONCLUSION
Failure is not the terrible thing we think it is. In fact, by helping us to learn, it can be extremely beneficial. But fear of failure paralyzes us and stops us achieving anything.

In other words: QUIT WORRYING ABOUT FAILING!!