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Leave Pride On The Side
Now and then, I’m afforded the opportunity to share in a vehicle donation community project. It is the cooperative endeavor of several hands to make refurbished transportation possible to a person or family in need. It is absolute goodness. It happened again this past week. As the recipient was passed the keys, he commented about times in life when we need to leave pride on the side and ask for help. I was struck by the visual of an item being left behind, cast aside its value exhausted. How often does pride, or its equally debilitating sibling fear, get in the way of our asking for help? Or admitting to…
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Just Like Ogres
“For your information, there’s a lot more to ogres than people think… Onions have layers. Ogres have layers… You get it? We both have layers.” –Shrek (Shrek) They say we shouldn’t make something of nothing. Attributing significance to something that doesn’t warrant it…the proverbial mountain of the mole hill. I was recently reminded of the less-often-referenced flipside of the coin…making nothing of something. Like a tourist deliberately composing a picture to distort relative size, we like to pretend we can hold the Eiffel Tower in the palm of our hand. If something of nothing is living in exaggeration, then the converse is living in denial. From either seat, we’re not seeing our lives accurately. Not…
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Different for a Reason
In a niche of a larger industry, Joe built a tribe. He stepped out of the safety of the familiar, a tried and true model of converting asset donations to a nonprofit’s bottom line, and grew a company based on his passion for innovation. He doesn’t sell a product although he has one. Instead, Joe sells an idea about how to do things differently. As an adolescent, Morgan witnessed first hand the impacts of mental illness. She developed a tremendous capacity for empathy and justice. After working in a substance abuse treatment center and at a school for children with behavior disorders, she pursued nursing and became an acute care RN. Morgan…
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Why and How
Constitution – the aggregate of a person’s physical and psychological characteristics. Growing up, now and then I heard references made to a person’s constitution. Having a “strong constitution” was considered praise amongst the sturdy, Midwestern farm stock from which we had descended. It meant that someone was physically strong and emotionally resilient. With that point of reference, I came to believe that a person’s constitution was mostly driven by their physiology and most certainly determined at birth. Not unlike a litter of puppies, there were alphas and runts among us. As time passed, my perception changed. While we certainly have some predetermined physical characteristics, there is much over which we have influence.…
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What’s In It For Me?
What’s in it for me? or WIIFM is an idea first popularized about a decade ago. From business journals to blogs, marketers were proclaiming the way to win over audiences was by explaining your product, service, or idea in the context of the individual benefit the recipient would experience. Looking at WIIFM from a different perspective, the question can also be a useful tool in personal reflection, self motivation, and drawing meaning from what we do. Instead of asking WIIFM about a future option, we reframe it to evaluate our present circumstances. Asking ourselves why we do what we do can help us connect, or reconnect, with the reasons for our choice. Like a mathematical shortcut,…
