on hope and achievement.

hope. as per websters...

intransitive verb 1 : to cherish a desire with anticipation
: to desire with expectation of obtainment
2 : to expect with confidence : trust
synonyms see expect

what is it about hoping for something? Why does the human organism find pleasure in trying to see the future? In attempting to predict what may or may not happen next?

do we feel that if we hope something happens, and then it does happen; that we have somehow made it so? is it a god complex?

The thing about the definition listed is that word, expectation. expect. The comparison tonight is that I expect that the tank and the turtle WILL keep their rooms clean. I expect that they will heed the words of their mother. I expect that turtle will not come home from kindergarten with a yellow light. But i dont hope for these things.

Expectations have consequences. SO what are the ramifications of hoping for something that doesnt pan out?

The point is that websters has a bad definition here. An inaccurate synonym if you will.

case in point. I said that I expect that Turtle will not come home with a note from school. I hope, by contrast, that nobody picks on him on the bus. Expectations are something held by those in control of a situation. I can offer some influence on his behavior in the classroom. I am not able to influence the bus ride.

And really, when you think of it, the things about which you would consider yourself hopeful are normally well beyond your own control. If they were in your control, you would not hope for them, you would just make it so.

All of this is not really tonights point. If I had really wanted to work with hope and hope alone, I would have just used the "hopes for a promotion" definition.

The idea tonight has more to do with the old " where do you see yourself " question.

You cannot expect anything in the future of your life. You dont know. You have no control. Because you never know what is going to happen next. Look at the news sometime. Pick any story and tell me that the central figure had any idea that they would be on the news today. you dont know.

So we do the best we can to control life. We spend our money in our own way. We live to our own standard. We follow the rules we know. And we try to live our lives down a path that we expect them to take. Even when we get bumped off one side of the path or the other, we correct ourselves to try and get back onto the path. If a college student does poorly on an examination, they may take it again, or add some extra credit time to get their grade back up. If a worker has his hours cut at the full time job, maybe he gets a part time job so that he can afford to keep his truck.

We like to believe in all sorts of warm fuzzy things like free will. freedom of speech. self reliance. In fact, we dont have any of them at our disposal. You are only in charge of your path until some outside factor changes it for you. You dont have any more control over the overall outcome of your life than an ant on the sidewalk.

Ants are a curiosity to me. Workers. An ant possibly has the highest work ethic of any creature out there. They are constantly trying to be hopeful about the future that they are faced with. Until you or I ride our bicycle across that path and squash them.

Thats what I mean about not having control. There is a song on the radio right now about this idea. "sounds like life to me" Talks about some of the challenges that we all face in our lives, and sort of makes light of them, The idea, i suppose is to tell you to roll with the punches. Thats a different song though.

But the hope. Thats what keeps a person moving. Have you ever seen a person who was truly hopeless? Collapsed in a ball in the corner? It is only hope that drives us. This is the true root of motivation. If we see some benefit, some light at the end of the tunnel, and we believe that our actions will get us closer to it.... that is acting in hope. And it is also at the core of motivation. Any reward you foresee is based on hope.

So try this on for size. Lets try and expect things instead of hoping for them. How would your behavior change? If you expected a promotion instead of hoped for it. Would you change the quality or quantity of work you were doing? Your interactions at your job? I bet you would.

Now I am not talking about entitlement here. I am saying that your life would be drastically different if you took the stance of having some amount of control over what happens to you. And by the way, taking some responsibility for what happens in your life as well.

It doesnt work in all cases, but here I guess Im talking about personal achievement. I did not hope that my hotrod would turn out well. I expected it to do so and then followed through to make sure of it.

See the difference? When it comes to achievement, we all have certain things that we hope for. I think that they should become things we expect. It seems to me that the odds of achieving them will be a lot higher.

Going for a ride.

I had the unique experience over the last few days of driving. A lot of driving. It began with a trip from home to Saxeville and back over the weekend. This was immediately followed on Monday by a drive to Michigan's upper peninsula.

There is something very calming for me about driving for a distance alone. I find myself able to address a large number of thoughts and conflicts, sort of making sense of them. In this case however, I found myself ending the trips with more questions than answers.

As you are likely aware, I generally find myself drawn to a very down-to-earth way of life. Much more so than the day to day life that I actually lead. These two trips did nothing to quell that. Driving through these two very remote, rural, and agrarian areas only served to make obvious to me the benefits of that ideal.

Whether or not you agree with the ideal, it seems hard to argue the basic simplicity of life that becomes inevitable when you are in a full time environment of this sort. When there is not a Target, Walmart, Sears, Bed Bath and Beyond, Elder Beermans, etc within 35 or more minutes of your home, your life's pace will absolutely slow down. We're talking about people who dont have cable television because the lines arent long enough. People who have to examine the gas guage before coming home rather than before leaving home.

This sort of life to me is the ideal. In my mind, the opposite end of the spectrum would be some of the ultra urban apartments and condos out there.

The thing is, I love to have a little space. I sometimes like to make a mess. Or some noise. You cant do that when you dont have any space. Its rude.

When was the last time your friend with that gorgeous subdivision house talked about target practice in the back yard? Or working on the car in the garage? Or having friends over for a fire? Shoot, leaving the boat out overnight. Maybe I have a problem with authority, but I have never been able to come to grips with the idea of a restrictive covenant. Mostly because the damned things were written to keep people like me away.

Driving through these areas, it becomes obvious that the folks who live there full time are a bit more laid back. They do things as they are able. Within their own level of ability. And as they see fit. They do not update the house based on increasing its resale value. They dont buy things with the idea that they will ever sell them. For that reason, they make those things reflect their own personality. If they think that it would look nice to plant flowers in a bathtub int he front yard, thats exactly what they do.

Now I'm not saying what this sounds like. The real point here hasnt changed much from many of the other ideas that ive shared. Specific examples never quite seem to show the whole picture.

I guess the underlying theme so far is thus; Be who you are. Of course you will have to maintain some amount of social conformity, but be who you are.

It truly is the differences in people that gives us the most in common.

Nurturing Growth

Environments are reflected by their inhabitants.

Any time you take the time to examine growth, you must also take into account the events and the situations surrounding whatever it is that you are focused on.

Children have an enormous capacity for learning. I see this in my own kids, and their ability to grasp and own an idea with very little explanation. The synapses are firing so quickly, and the interference is so low, that a child can process and commit to an idea much more quickly than an adult. Kids dont have the worries and stress that come with responsibility. This alone allows focus.

But a child can only learn that which is presented to him. Whatever it is that a child is subjected to becomes the norm, the way of doing things, of speaking, of behaving. Kids tend to be fantastic mirrors of the role models around them, because of the capacity, and desire, to focus on what is going on around the world that they live in.

Where this idea really becomes interesting though, is in the management of people.

Very rarely can the worker influence the growth of a supervisor. The idea of it counters most logical thought processes. More commonly, the worker is a product of the manager or supervisor. Highly productive people are generally motivated by highly productive bosses. Unfortunately, not-very productive people can also be reflections of highly productive bosses.

To illustrate this, examine the way in which you train a dog. If you want a dog to complete task x, you have to encourage that animal more and more specifically towards that task until he begins to understand. We have all been privy at one time or another to training a dog to recognize the boundaries of his yard. How is it done? Correct if you said that you walk him around the edges on a short leash, then a longer one, then a rope, then no rope, before finally letting him loose completely and calling him in if he gets too close to the edges. It never works if you just stand on the porch and scream at the dog every time he moves.

Teachers do this by the way. It is the tell me, show me, watch me theory. Whenever I am training somebody on a new process, it is this theory that I follow. I start by explaining the task at hand, then by working through the process a few times with the trainee, and finally by observing that person doing the job and offering constructive help.

This goes back to the kindergarten theory of management which I spoke of in another thread. When you start to deal with your people in the same manner that you might deal with a kindergartner, you begin to understand a relationship in which you are nurturing growth. This is not to say that you talk very slowly and specifically. This is more broad-based. A kindergartner will flourish if he is given opportunity to impress the teacher. If he is given a chance for success on his own. If he is able to attain something through his own success.

If you have a child, you know this. "clean up your bedroom and you can have a cookie" or "eat your brussel sprouts and you can have dessert"

It is the same with workers. I have yet to see a worker who was motivated by the fear of termination. Or who did a better job after being bawled out in public. I have never seen a person come to work committed to success the day after being told he was doing a poor job. Especially if that person didnt believe the assessment was accurate.

The ideal employee is as follows. Committed and excited about their job. Interested in what it is that they do for a living. Proud of the company that they work for. Feels valued in what they do. Believes that they can be successful in what they do, and that the success will generate more of the previous feelings. Is certain that the things that are expected of them are attainable. Notice that I did not say that the worker believes that they will be better paid.

We have all seen situations in which a person did not work out in one organization and yet was wildly successful in another. The person changed jobs, and was suddenly driven, motivated, interested, and successful. Unfortunately, we have all seen the opposite happen as well.

I believe that most of the time the change has to do with the supervisor more than the employee. My own experience has been as follows. If a person knows what is expected of them, believes that it is something that they can accomplish, and sees a benefit to doing so; they will be successful at it. Leave out any of the three, and they will fail. ten times out of ten.

If the person does not know what they are supposed to do, it isnt going to get done.

If they dont think they can do the job, or believe that too much is being asked, they arent going to do it.

And most of all, if that person does not think that getting it done will have a result, they wont get it done. Any time that a person gets to thinking that it doesnt matter what they do, because the result will not change, they will not take the extra steps that separate them from success.

So a person is the result of their own environment. An environment that encourages creativity will breed creative people. One that encourages stringent attention to structure and routine will create those folks. When you put a person in an environment, they become part of it.

When I talk to managers, one of the most common things that I hear is that their people are either afraid to make decisions, or that they make the wrong ones. It never fails to raise the question in my mind of consistency in that organization. I wander when i hear these things whether or not the worker has been walked around the yard, whether the leash has been lengthened gradually, and finally let go, and whether or not the worker has been called back from the boundary from time to time. More often I find that these organizations have very little structure or set ways of doing things. I find usually a situation in which people are turned loose on the job, and are only hemmed in when things get out of control.

In any case, one of the biggest things that any manager can do is make sure that the workers know and understand what it is that they are to do, that they are empowered to operate within that set of rules, and that they are comfortable with them.

Learning Every Day,
Greg

The Details...

Whenever you honestly examine some aspect of your life, it becomes apparent that how well you handle the details will determine the level of satisfaction you find.

For instance. I have talked before about the pickup truck. If I had not spent the time picking out that perfect camshaft for it, I can tell you that the experience of hearing it run would not have been the same. Come to think of it, modified cars are a great example of details. Think of all of the things that separate one hot-rodded car from the other. The wheels, the paint, the engine, the finish of the interior. The list goes on and on and on. But that said, I can tell you from experience that the difference of as little as a quarter of an inch on the width of a wheel can make the difference in whether or not the wheel looks or fits right on the car.

But we aren't talking solely about cars here. Imagine going to the store. The things that you have on your list to buy are very specific. You don't need milk, you need 2%. or soy. or chocolate. You aren't looking for Doritos, you want cool ranch, or late night taco.

The point is that the big things never go overlooked. Its the details that separate us from greatness many times. Its the little extra touches. Some people call it going the extra mile. More often its just taking the extra small step.

When we get dressed in the morning, we all wear pretty much the same things. We all have socks or something similar on our feet. We all have something covering our legs and torso. We wear shoes. And if we all stood in line together, it is the details of those items that shed light on our differences.

Think of men's shirts for a bit. Often, I wear sort of a denim-ish shirt to work. But if I really want to look nice for the day; I might wear something more dressy. The details of those shirts is what makes the difference in how I appear to my customers and coworkers. I generally will wear the same type of pants and shoes with either. But the shirts. They both have buttons. It is likely that they even have the same kind and number of buttons. They have similar collars. They have the exact same embroidery on them. But what a difference there is between a denim shirt and a crisp white dress shirt. Moreover, what a difference in the way the dress shirt looks with white buttons compared to brown ones.

Simple things can make the difference. How much different does a room look with a 40 watt bulb in the lights versus a 60 watt? Doesn't seem like much. Try it. Try it in your bedroom. If you have a workshop, try it there. It makes all of the difference in the world. The bedroom will be much friendlier, more inviting, not as harsh. The workshop will not be as usable, and your projects wont seem to work as well.

Ever been to a hotel that didn't put a mint on your pillow after cleaning up? Or bought a car and found old junk in the ashtray even when the rest of the car looked great? Most times, it is the things that would have taken one extra minute or one extra dollar that can really turn a person off.

Now for the reality of it. The details done correctly will never ever ever be a positive force for you. They tend to just make up the rest of the image. Not one time in your life have you looked at the ashtray in your car and said, " hey, there's no junk in it" You may have noticed that it was clean. But not in the way that you would notice it was dirty. You have never looked at my shirt and thought about the buttons. You have only noticed if one was missing or noticed that it looked very crisp.

But you will never get credit for following through on the details. You will only get whatever the opposite of credit is if you don't or aren't able to follow through and somebody notices it.

Interestingly, the level of pay that an employee receives works in exactly the same way. The amount of money you pay somebody will almost never equate to the level of satisfaction they get out of the job. Nobody goes to work and likes the job because they make a lot of money doing it. Lots of people go to work and hate the job because they don't think they make enough to do it. Details, like pay rates, can usually only be a negative. When they are a positive, they never seem to have the same impact. Every once in a while, people will notice perfection, but that is only in situations that they are looking specifically for it.

Point in fact. You can think of a time at a restaurant when you've gotten something off your bill at a restaurant because of a detail that was missed. I would wager that you have to think very hard to come up with a time that you have offered to pay more for the meal because everything was done right. You may have left a bigger tip for your server, but you didn't pay an extra buck for your steak.

Its because details are the things that are SUPPOSED to be done. If you are the housekeeper at a restaurant, you are supposed to leave the mints. If you clean cars, you are supposed to check and clean the ashtray. Whatever it is that you are involved with, there are things that people expect. They expect that your time and attention should be devoted to the details of the job. A housekeeper would never forget to vacuum the carpet. They might forget the mints. But that's the point.

In short, the difference between being good; and being great; is in the details.

Balance.

Do you remember the teeter totter in the playground at your childhood school?
You'd get on, one of your friends on the other end. up and down, first you would push, then your friend... If you weighed about the same amount, you could go up and down with that person for a long time.

But did you ever get on the thing with somebody who was bigger than you? Remember that sickening feeling when you realized that you had no control over the situation? That bigger kid could keep you up high for a long time, or slam you to the ground. There was nothing that you could do about it.

This is an illustration of balance. So long as that teeter totter was in balance, life was good, even, simple and fun.

Another example would be to imagine 3 potted plants. Lets say that you give one plant 5 cups of water each day. The second plant you give 1 cup of water. The third plant you never water. What would happen? Well, none of the plants would do very well. The first one is getting too much water, and his roots are rotting. The second is getting by, but barely. The third is slowly dying of starvation.

Think for a minute about the balance in your own life now. Do you balance your obligations with those things that you enjoy? The things that you have to do with those that you want to do?

This weekend, babe found herself hopelessly off balance. After spending the entire work week surrounded by five year old children, she discovered that she had come home from work, only to find more five year old children. Although I am not sure what the balancing factor to a kindergartner is, i suspect it is not another kindergartner. By the time that I arrived home on Saturday afternoon, it was somewhat easy to tell that she had no need for a kid-fix. She had experienced enough five year old for one week.

And this happens everywhere a person looks. "too much work makes jack a dull boy" "all things in moderation" how many cliche's can you name that are nothing more than an expression of balance?

Unfortunately, our own ability to balance our lives is often beyond our control. Many times, the things that we have to do override those that we want to do, or worse they override other things that we also have to do. It is awfully hard to do the dishes when you are at work; or take the dog to the vet when we need to be in another place.

But we try. I think that for most of us, the factor in our life that gets left out in the cold too often is simple relaxation. We are so busy trying to keep the rest of our lives in check that we dont stop and take a break. We dont take the kids to the beach. We dont go play with our toys. When was the last time that you took an afternoon nap on a Saturday? You cant because you are too busy trying to get your kids to take their nap right?

The worst thing to try and balance by far are the relationships in your life. every relationship that you have takes a differentiated amount of time. You need to spend x amount with your job. Y amount with your spouse, your kids, each friend that you have takes a unique amount. The hardest part is that you need some time for yourself as well. It never seems to fail that there are more things that you are supposed to do than you are actually getting done. you have more expected than you can deliver.

have you ever noticed what happens when you get your diet out of balance? Too much of this, not enough of that? people get sick. They get tired. They get hyperactive. Worst of all, they get gas. Just a matter of balance.

SO. What does a person do? I think that the best thing is to put some thought to what it is in your own life that is out of balance. Find a way to even things out. Do it on purpose.

Odds are, the things that you are spending too much of your attention on wont even notice the change. The things that are being left to the side will flourish by comparison. Think about those plants again. What if we took the five cups of water from the first plant, and the one from the second, and instead gave each of the three plants two cups of water. Suddenly, without changing the amount of water, or effort we are putting forth, all three plants will begin to grow again, and all three will flourish.

playing telephone....

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the church. You regular readers already know this.

It has come to my attention that there is a movement that is calling itself the Emergent Church... If you arent familiar with this, do a little study. provocative stuff.

Part of this movement is the updating of the language in the bible that we have been reading. I am not certain what my thoughts are on this. To me, the idea of changing the words in the bible seems a bit out there. Who do we think we are? Are we so high and mighty that we feel that we can just mess with the words of God?

This is not the first time that this has happened. Actually, we mere humans have been "updating" the language for millenia. Dont forget, the thing wasnt even written in English in the first place. And unless you have done extensive study in greek, you arent likely to be able to read the initial version...

I trust that the scholars who are doing this rewrite are far smarter, or more well schooled in linguistics that myself. I also trust that thier hearts are in the right place. And I trust that the church is supporting the move. What i dont trust follows.

When we were in Kindergarten, we all played a game called telephone. We would sit in a big circle remember? One person would whisper a silly message to the person next to them, that person would pass it to the next, and so on all of the way around the circle. By the time it got back to the person who started, it was a totally different message. Maybe the original message was "Bobby has a big bucket of fish." And likely the final message would have been "Betty thinks her ham sandwich got switched" There wasnt usually even a semblance of the original idea.

I think you may understand at this point what my concern is with changing the language of the word of God. I would love to know how many times we have screwed up our own message.

Now. Whether or not you believe that this newest iteration is a good or a bad thing; remember that you havent been reading the original anyway. You dont actually believe in the original word of God. You have been raised through the updated word for hundreds and hundreds of years.

And. Even if you have a strong opinion about whether or not it should be changed; you also have to realize that it has the potential to change for the better.

Here's why.

We are in the process of moving to a post-literate state in this world. What language we speak, how we write, how we read, all of these will cease to matter within the next 100 years, primarily due to our adoption of technology. What this means is that for most of us, the idea of even caring what words are in the bible will become obsolete within the lifetimes of our own children. Our own language, both written and verbal, is changing today at a pace that was considered to be inconceivably fast even ten years ago. Consider how much of what you send in a text message is not even a word. Think for a second about some of the slang words that have become common in our speech within the recent past. Our spoken word, and our methods of communication, are changing at a blindingly fast pace.

Where does this leave us? When we begin to work in a written language of icons, abbreviations, and electronic media; how will we even access the word of our lord?

I will say that I cant answer the question. I also dont know whether or not our changing of the words in the bible matters.

What i can say is this. The word of God represents a way of being. An Ideal. A Goal. In the same way that my corrections of my own childrens behavior does not address every single behavior in their lives; my corrections act as a guidebook for them to understand what the proper way of being looks like.

I guess, to me, if installing some new language in the book is done in a manner that makes it a more contemporary defintion fo what our way of being should be, I think that it is ok with me.

I pray that we arent playing telephone. The biggest problem for our own future will come if we think that we should change Betty's ham sandwich instead of helping bobby catch fish.

Attention Deficit Disor.... Wanna play hopscotch?

SO. I have what I prefer to call an "active child."

Turtle is starting kindergarten next week. Somehow, during the course of realizing and preparing him for that, Babe and I have noticed some unusual behavior patterns. in short, The frickin kid cant sit still. No matter what is going on, he has to be moving something on his body or fidgeting with something all of the time. Once we realized that there was some sort of force at work here, my wife began to research.

Ive said before that the Babe is a kid-genius. I have been continually impressed with her ability to get to the source of just this sort of thing with children throughout her career to date.

But you all know that I think im pretty smart too. When she explained to me her suspicion that the oddball behavior was possibly a food allergy involving dairy, I just about dropped my beer. But she insisted. SO... We have tried an experiment here at casa Wilker.

We took turtle off of most dairy. The return to the old kid we knew came about almost visibly. Within a few days, he had regained his attention span, his cool, calm nature when problem solving, and coolest of all, his ability to remember what tool Dad needed from the garage when working on a project.

Next step, go see the Doctor and see if we're right. This is sort of like taking a home pregnancy test, and then going in hoping that its just a coincidence. Doc thinks that we're on the right track.

This means that our family has to learn about food. I have never even heard of glutin before, much less thought about what foods might have it inside. And last time I checked, a soy was a plant. They dont have teets. How the hell do you get soy milk? Try to milk a Soy. I dare you. ITS SOY JUICE! ( this bit courtesy of Louis Black) Turtle says that it tastes like marshmallows. He likes it.

Turns out that this particular food allergy has the capacity to resemble ADHD.

I would have believed ADHD just as easily... During the course of our research on this little rugrat that we love, I found out what ADHD really is. Turns out that I might have it.

Reasons that I say this.

1. I am really good at getting projects accomplished that I can do in less than 1 day. Anything longer than that might take another year to finally get completely finished. (see also; half the woodwork in my home)

2. Although I can spend hours on the computer, I am likely to visit a different site every few minutes unless I find something truly interesting.

3. I have to carry a little flip style notebook at work so that I dont forget to do some of the small tasks that I might think of during the course of my day.

4. I love Hulu because I can watch a 30 minute television program in 20 minutes, and every so often, they show me a commercial just to keep me interested.

5. Anything that I build, from the deck to the playset, remodelling the house, my hotrod, constantly seem to be in the process of being rebuilt, based on some new iteration that I have dreamt up.


SO I think that I have ADHD. Fortunately, I also think that this will make me much more able to deal with turtle should he fall off the soy-juice wagon. Knowing this about me will hopefully help me to become a better role model for him.

Now where was that varnish? i just remembered that the table that I built for Babe's classroom still isnt sealed...