Tell People What They Want To Know

"Daddy," a little boy asked "where did I come from?"

The father gulped and realized that this was the important question he had anticipated since his son was born. He then went into a long-winded explanation of  "the birds and the bees" doing his best to explain the miracle of birth in words that his young son could understand. When he was done, he asked his son, "what prompted you to ask about this today?"

"Oh, well there's a new kid in the neighborhood and he's from Nashville, and I just wondered where I came from."

The lesson here is to tell people what they actually want to know, not what we think they want to know.  So often we give people information they do not need or want, and it doesn't help us or them.  There's an expression I always liked, "before you put your tongue on the accelerator put your ear in gear." So be sure to listen and actually hear what it is that people want to know and respond to them with that information.

Education

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know.  It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.  It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know; and it's knowing how to use the information you get.

~Anatole France

Wisdom

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.

~Elbert Hubbard

Quests

For man no rest and no ending.  He must go on conquest after conquest...And when he has conquered all the depths of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be begining!


~ H.G. Wells

Communication

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.

~ Peter Drucker

The Moment

We are nourished by studying the past, though we must also be fully involved with the moment.

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Steps Out Of Darkness

I was in darkness,
but I took three steps
and found myself in paradise.
The first step was a good thought,
the second, a good word,
and the third, a good deed.

~Author unknown but greatly appreciated

Pain

Pain is part of being alive, and we need to learn that.  Pain does not last forever, nor is it necessarily unbeatable, and we need to be taught that.

~Harold Kushner

Strength And Confidence

I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within.  It is there all the time.

~Anna Freud

Insight

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.

~ Oliver Wendall Holmes

A Friend

A friend knows how to allow for mere quantity in your talk and only replies to the quality.

~William Dean Howells

Individuality

Individuality is the salt of common life. You may have to live in a crowd, but do not have to live like it, nor subsist on its food.

~Henry Van Dyke

Fear

We are afraid of losing what we have,
whether it's our life or our possessions and property.
But this fear evaporates when we understand
that our life stories and the history of the world
were written by the same hand.

~Paul Coelho

What Is Memory?

What is memory?  Not a storehouse, not a trunk in the attic, but an instrument that constantly refines the past into a narrative , accessible and acceptable to oneself.

~Stanley Kauffmann

Always Do...

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk.  That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.


~Ernest Hemmingway

A Grown Up

A grown up is a child with layers on.

~Woody Harrelson

Happiness

Happiness doesn't depend on outward conditions.  It depends on inner conditions. It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy.  It is what you think about.

~ Dale Carnegie




8B9GMB7T75DJ 

Risk

If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

~ Erica Jong

Trust Yourself

Trust yourself.  You know more than you think you do.

~ Dr. Benjamin Spock

Great People

Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.

~Mark Twain

Managers

Most managers manage for yesterdays conditions, because yesterday is where they got their experiences and had their successes.  But management is about tomorrow, not yesterday.  Tomorrow concerns what should be done, not what has been done.  "Should" is determined by the external environment-what competitors (old, new and potential) can and might do, the choices this will give customers, the rules constantly being made by governments and other players, demographic changes, advances in generalized knowledge and technology a, changing ecology, and public sentiments, and the like.

~Theodore Levitt

Vision

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

~Anais Nin

Flexible

Blessed are the flexible for they shall not get bent out of shape.

~Author unknown but greatly appreciated

Love

If I love you and not an image of myself, I must want you to be what you are.

~ Judson Jerome

Diligence

Diligence is the mother of good luck!

~ Ben Franklin

To Live

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

~Boris Pasternak