There is something I have been wanting to do for a long time, and that is give a position and my personal guidelines for participating in social media outlets. Recently, I read two Christian articles on this subject - one from a Coptic Orthodox bishop and the other from a Seventh-Day Baptist minister - and it got me thinking that maybe I need to work on something like that too. So, this will be my attempt at creating a personal manifesto that gives my own position on utilizing social media.
Social media is a relatively new phenomenon, being less than 12 years since it really caught on. Back around 2005 or so, I began to hear a lot about this thing called "MySpace," but personally I never got involved in it. Up to that point, most social interaction for me was on message boards of different groups I was involved in, as I am sure it was for many. I have personally been involved on social media for about 9 years as of this writing, having gotten my initiation into it via a site called Bebo.com, which at the time was a more cerebral alternative to MySpace (I'm curious - does MySpace even exist anymore???). I first set up a Bebo page back around March of 2006, and for about 3 years it was my primary social media involvement until a dear friend of mine sent me this invite in late 2008 to sign up with something new called Facebook. Facebook, the creation of a whiz-kid by the name of Mark Zuckerberg, was not quite as well-known back then, as the MySpace frenzy was still the thing, but I thought at the time, "what the heck" and joined up on it. And, almost on a daily basis now, I visit Facebook, and have for about the past seven years. There are many advantages to tools such as Facebook, as long as the users keep in mind that these things are just tools, and not something your life should revolve around. Facebook, despite its attributes, can suck people into it and it can become an obsessive thing, so we need to be careful about that. Later on, I am going to talk more about that aspect.
As mentioned, Facebook has its virtues, and one of those is the ability to reconnect with distant relatives, old school friends, and old co-workers you may have had from years past. It is also a great place to exchange information too - if you want good recipes, old photos, genealogical material, etc., Facebook can prove to be a valuable resource. Of the now 708 "friends" I have on Facebook as a matter of fact, approximately 40% are relatives (I have a lot of cousins on both sides of my family, and almost all of them have Facebook accounts now!), while another 20% are old college and high school classmates and co-workers, and the remaining 40% are people who I have made friends with who have common interests - music, politics, religion, etc. So, as far as networking is concerned, it is fantastic. Also, there is now a service called SocialBook which will actually print your Facebook content in a bound volume, something I plan on doing for posterity-sake later. However, with these positives are also negatives, and let me briefly touch on those.
One thing about Facebook is that almost anyone can "friend" you (given your permission of course) and a lot of times weirdos try to "friend" you with ulterior motives - it is not uncommon, as a matter of fact, for pages to be "hacked" by weirdos and privacy compromised. Another negative is the fact that everyone has opinions, and at times people don't agree on certain things and it can cause fights to erupt - this is true especially in the past 8 years or so, when so many political and social issues are out there. I have been in more than one "cyber-war" and have experienced a lot of "defriending" from people in regard to that. I try now personally not to get into those scuffles if possible, although at times trouble can find you even when you are not looking for it because, especially in specified "groups" or on specific "pages" promoting something, there are people who do what is called "trolling," and they thrive on instigating fights and causing problems. "Trolling" in essence is a type of harassment in which a person called a "troll" targets a site they don't like, and they find ways to constantly comment negatively and cause trouble. There are ways for dealing with "trolls," and we'll also get into that later. Bottom line though is this - be selective about what you post, and don't necessarily advertise every detail of your personal life. I want to quote something from Coptic Bishop Yusef about this, as he has some good wisdom especially in regard to minors participating on Facebook groups, etc. Bishop Yusef says that "A parent does not give a child car keys until they are of age to and have the skills to drive. A parent does not allow their children to take the car unless they know where they are driving to and from. A partent does not allow the child to drive if they are unsafe, lie about where they are going or have been. A parent does not allow a child to drive with speeding tickets or upon the discovery of its inappropriate use. This is termed parental responsibility. Is it any less for things such as Facebook? Know what your adolescent or young adult are thinking and saying." (Bishop Yusef, "Facebook: Fun or Fateful?" in The Saint Anthony Messenger, Vol 25, Issue 6, June 2015. p. 8). In a similar vein, Seventh-Day Baptist pastor Scot Hausrath writes "When it comes to utilizing social media, not only is wisdom key, but so is self-discipline. One of the biggest challenges I have regarding Facebook, for example, it to realize that there is a time to access it. For example, when I'm writing a sermon, lesson, article, etc., I need to focus my thoughts on that one project. Checking my FB news feed at that time is more of a distraction than a blessing. It's a very tempting thing to do, because I love hearing what's going on in my friends' lives, so I need self-discipline to keep my thoughts focused on the task at hand. Social media are amazing tools, and they have revolutionized our everyday lives. Let's just make sure that it's a revolution of enhancement, not a revolution of distraction." (Scott Hausrath, "Devotional - Sharing the Journey with You" in The Sabbath Recorder, vol. 237, No. 6, June 2015. P. 13). Both of these Christian leaders, from radically different church traditions, are telling us something about using social media - do it responsibly, and don't let it sidetrack us from what we need to be doing. And, both of these quoted articles inspired me to talk about a few of my own guidelines I have come up with.
1. When on Facebook, Know Your Security. Facebook allows for security settings to monitor who sees what on your page, and in doing so, you can be selective about content. In my case, only a handful of my closest FB "friends" can see everything I post, and no one who is not a "friend" can gain access to the content on my personal page. There is a "Settings" bar on your FB page you can use to set up these boundaries, and it will be a valuable asset to get to know the "Settings" feature.
2. You Don't Have to See What All Your Friends Are Doing Either! The more "friends" you get on a site like Facebook, the more you are going to see what they post, as you will see everything that all your friends do unless you take an important step. On each of your "friends'" pages, there is an opt-out feature to where you can "Unfollow" their posts and you therefore will not see them in your newsfeeds. If you wish to limit what you see, that is the way to do it. I maybe actually "follow" less than 10% of my total "friends" list on Facebook personally, thanks to discovering that feature. And, most of them will be none the wiser about it, so no harm done - you are not saying you don't want to be friends with them, but rather that you don't need to know all their activities. Recently, one of our relatives on Facebook - this particular relative is one of those people who thinks they know everything and should control everybody, the type of person I really cannot stand personally - lambasted my wife for supposedly "overposting" on her own Facebook page. If the relative would have taken the time to explore their own Facebook page, they could have just simply "unfollowed" my wife and not have to look at the posts on the newsfeed. That being said, let me say this - your personal Facebook page is your page, and you can post whatever you want, however much you want, whenever you want, and that is your freedom. I of course don't necessarily want to see it, nor do I have to, but I don't have to get nasty about it either. A simple "Unfollow" solves the problem peacefully. Perhaps if said relative would learn to shut up and take that into consideration, it could save that person a lot of trouble.
3. Fights Are Unnecessary and CAN Be Avoided! I want to spend a little time talking about social media etiquette, as some people need a lesson in it. There are a few things to address, and we'll start with those:
a. Don't pick fights on people's personal Facebook pages! I view my own Facebook page as an extension of my house, and when someone comes onto my page and deliberately tries to pick a fight over something they don't like that I posted, that is the same to me as disrespecting me in my own living room, and it won't be tolerated. In "groups" and "pages" on Facebook, that is another thing, because those are public forums, but even then I feel best to try to avoid conflict if all possible, even when every fiber of my being is wanting to say something. Therefore, when on Facebook, exercise some common courtesy please - what people post on their personal pages is their business, and if you don't like it, you have your own page to vent that dislike, so don't pick fights on someone else's turf.
b. If someone is becoming really beligerent, you are well within your rights to "block" them. There are some people who get a joy our of picking fights with people they disagree with, and then beating the issue to death by constantly posting negative crap, even personal attacks against the person they disagree with. If that becomes a problem, there is a "Block" feature you can utilize to stop them from seeing your posts or responding to them. This is especially true in groups or what are called "Public Pages," where people often can soapbox. If you are one of those people who has the propensity to cause trouble and pick fights, rant on your own FB page and don't ruin discussions for other people in the group. Fights are disrespectful as well to page administrators, and when you are trash-talking someone you disagree with on one of those pages, you are disrespecting your host. In other words, you need to learn some manners and get over yourself.
c. If someone comments on your page and you feel that the comment is inappropriate or inflammatory, you reserve the right to remove it. This goes back to "a" above - people who are trying to either bait you or even disagree with something you say, even if they are close friends, need to respect the fact that this page is yours, and if they disagree, they have their own page to voice that. If you feel a comment is inappropriate, you can and do have a right to remove it at your discretion. Your personal Facebook page is like your "house," and you have the perogative to set your own "house rules" which people visiting your page have to respect. If they don't they should be deleted.
These are just a few basic rules I have for my own Facebook participation, and if you do likewise, you will have a more pleasant social media experience. The same could also apply to other social media outlets, such as this Twitter thing (which I still don't understand!). On a professional site such as LinkedIn, it is even more important to maintain strict standards, because potential employers and other business people utilize LinkedIn and get a first impression from your profile on there. Another thing I want to mention in relation to all this too is a simple one - when posting on Facebook, be careful how much personal information you divulge. For instance, if you have 6 bowel movements a day, you do not have an obligation to describe each in vivid detail as some do, and your "friends" don't really want to see that stuff either. However, there is nothing one can do about what one posts on one's personal page, because again that is their domain, and they can write or post what they want. However, if you don't want to see that stuff on someone else's page, you can "unfollow" either the friend or the post, depending on which is more practical, so that is up to your discretion.
I hope this will help with your own Facebook experience to make it more pleasant, and as you have different experiences unique to your own situation, you may even have other (and maybe better!) standards than these, and make sure you are clear about those to any of your social media "friends" and followers. Take care until our next visit!
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Leadership Lessons
I have been looking over a number of entries in my personal journal over the past few weeks, and there are some things to talk about that I feel would enrich people who read them. A lot of it is based on my own history, and the life lessons I have learned, as I feel they are important to maintaining stable leadership traits. If more politicians learned this stuff, as well as corporate execs (see an upcoming blog on that one!) I think the world would be a better place and self-serving people would not be tickling ears to get elected to public office only to sit with their thumbs up their bum while collecting over-inflated salaries at the taxpayers's expense. So, as I recollect the information I wrote a couple of months ago, I will attempt to share it here.
One trait I have had since I was a kid was collecting things and pursuing such a collection to its fullest extent. I remember, for instance, at around the time I was 7 years old, and I began to get these little toy prizes out of vending machines - they still have those around today, a small trinket that comes encased in a little plastic egg that pops out when you stick a coin in and turn the lever. I kept all that stuff in an old lunchbox I had in first grade that I no longer used, and ended up collecting quite a stash of those things. In those days, you could get all sorts of neat stuff out of those machines - little cap pistols, miniature lighters, tiny spy cameras, etc. - as well as just plain crap such as plastic rings and Scooby Doo magnets. I collected it all for some weird reason. In time, that penchant began to fade as Mom got me for Christmas one year a cowboys-and-Indians plastic fort panorama set, along with a WWII naval battle toy panorama too - then I got into that, and practically built a small civilization out of it in a very short time. Much earlier than that - around 6 or so - I was into a Noah's Ark play set, and had a HUGE paper grocery bag filled with plastic animals that at one point I could line up, two-by-two, around my great-grandmother's house in Hendricks, WV. In time, the Noah's Ark playsets, the cowboy and Indian figurines, and the stash of vending-machine trinkets became passing fancies, and I began to pursue more sophisticated interests as I began to transition from childhood into my teens, and one of those interests was the large music collection I still have today. The reason I mention these childhood collection vignettes is because one trait I have always had is pursuing an interest I have as comprehensively as possible - I want a collection to be as complete as it can be, and I want to learn everything I can about it. This has been a great aid in my graduate studies too, as I have utilized that same trait in researching class papers and projects. That however leads to another trait that is related to that I want to now share.
As a kid, I was a history buff - I would sit and read something to do with world history for hours, and it was not uncommon for me to go out the next day and try to re-enact what I was reading about in my childhood play and exploration. I even at one time wanted to form a political movement of my own at a young age that would serve as a vehicle for bringing together a group of my closest friends into a common unit - as a child we moved around a lot, and I had few close friends then, but the ones I had were scattered up and down the Eastern Seaboard of the US back then. In Georgia for instance, there was Sim Taylor, who was my best buddy when I stayed with my dad in Brunswick during the second half of my third-grade year. In my second-grade school year, I made two close friends in my class in Augusta, WV, their names being Joe Waybright and Chuck Butler. Unfortunately, at around the time we were in 5th grade, Joe and his whole family were killed in a fatal gas leak in their trailer, and to this day I still feel that was a tragic loss, as Joe had two siblings, a younger sister named Tina and an older brother named Richard, and all of them had their lives tragically cut short. However, I digress, as I want to tell you what I learned at a very young age by dabbling in reading history and trying to understand politics - the ability to unite diverse elements behind a common cause is an important factor in effective leadership, and a good leader must be able to know himself (or herself) well enough to utilize aspects of his (or her) own distinctive identity which relate to others he or she knows. If a leader can successfully accomplish that, then said leader will prove more effective in the execution of his leadership role and its component tasks. Subconsciously, I have lived by those precepts most of my life, although I have never really known how to articulate them in such a way as to present them to others. But, that being said, here are a few lessons in leadership I have learned and want to now share with you:
1. Know yourself, and as much about your own past as possible. Do not dismiss or ignore even the most insignificant details, because in some cases when an apparently insignificant detail is recalled, it may be the key to unlocking a personal mystery about yourself.
2. As you study your own past and reflect on it, remember that the things that have captured your interest over the years may reveal some valuable information about who you are.
3. As you go through life, note those people who have become your closest friends, and learn why they are your friends. For one thing, God has put these people in your life for a reason. Secondly, what are common elements that some of your diversity of friends share that led you to the friendships in the first place? These can be valuable later in life as you begin to form personal networks.
4. Diverse elements can have common goals. The question to ask here is this - of your interests and friends over the years, what common convictions or goals do you identify in the people and interests you know and have respectively? If you plan on being more organizational in leadership, being aware of these things will aid in establishing effective leadership quality.
Of course, for all their brevity, no doubt these four things can be elaborated further if time permitted, and I could even come up with more of them if I really meditated on it some more. However, as I have a major weakness I have self-identified of having so much going on in my head that I need to clarify my thoughts so as to aid in organization and articulation, it will take some work. Organization of thought and being able to communicate it effectively is definitely something I need to work more on personally too, as I have valuable insight on some things but I need to somehow channel it in such as way as to grab the attention of others. In written communication, I have progressed somewhat well, but verbally I still have work to do, as I am not as gifted at public speaking as I am at writing. That is why I want to encourage any of you reading this who have similar issues to add a fifth lesson to all this - keep a regular journal! A regular, consistent journal is a valuable tool for organizing thoughts, and I will tell you something about that. At this time, I have regularly kept a written journal for about 19 years, and its contents fill up probably 30 books at this point. If you think that keeping a journal is a one-book deal, forget that - as a tip, it is not necessary to write down everything every day, and you can even keep it once a week if it suits your needs better, but the important component to this is consistency. Keep a regular writing schedule, and try not to lapse longer than one month writing. Also, as ideas hit you, keep that book with you at all times and write them down while they are still fresh, because they can be lost forever otherwise. I would also encourage writing down your dreams - if you have a particularly significant dream the previous night that you just can't get out of your head, write it down immediately. Dreams reveal a lot about us, but they can also convey a message at times. I have learned over the years to take dream symbolism seriously, because even God can speak through your dreams to give you direction, encouragement, or warning - I did a teaching on that last year on my Sacramental Present Truths blog you should take a look at to learn more about that. Likewise, you should also. In addition to a journal, I would also strongly recommend keeping a daily planner of some sort to record your day-to-day activities - for instance, did you get something significant in the mail, or did you start a new job, leave an old one, or have some significant event? If so, write it down on the calendar in your daily planner. A daily planner can also be any means from a formal pocket planner to a simple wall calendar you can often pick up for free at your bank, so there is no specific criteria for one of those. I have kept daily planners since I was about 16 years old, and I can look back over 30 years and pretty much pinpoint even the most mundane of details in my life. This will also prove very valuable one day as your kids, grandkids, or a niece or nephew are going to come and inevitably ask, "where did we come from?" or "what is our story?" By pulling out those planners, journals, and other records, you can have the complete story for them. Which now leads to something else.
A huge box of planners, journals, and old photos and vital documents can be a bit cumbersome to wade through, so I would suggest somehow using those resources as a starting place for writing down your own story in a detailed fashion. I have been actually working on that project myself for close to ten years now, and I keep finding things to add to it as I also talk to people and accumulate missing information to fill in gaps in my own records. This is your legacy which you are preserving for someone to maybe be inspired by in the future, and although you may not think of your life as being a success or significant, someone reading your story one day will see its value and you could impact lives with it. Inspiration is also another key factor of good leadership, and some of the best leaders today still speak to and guide people despite their own passing from this world, and why? Because they kept records like this, wrote things down, and maybe someone thought these things to be significant and had the means to organize and package them so they could be shared with a much bigger audience - consider, for example, the martyred theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If it wasn't for someone organizing a bunch of his handwritten notes that were smuggled out of a Nazi jail where he was being held, many people would not have learned the inspirational truth he communicated in what is known today as his classic text Ethics. It may not be your responsibility to organize what you say, in other words, but rather to just get those thoughts on paper to share. So, don't worry even if your hieroglyphic-like scratching is seemingly illegible; your job is not to make it look pretty but rather to express it. Someone else can decipher it and figure it out in the future if you don't get around to it, and I am sure with the rapid advances in technology that there awaits in the wings some sophisticated gadget which can decipher bad penmanship - let us hope so, because my own writing is bad too!
I hope these little life lessons from my own "story" will be useful to you, and although the corporate world and sometimes the wider society rejects you, it doesn't mean that you don't have something important to say. So, be faithful to exercise these principles, and it will lead to a type of leadership skill that may not get you Trump's fortune or Putin's power, but it will impact someone in the years to come. Hope to visit with you again soon.
One trait I have had since I was a kid was collecting things and pursuing such a collection to its fullest extent. I remember, for instance, at around the time I was 7 years old, and I began to get these little toy prizes out of vending machines - they still have those around today, a small trinket that comes encased in a little plastic egg that pops out when you stick a coin in and turn the lever. I kept all that stuff in an old lunchbox I had in first grade that I no longer used, and ended up collecting quite a stash of those things. In those days, you could get all sorts of neat stuff out of those machines - little cap pistols, miniature lighters, tiny spy cameras, etc. - as well as just plain crap such as plastic rings and Scooby Doo magnets. I collected it all for some weird reason. In time, that penchant began to fade as Mom got me for Christmas one year a cowboys-and-Indians plastic fort panorama set, along with a WWII naval battle toy panorama too - then I got into that, and practically built a small civilization out of it in a very short time. Much earlier than that - around 6 or so - I was into a Noah's Ark play set, and had a HUGE paper grocery bag filled with plastic animals that at one point I could line up, two-by-two, around my great-grandmother's house in Hendricks, WV. In time, the Noah's Ark playsets, the cowboy and Indian figurines, and the stash of vending-machine trinkets became passing fancies, and I began to pursue more sophisticated interests as I began to transition from childhood into my teens, and one of those interests was the large music collection I still have today. The reason I mention these childhood collection vignettes is because one trait I have always had is pursuing an interest I have as comprehensively as possible - I want a collection to be as complete as it can be, and I want to learn everything I can about it. This has been a great aid in my graduate studies too, as I have utilized that same trait in researching class papers and projects. That however leads to another trait that is related to that I want to now share.
As a kid, I was a history buff - I would sit and read something to do with world history for hours, and it was not uncommon for me to go out the next day and try to re-enact what I was reading about in my childhood play and exploration. I even at one time wanted to form a political movement of my own at a young age that would serve as a vehicle for bringing together a group of my closest friends into a common unit - as a child we moved around a lot, and I had few close friends then, but the ones I had were scattered up and down the Eastern Seaboard of the US back then. In Georgia for instance, there was Sim Taylor, who was my best buddy when I stayed with my dad in Brunswick during the second half of my third-grade year. In my second-grade school year, I made two close friends in my class in Augusta, WV, their names being Joe Waybright and Chuck Butler. Unfortunately, at around the time we were in 5th grade, Joe and his whole family were killed in a fatal gas leak in their trailer, and to this day I still feel that was a tragic loss, as Joe had two siblings, a younger sister named Tina and an older brother named Richard, and all of them had their lives tragically cut short. However, I digress, as I want to tell you what I learned at a very young age by dabbling in reading history and trying to understand politics - the ability to unite diverse elements behind a common cause is an important factor in effective leadership, and a good leader must be able to know himself (or herself) well enough to utilize aspects of his (or her) own distinctive identity which relate to others he or she knows. If a leader can successfully accomplish that, then said leader will prove more effective in the execution of his leadership role and its component tasks. Subconsciously, I have lived by those precepts most of my life, although I have never really known how to articulate them in such a way as to present them to others. But, that being said, here are a few lessons in leadership I have learned and want to now share with you:
1. Know yourself, and as much about your own past as possible. Do not dismiss or ignore even the most insignificant details, because in some cases when an apparently insignificant detail is recalled, it may be the key to unlocking a personal mystery about yourself.
2. As you study your own past and reflect on it, remember that the things that have captured your interest over the years may reveal some valuable information about who you are.
3. As you go through life, note those people who have become your closest friends, and learn why they are your friends. For one thing, God has put these people in your life for a reason. Secondly, what are common elements that some of your diversity of friends share that led you to the friendships in the first place? These can be valuable later in life as you begin to form personal networks.
4. Diverse elements can have common goals. The question to ask here is this - of your interests and friends over the years, what common convictions or goals do you identify in the people and interests you know and have respectively? If you plan on being more organizational in leadership, being aware of these things will aid in establishing effective leadership quality.
Of course, for all their brevity, no doubt these four things can be elaborated further if time permitted, and I could even come up with more of them if I really meditated on it some more. However, as I have a major weakness I have self-identified of having so much going on in my head that I need to clarify my thoughts so as to aid in organization and articulation, it will take some work. Organization of thought and being able to communicate it effectively is definitely something I need to work more on personally too, as I have valuable insight on some things but I need to somehow channel it in such as way as to grab the attention of others. In written communication, I have progressed somewhat well, but verbally I still have work to do, as I am not as gifted at public speaking as I am at writing. That is why I want to encourage any of you reading this who have similar issues to add a fifth lesson to all this - keep a regular journal! A regular, consistent journal is a valuable tool for organizing thoughts, and I will tell you something about that. At this time, I have regularly kept a written journal for about 19 years, and its contents fill up probably 30 books at this point. If you think that keeping a journal is a one-book deal, forget that - as a tip, it is not necessary to write down everything every day, and you can even keep it once a week if it suits your needs better, but the important component to this is consistency. Keep a regular writing schedule, and try not to lapse longer than one month writing. Also, as ideas hit you, keep that book with you at all times and write them down while they are still fresh, because they can be lost forever otherwise. I would also encourage writing down your dreams - if you have a particularly significant dream the previous night that you just can't get out of your head, write it down immediately. Dreams reveal a lot about us, but they can also convey a message at times. I have learned over the years to take dream symbolism seriously, because even God can speak through your dreams to give you direction, encouragement, or warning - I did a teaching on that last year on my Sacramental Present Truths blog you should take a look at to learn more about that. Likewise, you should also. In addition to a journal, I would also strongly recommend keeping a daily planner of some sort to record your day-to-day activities - for instance, did you get something significant in the mail, or did you start a new job, leave an old one, or have some significant event? If so, write it down on the calendar in your daily planner. A daily planner can also be any means from a formal pocket planner to a simple wall calendar you can often pick up for free at your bank, so there is no specific criteria for one of those. I have kept daily planners since I was about 16 years old, and I can look back over 30 years and pretty much pinpoint even the most mundane of details in my life. This will also prove very valuable one day as your kids, grandkids, or a niece or nephew are going to come and inevitably ask, "where did we come from?" or "what is our story?" By pulling out those planners, journals, and other records, you can have the complete story for them. Which now leads to something else.
A huge box of planners, journals, and old photos and vital documents can be a bit cumbersome to wade through, so I would suggest somehow using those resources as a starting place for writing down your own story in a detailed fashion. I have been actually working on that project myself for close to ten years now, and I keep finding things to add to it as I also talk to people and accumulate missing information to fill in gaps in my own records. This is your legacy which you are preserving for someone to maybe be inspired by in the future, and although you may not think of your life as being a success or significant, someone reading your story one day will see its value and you could impact lives with it. Inspiration is also another key factor of good leadership, and some of the best leaders today still speak to and guide people despite their own passing from this world, and why? Because they kept records like this, wrote things down, and maybe someone thought these things to be significant and had the means to organize and package them so they could be shared with a much bigger audience - consider, for example, the martyred theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If it wasn't for someone organizing a bunch of his handwritten notes that were smuggled out of a Nazi jail where he was being held, many people would not have learned the inspirational truth he communicated in what is known today as his classic text Ethics. It may not be your responsibility to organize what you say, in other words, but rather to just get those thoughts on paper to share. So, don't worry even if your hieroglyphic-like scratching is seemingly illegible; your job is not to make it look pretty but rather to express it. Someone else can decipher it and figure it out in the future if you don't get around to it, and I am sure with the rapid advances in technology that there awaits in the wings some sophisticated gadget which can decipher bad penmanship - let us hope so, because my own writing is bad too!
I hope these little life lessons from my own "story" will be useful to you, and although the corporate world and sometimes the wider society rejects you, it doesn't mean that you don't have something important to say. So, be faithful to exercise these principles, and it will lead to a type of leadership skill that may not get you Trump's fortune or Putin's power, but it will impact someone in the years to come. Hope to visit with you again soon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)