Monday Morning
Motivation 11/1/2010
THE POSITIVE PLACE. SALES MOTIVATION AND PERSONAL GROWTH
Varied strengths
I've been driving across much of California the last few days. As I drove, I looked across the landscape and noticed that the world is indeed a beautiful place. I drove from California's shoreline near Big Sur, through the technology centers of Silicon Valley, across the beautiful mountain ranges along the coast, through the Central Valley, and across the desert. Each area had its own landscape, and held its own beauty.
And it reminded me that people are a lot like these varied landscapes -- each of us is different. Some of us are outwardly blooming, beautiful to gaze upon, uncommon in our good looks. Others of us have a more inward beauty, deep in understanding and the blooms in our lives are deep within our hearts and spirits. Some are brainy, others are brawny, and some are both brainy and brawny.
Like the Redwoods I saw, some stand deep against the wind, providing a stalwart barrier to the storms that rage, and are fed by those storms. Others grow best in shelter, protected by others, and nourished by their examples. Still others are like Willows, bending with the wind, but returning to our upright state when the winds die down and the sun comes out.
But although we are many and varied, when taken as a whole, our varied strengths can work in harmony when pointed toward a common goal.
Personally, I've never been a great team player -- unless I'm running a team, they sometimes irritate me -- but the varied nature of people most of the time will allow a team to succeed in ways an individual cannot. A team still needs a cohesive goal, and many teams fail because they have no goal -- they tend to drift this way and that, more so than a person might, but the nature of a team amplifies the individual attributes that each member of the team has. Much like the California landscape has forests and deserts and lakes, rivers, and seashores, all which contribute to the phenomenon that makes California unlike other states, so does it have people of every background and talent -- some add to the state, others detract from its strengths.
It's not only California, obviously -- each state in the United States, and each nation in the world has its own character and its own unique strengths that make that place unique. And in the same way, each company has its own strengths, each family its own makeup. Even a single person has varied interests and abilities that make her or him a unique and important individual -- or that make him or her a person who accomplishes more bad than good -- for even though California has its strengths, it also has its weaknesses -- I passed at least four prisons that I saw, and I know there are quite a few more.
Let's make certain that we make the most of the varied parts of ourselves, our states, our nations, our companies, and our families -- for the whole truly can be more powerful than just the sum of its parts.
Copyright, 2010, by Daryl R. Gibson. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the non-commercial redistribution of this document as long as it remains intact with this copyright and all other lines. This license does not extend to the use of this material in a compilation, whether for profit or non-profit use. Join us at http://www.Weekdaywisdom.com.