Archive for Motivation
Letting Our Imagination Take Us Beyond Our Limits
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s getting close to the end of the year, and a time when many of us reassess what we’ve accomplished in the past almost 12 months. If you’re like me, you wonder where the time went and why you didn’t overcome the obstacles that got in the way of doing what you wanted to.
As usual, a TED talk provided me with answers and inspiration for pushing beyond my limits in the new year.
When she was 19, Amy Purdy lost both her legs below the knee. And now she’s a pro snowboarder. In her powerful talk, she explains how she took a devastating, life altering experience and used her imagination to push through the obstacles to create rich and fulfilling life.
Her first artificial legs were bulky and painful. She decided there had to be a better way, so with help from a friend, she designed new legs that would allow her to return to snowboarding and win gold medals. Of importance, she took the design for these new legs to Africa and helped fit many young people there.
Here is Amy’s inspiring talk.
Related articles
- Losing her legs didn’t stop Amy Purdy from being a champion (sports.nationalpost.com)
The Power of Small Wins in Our Inner Work Lives
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Do you ever wonder if all the work you’re putting in is making a difference? I know I do. We envy the “stars” in our professions. But they got to where they are with a succession of small wins that add up to major progress and their huge success.
In her book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, co-author and Harvard professor Teresa Amabile describes how even small, incremental wins can have a major positive influence on what she terms an employee’s “inner work life.”
Finding Meaningful Work
Perceptions, emotions and motivations influence inner work life, but the single most important factor “is simply making progress on work they find meaningful.” Even the most trivial wins can affect performance. On the flip side, a trivial negative experience can have two to three times the impact as a positive experience. Read More→
Life on 9/11 and 10 Years Later
Posted by: | CommentsAs a New Yorker, I am feeling sad and subdued today, the 10th anniversary of a “day that will live in infamy,” to quote President Franklin D. Roosevelt, another New Yorker.
This is the question I still get after 10 years:
Where Were You on 9/11?
Image by Vincent Desjardins via Flickr
In my office, at Citigate, the PR agency where I held my last job working for an organization before hanging out my own shingle again. As an agency, we had a large TV monitor hanging from a wall to keep up with the news.
I remember someone calling out, “Come take a look — a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center!”
I immediately called my husband to turn on the TV, just before we lost all phone service, which was down for days afterward. We stood glued to the TV, watching the unimaginable happen before our eyes. A young woman in our office lost her 26-year-old husband in the conflagration.
I had a lunch date with a former client, who was flying in from Toronto. She had left me a voice message that she had landed at LaGuardia Airport and was in a taxi on the way to Manhattan. She never made it. She later told me she could see the smoke from the burning towers. Bridges and tunnels were closed, so her taxi was turned away. She went back to the airport, and, as all flights had been cancelled, she tried unsuccessfully to find a room at an airport hotel.
She still had her taxi, now a very valuable asset, and a young man approached her. Would she drive him to Long Island? She did, registered at a motel around the corner, and spent the afternoon in front of the TV with his wife and two young children. It didn’t seem bizarre. In those dark days, lifetime friendships were forged with strangers. We became part of an extended family of survivors — those who personally lived through the experience.
For three days she holed up at her motel, watching TV and eating meals with her new friends. Finally, she found a limo driver who agreed to drive her clear across New York State — a 12-hour trip — to Buffalo. Her husband drove from Toronto to pick her up. Later I learned that three of my office colleagues, stranded in Los Angeles, had rented a car and drove across the country back to New York.
Dear friends, who lived in my building, put together an impromptu dinner for everyone who was around. We ate and watched more TV with replays of the horror of the buildings collapsing and people jumping from the World Trade Center rooftops rather than die in the flames. Our friends had visitors from Florida who drove their car back to Florida and then sold it for them. True story. It took months for life to return to the new normal. The new normal is life after 9/11 because life changed forever after that dreadful day.
Where Are We After 9/11?
The world is a changed place. Iraq. Afghanistan, an African-American President. But, most of all, the rise of social networks has revolutionized our lives — and was the catalyst for the Middle East uprisings that gave new hope to the oppressed as they fought for their freedom and better lives.
Social media has enabled people to communicate with each other, build relationships and forge communities with common goals. Think of these developments since 9/11:
LinkedIn — founded in 2003: 120 million members
Facebook — founded in 2004: 750 million members
Twitter — founded in 2006: 200 million members
There are 156 million blogs — 156 million! Everyone is a communicator and amateur journalist now. How wonderful.
A global village
I haven’t tuned in to watch any of the 9/11 commemorative ceremonies. After 10 years, it’s still too painful to watch. Instead, I’m at my computer, engaging with my families on social media. That’s what we are – families that include friends from around the globe. Mine include Susan from Australia and Catarina from Sweden. We’re in touch regularly. I feel that I know them personally.
We’re all connected. This one big global family that will hopefully build a better world.
July 4th is a Day to Celebrate Life, Liberty and the Heart and Soul in Writing
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It’s Independence Day today in the U.S. where I live. It’s one of the only holidays that is still celebrated on the actual date, July 4th, that we declared our independence from Britain.
I attended the annual New York Philharmonic concert over the weekend where the British conductor Bromwell Tovey joked that he was very sorry about his country’s role that led to Declaration of Independence and the eventual founding of my country. The United States Marine Drum & Bugle Corps played alongside the orchestra and the concert ended in the rousing John Phillips Sousa march, “The Stars and Stripes.” What a grand finale!
A Story Well Told
I hadn’t read the Declaration of Independence in a long time, so I just went online to re-read it. With the advent of the Internet and computers, are school children still required to memorize these indelible lines?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Declaration of Independence
That sentence begins the second paragraph but it is probably the most famous line in that sacred document, laying the foundation of our democracy.
The Declaration is written in the florid style of the day, but there is no mistaking the meaning of these famous words, written with palpable intensity:
“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States … with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
I love the last line, “… we pledge our sacred honor.” It’s hard to imagine a business executive or government official today writing with such heartfelt feeling.
There is no time in a frenzied world to luxuriate in the written word — to read something for its brilliance or compassion. I’m glad I read the Declaration of Independence again. The words will live in eternity.
