Once again, we are rapidly approaching the "Holiday Season", or rather it is rapidly approaching us. In fact it, is tearing down the air- and digital- waves into our living rooms and dens as fast as fiber optics and satellite dishes can carry it. I could not believe it when the Gingerbread Man walked across my TV screen before I had given out my Halloween candy! Way before. September some time. I am either getting old, or we are rushing through our collective lives at breakneck pace. Or more likely, both…I am undeniably getting old(er) but I do think this is the earliest we have seen the harbingers of Christmas. In addition to a healthy "Humphhh" and a dramatic forehead slap about rushing the season it got me to thinking. Not about Christmas - I just out-and-out refuse to think about Christmas before December 1st. I started thinking about Thanksgiving which is now looming on my horizon. I know, I know - what does the Gingerbread Man have to do with Thanksgiving? It’s all in my mind - like a barn - odds and ends piled together in singularly illogical pairings that you inadvertently trip over. Anyway about Thanksgiving…and turkey…and more to the point, Thanksgiving Dinner… The picture is so New England/traditional. The one above would easily serve 8 - 10 people and the ones we used to roast when I was a kid served 12 - 15 and had to be cooked at Aunt Ginny’s and carried over to our house just before dinner because once you got it in the oven nothing else would fit. *** One of my favorite family stories revolves around Aunt Ginny dumping 5 quarts of of her famous giblet gravy on our kitchen floor as she swept through the door. (Ginny always "swept", she never "walked".) The entire assembled family dissolved into raucous tears of laughter while Ginny stood there looking at the traitor pot like it had leaped from her grasp on purpose. She gave us about 15 seconds of unbridled hilarity and then, like any good general, directed us to "Grab spoons and cups and get this all back into the pot! No one will ever know." This was patently untrue since everyone who was coming to Thanksgiving dinner had watched her dump said gravy all over the floor - but we got the message and jumped to corral the liquid gold. And everyone dutifully pretended not to "know". Dinner - and the gravy - were fine. We girls remembered this bit of wisdom a couple of years later when Nana Graves performed the same act of destruction in her upstairs apartment with a very heavy casserole of winter squash.  She was not nearly so theatrical about it…she wept rather then swept, and there was no "directing" just helpless self-flagellation (it was a generational thing, I think), but we cousins jumped into action and the eventual outcome was the same. It happened upstairs and we swore each other to secrecy, so no one "knew" and dinner was fine. (Thank you Julia!) *** Alas, Thanksgivings have gotten very much smaller these days with the extended older-generation family dead and gone and immediate family spread across five states and two foreign countries. The world is very much smaller and my dining room table is often empty but for the two of us. These days I find it is memory that serves to fill me up… *** "You can always die." It was actually said very quietly.  Not at all like most of Daddy’s pronouncements, which were delivered at parade voice and accompanied by the occasional pounding fist on the tabletop and helter-skelter scattering of offenders for cover. Aunt Ginny was the only one with the wit to break the ensuing silence.  "And too many did just that, didn’t they Dick?  We remember them."  She expected, and got, no answer - just reached out from her customary place of honor on his right with her perfectly manicured hand to gently touch his.  His hand gripped hers like a drowning man’s. She smiled her beautiful, red-lipped smile at him as if he had just commented on how lovely she looked this afternoon in her pearls and white lace and then turned a predatory smile to the rest of the table inviting anyone fool enough to take her on, to try. This group knew better - mostly from disastrous experience. Even Uncle John’s pretty but clue-less wife, Mickey, subsided without a word. "Now," Ginny withdrew her hand gently and spoke directly to her host, pretending she did not see his quivering chin and little-boy-lost look,   "I would like two small spoonfuls of squash, if you don’t mind."  She pointed sadly to a spot on her plate.  "I am coming out uneven." While Daddy reached for, and served the squash, the rest of us obediently observed her plate to note that, indeed, her neatly arranged little piles of turkey, onions, turnip and cranberry sauce were all about the same size, but her squash pile was decidedly smaller.  And while we all watched him add exactly enough squash to create a pile of the required dimensions, Ginny explained as if we had not heard her say so for the past ten or twenty Thanksgivings (depending on our relative ages), "I like everything to come out even, you know."  The slushy little plop of squash falling on her plate released the rest of us and we resumed eating and chatting politely. *** I don’t actually remember the comment that elicited that statement from Daddy, though I could guess easily enough. Viet Nam was in the air at the time. Courtesy: http://www.vintag.es/2011/02/35-years-after-fall-vietnam-war-in.html Probably someone made an off-hand comment about it that triggered his memories about World War II and too much food and drink made him careless enough to speak his thought out loud. Although, it is just as believable that there might not have been any particular comment at all; Thanksgiving being a time when the lines between present, past and future blurred for those of us sitting at dinner on Green Street. *** My first coherent memories of Thanksgiving dinners come from the Green Street years - and the first of those from when my sister and cousins and I were still considered too young and too boisterous to sit at the formal dining room table with polite company.  We were banished to the kitchen to sit with our grand-relatives who presumably were old enough to accept the task of riding herd on us with quiet dignity.  We used the everyday china and glassware and yearned for the day when we could eat in the dining room and exchange adult conversation.  While we waited, we consumed our first lessons in family history along with turkey and stuffing with giblet gravy. It’s like being at the kids’ table at Thanksgiving - you can put your elbows on it, you don’t have to talk politics… no matter how old I get, there’s always a part of me that’s sitting there. John Hughes "They’re saying grace in the dining room. We should say grace."  I folded my hands and waited.  I was a stickler for pomp and still hoping to one day become a Catholic Priest (soon to be squashed by the realities of Catholic dogma, but at the time fervently rampant). "They’re praying loud enough, they can say it for us too."  My sister, on the other hand was not - fervent or rampant. "You sister is right, we should say grace."  Nana Graves - while eternally mortified that her only daughter had eschewed the Methodist faith for Catholicism - was sure we were all going to hell anyway and clutched at any opportunity to save our souls. "Can we just say something and start eating?"  Cindy was always ready to eat. "How can you be hungry?  You ate a whole box of chocolates before dinner."  I snorted. "Not the whole box." "Oh, how many didn’t you eat?" "Aunt Ginny caught her at it.  She got swatted and Ginny took the box away."  My sister smiled unpleasantly.  I wondered if Ginny had been alerted by a spy. "There were some left."  Cindy started to snivel and although I had little sympathy for Cindy’s tendency to cry at the least provocation, I knew it would delay our dinner even longer if the Grandmothers had to calm her down or, God forbid, Aunt Ginny actually had to leave the adult table and come out to the kitchen, so I came to her aid.  Or started to… "There were some…" Grand Uncle Will’s dry-leaves-on-cement voice interrupted us.  "Children should be quiet at the dinner table." We all stared at him.  He sat with a fork in one hand and a knife in the other.  He was waiting on us and he was not pleased.  Nana Graves reached for the riced potatoes and started serving him. "Let’s eat before it all gets cold."  It was more a question than an admonition, but as one, we decided that moving forward was more interesting than grilling Cynthia about the chocolates she did or did not eat. We were more interested in soaking up family stories about the adults sitting in the other room. So through mouthfuls of food dutifully chewed and swallowed before we spoke, we quizzed them. "Nana Graves?  Tell us about the time Mother led cousin Eleanor through the manure pit…" "Yeah, when she and cousin Eddie knew where the solid places were and Eleanor didn’t…" "Right…and how they had to burn her clothes and wash her hair four times before she could even go in the house again…" "And how Eleanor threw up manure all afternoon…" "And how Mother and Eddie only had cornmeal mush to eat for five days afterwards as punishment…"  That was the part we liked best.  We really did not care about poor cousin Eleanor. It was our rather jaded opinion that anyone stupid enough to walk into a manure pile without checking out the lay of the land deserved what they got.  Cousin Eleanor was a city girl…she never had a chance nor did we think she particularly deserved one.  But we were terribly interested in the fact that our always correct, school-teacher mother had done such a thing.  It gave one hope. "Nana Sawyer, tell us about the time Daddy and his friends led the milk cow up to the top floor of city hall…" "And how the city fathers could not get it to come back down…" "And how they had to get a farmer to get the cow down and by the time he got there the cow had pee’d all over the court room…"  We were in tears…just thinking about it. "Why couldn’t they get the cow back down?"  Nancy was the youngest cousin in attendance and had not heard this story before. "Because, silly," Those of use who had heard the story numerous times felt greatly superior, "cows can’t walk down stairs. Their knees don’t work that way…you have to get them a ramp." And on it went.  We dug and delved into our grand elders’ memories of the past searching for tidbits that appealed to our fancy and could possibly be used as blackmail at a later date.   It filled the time while we waited impatiently to be admitted into the dining room to sit at the adult table.  The grandmothers accepted our urgency to get on with things as a matter of course and never once voiced melancholy at the turning of the wheel that would release all of us in the kitchen to the room beyond, young and old alike.   It seemed to take forever. *** Will was taken to the Odd Fellow’s Home in Lewiston to live until he died when Nana Graves was put in Files’ Nursing Home.  She had fallen on her way out to the porch and broken her ankle.  She was never quite "with it" after that.  Dr. Love suspected a mild stroke and when she started leaving the stove on until it melted holes in her pots, the family decided she had to be put where someone could watch over her.  We went to visit her every Saturday between our trip to the Post Office and grocery store.  In a very little while, she stopped knowing who we were and Mother and Ginny told us we didn’t have to go anymore.  I remember the last day I went to see her. "Hi Nana, how are you?  You look great."  I thought she looked awful, a thin bird of a woman stretched out on her single bed, rocking her head to and fro on the pillow in time to some song I couldn’t hear.  But I had been taught to have manners, and I used them. "Who are you?"  The head stopped but the eyes continued to move back and forth. "I’m Melinda, Nana. Faith’s daughter.  Her youngest." "No, you can’t be.  Faith is only a girl still.  She can’t be old enough to have a daughter of her own.  Can she?  You mustn’t plague me so."  The eyes finally came to rest on my mother’s face. "No, Annie, it’s all right."  Mother assured her.   It was surely not all right, but who was I to question? A skeleton hand snaked out from under the pink blanket and locked around mother’s wrist.  "I wish Fred would hurry up and come take me home.  I don’t want to be here.  They’re terrible to me here, you know.  They take me away at night and hook wires to me and bedevil me. They do." "He will come soon, Annie, he will be here soon…"  Mother tried to gently undo the fingers wrapped around her wrist.  She kept repeating:  "It will be fine, Annie, it will be fine," all the while and finally the old woman on the bed who had once told us stories and nursed us when we were sick lost interest and releasing mother’s hand went back to rocking back and forth on the pillow, back and forth. We left her there waiting for the husband who would not come, dead these twenty-odd years, buried in the family plot on Fort Hill.  She didn’t have that long to wait.  Fifteen months.  An eternity of rocking her head. That made two empty chairs in the kitchen. Nana Sawyer took a tumble one early November day on ice and ended up in the hospital with a broken hip. "Dick, be a good boy, call me a priest."  She looked very tiny on the hospital bed.  We were all there in a neat semi-circle around her hospital bed, come up from Gorham to see her the day after she had fallen. "Margaret, you’ve just broken a hip.  We’ll have you up and about in a day or two on a walker." "I won’t go into one of those homes.  And I won’t be where I’m not wanted."  She spoke in that flat way someone does when they have made up their mind.  "Get me the priest, Dick.  Please." "Yes, Mum." So the priest was gotten and Margaret said her last confession and received Last Rites.  Daddy served as altar boy and she got to take communion.  The priest was happy to oblige and do anything to make one of his oldest parishioners more comfortable with this change in status. "Don’t worry so Dick.  She just needed the reassurance of it.  She’ll be fine." "Thank you, Father."  And so he left her promising to return the next morning. All this on a Tuesday evening.  Wednesday morning she was dead.  By Monday she was in her grave.  Doc had been gone for ten years at that point.  Margaret was laid beside him at the top of Western Avenue in Saint Mary’s cemetery. That made three empty chairs and the next Thanksgiving, all of us cousins at the kitchen table graduated to the dining room. *** And so we all now sat at the finely polished mahogany table in the dining room. And we heard the occasional same story from a different perspective. "We really were terribly mean to poor Eleanor," Mother would say to Phil. "Oh, I don’t know.  She was pretty mean herself as I recall."  Phil would counter.  "Isn’t she the one who used to tease you in front of the boys about your butter and mustard sandwiches?" "Well, yes, she did.  But she didn’t know any better.  She had money.  She didn’t know what it was like to be poor." "Mmmmph."  Father didn’t like the Parker sisters.  They had snubbed him when he first came courted Faith. "Mean group of women."  He would say.  "They could use a little Christian charity or," and here he would pause for the desired effect, "a bath in manure."  He would laugh heartily at his own joke whether anyone else thought it amusing or not and then menacing a fork at the newly graduated adults at his table would speak for our benefit alone.  "Never let me catch any of you making fun of people just out of spite or some notion that you’re better than they are.  Hear me?" "Yes, sir."  We would chorus. "Because you’re not."  And he would return to his gravy and potatoes. Usually, however, the fare at the adult table was new to us.  And sometimes even the people were new to us.  I remember the year Daddy brought home a young man and his wife from Augusta with him.  The young man had just come to work in Daddy’s office and all his family were out in the mid-west somewhere.  They had been planning to eat Thanksgiving hamburgers on crates in their tiny apartment when Dad swooped down on them and gathered them up to come spend the weekend at our house.   Mother was polite until they climbed the stairs to the third floor and shut the door on the hastily prepared bedroom.  She then dragged Daddy into the den and shut the door. "Richard, what were you thinking of?  Bringing strangers into our house without so much as a warning.  And on Thanksgiving?"  Mother only called Daddy "Richard" when she was seriously put out. "They had no family to go to." Dad seemed to think that covered the bases. "So?  Why is it our problem?"  Even I knew that was a stupid remark. "Why?"  Penny and I could see him turn to her through the crack in the doorjamb.  We leaned back, expecting the blow.  It never came.  Instead his voice became a whisper. "Because I say so, if you can’t manage to think of a more Christian reason.  No one will go hungry or unwanted at my door while I have the means to prevent it and you will smile and be polite even if I sit a drunken hobo at your right hand."  And that was that. More often than not, dinner at the adult table started gay and turned somber as alcohol loosened memories and tongues and someone inevitably said something that would remind Daddy of the dead boys from WWII who would not be with their families this day.  Actually, now that I have thought about it for a bit, I do remember it.  What brought on Daddy’s comment. "Did you read about those poor boys in Viet Nam who were tortured and forced to read statements against the US?"  Mickey was a source of constant amazement to us all, even her devoted husband, Uncle John.  She had known Daddy for twenty-five years at least, seen him war-weary, hurt and half starved she could still babble on as if none of the people at the table had ever ventured outside the drawing room. "They’re writing such horrible things about them, you know.  Saying they were cowards. Even traitors."  Her disbelief may have been honest but voicing it at the Thanksgiving dinner table was just plain stupid. Daddy had very little patience with stupidity and that was when he said, "You can always die."  And Ginny leaped to the rescue and the rest of us pretended like nothing had happened.  Later, when John and Phil were sleeping over the football game, Ginny and Mickey were doing dishes in the kitchen and mother had retired to her bed with her now annual sick headache, Daddy stood watching the rain out the back door.  Our dog, Samantha, sat beside him resting her shaggy head on his thigh where his hand could just reach to rub her ears.  I went and stood on his other side and he rested a hand on my head too. "There is never an excuse for not doing your duty.  Never. " He tipped my head back just enough to get my full attention.  "You need to remember that.  No matter what it costs, you do your duty.  Promise me." "How do I know what my duty is?"  It was one of those moments when you know you need to be very clear on what is going on…even at 12. He leaned over a bit and tapped my chest with his finger.  "You will know in here.  And no matter how much it hurts, or how afraid you are, or who tells you different, you do what’s in there.  Promise me?"  His eyes were so sad I thought I would burst into tears.  But tears were not what was expected.  I squared my shoulders. "I promise." That’s a good girl.  We both basked in the warmth of our hero’s approval - the dog and I - while he patted our heads and returned to watching the rain. *** Our feast this year will be small. But there will be turkey - I am a purist about some things. And there will be stuffing and squash and cranberry sauce and we will eat it for five days afterwards until we cannot stand the thought of turkey for another 365 days. And we will raise a glass for all those who are accounted for in our memories but not present. And we will take a moment to give thanks to all those who cannot be with their families because they are off somewhere in the world doing their duty. Be thankful for what you have. Your life, no matter how bad you think it is, is someone else’s fairy tale. Wale Ayeni

  It is interesting to note that the title of Ken’s blog is "How WE lead," instead of "How THEY lead." This clearly sends the message that we share a responsibility in leadership. My name is Francisco Gomez and I am this month’s guest blogger. In previous posts, Ken has mentioned how important is the leadership that the new president and his team will need to exercise for positive change to occur and last, starting with the VISION that he should set for all of us. But once that vision is clear for all, it is our turn to contribute our share, it is our turn to act. President Obama also thinks this way, as can see when he said "we are the ones we have been waiting for." It is an important responsibility for each of us to realize that the change we want will require that WE act differently as well. We will need to unlearn some things we have adopted as habits, learn new attitudes and behaviors, and relearn some fundamentals that we forgot along the way. I want to invite you to contribute to this discussion by selecting one change you want to see happen over the next couple of years, and then providing your responses for the following questions: ·         What will I need to START DOING to help this change happen? ·         What will I need to STOP DOING to help this change happen? ·         What will I need to CONTINUE DOING? To kick off the discussion, one change I would like to see is a new kind of relationship between the United States and the rest of the world, based on what is good for the world at large, not just what is good for America. This means that sometimes we would be willing to do things that are not solely in the best interest of our country, but are desirable for the greater global good. To help make this change happen, I will: ·         Get better informed about the world and the issues different countries face ·         Become more tolerant of different points of view ·         Accept that we, as a nation, are not immune from making mistakes ·         Have renewed faith in our political leadership ·         Express my views and participate in the political decision making process What is one change YOU would like to see? How will you contribute to it? Let’s share our visions and inspire others to do the same.

How do you maintain trust in uncertain times? Trust has been an important concept since the beginning of our country. On our dollar bills, we have said In God We Trust. Yet today it’s hard for us to trust people—particularly our business leaders, whose greed and self serving leadership seem to have been a major cause of our economic crisis. Yet, if we are going to pull out of this present situation, we have to realize that none of us is as smart as all of us. There are companies that realize this simple truth and have maintained trust before, during, and I’m sure after this economic downturn. All these companies seem to have two characteristics in common.             First of all, they have a higher purpose than making money. As an example, Southwest Airlines, from its beginning, has been convinced that it is in the freedom business. The freedom of all Americans to be with friends and relatives during good times and bad times—thus their low price structure. Chick-fil-A’s purpose is to glorify God by having a positive influence on everyone who comes in contact with Chick-fil-A. They aren’t open on Sundays, even though that is often the busiest day in the fast food industry.             Secondly, they value both people and results. The way that plays out is that their leaders and their people respect and trust each other by celebrating good times together and working out tough times together.             I first realized the importance of trust and respect going together by listening to Ichak Adizes, a long-time consultant and professor at UCLA. He argues that respect and trust have both nonverbal and verbal messages. If you respect someone, you face them, because you are interested and want to hear their opinions. If you don’t respect someone, you turn your back on them, because you couldn’t care less what they think. If you trust people, you will turn your back on them because you are convinced they mean you no harm. If you don’t trust them, you watch their every move. How does that work at Chick-fil-A and Southwest Airlines?  In both cases, they respect their people and therefore share information with them about the performance of the company in both good times and bad times. In good times, they celebrate together, and in bad times, they are problem-solving partners. Does that work? You’d better believe it. Unlike many companies today where the top managers are locked behind closed doors, cutting costs and having everybody’s fate in their hands, these two great companies open their books to everyone so they know what’s happening and immediately go to work to cut costs as well as increase revenue.             This is exactly what our company, The Ken Blanchard Companies, did after 9/11 when we lost $1.5 million in sales that month, and what we are doing today with sales and operating income going down. We believe that none of us is as smart as all of us, and we are convinced we will pull out of this together.             What are you doing? Are you betting on the brain power of your top managers or on the brain power of everyone in your organization?  What’s at stake? The future of your company, trust, and respect.

Wanted to let you know about this recent article that was published in Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/23/trust-respect-employees-leadership-managing-blanchard.html Leadership Make Sure Your Employees Trust You-Or Else Ken Blanchard and Terry Waghorn 03.23.09, 5:48 PM ET How do you keep people trusting you at a time like this? Trust is essential in our lives, and it has been since the beginning of our country. Our dollar bills say In God We Trust. Yet today trust is all but vanishing, especially trust in our business leaders, whose greed and short-term selfishness seem to have been a major cause of our economic crisis. With negativity running amok, it is no small wonder that trust within the organizational context is slipping. Yet that need not be the case. "Managed properly, trust can actually grow in such adverse conditions," says Shawna O’Grady, associate professor of management at Queens School of Business, in Kingston, Ontario. "Taking this point to the extreme, consider the bonds forged between comrades-in-arms in a theater of war." The key to building trust in both good and bad times is to realize that none of us is as smart as all of us. There are companies that have embraced this simple truth and used it to maintain trust before, during and, we’re sure, after this economic downturn. All these companies seem to have two characteristics in common. First, they have a higher purpose than simply making money. Let me give you a couple of examples. Southwest Airlines, from its beginning, has expressed the conviction that it is in the freedom business. The freedom of all Americans to be with friends and relatives during good times and bad times-thus, their low price structure. Herb Kelleher, who co-founded Southwest, not only wanted to give his customers the lowest possible price, he also wanted to give them the best possible service. As a result, Southwest is set up to empower everyone, right down to its frontline employees-to make decisions, use their brains and be customer maniacs so they can create raving fan customers. Chick-fil-A’s purpose is to glorify God by having a positive influence on everyone who comes in contact with its stores and foods. The stores aren’t open on Sundays, even though that is often the busiest day in the fast food industry. S. Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A, first did this for religious reasons as a devout Southern Baptist and lifelong Sunday school teacher, because Sunday is the day of rest. But it has turned out to be a good business decision. Chick-fil-A attracts many of its employees, including managers, because they know they will be able to be with their families and friends every Sunday. Has it paid off? The chain has by far the lowest turnover of restaurant managers and frontline employees in the quick-service business. Second, companies that engender trust democratize the decision-making process by soliciting input and sharing the decision-making itself with as many people as possible. In his primetime address to Congress in February, President Barack Obama acknowledged "difficult and trying times" but sought to rally the nation with an upbeat vow that by working together "we will rebuild, we will recover." How do you do that in business organizations? It isn’t complicated. When leaders treat their people as their business partners and involve them in making important decisions, those people feel respected, and respect leads to trust. If you respect your people and they trust you as a leader, they will give their all to get the best results they can for your organization. Ichak Adizes, a longtime consultant and professor at UCLA, observes how respect and trust are conveyed by both nonverbal and verbal messages. If you respect someone, you face them when you speak to them, because you are interested and want to hear their opinions. If you don’t respect them, you turn your back, because you couldn’t care less what they think. If you trust people, on the other hand, you can turn your back on them, because you feel certain they mean you no harm. If you don’t trust them, you watch their every move. How does that work at Chick-fil-A and Southwest Airlines? In both cases, they respect their people and therefore share information with them about the performance of the company in both good times and bad. In good times, they celebrate together; in bad times, they are problem-solving partners. Does that work? You’d better believe it. Unlike many companies today, where the top managers are locked behind closed doors, cutting costs while holding everybody’s fate in their hands, these two great businesses open their books to everyone so they can know what’s happening and go right to work cutting costs and increasing revenue. Many leaders are afraid to share negative information with their people, because they fear appearing vulnerable and therefore weak. We have found the contrary to be true. Everyone knows leaders are not perfect. When leaders admit problems and involve their people in problem solving, respect and trust rise. Corporate leaders may also fear Wall Street’s reaction to their trusting moves, but that’s like playing tennis with your eye on the scoreboard and not on the ball. The ball in business is results and people. If the focus is only on results, you’ll never be able to maintain or build trust in a time like this. What are you doing? Are you betting on the brainpower of your top managers, or on the brainpower of everyone in your organization? What’s at stake? The future of your company, based much more than you may realize on trust and respect. Ken Blanchard is co-author of many New York Times bestsellers, including The One Minute Manager and The One Minute Entrepreneur. He serves as chairman and chief spiritual officer of the Ken Blanchard Companies. Terry Waghorn is an adviser to senior executives in companies ranging from small to Fortune 500. He is co-author of Mission Possible and author of The System.

We came back home from Tucson recently, and it was a joy to get here. Why? Because Joy was waiting for us—our fuzzy little dog. And you know, more and more I just believe that dogs, particularly puppies and all kinds of other pets, teach about unconditional love. They want a lot of attention but they give you back that unconditional love. She was just so excited to see us. It just kind of lifted up our spirits. I hope this week you will reach out and really hug some people and just tell them how important they are and make them feel like you are really excited to see them. You can even behave a little bit like a dog if you want to.  It’s just so wonderful when you get a sense that people really care about you and that you can make a difference in their lives that way. Dogs know how to do that. It’s great to be home.

Last week I had lots of festivities set up around my birthday. It’s really kind of funny—why did I do all this?  I invited all my coauthors, as many as could come, to come to our house for a little reception on Tuesday night. Then for the next couple of days we all talked about celebrating simple truths and what we’ve all done together. We talked about our body of work—what it was all about and where was it going in the future. Margie probably summed it up the best when she said it was really about being champions of self worth and individual dignity, and that everything we’ve done is to try to help make people feel important and cared for. And when people feel good about themselves, they produce good results. I think that’s probably a really good message for you as you continue to interact with each other and people at home and work. Every chance you get, ask, "How can I make the world a better place by the moment-to-moment decisions I make as I interact with other human beings, and build up their own sense of self worth?"  I’m really still amazed that the company Margie and I started with some of our friends is 30 years old, and that I’ve been able to do some of the things that I had never thought about before. People told me I couldn’t write—that I should be a college administrator. Zig Ziglar has a wonderful quote: "Regardless of your lot in life, you can build something beautiful on it."  And you know, I didn’t do it all by myself. I think that’s one of the reasons I wanted to invite everybody—because you know, my mother always said, "Why don’t you write a book by yourself?" and I would say, "Mom, I already know what I know."  So I built a wonderful life with the help of tons of people. I love another quote by Woodrow Wilson: "Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together." So we not only celebrated what we’ve accomplished together, but also our friendship. It was a special time and I really enjoyed it. Seventy is not a huge number. I have always thought that I wanted to be like Norman Vincent Peale. He died quietly in his sleep at 95. So that means I have another 25 years to go! I just feel great. I was glad I was able to put a bookmark there and take a look at what we’ve done over the years. We also got a chance to get our first copies of Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy called "Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A" that Garry Ridge, president of WD-40 Company, and I wrote. And then the first copies of Who Killed Change? which is the book that John Britt wrote with Judd Hoekstra and Pat Zigarmi and me. Everybody was excited to see those. Somebody once said, "Many things will catch your eye but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue those."  I really always tried to pursue things in my heart. Maybe I didn’t always make the best decisions. I could have probably done better writing fewer books and focusing more; we could have done things a little differently, but what’s happened has happened. So my 70th birthday, I think, has just been a celebration of life. We had a wonderful time; it was way beyond my expectations, and fun. I think life, as I’ve said for a long time, is a special occasion. And I don’t intend to miss any of it and I hope you don’t either.

I recently had an interesting experience—I spoke to the Better Business Bureau of the whole Phoenix valley. Normally, you know, the BBB is a group that deals with whether businesses are doing the best practices. They started this night a number of years ago where they recognize companies in the area who are leading in an ethical, values-driven way. It’s become quite a prestigious thing. I got a chance to talk to them about The Power of Ethical Management, the book I did with Norman Vincent Peale. What I particularly like is catching people doing things right. My own sense is that there are many good things happening in business that just don’t get publicized. You may think everybody is self-serving and doing everything for themselves—but that’s not really true. I think the number of people who are unethical and running businesses just for themselves is just a small percentage in comparison to the people who are doing it right. It was a real joy to be there and also to share with them our ethics check: Is it legal? Is it fair to all involved? How does it make you feel about yourself? Concepts like that. Being successful in business isn’t about perspective; it’s about both results and people, and that is so important to us. So it was an interesting night. So you take care of yourself. Life is a very special occasion. Make sure you don’t miss it. You’re missing it if you think life’s all about you.

Today I came across a wonderful quote from Winston Churchill, who I always felt was quite a guy. He said, "An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity. A pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity."  I guess I’m an optimist. I’m always looking for the lemonade from the lemons. That’s the way my mom always was. She said I laughed before I cried, I danced before I walked and I smiled before I frowned. So what are you? Are you an optimist or a pessimist? I think optimists live life a little bit differently and, I hope, more joyously. So be an optimist today, no matter what’s bothering you. See if you can see the opportunity in the problem rather than seeing everything as a problem. Have a great day.

Laura Berman Fortgang, a friend of my son Scott and his wife Madeleine, wrote a book recently called The Little Book of Meaning that really made me think.  I think it’s really an interesting topic, because I think one of the gnawing questions people have is: What’s the meaning of life? What’s our reason for being here? I think it’s so important that we not just go through the motions in life. You know—you come to work, you do your job, you go home, you do this and you do that. Where do you make the difference? What is meaning for you? In my opinion, it’s all tied into relationships—relationships with yourself, with others, and with something greater than yourself.  And I think we can create meaning for ourselves. We can create it by the attitudes we bring and the desire to have meaning in our life. If you feel like you’re getting hum-drummy about life, step back and quiet yourself and say, "Why am I doing this? What is the meaning of this? Why am I here?" Just raising these questions will enlighten you and lift you up to a different level.  So keep asking the questions around meaning—because we all have a real purpose. Don’t forget it.

One thought we have to keep at the top of mind is we are going to make it through this challenging time, and we’re going to do it together. We are. And we can’t get discouraged. We’re figuring this out together. Positive thinkers are winners. Why? Because they get positive results. And we’re going to get those. It’s going to be a story. It’s going to be a celebration. So don’t get down—keep up. We’re doing it all the time. You have a great, positive day, and remember we can do everything together. Remember that quote, "None of us is as smart as all of us."