“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

I love quotes like this.

I have always been drawn to the idea that our work has meaning. This quote reminded me that whatever work you do has meaning if you put meaning into it.

If you give it your all and do your best you immediately create meaning for whatever you are doing.

We each have the opportunity to see this meaning as we go about our day.

What do others see in your work?

Do they see someone just making it through another day?

Do they see someone going through the motions?

Or do they say there goes someone who did his job well?

We choose what they see. We choose our attitude and how we go about our work.

What will you choose today?

Make it a great day.

Jake

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. – Henry David Thoreau

Perception is reality.

This reminds me of the principle of “seek and ye shall find”.

This morning this quote made me think of how we see others and how we can choose to see the positive in them.

Instead of seeing a seeing an idiot driver in front of us maybe we could see a single mom with a lot on her mind who needs a smile from a stranger.

Instead of seeing a waiter who made a mistake maybe we could see someone who has just had their heart broken and needs someone to give them a little slack today.

All around us, every day, we look at people and choose what to see.

Let’s choose something positive or a positive action in response to their situation.

Make it a great day.

Jake

I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending.

Fred Rogers

What a great way to describe the holiday season.

Let’s enjoy the anticipation around the familiar turns of the Christmas season.

Decorating the house.

Shopping for presents.

Christmas plays and programs.

Our favorite Christmas movies.

Christmas church.

Wrapping and opening presents.

Quiet time with loved ones after all the hullabaloo.

Whatever your familiar moments, enjoy them.

Make it a great Christmas season.

Jake

KJ – Remember that failure is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night. – Zig Ziglar

JD – If you help enough other people get what they want in life, you can get everything you want. – Zig Ziglar

EB* – I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t be truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles. – Zig Ziglar

JM* – Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the “gotta have it” scale. – Zig Ziglar

JW* – If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere. – Zig Ziglar

JS* – If you treat your wife like a thoroughbred, you’ll never end up with a nag. – Zig Ziglar

We didn’t have our management meeting so I put together a bunch of good Zig Ziglar quotes that I found.

Really liked the one about looking for friends.

When we go out looking for a certain kind of relationship in life we must be willing to be the one that goes the whole 100%. We must be willing to be what we are looking for, not wait for others to be their half of what we are looking for.

I encourage all of you to seek out a Zig Ziglar book or audiobook in the near future. He truly was an exceptional human being with an exceptional way of conveying some of the most important concepts in life.

Make it a great weekend.

Jake

http://youtu.be/5oTC63hgsiY

Christmas song time for the Friday Morning Toe Tappers!

I already started listening to Christmas music in my office and it has been a nice little pick me up this week.

I know this song doesn’t have the most upbeat message, but it makes me smile every time it comes on (mostly because I get to picture Meaghan singing it).

Forget the bad stuff from last Christmas and focus on making this one a great one.

Make it a great day.

Jake

Watch your thoughts, they become actions.

Watch your actions, they become habits.

Watch your habits, they become character.

Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

Zig Ziglar shared this as part of his new book “Better Than Good”.

This may be one of the simplest explanations of how our thoughts become our reality.

Pay attention to what you are thinking, it may just end up as your destiny.

Make it a great day.

Jake

PS – For those of you who don’t know, Zig Ziglar passed away yesterday. Here at Mavidea we have a bunch of his seminars and audiobooks up front. You owe it to yourself to check them out.

“Our emotions need to be as educated as our intellect. It is important to know how to feel, how to respond, and how to let life in so that it can touch you.”

~Jim Rohn

The second half of this quote from Jim Rohn is a great follow up to yesterday’s CS Lewis quote.

We must let life in so that it can touch us. Only when we open ourselves up to our emotions and let life in do we experience all that life has to offer.

Here at Mavidea we sometimes experience this in our client relationships.

Sometimes our clients leave us and choose to move on to another provider.

Every time this happens it feels like someone punched me in the gut. I HATE to lose clients.

Now that I am so much older and wiser (that may be a bit of an exaggeration) I have learned to almost embrace these feelings.

Every time a client leaves I give myself a day to be plain old fashioned pissed off about it. After that I work to learn the most I can from that situation so it doesn’t happen again.

Doing the best for our clients requires that we care about them. A lot. But when we care about our clients that means it hurts every time one leaves.

In the end, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Caring about our clients means that it hurts when they leave, but it also means it feels great when they do well.

For every client that complains or moves on we have way more that are celebrating successes and complimenting us.

Make it a great day.

Jake

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” – CS Lewis

CS Lewis is one of my favorite authors. I love the way he is able to take a concept to a deeper, more fundamental level.

I really liked this quote because he takes “love” and does just that.

He reminds us that loving another requires vulnerability and taking some risk.

And he explains how maybe the greatest risk of all is that of taking none.

Some things are worth the risk.

Make it a great day.

Jake

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. – Melody Beattie

An attitude of gratitude.

Thanksgiving is upon us and we are all reminded to be thankful for all the blessings in our life.

And next will be Christmas where we will have that same opportunity for remembering the important areas of our life to be thankful for.

Our daily gratitude can transform our lives for the better.

Let’s all take this holiday season to again be reminded of our gratitude. But let’s make this holiday season a little different. Let’s stretch out the feelings of gratitude and goodwill towards men through January (to start).

Make it a great Thanksgiving.

Jake