Inspiration for these trying times

Both quotes give me food for thought, but it is the last one that got under my skin. After a lifetime of worrying about 'productivity' and 'efficiency', I realize that the 'degree of presence' in your own life and in the lives of others are what matter most. Eckhart Tolle writes about this all the time. We are often so worried about the future, or about what happened in the past. We are powerless to change the events of the past, and we simply cannot map out our futures to the smallest detail since it is the great unknown. So we are left with the present. Accepting where we are, where we stand, in the present time, leads to peace. And it leads us away from the idea that our personal lives must be lived the way our work lives have been lived--by measuring all things in terms of productivity and efficiency. Perhaps this is something one figures out as one gets older. I don't know. I only know that I have begun to think differently about how I want to live my daily life. Perhaps the pandemic has given me the chance to reflect on this. When I stop worrying about how much I need to get done in one day, I am more relaxed and life flows better. I am better able to keep the negative influences at bay because I am 'aware' of where I am in the present. I am aware of whether I am content or not. I am better able to establish the necessary boundaries between me and the rest of the world. I am aware of the uninvited infringements on my peace of soul and the criticisms of others and how that affects me. Society and other (well-meaning) people are always trying to tell us what to do, how to live, what to buy, how to think, and how to react to different events. It's exhausting to have to consider what others think we should do all the time. I simply don't want to. I've done it long enough in the work world.

You say, God says

A friend of mine posted this yesterday on Facebook. It made an impression, especially in these days of so many world problems and depressing news. I don't know why I am so affected by it all, but I am. So it's good to be reminded that God has our backs even though we forget that sometimes........

Zig Ziglar--quotes from a smart man

• What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
• The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.
• With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.
• If people like you, they'll listen to you, but if they trust you, they'll do business with you.
• Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.
• When you catch a glimpse of your potential, that's when passion is born.
• Positive thinking will let you use the ability which you have, and that is awesome.
• When you encourage others, you in the process are encouraged because you're making a commitment and difference in that person's life. Encouragement really does make a difference.
• He climbs highest who helps another up.
• The person who dumps garbage into your mind will do you considerably more harm than the person who dumps garbage on your floor, because each load of mind garbage negatively impacts your possibilities and lowers your expectations.
• Try to look at your weakness and convert it into your strength. That's success.
• If you learn from defeat, you haven't really lost.
• Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.
• You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.
• If you want to reach a goal, you must 'see the reaching' in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.
• Be grateful for what you have and stop complaining - it bores everybody else, does you no good, and doesn't solve any problems.
• Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.
• People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.
• You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.
• Outstanding people have one thing in common: An absolute sense of mission.

Learning by living

Eleanor Roosevelt was married to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, and served as First Lady during his three terms--from 1933 until 1945. Her husband died in 1945. When she married him, she found herself thrust into the limelight of politics and political society, which at first made her uncomfortable, but which she learned to master with time and experience. I recently finished her amazing book You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, first published in 1960 when she was seventy-six years old. She writes from the heart, in an candid and straightforward way, about the following: • Learning to Learn • Fear—the Great Enemy • The Uses of Time • The Difficult Art of Maturity • Readjustment is Endless • Learning to Be Useful• The Right to Be an Individual • How to Get the Best Out of People •Facing Responsibility • How Everyone Can Take Part in Politics • Learning to Be a Public Servant.

The first thing that struck me was that her wisdom and advice are every bit as good as, if not better than, most of the advice proffered by self-help books authored by psychologists or psychiatrists with years in their respective fields. Why? Because she not only talks about the fears and lack of self-confidence that she had to overcome in order to become a public person, she says flat-out that we must do that which we think we cannot do. We must face our fears if we are to grow and evolve as human beings, if we are to live an honest life. She also talks about the importance of being useful and embracing politics and public life. She stresses that we must take an interest in politics as the citizens of a democratic nation; that is our responsibility as free people. We must not stoop to cynicism and negativity when we talk about politics and politicians; they are important for the future of a free country.  She is a wonderful role model for a successful and honest life, for both women and men. Her advice is relevant for both genders. But I would absolutely encourage young women to read her book, especially in this age that defines a person’s worth mostly by whether they are good-looking or not. Eleanor Roosevelt said about herself that she knew that she was not the most attractive woman in her family already when she was a child; it never stopped her. Young women especially need to hear this, because there is too much emphasis in today’s world on having the perfect face and figure, often at the expense of cultivating one’s intelligence, wit, and talents.    

Eleanor Roosevelt was an honest, intelligent, introspective, persevering, patient and empathetic woman, who made a real success of her life in spite of the many difficulties she faced. I found her advice quite straightforward, no-nonsense, honest and helpful. She really did 'learn by living', and that is the message her book imparts. It's possible to grow and change with experience, if you tackle the challenges that life tosses you rather than evade them. She was way ahead of her time in terms of how she lived her life and how she looked at her life as a woman. I recommend this book if you want wisdom that will actually help you as you make your way in this life.

Rules for Living, from the Dalai Lama

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three Rs: Respect for self; Respect for others; Responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

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One of my good friends has these rules hung up on a wall in her apartment; she reads them everyday. I think that's a great idea. I've read through them more than once and each time I find something else that strikes me as important when I reflect on them. There is much wisdom in them. 

What Steve Jobs said

As most of you probably have heard already, Steve Jobs passed away at the age of 56 after a long battle with cancer. I have read some of the obituaries already, so I won't repeat any of what is already written about him. Suffice it to say that not only was he a brilliant innovator, he also had a lot of wise and inspirational things to say about life and working and doing what you love here in this short life on earth. I am posting some of his wise words here in honor of his life and many achievements. Rest in peace, Steve Jobs. 

Perspective on life, on following your heart and on doing what you love

·         Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

·         We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and everyone should be really excellent. Because this is our life.

·         Life is brief, and then you die, you know?

·         And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.

·         Almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

On being different and standing apart from the crowd

·         Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

·         Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?

·         I want to put a ding in the universe.

On wealth

·         Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.

·         I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money.

On working, management, quality, excellence and innovation

·         Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

·         My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.

·         Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

·         A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.

·         Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

·         Recruiting is hard. It’s just finding the needles in the haystack. You can’t know enough in a one-hour interview. So, in the end, it’s ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they’re challenged? I ask everybody that: ‘Why are you here?’ The answers themselves are not what you’re looking for. It’s the meta-data.

·         We’ve had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren’t going to lay off people, that we’d taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place – the last thing we were going to do is lay them off.

·         I mean, some people say, ‘Oh, God, if Jobs got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble.’ And, you know, I think it wouldn’t be a party, but there are really capable people at Apple. My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that’s what I try to do.

·         So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know – just explore things.

·         People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

·         I think the key thing is that we’re not all terrified at the same time. I mean, we do put our heart and soul into these things.

·         I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

·         Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

What Meister Eckhart Said

·         If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough. 

·         Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure. 

·         All God wants of man is a peaceful heart. 

·         He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment. 

·         Every creature is a word of God. 

·         God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being made and let God be God in you. 

·         God is at home, it's we who have gone out for a walk. 

·         Man goes far away or near but God never goes far-off; he is always standing close at hand, and even if he cannot stay within he goes no further than the door. 

·         Only the hand that erases can write the true thing. 

·         The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. 

·         The more we have the less we own. 

·         The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge. 

·         The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great. 

·         The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake. 

·         To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God. 

·         Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us. 

·         What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love. 

·         What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action. 

·         When you are thwarted, it is your own attitude that is out of order. 

·         Words derive their power from the original word. 

·         You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion. 

Some wise words about fathers

Tomorrow is Father’s Day, so in honor of my father (who passed away in 1985) and of all the other fathers I know who work hard at doing the hardest job of all—parenting, I am posting some inspirational words about fathers and fatherhood. I was fortunate to have had a very close relationship with my father, one that started when I was very young. We shared a love of books and literature that has stayed with me my whole life, and I will never forget our discussions at the dinner table about everything under the sun. My father was my friend as I grew into adulthood; I know that I lost him all too soon. He never got a chance to see how my life changed, nor did he ever get to meet my husband or my stepdaughter. Nevertheless, I know he is watching over me as he always did when I was a child, and I am grateful for the time I did have together with him. He taught me to appreciate the time we have together with our loved ones, that we don’t have them with us on this earth forever, so we should not take them or our time together for granted.

·         It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
~ Anne Sexton

·         He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.  ~Clarence Budington Kelland

·         A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.  ~Author Unknown

·         Father! - to God himself we cannot give a holier name.  ~William Wordsworth

·         Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father!  ~Lydia M. Child, Philothea: A Romance, 1836

·         Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.  ~Ruth E. Renkel

·         A father carries pictures where his money used to be.  ~Author Unknown

·         It is much easier to become a father than to be one.  ~Kent Nerburn, Letters to My Son: Reflections on Becoming a Man, 1994

·         The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering-galleries, they are clearly heard at the end and by posterity.  ~Jean Paul Richter

·         Any man can be a father.  It takes someone special to be a dad.  ~Author Unknown

·         The greatest gift I ever had
Came from God; I call him Dad!
~Author Unknown

·         I love my father as the stars - he's a bright shining example and a happy twinkling in my heart.  ~Terri Guillemets

·         Dad, your guiding hand on my shoulder will remain with me forever.  ~Author Unknown

·         You will find that if you really try to be a father, your child will meet you halfway.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

·         Why are men reluctant to become fathers?  They aren't through being children.  ~Cindy Garner

·         Fathers represent another way of looking at life - the possibility of an alternative dialogue.  ~Louise J. Kaplan, Oneness and Separateness: From Infant to Individual, 1978

·         There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.  ~John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994

·         There are three stages of a man's life:  He believes in Santa Claus, he doesn't believe in Santa Claus, he is Santa Claus.  ~Author Unknown

·         Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.  ~Bill Cosby

·         When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.  But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.  ~Author unknown, commonly attributed to Mark Twain but no evidence has yet been found for this 

Some wise words about gratitude

Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.

- Brian Tracy

What you focus on expands, and when you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it. Opportunities, relationships, even money flowed my way when I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life.

- Oprah Winfrey

Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.

- Kahlil Gibran

Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty.

- Doris Day

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

- G. K. Chesterton

Joy is a heart full and a mind purified by gratitude.

- Marietta McCarty

There is nothing better than the encouragement of a good friend.

- Jean Jacques Rousseau

Kindness trumps greed: it asks for sharing. Kindness trumps fear: it calls forth gratefulness and love. Kindness trumps even stupidity, for with sharing and love, one learns.

- Marc Estrin

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.

- Johannes A. Gaertner

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.

- Melodie Beattie

To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude.

- Albert Schweitzer

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

- Eric Hoffer

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice.

- Meister Eckhart

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

- Marcel Proust

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

- Cicero

What Georgia O’Keeffe Said

Georgia O'Keeffe was born in 1887 near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She is one of America's most important modern artists, well-known for her bold, beautiful and colorful flower paintings. She had some important things to say about art, courage, being an artist and being a woman. She died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an area of the USA that she loved, in 1986.

·         Making your unknown known is the important thing.

·         To create one's own world, in any of the arts, takes courage.

·         Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.

·         I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me -- shapes and ideas so near to me -- so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

·         When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

·         I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.

·         I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it – I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.

·         I think I am one of the few who gives our country any voice of its own.

·         One cannot be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work.

·         One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.

·         Now and then when I get an idea for a picture, I think, how ordinary. Why paint that old rock? Why not go for a walk instead? But then I realize that to someone else it may not seem so ordinary.

·         I found I could say things with colors that I couldn't say in any other way -- things that I had no words for.

·         I don't see why we ever think of what others think of what we do -- no matter who they are. Isn't it enough just to express yourself?

·         I feel there is something unexplored about women that only a woman can explore.

·         I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life -- and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

·         The days you work are the best days.

·         You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.

One Door Closes, Another One Opens

After the turbulence of last year, I made the decision that 2011 was going to look very different than 2010. And so far I can report that 2011 is turning out to be different than 2010. I am trying to live each day to its fullest (even though I am tired in the evenings these days and end up falling asleep on the couch instead of finishing off a project or two). I am trying to walk away from incendiary situations, trying to keep a lid on my anger and my irritation, trying to take good care of myself in all ways, trying to be happy and trying to be cheerful for others. I’m trying to be nicer to my husband instead of taking my irritation with workplace situations out on him (but I require the same from him, just to have the equal balance—we’re both trying). I am trying not to get dragged down by hopeless work situations, even though it would be easy to hit the bottom again from time to time. I have extricated myself from useless and time-consuming activities, from trying to change the world with people who haven’t the foggiest idea about what that means or what’s involved. I am trying not to cast whatever pearls I own before swine. I am trying to let go and let God as the saying goes, trying to not wall myself off when sad times hit, trying to reach out to others who are going through tough times, trying to remember that life is short and that every minute counts. When you remember that life is short, you live life in a more aware manner. Not everything that happens has crucial importance for your life; some things just happen, the world is sometimes unfair, people are sometimes frustrating and rude, but better times do come. They do. Doors close, opportunities disappear, but new doors open and new opportunities appear. My mother always used to say this. It appears that she was right about a lot of things, but I didn’t give her the credit she was due when I was younger, when I thought I knew best. Ah, the arrogance of youth.   

The key point is that I am trying, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. I realize that I have taken failure so seriously, when in fact failure is a part of life. It balances out success—the yang to the yin. I cannot believe sometimes that I didn’t learn this lesson sooner. I mean really, who am I to think that I would be spared, when people a whole lot smarter and better at things than me have failed? Failing means to have taken a risk, so I can comfort myself with that. Better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. I have written about this in an earlier post, but it is true. Trying is what is important, whether or not success is the result. And by success I don’t necessarily mean achieving wealth and fame (although they are of course nice). It is enough with personal satisfaction and happiness, with the knowledge that one has achieved something that one has set out to do. That is immensely satisfying.

I send out small hopes and prayers into the universe on a daily basis. I won’t say what they are, but they are not selfish prayers. I hope and pray for others as much as I do for myself. I believe in the power of positive thoughts and hope that the prayers will be answered. We just never really know quite how they will be answered. But life and the universe have a way of providing opportunities and answers. I see that now. One of my little prayers has been answered recently--I got a few answers to some questions that have been causing my soul some amount of searching. A new small door has opened. I am entering it and have decided to follow the path that lies beyond the door. I’ll be writing more about that path as time goes on.  

Some wise words about mothers

·         A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.  ~Peter De Vries

·         The phrase "working mother" is redundant.  ~Jane Sellman

·         The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.  She never existed before.  The woman existed, but the mother, never.  A mother is something absolutely new.  ~Rajneesh

·         I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me.  They have clung to me all my life.  ~Abraham Lincoln

·         Sweater, n.:  garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.  ~Ambrose Bierce

·         Women's Liberation is just a lot of foolishness.  It's the men who are discriminated against.  They can't bear children.  And no one's likely to do anything about that.  ~Golda Meir

·         The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.  ~Honoré de Balzac

·         All women become like their mothers.  That is their tragedy.  No man does.  That's his.  ~Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895

·         Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
~William Shakespeare

·         When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts.  A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.  ~Sophia Loren,Women and Beauty

·         Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.  ~John Lancaster Spalding

·         Motherhood has a very humanizing effect.  Everything gets reduced to essentials.  ~Meryl Streep

·         I love my mother as the trees love water and sunshine - she helps me grow, prosper, and reach great heights.  ~Terri Guillemets

·         [A] mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.  ~Emily Dickinson

·         A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.  ~Washington Irving

Little pearls of wisdom

I am recommending this article 'Don't get emotionally mugged' written by Martha Beck which showed up on Oprah.com on April 28th of this year. It had a lot of interesting things to say to me and I don't hesitate to recommend it! 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/04/28/stay.good.mood.o/index.html?iref=obinsite

I also recommend another article by the same writer: 'The Cure for self-consciousness' that also can be found on Oprah.com  http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Martha-Becks-Cure-for-Self-Consciousness/1 and which was originally published in Oprah magazine in July 2007.  

There are a lot of self-help books, magazines, articles, shows, and advice out there. Sifting the wheat from the chaff is a huge job, but well-worth it when you find some quality advice. These two articles ‘speak’ to me because the author seems to be genuinely interested in making life better for her readers, and because you get the feeling that she’s been there, done that and learned from it. And what she learned was valuable enough to share, and since she’s a good writer, she can communicate it well. And anything that can make our lives better or change our attitudes for the better is something I want to share with you.

Enjoy………..

A lesson in employee satisfaction

”People are the most important resource we have at SKAGEN and it is therefore very gratifying that they are also very happy in their jobs. The workplace is demanding, but unique, and expertise and knowledge are important in all aspects of the organization”.

Mette Helgevold Årstad, SKAGEN Human Resources manager

Why you wonder, am I quoting a human resources manager and her views about the company she works for? It is because the company she works for is not just any company, it is a mutual funds company founded in 1993, and it was recently voted one of the top ten places to work in Norway by the Great Place to Work Institute. They surveyed 12,000 employees from 136 companies and SKAGEN FUNDS came in as #9 out of 68 companies with 50-250 employees. Impressive, if you ask me, but I’ve heard this before about the company. And it makes me wonder how they do it. How do they achieve employee satisfaction? Could it be the bonuses that they hand out at Christmas time to all employees, from high-level managers to secretaries? What is their secret? Whatever it is, I want to bottle it and share it with my (public sector) workplace, because at present it’s on the opposite end of the scale in terms of employee satisfaction, unfortunately. And I know a lot of the skeptics will tell me that SKAGEN is a private company and that things are done differently there. So what? Why can’t the public sector adopt other things from the private sector besides the goal of making money? Why can’t they learn from the private sector how to treat employees well?

Many people in this country have bought shares in mutual funds offered by SKAGEN; the company thus has a huge amount of money at its disposal for its national and global investments, and has done very well since its founding in 1993. They not only treat their employees well, they also treat their clients well. We recently attended the play ENRON courtesy of SKAGEN; they had a few hundred tickets that were made available on a first-come/first-served basis to attentive (answering an email ad) clients, and I just happened to be one of the lucky ones who got tickets when I saw the email advertising this. I like this idea of treating clients to a night out. The skeptics and the cynics I know were quick to add that the company can afford it and so on—that it’s just a drop in the financial bucket for them. I know this is true. But I ask--how many other companies are actually doing this for their clients? I appreciate the gesture. It’s not just the rich they’re courting; it’s the common man and woman. And I’m not naive; of course I know that they are looking for new clients. Again I say, so what—it’s their job and they do it well. They also offer seminars and courses, for example, on pensions and pension reform, saving for retirement, and so forth. I recently attended an evening seminar for women only which was very interesting, particularly the lecture about pensions, retirement, and early retirement. The seminar was free and during the break, the company provided tapas, dessert, fruit and wine. So again I say, if this is how they can treat their clients—by sharing a little of the wealth, then it’s not surprising that they also ‘share the wealth’ with their employees. Not too difficult to achieve employee satisfaction that way—by rewarding your employees for their hard work. But not only that, it seems to be an interesting place to work, even though it’s a high-pressure environment. SKAGEN seems to function well as a company and other companies could learn from them how to treat their employees. I’m not just talking about handing out bonuses at Christmas time; I’m talking about creating a work environment that appreciates and cares about its employees, at least from my vantage point. I’m talking about leadership that listens to and ‘sees’ its employees and likes them. There’s a lot right with this picture.

Good Friday and Easter Sunday

This is the third year I have attended Good Friday services at Gamle Aker church, a Protestant church that is very close to where I live in Oslo. The church was built around 1080 AD, making it the oldest building in Oslo. It is a beautiful old church with a lot of atmosphere—massive stone columns around the nave of the church that give it an air of being an ancient building. When you step into the church, you walk along a dark and cool aisle that leads to the altar; chairs have been placed on either side of the aisle for parishioners. The church is devoid of statues or any decorations save for a few candelabras on the altar. The service for Good Friday is divided into two parts: the first part is the passion and suffering of Christ, with a lot of readings interspersed with relevant songs from the choir which stands on the altar together with the priest. This part of the service ends with parishioners being able to stand or kneel before a crucifix so that they can pray or touch the feet of Christ, much as we do in the Catholic Church on Good Friday. But the thing that most surprised me and has kept me coming back is the second part of the service; this is a symbolic burial of Christ after he is taken down from the cross. The crucifix is placed on the ground in a circular area behind the altar, and parishioners are encouraged to take a flower and place it on the ‘grave’, then the priest says a few prayers and the service concludes. I found this part of the service to be incredibly poignant the first year I was part of it. It felt so real, and so sad, and that of course is the point of it. It is to make you realize that Christ died and was buried in this way. Experiencing this in a church from 1080 also has the effect of placing you that much closer to the actual event in history; at least that is how I ended up feeling, and I was glad for the experience.

On Easter Sunday I attended mass at St. Olav’s Catholic Church. I happened to attend the high mass, which is a mass sung in Latin or Norwegian, or in this particular case, both languages. It was a joyful celebration of the resurrection of Christ; the day was sunny and warm, the church was full of people, and the priest gave a very good sermon about doubt, the scientific search for evidence of Christ’s resurrection, and the importance of faith. His words struck a nerve; this is how I have been feeling lately. I see how important having faith is, much more important than having scientific explanations and evidence for everything that we doubt or that we meet with skepticism. Doubting Thomas comes to mind; Christ had a lot of patience with him but did tell him that some people had faith and did not need to ‘see’ what Thomas needed to see. Some things in this life are mysteries that we will never be able to explain. Love is one of them. We do not require explanations for why we love or why we are loved; as soon as we start to dissect love it can very well disappear or become merely banal. We trust another or others with our heart, with our love, and we take a leap of faith to do that—whether it is romantic love or friendship or charitable love. If we did not take that leap of faith, we could not give or receive love. We can gather as much knowledge about another person as is humanly possible; still that person is a mystery to us and will remain so until the day we die. We will have learned a little about that person but not everything. This does not stop us from loving. How important this is for me to remember when I doubt my faith; that I love and am loved. If I can experience love, then I can have faith and I can trust that Christ’s life and death have meaning for me and for our world. This is the Easter message and it has become a very important message for me. 

What Mother Teresa said

At Easter time, I am reminded of the words of Mother Teresa. She had a lot to say about living in the modern world, about loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted. At mass this past Sunday, the priest spoke about the very same things, and talked about the heavy crosses that many people in our society live with each day—depression, loneliness, unemployment, a demoralizing job, family problems--the list goes on. The priest meant that these conditions are our chance to share in the cross of Christ, and while that idea is very unappealing—to have a cross on our shoulders weighing us down that may ultimately lead to our demise--the fact remains that this is the human condition from time to time. I find some reassurance in knowing that my faith is founded on the suffering and death of a man who cared for others. His life was remarkable; the circumstances surrounding his death were not. He was treated as a common criminal and left to die, and before he died, he struggled with not wanting to fulfill his mission here on earth. How many times have we had that feeling ourselves? How many times have we wanted to run away from our problems, from unhappiness, from depression, from heavy responsibilities, from unpleasant situations, from unpleasant people? How many times has it been hard to smile after being pushed down one more time, after being trampled on one more time? How difficult it is to smile in the face of injustice, abuse, and ridicule. And yet there are people who do this every day. Get up and keep on going. Smile kindly and accept what others would not accept. Are these people crazy? Do they have something to teach us? Even Mother Teresa knew that most of us could never live her life. She was adamant about starting at home, that we had to learn to love the ones we live with before we could go out into society to do the same. Her wisdom is timeless and precious and too important not to share again. I read her books when I was younger, and here I am many years later, and her words make even more sense to me now.

·         Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

·         Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

·         Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

·         Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

·         I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?

·         If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

·         If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

·         If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

·         Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

·         Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.

·         Peace begins with a smile.

·         We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

·         Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

·         Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

·         Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

·         Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.

·         Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.

·         We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

·         Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

·         The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

·         The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

·         There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in - that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.

·         Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

·         There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.

·         We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

·         Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

·         We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.