Archive for the ‘Calling’ Category
Managing Calling
“There are those who travel and those who are going somewhere. They are different and yet they are the same. The successful have this over their rivals: they know where they are going.”
- Mark Caine
As an 8th grader attending First Avenue School in Arcadia, I had some fantastic teachers including Mrs. Sharp, my English teacher. Her love for literature and writing inspired me. Looking back on those Junior and Senior High years, I realize just how significant teachers can be in pointing a student toward their strengths and interests, helping them discover where they want to go.
Mrs. Sharp was a demanding taskmaster. She ignited the passion of her students by challenging them to pursue achievement tenaciously. She pointed them to move purposefully in the direction of success defined by the pursuit of excellence. Her methodology? She mentored with tons of enthusiasm, planning and spontaneity as she pushed, nudged and cajoled us in the direction of academic goal accomplishment. If I could chat with Mrs. Sharp today, I am confident she would be the first to acknowledge she wanted her students to know one thing: Do you want success? Know where you are going!
Recently, I had the opportunity to listen to a competent business professional confide that, for many years, he had pursued his personal and professional life like a bouncing ball in a pinball machine….constantly defining his direction by being moved…here, there, anywhere…by circumstances, people and, mostly, his life attitudes. He pursued a random path, personally and professionally. For him it took time being bounced around before he claimed his future by declaring to himself: Setting the direction is my call to make.
There is nothing wrong wandering without a map. It can be a creative and revealing experience. Steve Jobs’ life story proved that fact. Yet, when a few weeks, months, or years of wanderlust become a lifetime of wandering, such lives often succumb to the crippling impact of victimization, disappointment and the numbing expectation to be taken care of by someone because of the failure to exercise the rigor of the personal life challenge provided to each of us: to set a direction and pursue its path.
One clear message has been revealed by every mentor I’ve met along my path: Regardless of the season, we can set the course correction and make the fundamental decision to move ourselves in the direction of our hopes and dreams.
Mission Integrity Action
Today, I see the big lesson with renewed conviction: Meandering turns to meaning when I make the call to set the direction.
Appreciating you on the ethical edge!
Russell Williams, Founder/President
Passkeys Foundation/Ethical Edge
www.ethicaledge.org
Managing Calling
“Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.”
-Jose Ortega y Gasset
Every 92 minutes. That’s the timetable for the eruption of Yellowstone Park’s Old Faithful. Until 2007 when my wife and I revisited Old Faithful, it had been more than fifty years since my first visit to the park as a youngster to sit on a wooden bench resting on encrusted ground to watch the world’s most famous geyser do its thing for 1000′s of vacationing onlookers.
Is Old Faithful predictable? Amazingly so! It has been for countless decades. The fact is, according to the Park Ranger informing park guests about the geyser’s history, Old Faithful will remain predictable far into the future…give or take a few minutes. You could place a sure bet on the fact that the boiling waters deep below the surface of the geyser will produce the energy to cause Old Faithful to let off a little steam with regularity.
There is something excitingly appealing about nature’s predictability. The spectacular and sometimes devastating results of natural occurrences put mortal minds in awe-gazing checkmate, realizing that hidden and concealed forces cause granite templates to jump skyward, create glaciers, geysers and move rivers and oceans to rise and subside.
Clearly, leaders of integrity become faithful individuals defined by predictable hidden thought patterns that reveal the bedrock of meaningful values. Deep within the psyche of every individual is a template of perennial life-enhancing values. Such values…responsibility, respect for others, gratitude and many others…are the source of personal life behavior that serve a public good benefitting self, others, and society. It is the steady, purposeful application of timeless values that distinguishes the leaders of integrity.
While thousands flock annually to see a famous Wyoming geyser perform its natural act of magnificent predictability, I believe that it is no less a spectacle of human achievement for an individual to craft a steady values story that becomes predictable, trusted and the bedrock for one’s continual influence for good at home, at work and in the community.
Mission Integrity Action
This week I regularly remind myself that my personal faithfulness to the core values that guide my actions attracts the right people into my professional life. I show up with the steady presence of perennial values that draws a spectacular network of like-minded professionals.
Appreciating you on the ethical edge!
Russell Williams, Founder/President
Passkeys Foundation/Ethical Edge
www.ethicaledge.org