Leadership
What Inspires You?
“The consequences of today are determined by the actions of the past. To change your future, alter your decisions today.” ~ Anonymous 
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein
“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell
“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 others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.” – T. S. Eliot
“There’s no next time. It’s now or never.”
“For every effect there is a root cause. Find and address the root cause rather than try to fix the effect, as there is no end to the latter.”
“Every moment you get is a gift. Spend it on things that matter. Don’t spend it by dwelling on unhappy things.”
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don’t put off living to next week, next month, next year or next decade. The only time you’re ever living is in this moment.
Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. – Mark Twain
Life is a gift. Never forget to enjoy and bask in every moment you are in.
“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”
“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” ~ Jim Rohn
Be Persistent!
Persistence – the act of enduring despite… regardless of… in the face of… even with… even though… A leader is persistent. If there are setbacks, if there are obstacles, if the going gets tough, a leader is persistent. It’s the act of determination that stems from the depths of confidence and the strength that is derived form experience.
Remember to Be Persistent!
Leadership is Scarce!
True leadership is rare. Titles are common, but leaders who inspire, serve, and stand firm in adversity are scarce.
Leadership is not about power. It is about vision, influence, and putting others first. It requires sacrifice, humility and the courage to step forward when it would be easier to step back.
That is why leadership stands out. In a world full of followers, authentic leaders are remembered, respected and needed more than ever.
Leadership is scarce, but if you choose integrity, courage, and compassion each day, you can become the example others are waiting for.
The scarcity of leadership presents both a challenge and an opportunity. A challenge, because organizations, communities, and families struggle without strong leaders. But also an opportunity, because those who rise up and commit to leading authentically will always stand out. In a world full of followers and spectators, real leadership becomes a powerful differentiator.
If you aspire to lead, remember this: leadership is not a position you wait to be given, it is a choice you make daily. You choose it when you act with integrity, when you put others first, when you remain steady in the storm. Every decision to do the harder, better thing, is a step toward embodying the kind of leadership that the world is desperately searching for.
Leadership is scarce. But if you decide to lead with vision, courage and compassion, you can become the rare example others have been waiting for. 
Are You Satisfied and Complacent?
It is dangerous to become so satisfied and complacent that we lose the fire within us to keep learning and growing. The moment we stop challenging ourselves is the moment we begin to drift toward mediocrity. A failure to develop, improve, and evolve is a slow death of potential, and it’s heartbreaking to see someone once alive with energy, passion, and vision fade into complacency.
Think about how many times we’ve set New Year’s resolutions. A new year often feels like a fresh start, a chance to make changes for the better. And while this habit of self-reflection is valuable, the problem isn’t in setting resolutions. The problem is in sustaining them. According to Emily A. Sterrett, Ph.D., “We often make resolutions we are not entirely committed to (but believe we should do, like lose weight) or resolutions that are so idealistic and out of reach that they are nearly impossible to achieve… and we quickly get discouraged.”
How many of us run out of the gate in January with excitement only to lose steam by February or forget our resolutions completely by summer? It happens all too often. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
The key is to shift your focus from short-term resolutions to long-term growth. Start small and build momentum gradually. Choose goals that matter to you, not the ones others expect of you. Surround yourself with people who will hold you accountable, inspire you, and remind you of your “why.” More importantly, choose goals that bring you joy and fuel your growth, not ones that only check a box.
At the end of the day, the issue isn’t about resolutions at all, it’s about your willingness to evolve. If you’re content with mediocrity, then don’t be surprised when life starts to feel like it’s passing you by. But if you want more, more meaning, more growth, more fulfillment, you must decide what changes are worth pursuing and commit to them daily.
Growth doesn’t come from chance. It comes from choice.
So the question is, what choice will you make?
Life isn’t Fair…Get use to it!
Common sense rules for life!
Rule 1: Life is not fair — get used to it!
Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping — they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
In the Words of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some memorable quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)
A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
As we grow old…the beauty steals inward.
Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
Character is higher than intellect… A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think.
Children are all foreigners.
Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practicing every day while they live.
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Don’t waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.
Every hero becomes a bore at last.
Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.
Give all to love; obey thy heart.
God enters by a private door into every individual.
He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.
A Mother’s Love!
When the time came for my family to leave Cuba, the new regime of government inspectors came to our home and inventoried every item in it. The few items my parents held sacred became the property of the new Communist government and everything they owned, from pictures and mementos would never be passed on to other generations. Despite the persecution they experienced daily by those who had embraced the new mindset, their courage and determination allowed them to endure and stay focused while they waited for permission to leave. My mother’s love for her family led her to hide her wedding picture as a keepsake for her children. As my mother and father ventured out into the unknown to provide their five children an opportunity to live the America dream; this picture serves as the only reminder of a past my siblings and I have only heard through stories.
The Opportunity is Here!
The time is NOW! 
Enjoy the words of Seth Godin!! If you aren’t registered to receive his daily dose of wisdom, I encourage you to do so.
At the same time that our economic engines are faltering, something else is happening. Like all revolutions, it happens in fits and starts, without perfection, but it’s clearly happening.
The mass market is being replaced by multiple micro markets and the long tail of choice.
Google is connecting buyers and sellers over vaster distances, more efficiently and more cheaply than ever before.
Manufacturing is more of a conceptual hurdle than a practical one.
The exchange of information creates ever more value, while commodity products are ever cheaper. It takes fewer employees to generate more value, make more noise and impact more people.
Most of all is this: every individual, self-employed or with a boss, is now more in charge of her destiny than ever before. The notion of a company town or a stagnant industry with little choice is fading fast.
Right before your eyes, a fundamentally different economy, with different players and different ways to add value is being built. What used to be an essential asset (for a person or for a company) is worth far less, while new attributes are both scarce and valuable.
Are there dislocations? There’s no doubt about it. Pain and uncertainty and risk, for sure.
The opportunity, though, is the biggest of our generation (or the last one, for that matter). The opportunity is there for anyone (with or without a job) smart enough to take it–to develop a best in class skill, to tell a story, to spread the word, to be in demand, to satisfy real needs, to run from the mediocre middle and to change everything.
¡Note! Like all revolutions, this is an opportunity, not a solution, not a guarantee. It’s an opportunity to poke and experiment and fail and discover dead ends on the way to making a difference. The old economy offered a guarantee–time plus education plus obedience = stability. The new one, not so much. The new one offers a chance for you to take a chance and make an impact.
¡Note! If you’re looking for ‘how’, if you’re looking for a map, for a way to industrialize the new era, you’ve totally missed the point and you will end up disappointed. The nature of the last era was that repetition and management of results increased profits. The nature of this one is the opposite: if someone can tell you precisely what to do, it’s too late. Art and novelty and innovation cannot be reliably and successfully industrialized.
In 1924, Walt Disney wrote a letter to Ub Iwerks. Walt was already in Hollywood and he wanted his old friend Ubbe to leave Kansas City and come join him to build an animation studio. The last line of the letter said “PS I wouldn’t live in KC now if you gave me the place—yep—you bet—Hooray for Hollywood.” And, just above, in larger letters, he scrawled, “Don’t hesitate—Do it now.”
It’s not 1924, and this isn’t Hollywood, but it is a revolution, and there’s a spot for you (and your boss if you push) if you realize you’re capable of making a difference. Or you could be frustrated. Up to you.
Seth Godin
The Value of a Mentor!
Defining what we value begins by recognizing who we value. As a former educator I always tried to lead with passion. I wanted to establish my sincerity as I helped shape my existence and the existence of my former students. I wanted to make sure my passion and commitment caused those around me to revel in it and inspire them to tap into their own passion. Passion is a choice! I tried to lead with passion, honesty and commitment, so others would not only follow, but follow the students I was mentoring. The passion, excitement and comradery between all of us, is front and center. As we continue in life’s journey, we realized; success is our journey, not our final destination. We’ve already been rewarded being part of each other’s journey! Our journey is measured in the friends we have, rather than the miles we travel! Our commitment to excellence and each other is prevalent. Even after so many years, nothing has changed! We continue moving forward!
