YOU: A WORLD OF VALUE

Several months ago I received a gift that literally dumfounded me: a Wingard painting (the regal lion in the photo above). While I've admired art in galleries and museums in the United States and abroad (my favorite is the Metropolitan in NYC), it never occurred to me to actually own an art piece. 

Receiving a valuable gift like that brought back memories of all the awkwardness I've experienced when receiving gifts from others.

In December of 1994 I ran out of money at college & was unable to return for the spring semester. I stayed with an elderly widow in Fort Walton Beach, Florida for that winter (I couldn't afford to visit my home in Germany), and she learned about my situation. The day that I was to head back to college to clean out my dorm room, she gave me a blank check. 

"You're an honest man, Robbie. Fill in whatever amount you need. We can work out the details later." 

To this day I can't believe that I wrote it for only 1/4 of what I needed! Somehow I felt I was doing her a favor by not receiving the gift like she intended. Because of that, I struggled with college payments for the next two years.

The rule for me seems to have been The higher the value of the gift, the more unworthy I am to receive it. But why should I feel unworthy when it's not my gift to give but only to receive?

Maybe ...

-my being perceived to be in need is a scourge

-my taking is an admission of inadequacy

-my receiving is a form of slavery

Would you agree that everybody is needy at one time or another? 

If so, then is it true that people who are needy HAVE NOTHING OF VALUE? 

Here is a picture of my youngest child. She has no job, no money, and no experience in any field (other than being herself). Yet I will bend over backwards to make sure she has shelter, clothing, food, and love. I will make sure she's safe and happy.

AND THAT'S ONLY THE MINIMUM. 

And you know what? She doesn't apologize for taking the time I'm only too happy to give her. She doesn't shrink herself as small as possible because she's self-conscious about being cared for. 

What is most difficult to believe is that while our PERCEIVED VALUE might dip when we are in need, our TRUE VALUE doesn't.

Do you want to know your true value?

Just click on the link below...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYg3iB5VvmI

Click the link below to take TRAITMARKER's Finding Your Hidden Strength: 

www.traitMarker.com

For more daily inspirations, like us at: 

www.facebook.com/traitmarker

GET "SELFISH": AN ANTIDOTE FOR SOUL POISON

Above is a picture of me worrying. I can tell by the set of my jaw and the furrow of my eyebrow. It's a little ironic, isn't it... my carrying my youngest daughter on my shoulders, her being oblivious to it all? 

But there were reasons why my brow is furrowed and my jaw is fixed. There were YEARS of reasons...

-I was struggling to keep my fledgling school a-flight in a merciless economy

-I was "upside down" in my house in a ritzy community

-I was grossly behind on several payments.

I could go on. In fact, when I think about this day, I don't really even think about it. 

I feel it.

Here are a few other things I was doing that day:

Laundry...

Washing the kitchen floor...

Trampolining...

Looks like I'm being productive, doesn't it? In retrospect I can honestly say that each of these activities were DIVERSIONS from the acid that was slowly eating away at my soul. 

Acid? Eating away? Soul?

At the time of these photographs, I was reflecting on almost 13 years of investing in a community of people who in very damaging ways ended up not being what they projected 13 years before and all along. In reality, they were petty, grasping, devious, and effectively deceptive in convincing me that I had a place with them for as long as I lived.

But I'M the one who believed it. So I forgive them.

But should I be stupid again? 

I mean, aren't we supposed to trust? Isn't that what cultivates a genuine sense of safety and ease among people?

Yes, it does. But I was missing a basic element that my HEART was telling me throughout those 13 years but my BRAIN was conditioned to suppress: I was told that thinking about myself FIRST was selfish.

This hit me like a ton of bricks about a year ago on a flight from Baltimore to Nashville. I've heard it dozens of times from air stewardesses, but this time it finally made sense: 

In the event of an emergency and oxygen masks are deployed, put YOUR MASK ON FIRST. Then put your child's mask on. 

When do you get "selfish" like that?

WHEN YOU HAVE OTHER PEOPLE DEPENDING ON YOU!

-Have you ever wanted to tell your boss exactly what you think about him or her, but you refrained from it because you could lose your job?

-Have you ever wanted to tell someone who cheated you in business WHERE THEY COULD GO, but you refrained because it could jeopardize your clientele?

-Have you ever wanted to tell a caustic neighbor how petty they are, but you don't because it could cause you more problems?

Of course, you have.

Do you have others depending on you?

Of course, you do.

Do you want to know how you can put your heart first in every important decision?

Click on the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYg3iB5VvmI

Click the link below to take TRAITMARKER: Finding Your Hidden Strength

www.traitMarker.com

Want MORE thought-provoking inspiration (for FREE)? Like us at:

www.facebook.com/traitmarker

S T R E T C H THOSE "INNER LIFE" MUSCLES

I've been through it one hundred times: paying a late bill. But by the time I pay it, the water or electricity has already been turned off, my card has been dinged with an extra fee, or the administrator of my children's private school has handed me a personal reminder to pay tuition (which is two months late). 

After a while, paranoia sets in. You begin to wonder if it's worth it to go to the grocery store because you might run into someone to whom you've obligated yourself. Or you find answering the mail nerve-wracking because you're used to getting weekly reminders of your delinquent accounts. Once when I was pulled over by a police officer on my way home, he sat in his car for so long that I was CERTAIN he somehow knew I was late on my taxes.

All of these humiliations eventually made me angry, so I decided to do something about them. I began to cut everything out of my life within reason that represented an unnecessary expense or repeat failure. So I stopped the Melaleuca orders. I sold the cars. I sold the house. I pulled my children out of private school. I terminated quite a few brokering deals. That was MUCH better. But there was something else I needed to do. Now that I had rid my life of the unsustainable, I needed to STRETCH MY INNER LIFE.

As a gymnast, I knew something about stretching. When you first begin to stretch, your muscles don't comply. They resist. Because they aren't used to that motion, they equate the discomfort to a "bad" feeling and signal your body that something "bad" is happening. But if you hold a stretch for several minutes, your muscles begin to think "Oh, s/he means to do this. Well, then, I suppose that is ok." And they give in. 

Of course, the benefit of stretching yourself is that it increases your range of motion. In my personal life I wanted to increase my range of awareness related to my financial responsibilities. So I sat down and preempted a budget. I found out the total of my debts, found out the averages of my utilities, and identified all of my recurring bills. I even found out what times of the month or quarter those bills were due. In the end, I had such a hold on my financial situation that I no longer was plagued with the fear that I was going to be sucker-punched with the unexpected when I walked out in public.

Eleanor Roosevelt said "You must do the things you think you cannot do." And she was right. We each need to be stretched beyond our regular range of motion in order to enjoy the unexpected twists and turns of life with ease, agility, and, most of all, enjoyment.

So where do YOU need to be stretched? Do you need to work LESS and be MORE present with your significant other, your spouse, or your children? Do you need to EXERCISE more  to INCREASE your stamina so that you you can bond over a variety of activities with the ones you love? Whatever your situation is, IT ALL BEGINS WITH YOUR INNER LIFE.

Watch my video below to find out how you can increase your range!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYg3iB5VvmI

Click the link below to take TRAITMARKER: Finding Your Hidden Strength

www.traitMarker.com

Like us at:

www.facebook.com/traitmarker

CARE NOT: SPEAKING FROM A DEEP AND STRONG PLACE

Here is my friend, Deb. We went to high school together in Oxfordshire, England in 1986. When I left England in May 1987 I didn't see her again until October 2013. That's 26 years later. Of course, we had a lot to catch up on after that 26-year gap. Thanks to Facebook, I noticed Deb's facial features and limited profile a few years ago.

When Deb visited two months ago, I had one of those surreal moments where on one hand I had to pinch myself to make sure this was happening and on the other hand I doubted we had been separated at all. As we began catching up on the past, I noticed something about BOTH of our conversations. We were strategically editing what we chose to tell each other about those absent 26 years. 

From my silence, Deb perceived my adolescent years in England turned me into an over-brooding individual. From Deb's silence, I perceived a deep restlessness that found her in several difficult relationships (her last one being the most difficult of all). 

"But HOW DID YOU SURVIVE the things you won't talk about?" That's what we both really wanted to know! 24-hours before we parted ways again, we pushed and prodded each other about the silence. Walking down crowded MUSIC ROW in Nashville, Tennessee and sipping warm drinks at FIDO's on 21st helped us to speak in glitches: she about relational stress & me about my bouts of depression. The glitches spoke louder than words: when times got difficult we found ourselves speaking from a deep, strong place.

People like us want to make other people happy... sometimes at any cost. Before we know it, we are no longer ourselves. We begin to see ourselves through the affirmations and insults of those we would do anything for. Our survival instinct simply won't kick in until it's a matter of life and death, and we are often down for the count LONG before others finally say "I think s/he's had enough of it."

Why? Because we finally got the message through that WE NO LONGER CARED about what others think about us. We no longer cared about being ostracized, isolated, or shunned for saying what we want to say. We finally spoke from that VERY DEEP and VERY STRONG PLACE that is the mysterious root of individual personality. We are simply "graduates from the class of WE MADE IT":

You are a survivor just like Deb and me.

If you liked what you heard, click on the link below to hear more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYg3iB5VvmI

Click the link below to take TRAITMARKER's Finding Your Hidden Strength.
www.traitMarker.com

Like us at:

www.facebook.com/traitmarker

YOUR BRAND: WRAPPED UP IN A PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE CALLED "YOU"

I spent eleven years running my own alternative school. Starting a school is similar to founding a small country. You have a unique group who have rallied around you for this new venture, but the group doesn't have an identity yet. And it's YOUR job to help shape and articulate that identify. Like starting any business, that's a huge job.

For the first seven years of my school, I used a number of slogans, tried out a bunch of logos, and solicited hundreds of clients (and inadvertently chased off hundreds). In 2004 I experienced my lowest return from my branding and marketing strategies (I began with a deficit that year by losing my school building to a higher bidder and losing students to other schools. I spent one day courting investors who all declined. I remember sitting on the curb in the library parking lot, knowing I was ruined, and unable to go home to face my wife. The week before, all the stress produced my first white hair in my beard).

By the time I experienced some momentum after finally deciding on a logo, coining a slogan, and reeling in my customer base, and really REALLY knowing what I was doing, a wrench was thrown in the works. After all of that work, I now REALLY understood what I was doing and it WASN'T the thing I had FINALLY decided on!

I had been working on an algorithm for almost seven years that would help me decide 3 things about my customer. I wanted to know what my customer base liked about me, what they REALLY wanted from me, and what products and services they were likely to want from me in the future.

After several more years I finally realized something I had never noticed before. I realized that I wasn't really trying to understand my customer as much as I was TRYING TO UNDERSTAND MYSELF. When I understood that I was studying myself all along, my branding war ended. I realized that an important part of personality is 1) where you are, 2) where you were, and 3) where you are going. And those three strands were all wrapped up in the genetic code of my personality's DNA: me!

Click the video below to find out more about the 3 strands of your personality that I call your TRAITMARK.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYg3iB5VvmI

Click the link below to take TRAITMARKER's Finding Your Hidden Strength:www.traitMarker.com

Like us at:

www.facebook.com/traitmarker

SUCK OR SUCCEED? CHALLENGE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

I've failed at a lot of things, and that is not an underhanded compliment. When I was in high school I noticed that I had a penchant for obligating myself to do feats of greatness in impossible timeframes. Believe it or not, I was hardly ever disappointed in myself when I didn't come through. After all, it wasn't about completing the task as much as it was about undertaking it in the first place.

You can imagine how that same mindset DIDN'T work for me in college. While I was an accomplished athlete and scholar, my attempts at sports and academics far outweighed my achievements. My German professor once had me come to his office to reprimand me for not doing my best. I was mortified. My heart rate soared, and my response (I forget what but it started off with something like "YOU DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH I'VE PUT INTO MY CLASSES...") startled him so much so that he put his hands up.

You can imagine how that same mindset DIDN'T work in marriage. In the first few years I learned that my wife and I didn't speak the same language. Largely influenced by her minimalist father, my wife didn't get the idea of "conceptualizing" out loud. Whenever I talked about how much money I COULD make, she expected me to come home with that exact amount. While I've made piles of money over my career, that pile pales in comparisons to the foregone commissions and budget projections made. Several years ago after almost losing my shirt in a business deal (and my house, and my job, and my family), I was finally brought up so short that I paid closer attention than I had ever paid before. 

WHAT WAS MY PROBLEM? Why weren't a fourth, a third, half... nay... even three quarters of my deals working out? Was I simply BAD LUCK?

After listening to a mentor at a local Waffle House one morning, I learned a sequence of words that made the puzzle-pieces of my career come together with frightening clarity. 

"ROBBIE, WE TEND TO BE MORE OPTIMISTIC ABOUT OUR OWN IDEAS THAN WE ARE  THE IDEAS OF OTHERS."

I was speechless, because, of course, he was correct! If Joseph or Tiffany come up with a brilliant idea to, say, open a bakery, my critical eye immediately sees the holes in the plan. 

-Why a bakery?

-What's the demand?

-Who wants to wake up at 3 a.m. to bake bread?

BUT WHEN IT'S MY IDEA, I'm more optimistic. 

-I've got a GREAT idea for a logo!

-People will love my marzipan cookies! 

-I know what color I want the inside painted!

Ultimately, it's this kind of uncritical selfishness that finds many of us pinching pennies at the end of the month or peeking out the window to see if our creditors have actually come to our house (I've had that happen before). While our business ideas are products of our hearts, heads, or hands, once it has been SPOKEN, it is no longer us. It is another person. 

So look at it that way.

If you are interested in learning more about CHALLENGING YOUR OWN ASSUMPTIONS, then click on the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYg3iB5VvmI

Click the link below to take TRAITMARKER's Finding Your Hidden Strength: 

www.traitMarker.com

Like us at: 

www.facebook.com/traitmarker

STARTING OVER... AGAIN: A TIP

Here are two of my children the weekend after Halloween. I caught them coming downstairs to dump their bathroom trash. You can imagine how surprised I was to see how full it was of candy wrappers and very little bathroom trash. 

As surprised as I was to see how much candy they had eaten, I was more surprised that they let the trash pile up all week. But I'm known in my house for being a neat freak (or an organizational dictator). 

I'm more lenient on my children than I am on myself. For me, the trash has to be taken out EVERY day. The idea of garbage rotting in the house or useless trash (useless to me) taking up space in my house is enough at times to give me a sleepless night.

But it varies for each of us. How often we...

-take out the trash...

-wash the dishes...

-fold the laundry...

-get our sleep...

When I taught school, OVER 70% of my students hadn't had a full night of sleep FOR A YEAR OR MORE! How long can a person go without sleep before they are absolutely useless to themselves and others? Sleep is nature's way of letting living things START OVER.

Sometimes life reminds me of walking through a boggy field of Aston, England. By the time you would reach the other side, you had SO MUCH MUD on your feet that it was impossible to walk any further until you somehow got it off.

Sometimes life seems more drudgery than enjoyment. You wake up one day (or one day long ago) feeling energized and so full of hope you can ALMOST imagine accomplishing your dreams.

But then...

-the baby gets sick...

-the car blows a head gasket...

-your boss needs more of your time...

Before you know it, a glitch of several days, several weeks, SEVERAL YEARS, has gone by and you are an exhausted, fretting recluse of your former self. And there seems to be no way out.

But what if I told you that you could start over TODAY?

Just click on the link below & watch my video about how TRAITMARKER can help you start over by understanding...

-WHO I AM (What I know about myself that others do not)

-WHO I AM NOT (What I know about myself that others think they know)

-WHO I AM BECOMING (What allows me to start over when I get stressed)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYg3iB5VvmI

And it's ONLY $20 for that kind of clarity! Click the link below to take TRAITMARKER's Finding Your Hidden Strength: 

www.traitMarker.com

For more daily inspirations, like us at: 

www.facebook.com/traitmarker