Take this quiz:
1. Name the ten wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.
3. Name the last five winners of the Miss Universe contest.
4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor actress.
6. Name the last decade’s worth of World Series winners.
How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are
no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields.
But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten.
Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here’s another quiz. See how you do on this one:
1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel, appreciated and special.
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.
6. Name half a dozen heroes whose stories have inspired you. Easier?

The lesson: The people who make a difference in your life are not
the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care.

GO CARE FOR SOMEONE TODAY, TOMORROW AND ALWAYS

I was parked in front of the mall wiping off my car. I had just come
from the car wash and was waiting for my wife to get out of work.
Coming my way from across the parking lot was what society would
consider a bum.
From the looks of him, he had no car, no home, no clean clothes, and no
money. There are times when you feel generous but there are other times
that you just don’t want to be bothered. This was one of those “don’t
want to be bothered times.”
“I hope he doesn’t ask me for any money,” I thought.
He didn’t.
He came and sat on the curb in front of the bus stop but he didn’t look
like he could have enough money to even ride the bus.
After a few minutes he spoke.
“That’s a very pretty car,” he said.
He was ragged but he had an air of dignity around him. His scraggly
blond beard keep more than his face warm.
I said, “thanks,” and continued wiping off my car.

He sat there quietly as I worked. The expected plea for money never
came.
As the silence between us widened something inside said, “ask him if
he needs any help.” I was sure that he would say “yes” but I held true
to the inner voice.
“Do you need any help?” I asked.
He answered in three simple but profound words that I shall never forget.
We often look for wisdom in great men and women. We expect it from
those of higher learning and accomplishments.

 I expected nothing but an
outstretched grimy hand. He spoke the three words that shook me.
“Don’t we all?” he said.

I was feeling high and mighty, successful and important, above a bum
in the street, until those three words hit me like a twelve gauge
shotgun.
Don’t we all?
I needed help. Maybe not for bus fare or a place to sleep, but I
needed help. I reached in my wallet and gave him not only enough for bus
fare, but enough to get a warm meal and shelter for the day. Those
three little words still ring true. No matter how much you have, no matter
how much you have accomplished, you need help too. No matter how little you
have, no matter how loaded you are with problems, even without money or
a place to sleep, you can give help.

Even if it’s just a compliment, you can give that.
You never know when you may see someone that appears to have it all.
They are waiting on you to give them what they don’t have. A different
perspective on life, a glimpse at something beautiful, a respite from
daily chaos, that only you through a torn world can see.
Maybe the man was just a homeless stranger wandering the streets. Maybe
he was more than that.

Maybe he was sent by a power that is great and
wise, to minister to a soul too comfortable in themselves.

 Maybe God looked down, called an Angel, dressed him like a bum, then said, “go minister to that man cleaning the car, that man needs help.”
Don’t we all?

A young man was getting ready to graduate college. For
     many months he had admired a beautiful sports car in a dealer’s
     showroom, and knowing his father could well afford it, he told
him that was all he wanted.

     How many times do we miss God’s blessings because they are not
     packaged as we expected?

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One man  was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour a day to drain the fluids from his lungs. His bed was next to the room’s only window. The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.

The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and   families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military  service, where they had been on vacation. And every afternoon when the  man in the bed next to the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.

The man in the other bed would live for those one-hour periods where  his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and  color of the outside world. The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake, the man had said. Ducks and swans played on the water while  children sailed their model boats. Lovers walked arm in arm amid flowers of every color of the rainbow. Grand old trees graced the landscape, and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance. As the man by the window described all this in exquisite  detail, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine the picturesque scene.

One warm afternoon the man by the window described a parade passing by.  Although the other man could not hear the band, he could see it in his mind’s eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive  words. Unexpectedly, an alien thought entered his head: Why should he have all the pleasure of seeing everything while I never get to see  anything? It didn’t seem fair. As the thought fermented, the man felt  ashamed at first. But as the days passed and he missed seeing more sights, his envy eroded into resentment and soon turned him sour. He   began to brood and found himself unable to sleep. He should be by that  window - and that thought now controlled his life.

Late one night, as he lay staring at the ceiling, the man by the window  began to cough. He was choking on the fluid in his lungs. The other man   watched in the dimly lit room as the struggling man by the window groped for the button to call for help. Listening from across the room, he never moved, never pushed his own button which would have brought the nurse running. In less than five minutes, the coughing and choking  stopped, along with the sound of breathing. Now, there was only silence–deathly silence.

The following morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths. When she found the lifeless body of the man by the window, she was saddened and called the hospital attendant to take it away–no  words, no fuss. As soon as it seemed appropriate, the man asked if he  could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his   first look. Finally, he would have the joy of seeing it all himself. He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed. It faced a blank wall.

Moral of the story:

The pursuit of happiness is a matter of choice…it is a positive attitude we consciously choose to express. It is not a gift that gets delivered to our doorstep each morning, nor does it come through the window. And I am certain that our circumstances are just a small part of what makes us joyful. If we wait for them to get just right, we will never find lasting joy.

The pursuit of happiness is an inward journey. Our minds are like programs, awaiting the code that will determine behaviors; like bank vaults awaiting our deposits. If we regularly deposit positive, encouraging, and uplifting thoughts, if we continue to bite our lips  just before we begin to grumble and complain, if we shoot down that seemingly harmless negative thought as it germinates, we will find that there is much to rejoice about.

A story is told about a soldier who was finally coming home after having fought in Vietnam. He called his parents from San Francisco.

“Mom and Dad, I’m coming home, but I’ve a favor to ask. I have a friend I’d like to bring home with me.”

“Sure,” they replied, “we’d love to meet him.”

“There’s something you should know the son continued, “he was hurt pretty badly in the fighting. He stepped on a land mind and lost an arm and a leg. He has nowhere else to go, and I want him to come live with us.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, son. Maybe we can help him find somewhere to live.”

“No, Mom and Dad, I want him to live with us.”

“Son,” said the father, “you don’t know what you’re asking. Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden on us. We have our own lives to live, and we can’t let something like this interfere with our lives. I think you should just come home and forget about this guy. He’ll find a way to live on his own.”

At that point, the son hung up the phone. The parents heard nothing more from him. A few days later, however, they received a call from the San Francisco police. Their son had died after falling from a building, they were told. The police believed it was suicide. The grief-stricken parents flew to San Francisco and were taken to the city morgue to identify the body of their son. They recognized him, but to their horror they also discovered something they didn’t know, their son had only one arm and one leg.

The parents in this story are like many of us. We find it easy to love those who are good-looking or fun to have around, but we don’t like people who inconvenience us or make us feel uncomfortable. We would rather stay away from people who aren’t as healthy, beautiful, or smart as we are.

Thankfully, there’s someone (Jesus Christ) who won’t treat us that way. Someone who loves us with an unconditional love that welcomes us into the forever family, regardless of how messed up we are.

Tonight, before you tuck yourself in for the night, say a little prayer that God will give you the strength you need to accept people as they are, and to help us all be more understanding of those who are different from us!!!

There’s a miracle called Friendship that dwells in the heart You don’t know how it happens Or when it gets started But you know the special lift It always brings And you realize that Friendship Is God’s most precious gift!

Friends are a very rare jewel, indeed. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed They lend an ear, they share a word of praise, and they always want to open their hearts to us.

Perseverance is about as important to achievement as gasoline is to driving a car. Sure, there will be times when you feel like you’re spinning your wheels, but you’ll always get out of the rut with genuine perseverance. Without it, you won’t even be able to start your engine.

The opposite of perseverance is procrastination. Perseverance means you never quit. Procrastination usually means you never get started, although the inability to finish something is also a form of procrastination.

Ask people why they procrastinate and you’ll often hear something like this: “I’m a perfectionist. Everything has to be just right before I can get down to work. No distractions, not too much noise, no telephone calls interrupting me, and of course I have to be feeling well physically, too. I can’t work when I have a headache.” The other end of procrastination - being unable to finish - also has a perfectionist explanation: “I’m just never satisfied. I’m my own harshest critic. If all the i’s aren’t dotted and all the t’s aren’t crossed, I just can’t consider that I’m done. That’s just the way I am, and I’ll probably never change.”

Do you see what’s going on here? A fault is being turned into a virtue. The perfectionist is saying that his standards are just too high for this world. This fault-into-virtue syndrome is a common defense when people are called upon to discuss their weaknesses, but in the end it’s just a very pious kind of excuse making. It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with what’s really behind procrastination.

Remember, the basis of procrastination could be fear of failure. That’s what perfectionism really is, once you take a hard look at it. What’s the difference whether you’re afraid of being less than perfect or afraid of anything else? You’re still paralyzed by fear. What’s the difference whether you never start or never finish? You’re still stuck. You’re still going nowhere. You’re still overwhelmed by whatever task is before you. You’re still allowing yourself to be dominated by a negative vision of the future in which you see yourself being criticized, laughed at, punished, or ridden out of town on a rail. Of course, this negative vision of the future is really a mechanism that allows you to do nothing. It’s a very convenient mental tool.

I’m going to tell you how to overcome procrastination. I’m going to show you how to turn procrastination into perseverance, and if you do what I suggest, the process will be virtually painless. It involves using two very powerful principles that foster productivity and perseverance instead of passivity and procrastination.

The first principle is: BREAK IT DOWN

No matter what you’re trying to accomplish, whether it’s writing a book, climbing a mountain, or painting a house the key to achievement is your ability to break down the task into manageable pieces and knock them off one at one time. Focus on accomplishing what’s right in front of you at this moment. Ignore what’s off in the distance someplace. Substitute real-time positive thinking for negative future visualization. That’s the first all- important technique for bringing an end to procrastination.

Suppose I were to ask you if you could write a four hundred-page novel. If you’re like most people, that would sound like an impossible task. But suppose I ask you a different question. Suppose I ask if you can write a page and a quarter a day for one year. Do you think you could do it? Now the task is starting to seem more manageable. We’re breaking down the four-hundred-page book into bite-size pieces. Even so, I suspect many people would still find the prospect intimidating. Do you know why? Writing a page and a quarter may not seem so bad, but you’re being asked to look ahead one whole year. When people start to do look that far ahead, many of them automatically go into a negative mode. So let me formulate the idea of writing a book in yet another way. Let me break it down even more.

Suppose I was to ask you: can you fill up a page and a quarter with words-not for a year, not for a month, not even for a week, but just today? Don’t look any further ahead than that. I believe most people would confidently declare that they could accomplish that. Of course, these would be the same people who feel totally incapable of writing a whole book.

If I said the same thing to those people tomorrow - if I told them, I don’t want you to look back, and I don’t want you to look ahead, I just want you to fill up a page and a quarter this very day - do you think they could do it?

One day at a time. We’ve all heard that phrase. That’s what we’re doing here. We’re breaking down the time required for a major task into one-day segments, and we’re breaking down the work involved in writing a four hundred-page book into page-and-a-quarter increments.

Keep this up for one year, and you’ll write the book. Discipline yourself to look neither forward nor backward, and you can accomplish things you never thought you could possibly do. And it all begins with those three words: break it down.

My second technique for defeating procrastination is also only three words long.

The three words are: WRITE IT DOWN

We know how important writing is to goal setting. The writing you’ll do for beating procrastination is very similar. Instead of focusing on the future, however, you’re now going to be writing about the present just as you experience it every day. Instead of describing the things you want to do or the places you want to go, you’re going to describe what you actually do with your time, and you’re going to keep a written record of the places you actually go.

In other words, you’re going to keep a diary of your activities. And you’re going to be amazed by the distractions, detours, and downright wastes of time you engage in during the course of a day. All of these get in the way of achieving your goals. For many people, it’s almost like they planned it that way, and maybe at some unconscious level they did. The great thing about keeping a time diary is that it brings all this out in the open. It forces you to see what you’re actually doing . . . and what you’re not doing.

The time diary doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. Just buy a little spiral notebook that you can easily carry in your pocket. When you go to lunch, when you drive across town, when you go to the dry cleaners, when you spend some time shooting the breeze at the copying machine, make a quick note of the time you began the activity and the time it ends. Try to make this notation as soon as possible; if it’s inconvenient to do it immediately, you can do it later. But you should make an entry in your time diary at least once every thirty minutes, and you should keep this up for at least a week.

Break it down. Write it down. These two techniques are very straightforward. But don’t let that fool you: these are powerful and effective productivity techniques. This is how you put an end to procrastination. This is how you get yourself started.

In our hurry-hurry world, the most popular phrases are, “We’ve got to get together sometime, but it seems that I’m always so busy.” “Attend a neighborhood gathering? I just don’t have the time!” “Visit with my neighbors or my family? I’m too busy to breathe.” And so it goes.

The old saw that if you want something done you should give it to a busy person is as true today as it was when that phrase was first introduced in our vocabulary. It’s amazing how many hours each week can be taken by people who barge unannounced into our lives with nonsensical topics to discuss or simply time-killing chatter.

All of us have the same amount of time. Productive people use their time wisely. The millionaire and hourly wage earner have exactly the same amount of time. The same is true for the top student and the one who flunks the course. Improper use of time, not lack of time, is the problem in most cases.

An August 17, 1994, USA TODAY article highlighted a study by Christopher Ruhm of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He disclosed that seniors who had worked up to 20 hours a week earned better grades than students who did not work. Even more impressive, six to nine years later the working students were earning 22% more than classmates who didn’t work during their senior year. Ruhm observed that part-time jobs for seniors can ease their later transition into the work place. They improve students’ knowledge of the job market, teach work place skills, build beneficial contacts and helps them manage their time more efficiently.

Yes, it’s still true that the experience you gain and the habits you acquire early on benefit you throughout life. Think about it and I’ll SEE YOU AT THE TOP!

Which Prime Minister would you want as a friend?

Two of the greatest prime ministers in the history of the British Empire were Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. They served Queen Victoria–great men with different personalities and different approaches to life.

A much loved and respected aristocratic lady of the time was seated next to Benjamin Disraeli at a well-attended banquet. They engaged in a lengthy and lively conversation. A few weeks later the same lady was seated next to William Gladstone at yet another banquet. As the Prime Minister he, of course, was highly renowned and respected.

Some time later this woman was asked about the difference between the two men. She responded, “After spending an evening seated by Mr. Gladstone, I became convinced that he was the most brilliant, knowledgeable man in the British Empire. After being seated by Mr. Disraeli, I was convinced that I was the brightest person in the British Empire.”

Chances are pretty good, as you reflect on that, you would say that you would naturally want to be a friend of Mr. Disraeli. The point I want to make is that it’s not about you–it’s about others. Again I repeat my favorite quote: You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

Our relationships with others are extremely important. Dale Carnegie wrote a great book along those lines, and out of it came a lot of good, common-sense thoughts that make a difference. I’m not certain Carnegie said it, but some very wise person said that people don’t really care how much you know until they know how much you care–about them.

The reality is that anybody can say virtually anything they want to say and work hard at impressing you. Unfortunately, many times that’s all it is—they are trying to impress you with themselves so that perhaps you will seek a relationship with them and even do something for them. That truly is the height of hypocrisy. When people are genuinely interested in you, in short, when they truly care for and about you, their actions, their demeanor, their every step indicates they believe you are special and conveys that you are important to them.

Every person, regardless of who they are or even where they are, cherishes someone who genuinely cares for them, and when they discover that you are that person, they will want to be your friend, and in the process will listen to what you have to say as they watch what you do. Chances are excellent you will become, in a vague sense, perhaps, but nevertheless you will become a hero to them and a role model to follow.

Yes, relationships are extremely important. If we have an attitude of “What can I do for you” instead of “What can you do for me”, chances are pretty good we will have a far more balanced, joyful life than those who take the opposite approach.

Using positive affirmations is a proven technique that works miracles in many lives. Ideally, you should look yourself in the eye as you make these positive affirmations. Don’t be shy; go ahead and get started! Repeat the following statements to yourself every Monday morning to get your day and week off to a great start:

I clearly understand that failure is an event, not a person; that yesterday really did end last night; and that success isn’t final and failure isn’t fatal because I only fail if I quit.

I have the courage to admit a mistake and to say that I was wrong.

I have vision in my life, which means that I see not only with my eyes but also with my heart.

I have 525,600 minutes in every year of my life, and I utilize them well to maximize my ability.

I am successful because I believe that to be truly educated, I must be mentored–either in business or in my personal life, by reading or by association–by superior minds with greater skills and mature spirits.

I discipline myself to do the things that I need to do when I need to do them, because I know that doing them will enable me someday to do the things I want to do when I want to do them.

I clearly understand that if I develop yearning power and apply learning power, I will increase my earning power.

I am successful because I don’t confuse activity with accomplishment. I know that I can’t make it in life as a wandering generality, so I am a meaningful specific.

I am successful in all areas of my life because I have a great sense of humor and the ability to laugh at myself.

I am like an eraser. I recognize my mistakes, I learn from my mistakes, and then I erase those mistakes from my memory.

I move forward in my life every day, even if it’s only a tiny step, because I know that great things are accomplished with tiny moves, but nothing is accomplished by standing still.

Before he won his first national basketball championship, Hakeem Olajuwon, the all-pro center for the Houston Rockets, knew that he needed to improve his 15-foot jump shot.

He was earning a million-dollar income and he had been all-pro for six consecutive years, but until he improved his jump shot, he believed his team was incapable of winning a national basketball championship. So what did he do?

Before the 1993-94 season, Hakeem went to the gym every day and practiced 500 15-foot jump shots. In 1994, when the Houston Rockets won the NBA championship in seven games against the New York Knicks, there was only one game with more than a five-point difference in the score.

Replays revealed that had Hakeem not improved his shooting percentage from 15-feet, the Knicks would have won the best- of-seven series instead of the Rockets. You can imagine, of course, how good Hakeem felt about himself for putting in those extra hours of practice. And you can imagine how popular Hakeem became with his teammates once they were champions.

And finally, you can bet that Hakeem got a hefty raise in his pay as a result of the 1994 championship, which was repeated in 1995. All of this is another way of saying that you can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

Hakeem helped his teammates, the owners, and the fans gain that championship. He was already a leader before the championship season, and because he was a leader he took the responsibility to improve his own game to help everyone win.