Posts Tagged With: vacation
Vacationing is good…but we should…(post by Kirk Weisler)
Vacationing is good…but we shouldn’t take a vacation from learning.
A couple of things learning from this vacation.
We are enjoying our time in Fort Lauderdale as a family. Rebecca and I have both remarked that having 6 of us packed into a typical sized hotel room with a couple of queen sized beds feels a bit like a sleep over. She says she loves having all of her kids in the same room. The younger girls love it too. It has reinforced our desire to downsize our home and further simplify our lives. A bigger home does not a closer family make.
Learning number 2 – No matter how early you get up to go walking – there seems to be people who are already there enjoying the peace and tranquility of a quiet walk on the beach. Lot’s of people even older than me… walking, even faster than me. I imagine all they could teach me about life as I consider all they have experienced…. I consider asking a few of them but don’t. Still it’s fun to imagine.
3) The picture above represents most of the books and magazines that made it into our travel bags.
Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography – Recommended by daughter Brittany who did not make it on this trip (college and stuff)
The China Study – The most comprehensive study on health and nutrition ever conducted. (It basically dismantles our Western style diets, eating patterns and health institutions) It’s a real wake up call for anyone who really wants to live a cancer free life and more. Highly recommended reading.
Delivering Happiness – The story of Zappos told by Tony… excellent! A culture building classic.
Quiet – The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain – My wife loves this book and I get to read it next. Are you an introvert? The world is run by them. http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/
Find Something to Do – A book of no prop team builders and activities…by my friend Jim Cain (no relation to Susan)
Fit for Life – my wife reads and re-reads this book
The Original Kindle – lots of titles on it…but daughter Brooklyn is reading the e-book version of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Tech over turning pages.
We actually brought 4 copies of Ender’s Game – we are reading it as a family. Great book.
And a few others….about marriage, juicing, storytelling, and life. All good. All to keep us in a state of becoming. One thing we never want to take a vacation from is learning!
Kirk Out
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Will You Dance With Me? ~Author Unknown~
Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven’t thought about it, don’t have it on their schedule, didn’t know it was coming or are too rigid to depart from their routine.
I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back. From then on, I’ve tried to be a little more flexible.
How many women out there will eat at home because their husband didn’t suggest going out to dinner until after something had been thawed? Does the word ‘refrigeration’ mean nothing to you?
How often have your kids dropped in to talk and sat in silence while you watched ‘ Jeopardy ‘ on television?
I cannot count the times I called my sister and said, ‘How about going to lunch in a half hour?’ She would gas up and stammer, ‘I can’t. I have clothes on the line. My hair is dirty. I wish I had known yesterday, I had a late breakfast, It looks like rain.’ And my personal favorite: ‘It’s Monday.’ She died a few years ago. We never did have lunch together.
Because Canadians cram so much into their lives, we tend to schedule our headaches. We live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect!
We’ll go back and visit the grandparents when we get Steve toilet-trained. We’ll entertain when we replace the living-room carpet… We’ll go on a second honeymoon when we get two more kids out of college.
Life has a way of accelerating as we get older. The days get shorter, and the list of promises to ourselves gets longer. One morning, we awaken, and all we have to show for our lives is a litany of ‘I’m going to,’ ‘I plan on,’ and ‘Someday, when things are settled down a bit.’
When anyone calls my ‘seize the moment’ friend, she is open to adventure and available for trips. She keeps an open mind on new ideas. Her enthusiasm for life is contagious. You talk with her for five minutes, and you’re ready to trade your bad feet for a pair of Roller blades and skip an elevator for a bungee cord
My lips have not touched ice cream in 10 years. I love ice cream. It’s just that I might as well apply it directly to my stomach with a spatula and eliminate the digestive process The other day, I stopped the car and bought a triple-Decker. If my car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy.
Now…go on and have a nice day. Do something you WANT to……not something on your SHOULD DO list. If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?
Make sure you read this to the end; you will understand why I sent this to you.
Have you ever watched kids playing on a merry go round or listened to the rain lapping on the ground? Ever followed a butter fly’s erratic flight or gazed at the sun into the fading night? Do you run through each day on the fly? When you ask ‘ How are you?’ Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done, do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running through your head? Ever told your child, ‘We’ll do it tomorrow.’ And in your haste, not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch? Let a good friendship die? Just call to say ‘Hi?
When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift….Thrown away….. Life is not a race. Take it slower. Hear the music before the song is over.
‘Life may not be the party we hoped for.. but while we are here we might as well dance!
The 6 Habits of Highly Memorable People (post by Kirk Weisler)
My old (but still young) Special Forces Commander, Don Spradling, sent me this last night. I love it… it’s a weeks worth of T4D wisdom so I hope you’ll take some time to consider it, share it, learn it, and perhaps even live a bit of it too. I’ll share a short bit about Don’s memorability at the end. (hint that’s him in the picture above)
The 6 Habits of Highly Memorable People
In order to succeed, almost everyone-whether business owner or employee-must be memorable.
While you don’t have to be The Most Interesting Man in the World, being known is one of the main goals of marketing, advertising, and personal branding.
Out of sight is out of mind, and out of mind is out of business. But if your only goal is to be known for professional reasons, you’re missing out. People who are memorable for the right reasons also live a richer, fuller, and more satisfying life. Win-win!
So forget the flashy business cards and personal value propositions and idiosyncratic clothing choices. Here’s how to be more memorable-and have a lot more fun.
1. Don’t see. Do.
Can you speak intelligently about how clothing provides a window into the inner lives of Mad Men characters? Do you find yourself arguing about how the degree of depth lost in the Game of Thrones TV series as compared to the books?
Anyone can share opinions about movies or TV or even (I’ll grudgingly admit) books. That’s why opinions are quickly forgotten. What you say isn’t interesting; what you do is interesting.
Spend your life doing instead of watching. Cool things will happen. Cool things are a lot more interesting and a lot more memorable.
That’s especially true when you…
2. Do something unusual.
Draw a circle and put all your “stuff” in it. Your circle will look a lot like everyone else’s: Everyone works, everyone has a family, everyone has homes and cars and clothes….
We like to think we’re unique, but roughly speaking we’re all the same, and similar isn’t memorable.
So occasionally do something different. Backpack to the next town just to see how many people stop to offer you a ride. (Don’t take them up on it, though. Unless you appear to be in distress, the people who want to give you a ride are the last people you want to ride with.) Try to hike/scramble to the top of a nearby mountain no one climbs. (Trust me; take water.) Compete with your daughter to see who can swim the most laps in three hours. (If you live in my house you’ll lose. Badly.)
Or work from a coffee shop one day just to see what you learn about other people… and about yourself. Whatever you do, the less productive and sensible it is, the better. Your goal isn’t to accomplish something worthwhile; the goal is to collect experiences.
Experiences, especially unusual experiences, make your life a lot richer and way more interesting. You can even…
3. Embark on a worthless mission.
You’re incredibly focused, consistently on point, and relentlessly efficient. You’re also really, really boring.
Remember when you were young and followed stupid ideas to their illogical conclusions? Road trips, failing the cinnamon challenge, trying to eat six saltines crackers in one minute without water… you dined out on those stories for years.
Going on “missions,” however pointless and inconvenient, was fun. In fact the more pointless the more fun you had, because missions are about the ride, not the destination.
So do something, just once, that adults no longer do. Drive eight hours to see a band. Buy your seafood at the dock. Or do something no one else thinks of doing. Ride along with a policeman on a Friday night (it’s the king of all eye-opening experiences.)
Pick something it doesn’t make sense to do a certain way and do it that way. You’ll remember it forever-and so will other people.
4. Embrace a cause.
People care about-and remember-people who care. When you stand for something you stand apart.
But…
5. Let other people spread the word.
People who brag are not remembered for what they’ve done; they’re remembered for the fact they brag.
Do good things and other people will find out. The less you say, the more people remember.
6. Get over yourself.
Most of the time your professional life is like a hamster wheel of resume or C.V. padding: You avoid all possibility of failure while maximizing the odds of success in order to ensure your achievement graph climbs up and up and up.
Inevitably, that approach starts to extend to your personal life too.
So you run… but you won’t enter a race because you don’t want to finish at the back of the pack. You sing… but you won’t share a mic in a friend’s band because you’re no Adele. You’ll sponsor the employee softball team but you won’t play because you’re not very good.
Personally and professionally, you feel compelled to maintain your all-knowing, all-achieving, all-conquering image. And you’re not a person. You’re a resume.
Stop trying to seem perfect. Accept your faults. Make mistakes. Hang yourself out there. Try and fail. Then be gracious when you fail.
When you do, people will definitely remember you because people who are willing to fail are rare… and because people who display grace and humility, especially in the face of defeat, are incredibly rare.
— I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did — Rebecca and were discussing it even as I was editing it to send out this morning. I almost want to go out and apply for a job now…just so I can present them with a very different resume…one that lists a few glorious failures. Wouldn’t that be unique?! I bet it would help land me the job.
Anyway… Don Spradling pictured above in our MIB (Motivators In Black) photo shoot. Dressing up for a farce photo shoot holding Nerf guns isn’t something you imagine your special forces commander doing…but when I asked him if he would consider it … his reply was an instantaneous and enthusiastic… “You bet ranger!” Don is a most remarkable listener, a certified river guide, a champion tennis player, a failure, a marathoner, does 100 mile mountain runs, an executive coach, 7 Habits trainer, Security Consultant, devoted husband, father, grandfather and more and more and more. And as long as the list is…and it’s very long. With the exception of the grandfather piece and the failure piece… every bit of the DO and have DONE on his list.. I found out from others or from observation. Don is a DOER!
With regard to the failure piece… Don has shared many of his failure stories with me and with others. Not that he brags about them…just that he willing shares his learnings from them…so that others may gather wisdom and build on them in their own journey of becoming.
Kirk out (www.kirkweisler.com)
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