The characters in director Michael Mann's West Coast noir thriller Collateral (2004) starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx, provide excellent examples how Hollywood villains can teach self-improvement and how to get the most in life. In fact, often you can learn more from Hollywood villains than you can from the heroes. The plot in a nutshell is about Max (Jamie Foxx), […]
"A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless." - Charles De Gaulle
Michael Chang is in the record books as the youngest winner (17) of a grand slam, but his French Open triumph in 1989 is largely remembered for one extraordinary game changing moment against the top ranked player in the world, Ivan Lendl.
Injured and exhausted, near the end of the match, Chang broke two of the most basic commandments of winning tennis.
First, in a sport where powerful overhand serving is usually the key to winning, Chang served UNDERHAND, and the confused Lendl's returns went into the net.
Second, on the match-point, facing Lendl's 120+ mph serve, Chang moved CLOSER to the net and stood at the line of the server's box.
The bewildered Lendl double-faulted, producing one of the most memorable upsets in tennis history.
Challenging the conventional wisdom on these previously sacred aspects of the game - serving and returning serves - Michael Chang radically changed his strategy, surprised his opponent - and elevated his standing in the tennis world.
ACTION
As you prepare for the coming week, ask yourself...
"How can I use the element of surprise to break the rules of conventional thinking in order to make a breakthrough?
Think of every business and personal commitment you have in place for the week and determine how you can use the element of surprise to blow a few minds, and as Charles De Gualle so beautifully stated...
"keep your public excited and breathless."
Everything Counts!
Gary Ryan Blair
Gary Ryan Blair is a visionary and gifted conceptual thinker. As one of the top strategic thinkers in the world he is dedicated to helping his clients win big by creating focused, purpose driven lives.
A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her.
She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed that, as one problem was solved, a new one arose.
Her mother took her to the kitchen.
She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire.
Soon the pots came to a boil.
In the first, she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans.
She let them sit and boil, without saying a word.
In about twenty minutes, she turned off the burners.
She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Tell me, what do you see?" "Carrots, eggs, and coffee," the young woman replied.
The mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. She then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, she asked her to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma.
The daughter then asked, "What does it mean, mother?"
Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity - boiling water - but each reacted differently.
The carrot went in strong, hard and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak.
The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But, after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened!
The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.
"Which are you?" the mother asked her daughter. "When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?"
Think of this: Which am I?
Am I the carrot that seems strong but, with pain and adversity, do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?
Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat?
Did I have a fluid spirit but, after a death, a breakup, or a financial hardship, does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and a hardened heart?
Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavour. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you.
When the hours are the darkest and trials are their greatest, do you elevate to another level? How do you handle adversity? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?
Once I got past the awe of witnessing Mother Nature’s astonishing power to wreak devastation in Oklahoma, I was awed by something more positive and uplifting: the instinctive capacity of our species to care about, come to the aid of, and — for those caught in the middle of the calamity — to even sacrifice their own lives for others.
Every day we are surrounded by examples of the dark side of human nature — selfishness, greed, dishonesty and cruelty — which make it hard to resist cynicism. It’s a pity that it often takes a disaster and the heroic actions it evokes to provide compelling contrary evidence, to remind us of the best in human nature.
How can one resist tears hearing of the teachers in Oklahoma who put themselves at risk by shielding children with their own bodies?
I suspect lots of other adults would have reacted in a similar fashion, but I think teachers really are special.
With the current focus on competence and accountability in education, we tend to undervalue one of the most important qualities of most teachers: their genuine sense of responsibility and affection for the children they teach.
Over and over we’ve seen the powerful instinct of teachers to protect children in school shootings and, more recently, in the horrific tornadoes.
Teachers willingly and without hesitation treated children as their own and put themselves at risk to protect them.
It should be a comfort to parents to know how much teachers really care.
Henry Adams once said, “Teachers affect all eternity. You never know where their influence stops.” He was referring to the way they shape lives by transmitting information and learning skills, but teachers often do so much more. Though only rarely called upon to risk their lives, they regularly touch the lives of students with their commitment and love.
It’s been said that kids don’t care what you know unless they know that you care. Let’s do all we can to commend, congratulate and celebrate teachers who show how much they care.
Remember, character counts.
Michael Josephson
www.whatwillmatter.com
In the Old Reality, things were seen as opposites - black or white, hot or cold, good or bad, this way or that way. In the expanded view of New Reality consciousness, life is seen in a unified way. Opposite sides of the coin are viewed, not as polar opposites, but rather as just being different aspects of the one coin.
In the New Reality view of the world, the opposite extremes of black and white become, instead, endless shades of gray. Hot and cold become variable degrees of warmth. Good and bad become different shades of human nature; free of the judgment, resentment and fear that comes with Old Reality, polarized thinking.
In the Old Reality, destiny and free will were seen as mutually exclusive. The reasoning was that, if destiny exists, then it controls everything and, therefore, free will does not exist. On the other hand, you can prove that free will does exist by making a choice. So, as the thinking goes, if free will does exist, then there can be no destiny.
But, wait. Perhaps that choice of "free will" was really a pre-destined one. Perhaps the person was destined to make that choice all along, so the experience of choice was just an illusion. At this point, people usually give up on the whole question because it has turned into one of those brain teasers, like asking which came first - the chicken or the egg.
Brain teasers keep your mind in an endless loop until you try stepping back from the situation and seeing it in a wider perspective. The new, wider perspective allows for the inclusion of non-materialistic factors. In deciding whether the chicken or the egg came first, for example, you just have to step back and see that the Creator designed the chicken to be self-perpetuating.
When you step back and see destiny and free will from a wider perspective, you realize that nothing has to be absolute. If every event in your life were pre-ordained, there would be no such thing as free will or self-determination. As we do have free will, destiny cannot be fixed.
Destiny is therefore variable, not fixed. Destiny and free will both exist as interwoven facets of your life. Like threads in a tapestry, they interact with each other and blend to form the outcomes that are the events in your life.
Your destiny is created by plans that you made at a soul level of consciousness. Before you were born, you made your main plan for this life. Then, the minute you were born, the rules of the game demanded that you also get a case of amnesia about the whole arrangement. Such is the game of life in the physical realm.
However, at night when you go to sleep, you can go to the deepest levels of human consciousness, review how the original plan is unfolding and make changes to your plan if desired. When you return to your physical body and awake in the morning, amnesia strikes again. Within seconds of your conscious mind returning into your physical brain, you forget both the surface dreams and the deep experiences of the night.
Amnesia may be a part of the game we are playing in this life, but inner guidance is always available to anyone who pays attention to it. Your intuition is your link to your soul, or inner being, which is also linked to the rest of the universe and all levels of Creation.
You are never left alone to fumble in the darkness of a purely physical life. Your inner being is always there with you, expressing itself through the quiet whisperings of intuitive information. Thanks to this inner compass of knowing, you can always sense which choice feels right. You can always tell when your life is running on plan, and you can tell equally well if you've become temporarily distracted from your plan. You always have the means to be right on course, or get back on course, and explore the fascinating themes that make up your life plan.
The most productive use of free will is to explore your true potential within the themes of your life, thus gaining the greatest possible experience from your life plan.
Destiny is an influence that comes from your inner plan. There is nothing absolute about your destiny. It's a pressure which constantly seeks the best route to unfold into manifestation.
Free will provides the means to manifest that destiny in a way that provides the learning that you came here to acquire in this life.
Destiny is variable. It adapts to the circumstances of your life every second of the day. As destiny unfolds, you feel it within as a sense of being a part of the flow of life, of manifesting your potential in the way that you planned for this day and that you planned for this life.
Destiny is the plan. Free will is the action. Experience is the result.
That's what being human is all about.
Owen Waters is editor and cofounder of Infinite Being LLC. He promotes a philosophy of spiritual empowerment through inner connection to the source of your ultimate potential. For more Spiritual Words of Empowerment subscribe to his free weekly newsletter.
Awakened by the phone ringing at 11:35 p.m., I fumble for the receiver beside my bed.
Who would be calling at this time of night?
"Hello," I mumble, my brain barely functioning.
"Mom, I'm not in jail." The voice at the other end belongs to my 21-year-old daughter, Rachel.
"What?" My heart is beginning to race and my imagination is running away with me. It's amazing how quickly those words fully awaken me.
"I'm not actually in jail," my daughter continues. "I'm fine. It's my car."
"What's the matter?" I ask, trying to make sense of what I am hearing.
"My car was impounded. I found out that since it's registered in your name, you have to be the one to get it out." There is a sense of urgency in her voice.
"At this hour of the night?"
I knew earlier in the day that her car had been missing. She assumed it had been towed and was trying to locate it. Now she is calling from the city impoundment lot that closed at midnight, (or so I thought.) It's located in the industrial area of a city of 900,000 people. I'm not at all familiar with that part of the city and I avoid it even in daylight. Travel there alone at night? Certainly not.
I awaken my husband, explaining the situation. Fortunately his concern for our daughter wins out over his anger at being awakened.
After driving down the freeway, we wind our way down the darkened streets in the industrial area of the city. The world is eerily silent except for an occasional passing car.
"I hope some day that she will believe the signs she reads," I say wistfully. "She parked in the half-empty parking lot of an apartment building to visit a friend this morning and ended up staying for three hours. She ignored the sign that said 'unauthorized vehicles will be towed at the owner's expense.'"
A university student, Rachel had a penchant for parking in unauthorized places in the cramped lots at school, and had already collected her share of parking tickets. However, this is her first towing experience.
When we arrive at the impoundment lot, Rachel and her room-mate are waiting for us and are in a good mood. In fact, she gets me laughing too. The woman at the desk stares at us in disbelief. No doubt she had seen a good many confrontations between angry parents and children in similar situations - or has dealt with angry car owners coming to claim their cars. No doubt laughter in her office is an extremely rare thing.
"Why are you laughing?" I ask.
"It was a choice between crying and laughing," Rachel says. "I choose to laugh."
"And why did you wait until 11:30 to pick up your car?" I ask.
She explains that although she had gotten off work at 8 p.m., she had chosen to watch her favorite T.V. program at 10 p.m. as a way to "de-stress" before she and her friend left to pick up her car.
All it takes is my husband's driver's license for identification, and she is free to take her 1991 Chevy Sprint rust bucket home. She still has a hefty fee to pay, but that's now her problem.
As my husband and I drive home, a little short of sleep, I think of other parents who get phone calls in the night from their children - who really are in jail, or from police reporting that their child was in an accident, or worse. I silently breathe a prayer of "thanks" to the Lord that our daughter is safe.
A "jailed" car is trivial in comparison to other things that could have happened. So many things in life are irritating, annoying, and inconvenient at the time, but are of no lasting consequences. I think my daughter's philosophy is a good one. I, too, choose to laugh.
Janet Seever
Copyright © 2004
The mother of two adult children, Janet Seever lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She writes for Word Alive magazine, a publication of Wycliffe Canada, and has had articles published previously in magazines and on the Web. Janet lives her life with a strong faith and still can find reasons to laugh. You can read more of her writing at: www.inscribe.org/janetseever
