Hello All:
Consider these names in the news:
Alex Rodriguez, Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds,
Anthony Weiner, Mark Sanford, Elliot Spitzer,
Rod Blagojevich, Martha Stewart and Bob Filner.
What thoughts come to mind? Admiration or disappointment? Respect or cynicism? Awe or let-down? Impressed or depressed?
Which is more likely, respect follows like or like follows respect? You are popular and likely therefore to be respected? Or are you respected and likely therefore to be liked? Which has a longer shelf-life, being liked or being respected?
If you really think about it… RESPECT HAS A LONGER SHELF-LIFE, and you are more likely to be liked and popular after you are respected.
Like most always follows respect. And, people will respect you MORE when you improve your own self-respect.
So strengthen your character and start with your own SELF-RESPECT. You either dilute it or build it up. It is up to you.
You either snatch a rationalization from the jaws of logic, or you go on the road less traveled and stick with your strong character.
At the end of the day, everything comes down to your character.
It’s Common Sense and remember, Common Sense is very Uncommon.
Dr. Mitchell Perry
Share Your Strength of Character
Every morning when you wake up and look at yourself in the mirror, what do you see? Are you pleased or embarrassed? Proud or ashamed? Impressed or depressed? Excited or bored? Energetic or listless? Engaged or isolated? Powerful or weak? How is your self-respect?
Every morning, whether you like it or not, you wake up inside your own skin. You always wake up you, which means you are always there attending that party… so does it make any sense to you to dislike the person in the mirror? You are unable to get away from that person, which means you always have to live with yourself, your feelings, your choices, and your behavior. And, just like compounded interest in a bank account, there are long-term effects to those choices and behaviors.
At the end of the day, the measure of your life
is inevitably determined by your CHARACTER and all its strengths and weaknesses. So, what is the condition of your Character? What are your basic governing values? What are the basic governing principles by which you want to live?
The essential qualities for Strength of Character include:
INTEGRITY: Honesty, legitimacy, the straight stuff, the full disclosure; the willingness to be unpopular at times, by telling the truth; the absence of lying, tap-dancing, pretending, rationalizing, spinning, distracting and avoiding.
RESPONSIBILITY: Your life is completely your responsibility. If life is going well for you, you probably made it happen. If life is going poorly, you did that too. And if life is a whole new level of underwhelming… you did that too. The cards dealt to you are yours to play — good or bad. So take your lumps and get on with it. The energy you spend on whining, complaining, catastrophizing, awfulizing, and admiring the problems will be so much better spent on problem solving.
GENEROSITY OF SPIRIT: This part of your Strength of Character is about giving more than taking, contributing more than consuming, caring more than expecting, investing more than expensing, and forgiving more than condemning. This part of you is faith, living in the light, deriving meaning, and hearing the quiet. You get more than you give when you give more than you get. (Hmmm… random acts of kindness.)
So, establish a higher standard for yourself and your life. Commit to INTEGRITY, RESPONSIBILITY, and GENEROSITY OF SPIRIT… and then share your values and spread them around. You are quite a role model!
Raise your bar!
Today’s Tickle
One of the Greats
Lawrence Peter Berra played major league baseball for 19 years for the New York Yankees. He played on 10 World Series Championship teams, is a MLB Hall of Famer and has some awe-inspiring stats. His name is consistently brought up as one of the best catchers in baseball history, and he was voted to the Team of the Century in 1999.
Amazing accomplishments aside, they probably aren’t how you know Lawrence . You know him as Yogi, a nickname given to him by a friend who likened his cross-legged sitting to a yogi. Yogi is famous for his fractured English, malapropisms and sometimes nonsensical quotes. He’s closing in on 88, and there seems to be no end to his fans’ love for him.
Here are 25 Yogi Berra quotes that will make you shake your head and smile.
1. “It’s like deja vu all over again.”
2. “We made too many wrong mistakes.”
3. “You can observe a lot just by watching.”
4. “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”
5. “He hits from both sides of the plate. He’s amphibious.”
6. “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.”
7. “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up some place else.”
8. Responding to a question about remarks attributed to him that he did not think were his: “I really didn’t say everything I said.”
9. “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
10. “I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house.”
11. On why he no longer went to Ruggeri’s, a St. Louis restaurant: “Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.”
12. “I always thought that record would stand until it was broken.”
13. “We have deep depth.”
14. “All pitchers are liars or crybabies.”
15. When giving directions to Joe Garagiola to his New Jersey home, which is accessible by two routes: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
16. “Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.”
17. “Never answer anonymous letters.”
18. On being the guest of honor at an awards banquet: “Thank you for making this day necessary.”
19. “The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.”
20. “Half the lies they tell about me aren’t true.”
21. As a general comment on baseball: “90% of the game is half mental.”
22. “I don’t know (if they were men or women running naked across the field), they had bags over their heads.”
23. “It gets late early out there.”
24. Carmen Berra, Yogi’s wife asked: “Yogi, you are from St. Louis , we live in New Jersey , and you played ball in New York . If you go before I do, where would you like me to have you buried?” Yogi’s answer: “Surprise me.”
25. “It ain’t over till it’s over…..”
