Tag Archives: The Tennessean

RAZING THE IDEA OF ANNUAL RAISE

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#annualraises

“Better not start spending that big raise you might be expecting this year,” says Doug Carroll, a reporter for USA Today.
For the last few years, a raise has been hard to come by. In fact, a job was not easy to come by, so one may not have expected a raise. A steady paycheck was good enough.
But Carroll, whose article was published April 27, 2014, in the Tennessean newspaper of Nashville, says eight of 10 businesses say they expect subdued wage growth in the next three years. By subdued, they mean 0 to 3 percent, adjusted for inflation, Carroll quotes a survey by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE).
We can probably hear each other thinking the same thing: our cost of living goes up, but our paychecks don’t. And, if they do, they don’t go up enough to cover those extra costs.
Let’s put this in perspective. A salary was never designed to cover OUR costs. A salary is something an employer gave a person for work he does. What’s done with the money is the worker’s decision. In decades past, a worker figured out how to make a life with his given salary, and regular, if not annual, increases helped him better his life as time passed.
Combine the extra salary with the worker’s life efficiencies, such as paying off a mortgage, having children grow and leave the house etc. Now, examine today’s world. Raises are smaller. Those life efficiencies are getting fewer. Mortgages are more difficult to pay off because houses likely have dropped in value. In fact, foreclosures have skyrocketed in the last few years.
Children that grow into adults are leaving home later, if at all. Those adult children may be finding it difficult to support themselves, perhaps because they have lost a job and are having trouble finding another. If they do find another job, it is often for less money than they were making, compounding the difficulty of independence.
Financial upward mobility is more difficult to achieve because employment that may have been secure decades ago is far from secure now. We have to find multiple sources of income so that we are not so dependent on one job, or one employer.
The good news is there are many such income sources out there. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You’ll find financial assistance in two ways: spending less and earning more.
It’s logical that high unemployment keeps wages down. It’s also logical that as employers’ non-wage costs rise – 31% of those surveyed by NABE reported rising material costs, Carroll reports – employees will pay for it with flat wages.
We can curse out our employers for not paying us enough. One might argue that we almost never get paid enough working for someone else. But cursing or blaming your employer wastes energy.
We have to manage our own financial situations ourselves. We have to continually look for jobs or other income that will better our lives. We also have to spend what we have wisely.
In fact, living BELOW one’s means may be the first step toward financial independence. If one lives below one’s means long enough, and invests wisely what he is not spending, eventually he can live better, if not the way he wants, regardless of his employment situation.
So, to paraphrase Chik-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy, earn your money, however much or little, honestly. Spend it wisely. And, if you are fortunate enough, give the rest away to worthy causes.
Peter

RISK IS A GREAT TEACHER

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#taketherisk

We have to start life somewhere.
When we do, our relationship with the future is, well, complicated.
Kate O’Neill, founder and principal of KO Insights, discussed this idea in a May 11, 2014, column in The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.
O’Neill discussed a project she had worked on for a large firm. One of the executives asked her how long a particular feature would take. She told him eight months. He asked how sure she was in that projection. She answered, “70 percent.” He told her that the longer it takes to get something done, the more risk there is and the less certain we can be about it.
The lesson: “Every day could be your last,” O’Neill writes. “Whether it is or not, you can take intentional, meaningful risks today to build the future you might get to enjoy.”
We hear a lot of talk today about uncertainty, as if forgetting the old adage that the only things certain are death and taxes. Part of the uncertainty talk is about taxes, and the fear of rising taxes is keeping some potential employers from expanding, so they say.
No one can know what will come next, but it should never stop us from acting. If you know you have something good, go for it. If you are unsure that what you have is good, then it may be best to stop, think and evaluate. How can I make this idea that I THINK might be good a little clearer to me?
Fear, sometimes irrational fear, can sometimes prevent us from doing something that would be good for us. Don’t let fear, particularly irrational fear, stop you.
Don’t blow something off because you THINK you know it may hurt you, before determining for certain that it will. In other words, standing in front of a moving train certainly could hurt you, so don’t do it. But examining a new business venture, or interviewing for a job that you may have never done before may benefit you. The worst that can happen is failure that you are certain to learn from. The best that could happen is a very positive life-changing experience.
You feel great when you’re “in the zone.” But if that zone is a comfort zone, be wary. The comfort could disappear, then what?
O’Neill writes that our complicated relationship with the future can make us live our days in a balance of hope and impatience. Have you ever told your (pick one: parents, spouse, teachers) that you are onto something big, and they ask you when you expect to achieve success? Though you would like it to be tomorrow, success often doesn’t come quickly. You may have an idea of a perfect time, but that perfect time may come and go. If you know what you have, and what you are doing, are good, don’t give up because your predicted timing has come and gone. As O’Neill says: “try, fail, learn adjust. Try, succeed, learn, adjust. Then, try, fail, learn, adjust” etc.
If you are open to looking for something that could give you the future you want, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You will see how others are living their dreams, and how you could, too.
If you fear uncertainty, learn that uncertainty is a way of life. But don’t avoid positive action because you fear the uncertainty. Take, as O’Neill calls them, meaningful risks. Step outside the comfort zone if the comfort has disappeared. You will survive. You could thrive, if you maintain the drive. Forget the fret. It wastes energy.
You may not know the perfect time, but it is out there if you keep looking for it.
Peter

DEBT: WEALTH VEHICLE AND WEALTH KILLER

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There’s good debt and bad debt.
Of course, having no debt at all is ideal, but often, to have what you want in life, you sometimes have to borrow money.
Mortgage debt is among the good kind. As you pay it down, you are paying a part of it to yourself in the form of equity in your home. The more you pay down, the greater the equity. As a bonus, you are living in your house, too, so there’s an absence of rent payments. When your house is completely paid off, you essentially are living there for free.
In this economic milieu, when you sell a house, it’s not an automatic profit. But if you HAVE to sell your house, one of the considerations is that for however long you’d lived in your house, you didn’t pay rent – all of which goes into someone else’s pocket.
College loan debt used to be considered good debt. You were getting money for an education that ultimately was going to lead you to a better job than if you hadn’t gone to college. It made college available to non-wealthy families.
But Carolyn Thompson, reporting for the Associated Press, asserts that student loan debt is widening the gap between rich and poor. Her article ran in the March 30, 2014, edition of The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.
Thompson’s point: those who came out of college with lots of debt – roughly 37 million people saddled with $1 trillion in debt – will have a hard time catching up with the wealth of their peers who graduated with no debt at all. In short, those from wealthier families, long term, will have a leg up financially on their cohorts that were forced to borrow to go to school.
Looking at the big picture, a college education isn’t what it used to be. Decades ago, a college education gave you a shot at jobs that those who didn’t graduate or finish college wouldn’t get. Companies hired raw brains, and trained them for the jobs they wanted them to do.
Today, some of those degrees we cherished years ago are almost worthless in terms of job opportunities. You may have studied what you loved, or found your passion in, say, the arts, but converting that to economic advancement can be difficult.
Therefore, if you borrowed money to study what you love, or to find your passion, you need to do something to pay back all that debt. Unemployment, or constant job hunting, isn’t going to make that debt go away. Even if you get a good job out of college, as Thompson asserts, you’ll still have a potential six-figure debt out of the gate. Those years it takes to catch up to your debt-free peers may find you not getting a mortgage for the house you want, and having to settle for a lesser lifestyle for a long time. It could keep you from starting young to save for retirement.
In short: if you have to borrow money to go to college, you had better find it all worth it, regardless of what you study. You may come out an expert on Shakespeare’s works, but you could be making a living pouring coffee. Though there’s nothing wrong with having smart coffee pourers, you won’t be paying down your debt quickly, and may have little in savings at age 60.
There are numerous solutions to this problem, besides skipping college altogether. If you are not college material, don’t fret. There are other ways to make money. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau . You may find a way to earn a substantial income without interfering with your academic loves or passion. If it fits you, and you start before college, you could have a financial leg up on all your peers.
As radio talk show host and financial expert Dave Ramsey might advise: don’t let debt be your financial death.
Peter

HOW MUCH TECHNOLOGY IS TOO MUCH?

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Is the pace of technological change too fast for you?
To many, it is, but, like an avalanche, we are hard pressed to stop it or slow it.
Two columnists in the Feb. 2, 2014, edition of the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville weighed in on the subject.
Saritha Prabhu worries that smart phones make us stupid, and, while we are racing to make robots more human, we may be losing some of our humanity.
Prabhu saw the movie “Her,” with her son. It’s the story about a college freshman who falls in love with his artificial-intelligence-imbued operating system. It’s OK to love a device for what it does for you, but to “fall in love” with a device? Until the entire human anatomy becomes artificial, that’s physically impossible – or so it seems.
Meanwhile, business columnist Julie May talks about cars that drive themselves, virtual gaming and other technological advances that are either here, or rapidly approaching.
We’ve gone from seats that automatically adjust to your preferred driving position to backup cameras to cars that park themselves. May sees the day coming when cars will drive themselves. Indeed, TV news has also reported on cars that can communicate with other cars on the road, thus warning each other of trouble ahead – trouble that is currently out of human eyesight. Once the car is warned of trouble, it can act accordingly, thus avoiding an accident.
May talks about how the self-driving cars can enable a driver to, say, prepare for a meeting while his car is taking him to work. Or, how a driver can turn to the back seat and settle a dispute between or among children, while the car is driving itself to the destination.
Talk about implications for the future! Those of us at the beginning of our careers take heed. Think about how a machine could do your job! Impossible? Maybe now. But if you are young, you may see your job done by a machine eventually.
That device you might be falling in love with could put you out of work before you are ready to retire.
If you are in or near retirement, technology will undoubtedly make your elder years easier, and could prolong your life. Hopefully, you will never outlive your money!
Oh, you are so good at what you do that a machine could NEVER replace you? After all, machines can do simple things, but cannot possess human “creativity.” Don’t bet the farm that it will NEVER happen. And, if your job involves very little creativity, take it to the bank that you’ll see a machine do it eventually.
You older folks may have been FORCED to retire before you had enough money. Or, you gave your children lots of stuff and didn’t put away enough for your later years. Is there a way to deal with this?
There are many ways to create an income stream just in case a machine replaces you, or to boost your retirement nest egg. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You might see a “people” business for which technological advances will only be a plus.
As for technology advancement’s pace, it’s out of your hands. You can resist it personally by not availing yourself of these new products and devices, but your protest will not stop or slow anything. Eventually, you will succumb. So, you might find your stress level reduced if you EMBRACE change, rather than resist it.
If birth rates are already declining among some population groups, imagine how much they will decline if humans “fall in love” only with devices.
Peter

DREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

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We all dream.
Some of us only dream in slumber. Some of us daydream to alleviate boredom. Still others dream while conscious – and consciously try to make those dreams come true.
Some of us never recall the dreams in slumber. Some of us recall them vividly, then try to decipher what they mean. These are the unimportant dreams, so it matters not whether they are recalled.
The daydreams are usually fantasy, and are treated as such. Perhaps you are longing to meet that special person that hardly, if at all, knows you exist. Perhaps you are dreaming about what you would do if you were the boss. These events may actually happen, but the percentages are really low.
The dreams of the conscious can make your life what you want it to be. As Rory Vaden, author of “Take the Stairs,” and a self-discipline strategist advises, “Chase your dreams now.”
Vaden discussed dreaming in a Jan.26, 2014, column in the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.
The dreams of the conscious are not dreams of fantasy. They are, indeed, purposeful dreams. The dreamers make them purposeful by writing them down, looking at them every day and setting achievement dates. Achievement dates are not deadlines, but are set to encourage urgency. With urgency, comes commitment and diligence.
Some say to the dreamers, “get real.” No “realist” ever finds greatness. Realists exist only in the world of the narrowly possible. Dreamers, to paraphrase a famous quotation, don’t just look at what is and say, “why?” They instead look at what can be and say, “why not?”
The realist lives in a world of what they believe has to be. Their dreams are but daydreams of fantasy. They are “grounded,” lest they be in the ground.
We certainly need a few realists to do some of the things that need doing. We can’t all be looking for personal fulfillment, or the next big thing, can we?
Perhaps we can be, at least to start, part-time dreamers and full-time realists. We never lose sight of our dreams, and we look at them, and their achievement dates, daily. But we know that they will come and we will not be realists forever.
So, said the elephant in the room, how does one achieve his dream once he has recorded it?
There are many ways one can achieve a dream. Perhaps he can invent something no one has thought of. Perhaps he can work hard, save his money, invest well and eventually see, if not complete financial freedom, no financial worries.
But real dreamers don’t settle just for “no worries.” They want complete financial freedom. There are several ways to achieve that freedom. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau.
This dream vehicle can work for anyone, regardless of education, background or circumstance.
You see, dreamers can have “average” backgrounds – even poor ones. But they become above-average earners by having a dream, and doing what they need to do to achieve it.
Of course, you have to want your dream badly enough to go for it. But if you do, follow Vaden’s advice:
“Overthrow the desire deficit and chase down your dreams. You are the person. Today is the day. Now is the time.
Do it.”
Peter

A NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION: MEET MORE PEOPLE NOT LIKE ME

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We all have a (pick one: world, culture, environment) that we grew up in.
For most of us, nearly everyone in that milieu was pretty much like us. We shared the same beliefs. We had similar goals in life, even if our ways to pursue those goals might have been different.
That milieu is part of who we are. But, it’s not the “whole” world.
Keel Hunt, a columnist for the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville, talked about how diversity has been the key to that city’s prosperity. His new year’s resolution is to meet at least one person who is not like him. He discussed this in a Jan. 5, 2014, column.
Certainly, in his profession, Hunt meets a lot of folks not like him. But not everyone can say that.
Many people never leave the world in which they grew up. They never experience the culture, environments and worlds that others grew up in. Perhaps, if their children attend a school with students who are not like them, they move their children to a more homogeneous school.
This type of behavior breeds intolerance. But, today, “intolerance” has taken on new meanings.
When “Duck Dynasty’s” Phil Robertson talks about his religious and racial beliefs in public, or when a large group of people petition to have CNN’s Piers Morgan deported because of his views on gun control, it makes us re-examine what “intolerance” is.
“Intolerance” today has been comingled with free speech. Those who protest the views of Robertson and Morgan don’t watch them in large numbers. They are speaking largely to an audience of their peers, in terms of their beliefs. Those who disagree with them turn them off. It should come as no surprise that Robertson and Morgan believe what they believe.
Even though you may not agree with what they believe, or say in public, every person has to defend Robertson’s and Morgan’s rights to believe it and say it. If you disagree, turn them off. If enough people turn them off, they will pay a price not for believing what they believe, but expressing it so boldly in public.
If you follow Hunt’s idea and begin to meet people who are not like you, you may learn something. Neither you, nor they, should expect that either of your beliefs, customs, traditions etc., will change. But, neither party should presume the other is “wrong.”
We all are better people when we become an active part of the world. It takes all kinds of people to make a world, to quote an old adage. Many people in the world are different from you. They mean you no harm, in most cases. If they mean you harm, stay away from them. If you mean them harm, shame on you. Certainly, in most cultures or belief systems, most of us are taught to respect one another. There are a few cultures that teach children to avoid people because of what they look like, talk like or behave like – even when they are not misbehaving.
We learn from others. We should make it a point to learn ABOUT others. We should make it a point to live peacefully and respectfully among others who are not like us. And, yes, we should fight for the right of others to be who they are, as long as they mean no harm.
You can’t do much about others’ behavior, but you can start with your own. Believe what you want to believe, but learn more about others. You can help make the world a happier, healthier and more prosperous place for everyone. Eventually, blessings will come back to you in ways you may have never expected.
So, if you haven’t made it a practice to meet people who are not like you, try just meeting one such person. Don’t try to make him or her believe what you believe. It will never work. Instead, listen more and talk less. Each of you may learn more about each other and, perhaps, become friends. What a great world it would be if we could believe what we believe, and have an abundance of friends who are different from us.
Also, if you are well-known person, believing what you believe is certainly OK. And you are certainly free to talk about what you believe. But you might take a little extra care in how, and in what venue, you express your beliefs.
Peter

P.S. If you and your friends – those like you and those not like you – want to become prosperous, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. See how communities of friends of all types learn to prosper, and grow as people, by helping each other.

HOW MUCH IS YOUR CHARACTER WORTH?

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It’s not about brains. It’s about beliefs.
Your brains may be worth a given amount to someone else, i.e. an employer or a client.
Your beliefs have a value only to you. What would you sell them for?
Rory Vaden, cofounder of Southwestern Consulting and author of “Take the Stairs,” posed this question in a column in the Dec. 1, 2013, edition of The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.
He calls the sum you would command to compromise your beliefs your “character quotient.”
If you have strong beliefs in something, what would tempt you to deviate from those beliefs?
Criminals, obviously, have a low character quotient. Their beliefs are compromised regularly, and they don’t seem to mind. Or, they never had a strong set of beliefs in the first place. Some of them would compromise themselves for very little.
Some business people have low character quotients. Their belief systems have much to do with making as much money as possible. Some of them don’t really care whom they hurt to feather their own nests. Because of these people, commerce and capitalism carry a bad name among many.
Some people in politics have low character quotients. But, there is an exception here. One does not want a politician unwilling to compromise. Governing is all about compromise, and accepting election results. But some in politics are in it for self-gain and, frankly, make no bones about it.
No matter what you do for a living, no matter your faith, no matter your core beliefs, you probably have something you would go to the wall for. No amount of money, in your mind, would make you deviate from that. Let’s look at Vaden’s formula: a quotient is the answer in a division problem. The dividend is what is being divided. The divisor is what the dividend is being divided by.
Your character dividend, Vaden says, represents the self-assigned value you place on sticking to your virtues and doing what you know is right. The divisor is the amount of money or other payoff that would be offered for you to choose NOT to stick to your principles.
In a concrete example, we all hate paying taxes. How many of us tinker with our tax returns to pay as few taxes as possible. Of course, there is legal tinkering that is OK. But illegal tinkering – cheating – is not. How much tax savings would tempt you to cheat on your taxes, perhaps risking an IRS audit etc.?
Perhaps, you may be offered a job that would violate your core principles. How much would they have to pay you to do it? As an example, you may have a place you’ve always wanted to work. You get an offer to work there, but as a strikebreaker. In other words, you’d have to cross a picket line to go to work. How much would they have to offer you to do that?
Or, you discover that your employer is doing something illegal or unethical. You do not want to be a part of it, because of your core beliefs. Would you quit your job over it – actually take something of value away from yourself?
These are questions we may never ponder, or we may ponder constantly. Do you consider selling out as selling yourself? Do you try to justify your decisions by saying you are doing it for the greater good? Again, politicians are the exception here. They must ALWAYS think about the greater good. Have you ever been placed in a bad position, having to make a decision from which none of the alternatives would be good? What are your beliefs really worth?
If you find yourself in a position to make what you feel is a bad choice, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You may realize there is a positive place to go when all of the choices placed before you make sense to you, and none would compromise your beliefs.
People who do the right thing usually get rewarded in the end. Those who do the wrong things eventually get caught. Do what make s YOU feel good. Don’t hurt others in the process. The rewards for straying are usually short-lived. Your reward for standing firm may not come immediately, but one day, you’ll find it.

Peter

ECONOMY WILL COME BACK IF WE ARE OPTIMISTIC

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Most leadership experts and motivational speakers and authors talk about the power of thought.
We become what we think, the adage goes.
As Frank Daniels III, community conversations editor for the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville put it, 10 years ago, we lived in fear. We had to sleep with an eye open because we had no confidence things would get better. That kind of thinking, Daniels wrote in a Dec. 8, 2013, column, is the most debilitating factor in our economy.
Income gaps between rich and poor are growing. People who want work can’t find it. Some who are working are not earning enough to support themselves or their families.
Technology and other progress helps companies do more with less. But those who lose their jobs because of technological advances pay the price.
All these things are circumstances – many of which we can’t control. But we can control how we react to them.
Though things in one’s past may have been really good, the past is gone. We have to believe that the future is going to better. Author and speaker Andy Andrews, in “The Noticer Returns,” says that perspective is everything. We have to be actively grateful for the good things in our lives. Gratitude begets optimism.
Too many people are walking around with anger, frustration and pessimism. They believe the world and their lives will get worse, not better. Andrews would call this a period of confusion. Things are changing, and we don’t know what’s coming next. We have a choice: we can look at this confusion as opportunity, or we can fear the confusion and try to stay out of it.
Staying out of the “confusion” leads not just to malaise about the world, it will likely seal one’s dismal future. If you are optimistic during this confusion, you will take the action you need to make your life better.
Our thoughts lead to actions. Optimism, followed by action, produces a good life. It may not happen overnight. Our “confusion” can last for years. But we have to see this “confusion” as something we can work through.
The question for each of us, of course, is how does one work through the “confusion.” If you are out of work, your chances of finding another job that pays you what you made before, or better, are slim. It’s not your fault, but you probably will have to think about operating with a lower salary, or do something else to enhance your income.
There are lots of vehicles out there to enhance one’s income without a traditional job, or while working a traditional job. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. Consider it a test: if you check out other sources of income, and walk away from them because you are “confused” about them, stop. Perhaps what you are looking at is not “confusing” at all. You may just need to tell yourself, “Wow! I know I can do this.”
So think long, hard and optimistically about your future. Instead of waiting for the next shoe to drop, build a dream board. Instead of believing the world will get worse before it gets better, reflect on the good parts of your life NOW. It will help you see the future in a better light.
We can’t go back to the way things were. But we can go ahead to bigger and better things amid our current “confusion.”
Peter
P.S.: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

A LEADER KNOWS WHEN TO FOLLOW

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Good leaders follow.
Ask any Army general or Navy admiral. They would not have risen through the military ranks had they not been able to follow orders.
Business coach Andy Bailey, with the firm Petra, talked about leaders who follow in the Oct. 20, 2013, edition of The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville. His column says leaders are empathetic, show vulnerability and grow other leaders.
Unless you are a dictatorial leader, who tries to advance while holding others down, good leaders can’t exist without a great team, Bailey says.
Other leadership experts, like John Maxwell, also talk about vulnerable leaders. In his “5 Levels of Leadership,” Maxwell points out that vulnerability helps make leaders genuine. A good leader doesn’t have to know everything. He has to be able to find the people on his team who know more about a given subject than he does, and allow them to lead in that area.
As we grow as people, we learn that not knowing everything about everything is OK. Did you ever have a neighbor, friend or relative who could rattle off a lot of knowledge about anything and everything? Did you like being around this person? Sometime, you may have had to borrow a cup of sugar from this person, but that turned into an hour or longer conversation. He did most of the talking.
Good leaders are humble. They admit not knowing things, and they admit when they make mistakes. It’s part of the relationship the leader is building with his team.
Remember, too, that one does not necessarily have to have a high position or high authority to be a leader. He just needs to have influence. The difference between power and influence is that influence allows you to get people to do things for you willingly, instead of by force.
Good leaders, as Maxwell points out, have great relationships with each on his team. This relationship is cultivated without having to be “soft,” and unable to make hard decisions.
We’ve all worked for dictatorial leaders at some point. You don’t dare offer suggestions, or talk about any difficulties in getting a job done with that person. He doesn’t listen, and doesn’t care how difficult things are for you. He has no empathy. He’s working for his own success, and is using you to get what he wants.
Today’s leaders engage in the messy process of developing people, as Maxwell points out. Developing good relations with people is a deliberative process. First, the leader has to be likeable, though he doesn’t expect EVERYONE to like him. For some, becoming likeable is a messy process. For others, it comes naturally.
A wise person once said that people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care (about them). Good leaders care about their people first. The other things usually fall into place once that happens.
Want to be a good, empathetic leader but don’t have a team? Visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau and learn how to find, and build, a great team. You may not know who will be on your team ultimately, but if you follow the leadership guidelines that Bailey, Maxwell and others espouse, you’ll have a great time building your team, and growing as a person yourself.
Peter

TRUST IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY

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Trust must be earned. It can’t be ordered.
Therefore, trust is valuable.
If you’ve earned the trust of others, they will do what you want them to, and they expect you to have their backs.
As you earn trust, don’t lose it. It could cost you dearly.
Rory Vaden, a self-discipline strategist and speaker, as well as co-founder of Southwestern Consulting, lists seven ways to lose trust. They are: be selfish, be protective (of your turf), be ungrateful, be self-centered, be passive-aggressive, be negative and be incongruent.
Vaden talked about these trust busters in a Sept. 8, 2013, column in the Tennessean newspaper of Nashville.
People generally trust positive, upbeat people. Sure, we all occasionally meet phonies who fein a positive attitude, but turn out to be snakes in the grass. But most of us can spot those folks easily, before too much trust has been established. We react differently to those who are genuninely positive.
People who are genuinely positive, even under difficult circumstances, also tend not to be selfish. They tend to be grateful for anything anyone does for them. They tend to think of others first, and that generally separates them from the phonies.
They tend to be private people, but not secretive. They tend not to protect their own turf at any cost. They tend to do what they say and say what they mean all the time. They would not even think about being devious, unless it’s all in fun, as in surprising one’s spouse on a birthday.
Sometimes it’s difficult to trust, especially when someone you’d trusted violates the trust. In that case, don’t presume EVERYONE will violate your trust, and give the person who has violated trust sufficent time to earn it back. Many marriages that could have been saved dissolve because one spouse’s trust was violated, and the other spouse is never given a chance to earn it back. The rule here might be that one violation of trust is not insurmountable. Trust can be earned back. Multiple violations of trust may do you in.
In marriage, not only is it virtuous to be trustworthy with your spouse, but more convenient. It has to be really difficult keeping a false story straight every time, day in and day out. Eventually, if you try to do that, you’ll slip up and get caught. If you are trustworthy, period, your spouse always knows everything, and everything he or she knows about you is true.
One’s trust should be given with care, but still given. Never trusting anyone will lead a person to a pretty miserable life. It’s OK to trust. It’s also OK to, as former U.S. President Ronald Reagan once put it, to verify, if there is any question.
You’ve heard that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Sometimes, we have good things come into our lives, yet we don’t trust that they are true, or they will do what they say they will do.
If you are looking to improve your life, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You can trust that everything you read, hear and see there is true.
Trusting, and being trustworthy will also improve your life. Trust is valuable to give and valuable to receive. Do both with care.
Peter