The stories we tell each other

“It was a UFO,” she said.
“I’ve never seen one before, but I swear that’s what it was.”

She must be at least 80. The dog at her feet is an ankle biter.
The dog has spindly legs, a big belly, bulgy eyes, a pink rhinestone collar and a red nylon leash. Except for the leash and collar part, so does Margaret.
She has stopped me as I dump the week’s trash, bagged and heavy, with a thump on the curb.
“Where?” I look upward.
“There,” a gnarled finger points as the dog sniffs my garbage.
I look.
“It’s gone now.”
She looks at me and back up into the trees, then nods.
Her dog is squatting, leaving an anklebiting size pile of dog feces beside my garbage.
She looks away as if she doesn’t notice. I make a mental note. When I’m 80 I’ll ignore my dog squatting.
A neighbor who has just pulled into her driveway across the street sees us talking and joins us. Me. The crapping dog.
“Hi Margaret,” she says, ignoring the dog.
Margaret nods and continues recounting a movie she saw once about abductions and anal probes. We all look up into the wet, black limbs of the oak tree on the corner and past it into the night sky.
The glare from the street light is all we see.
No aliens here.
Yet another couple stops and looks up with us.
What is it?
“Aliens,” the elderly woman begins her story anew.
We all nod solemly.
And for the next ten minutes we recount our own first UFO sightings. We have bonded over the sharing of a mystery.
We all check the tree once again to ensure the UFO hasn’t returned and become lodged there while we were talking.
The dog is finished and kicking ankle-biting sized pieces of wet grass over his deposit.
“Well,” she sighs, looking first at her dog, then at the tiny pile beside the garbage bag.
“I’ll get it,” I say.
She smiles.
The walking after dinner for the exercise couple laughs and strolls off.
“No aliens tonight,” Margaret says, and totters off.
My neighbor watches her walk away.
“Do you really believe she saw a UFO?” she asks.
“Of course.”
She looks at me for a minute, her eyes narrowing.
“I don’t know if I do or not.”
She crosses the street and gets in her car, backs up and stops for a minute to let the traffic go by before pulling and backing in so she can pull directly into traffic in the morning.
I turn to walk back in when the lights in the sky catch my eye and I stop.
There. And again. I rock back and forth, back and forth.
If you stand just right there are UFO’s – the reflection of the neighbor’s car lights on the windows of the unlit upper story house behind the tree.
The neighbor pulls back out and the lights disappear.
I watch them disappear into the night.
The stories we tell each other.
Oh, the stories we tell each other.

Do I deserve this?

It’s a question many of us ask. If not “Do I deserve this?” then we ask, ‘What did I DO to deserve this?” The fact is, the people, things and events are in our lives because of the decisions we made. We can’t control some things, but most of what happens to us we can control. Life is about choices.

Have you ever been angered by the way people treat you? The old adage says, “We teach others how to treat us by our responses.” I read a recent blog by Robert Burns. He asks,

“So why do we have a tendency to respond in such a way that we are treated as we are. When you begin to view this from a much deeper view point it slowly begins to reveal itself and then we realize it stems from early childhood.

Lets think for a moment about how we were raised. Was it with a positive and encouraging set of parents or were we constantly put down with words such as “children should be seen and not heard”. An old and yet influential statement that does not in any way support our self esteem. Many years ago I was conducting a seminar on deserve level and there were 60 to 70 men and women in the audience. I asked how many of them had received a spanking that stung prior to the age of ten.

All of the hands went up. I then asked how many still felt the sting from the spanking and of course, non of the hands went up. I followed with, how many of them had something said to them prior to the age of ten that stung and all of the hands went up. But when I asked how many still felt the sting of what was said to them prior to the age of ten, half of the hands went up. That begins to explain the ultimate power of the words we use and how they’ve affected us during the course of our lives. In my next article I will list many solutions to this starting with a quote from a very well known speaker Zig Ziglar who said “You’re where you are and what you are because of whats gone into your mind, you can change where you are and what you are by changing what goes into your mind. A thought provoking statement.”

Indeed.

More than a lesson, a connection

Who helps their competition? Well apparently at least Ed Brenegar and I do. Both of us are finalists on the Johnny Bunko contest. His “greatest lesson” suggestion for the seventh lesson was, “Say thanks every day.” My “greatest lesson” suggestion was, “Stay Hungry.”

Grand prize – an all-expense paid trip to the 2009 Global TED Conference in Oxford, England. But you know what? The funny thing is, this is a competition – who can send the most emails, who has the most friends, who has the greatest following on Twitter? Or is it? Once I voted I looked Ed up on the internet, found his blog and sent him a message. You’ll have to go here, to read my post to him. I basically invited him to submit a page and his reasons why “Say thanks,” should be the seventh lesson. And suprise! He agreed to! What happened?

We connected. We agreed to “spread the idea.” The idea about what makes a great lesson. Is it (1) Do it Now or (2) Say Thanks Every Day or  (3) Stay Hungry?  I guess it all depends on who you know, or what your business is. All three are great lessons – all three are needed if you really want to be successful. But the third lesson – the lesson that’s really come out of this – is “Get connected.”

Ed and I connected. I invited him to join Seth Godin’s Triiibes.com. And apparently he thought that was a good move. He accepted. Now Ed is bringing his expertise to Triiibes.com and reaching more people. The possibilities are infinite. Want to know why? To see what happens when you “get connected” and “Stay Hungry” and “Say Thank You Every Day,” go to: http://lessonseven.wordpress.com. See who else is hungry.

The Seventh Lesson

It started on a whim. Surfing. A blog somewhere mentioned Johnny Bunko and I followed the link. Following links is like following the Rabbit. How far down the hole will you go and how far will it take you? Red Pill. Blue Pill. It’s one of the undefined hazards of the Internet no one tells you about.

Corporate America doesn’t want you to know there’s life outside of ads. The media wants you spending your precious time on their pages. And so on. But for some of us…life is clicking on the little links buried in the text – hoping for an Easter Egg. I found one.

Johnny Bunko. Six lessons no one ever told you about, and in Manga. Cool.

Wait! There was a contest. What is the “Seventh lesson?” Why not? I fired off my answer and promptly forgot about it…until I got “the letter” from Daniel Pink telling me I was a finalist. Sweet.

Do it Now.

Be Thankful.

Stay Hungry.

I said, “Stay Hungry” of course. (C) on the list of choices. I got the feeling I got in by the whim of fate, the skin of my teeth. But I’m in. Now – do I take part in this popularity contest? Or do I turn it around? What’s more important? For me – it’s not winning..although bragging rights would be cool and so would the trip to the 2009 TED conference in Oxford, England. What would really be cool though is reaching people with the “Seventh Lesson,” and what it really means to keep looking for more. So many people settle. They settle for jobs they hate, careers that bore them, a routine that smothers every creative bone in their body. Why stop at winning some contest? Why not save the world from mediocrity? Why not explain HOW to stay hungry?

I’m on it.