Envisioning

I have posted my goals on my wall and a reminder to spend 5-10 minutes every morning imagining what it will be like when I have reached them. Before I read Napoleon Hill, I would not have thought that was a good way to spend my time, daydreaming really. But he seems like an imminently practical person and he says it works.

Maybe I have done it before. My husband and I wanted to build a cabin in the mountains. We bought books to learn how to do it. We spent a lot of time imagining what it would be like living there when it was built. From that we made our plans. Then we built it.

My goals now are not as tangible. Envisioning how they will affect my life might be even more essential to making good plans. I will not forgot that it will require action also!

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Book Signing Saturday December 2

Saturday, December 2, 2006, 3:00 to 5:00 PM

Page One Bookstore in the Cafe
corner of Juan Tabo and Montgomery
11018 Montgomery NE
Albuquerque, NM 87111
(505) 294-2026

Page One Bookstore is hosting a local author book fair on the first Saturday of December (and every month). There are usually four to six local authors there. Maybe even more this time since it will be the last one before Christmas.

I will have gift mailers to send my books as Christmas presents. We're sure to have some great decorations. It will be like a party!

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Be Who You Want to Become

I was talking with some other managers tonight about knowing who to promote. As we were talking, I realized that what I have actually been doing for some time now is recognizing people for what they are already doing.

When I needed a lead for my team, I picked the person who was already leading. She was the one that everybody went to with questions and for help in difficult situations. She made herself an expert in our business, she went beyond what was required of her, she pursued problems until they were resolved. She was the lead.

When I needed a project coordinator, I picked the person who was already coordinating. His work was well organized and prioritized. He knew who was the best at each thing that needed to be done. He recruited the appropriate people when there was something he couldn't do by himself. He was the coordinator.

Without my even being conscious of it, it worked for me, too. When I was ready, the responsibility that I had demanded and never been given was handed over to me easily.

Be who you want to become.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

What Would You Do If You Couldn't Fail

Sometimes in personal development, a trainer will ask, "What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?" Then you know that the only thing holding you back from that is the fear of failure. Almost always, I have heard it used with regard to personal goals and it is great for that. But I wonder what we would do with our goals for all of humanity if we knew we couldn't fail. Because those also start with what one person believes.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Change

Each of us has power in his or her own life and that life, the way we live it, the things we do and say, has influence. We can choose to live our lives in a deliberate way, saying and doing things consciously to do the right thing and achieve our highest goals.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world: indeed it's the only thing that ever has!
-- Margaret Mead

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Influence

When I was a teenager, my father had a boat. If I remember correctly, it was 17 feet long. It had a small cabin that we used mainly to store the gear. It wasn't very fast. We used it to go fishing on Chesapeake Bay. Sometimes my father would let me steer it. You had to get used to it though. When you turned the wheel, nothing happened for a while. You were tempted to turn it more, but that was a mistake, because you had to wait for it to come around.

Sometimes people are like that.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

What Are You Looking For?

Now that I can see more information for this blog because of Google Analytics, I know that people come here from all over the world and I know that most people get here by searching for "doing the right thing". It makes me feel good to think that people everywhere are searching for that. And it makes me think. Can you find that here? Yes, you can. I haven't been all over the world, but I have been all over my own country and it is the same everywhere. People are unhappy and make the people around them unhappy because of what they think others are doing to them. But it isn't true. That isn't the problem. And the answers are here.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Happy Thanksgiving!

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Power

Power has gotten a bad name because it has been misused, to the detriment of all. But it is important for an individual to feel powerful, at least in relation to his or her own life. One of the things that happens when you do the right thing is that you feel more powerful. The apparent enigma in that is that you give up trying to control other people. But you really are more powerful when you don't count on trying to control people and instead try to convince them and, if you cannot, go on without them, hoping that someday, if you are on the right path, they will come when they are ready. Then you can leave frustration and powerlessness behind.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

A Trilogy

But if there was a second, then naturally there would have to be a third book, to make a trilogy. What would that be about? That would be about the amazing things that we can do when we stop fighting, truly connect with one another, and unleash the incredible energy that is created when people join together to pursue an audacious goal.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

The Second Book

If I wrote another book, it would be about connecting with people. Because the purpose of Doing the Right Thing and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time is to create a world where that can happen. There is a special reward to making a connection with another human being. We experience it in love. But there is also something extraordinary that happens when people share a vision, an audacious goal, a grand purpose. It feels expansive. You grow to fill it, but you can never do it alone. You have to find the people who will help you. When you see that same spark in their eyes, it's electrifying.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

It's Not What Happens to You

I am reading Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. Frankl was a psychiatrist who survived being imprisoned at Auschwitz and three other concentration camps, and who survived with his spirit and his compassion strengthened. He wrote:

Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
-- Victor Frankl

In his book, he quotes Nietzsche:

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

and, in several places:

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

Frankl agrees:

It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
--Epictetus

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

The Perfect Book Signing

The new Hastings at Candelaria & Tramway was the perfect place for a book signing. The store was beautiful. The staff was friendly and helpful. Thanks, Celisha and Dan and Elias! They let me stay as long as I wanted. I sold books and talked to lots of people about my book and whatever else came up, like Burns and Allen, Casablanca, and Arkansas Razorbacks. Many of them kidded with me about my sign advertising advice for 10 cents, and paid the 10 cents! With some I felt a special connection, as if mine was a message they needed or were ready to hear. It made me try to figure out how to say what it is really about in a few words. I will keep thinking about that!

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

The Perfect Gift

Doing the Right Thing and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time is the perfect gift because:

It demonstrates how to show respect for people's strengths.
It demonstrates how to show compassion for people's weaknesses.
Which is all people are asking for.

It helps people to know what to do in any situation to make things better.
It helps people to be happy and spread happiness.
Which is what will change the world.

It shows that you believe in the person that you give it to because you know that in achieving all their goals, they want to do the right thing.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Hastings at Candelaria & Tramway in Albuquerque

The Hastings at Candelaria and Tramway is so new:

It still shows as a vacant lot on the Windows Live Local aerial view. Although you can go down to the Windows Live Local bird's eye view and see it almost finished, just missing the sign on the front.

It is under construction on the Google Maps satellite view.

It is finished on the new aerial view at Mapquest, but it must not be open yet, because it's daytime and the parking lot is empty, which is not the case these days!

It's a beautiful new store with comfortable chairs to lounge in and a great new cafe. I especially love the Business section, because it's a handsome display right in the middle of the books. When I stopped in tonight, my book was still on the New Arrivals table in front of the cafe and you'll find me just inside the door on Friday between 4 and 6 PM!

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Book Signing Friday, November 17

Friday, November 17, 2006, 4:00 to 6:00 PM

I'll be signing books at:

Hastings
corner of Tramway and Candelaria
12501 Candelaria Road NE
Albuquerque, NM 87111
(505) 332-8855

Come by to buy a book (or 10) or just to say Hi!

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

The Next Leap

Tonight I was over at Barristers Toastmasters and we were discussing the roots of violence. We agreed that it was in our biology and in our history. But that doesn't mean it always has to be with us. There have been some leaps in our past. When we learned to speak and started passing down our knowledge from generation to generation. Maybe there is another leap. Learning to use logic and reason to make choices about our actions based on what we want for the future and our care for ourselves and other people, instead of using them to justify the actions we take in the heat of the moment.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

A Guide

That is what my book is for. Reality checks. Rules of engagement. A guide for words and actions that let in the light.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

In An Instant

When I met The Man Who Listened Well, he gave me light. In an instant, I could see everything that had been happening to me. I say that on purpose, because I had no control. Suddenly, all the things I had been bumping into, no, throwing myself against is more accurate, became obvious. I could see that my failures had been inevitable, because of the path I had taken. I could see that there was another way. Sometimes, when I'm not paying attention, I still run into those same obstacles, but now I know what they are and can get back on course without stumbling around too much.

The most amazing thing is that now I always know what to do.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

The Man Who Listened Well

I was reminded of The Man Who Listened Well today. Not just the things I learned from him, which is what I usually think of since I wrote the book, but the actual person. I thought of the saying, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." When I met him, I was ready to stop suffering and making everyone around me suffer, too. I was slowly trying different things, but he was the one who taught me that there were words for what I was thinking and feeling. Words that could help me make sense of what was happening around me. Words that could create a philosophy to guide me. When you don't have the words, you are lost in a strange land that is always in darkness. Words shine. Words illuminate.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Imperfection

We are all of us flawed, imperfect. And we know it. But we act as if every missstep is unforgivable, the sign of some deep-rooted character flaw. Mistakes are impossible to admit, they have such dark significance. Errors are not tolerated. Well, maybe once, but don't make the same mistake again. And a third one, that's it! Grounds for dismissal.

Such arrogance! To think that we are so close to perfection, that we have a right to demand such performance.

We need 100 tries to get it right. And if we can't get it right in 100 tries, we need to see what's wrong with the procedure. Do our processes serve us or the other way around?

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

How Do You Know You're Doing the Right Thing?

The right thing is right for everyone. It has a way out for all sides. It has a way for people to redeem themselves and be forgiven, no matter what they have done. The right thing saves everyone. Some people may not believe it. Some people may not do it. But that option must exist for all.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Good and Bad

I used to know that I was different from people who broke the law, from people who hurt other people. They were monsters, devils, inhuman. And I knew that I was different from the people who spent their entire lives doing good deeds. They were saints, angels. Although I thought I was closer to the angels than the devils, of course.

Now I think that we each have all of that inside of us. Whatever any person has done is something that we are capable of. Doing something outside the norm, bad or good, does not change you from a human being into something else. It changes the definition of a human being. In 1926, there was a leopard found by climbers on Mount Kilimanjaro at 18,000 feet, frozen. One of the climbers, Pastor Richard Reusch, took a picture of it. Nobody tried to say that it wasn't a leopard because leopards don't go to that altitude. They knew then that leopards can go to that altitude.

What makes us good is not that we are incapable of doing evil. It is that we choose not to.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Secrets

In public life, it's been said: Never do anything that you wouldn't want to read about on the front page of the newspaper.

In mental health, we say: You're only as sick as your secrets. We also say there's a diagnosis for everyone, because everyone has problems. You could say everybody's a little crazy. When it gets to the point where you can't handle it, you can always find someone to help you figure things out. The harm comes from those things that you can't tell anyone.

There is a need for security, confidentiality, and privacy in work and in life. In those areas, it's easier not to know what you shouldn't know, to forget what you can't talk about. But there is also a need for communication, cooperation, and support in work and in life. In those areas, information should be shared as broadly as possible, because you never know who needs to know. People who don't seem to care may care. People who have no voice in the decision still have choices to make. And sometimes people mess up your plan unintentionally because they didn't know you had one!

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Toastmasters Conference Day 2

The conference went on today from 7:15 AM in the morning (I was late) until about midnight. Business meetings, training sessions, visiting with and learning from old and new friends, more great speakers, the banquet, and the humorous speech contest. Sometimes a major speech contest, with eight speakers each doing five to seven minutes, can seem long, but not the humorous speech contest. Laughter makes it go faster.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Toastmasters Conference Day 1

It was out of the esoteric and into the practical today! Before the conference, the Toastmasters International Director, Division Governor, and I (I'm Lieutenant Governor of Marketing) visited local government officers and corporate contacts today, six of them. Over the course of the day, we got into the swing of it. We told them about Toastmasters. The most important thing seemed to be:

It's like communication workshops you can take,
only it doesn't cost thousands of dollars,
and you learn more because you get to practice more.

It's like a speaking or leadership course you can take at a college or university,
only it doesn't cost hundreds of dollars,
and you learn more because you get to practice more.

Not that we object to anyone taking those workshops or courses, because they can still come to Toastmasters to practice what they learned!

The conference started in the evening with a great speaker, dinner, and an evaluation contest.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Not New

It seems as if people know that there is a better way for us to live and work together than what has been. And we feel as if we know or at least used to know what it was. So, we search for books and experts to tell us what it was that we have forgotten. But it's not lost knowledge that we need to find. It's a new way to look at what we have always known. I think we are on the verge of putting it all together, of being able to look at our own actions from a new perspective.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Synchronicity

I'm not sure if I understand what people mean by synchronicity. From the root word, I would say it is a condition where events are synchronized and that is what I am talking about. The implication in what I have read about it seems to be that there is no common cause, but I wonder if that is because the connection is unrecognized. I have been feeling like I have been seeing some synchronicity lately, as if people from different places are all starting to realize the same thing. Of course, it may just be the phenomenon I experienced when I got a Jack Russell Terrier -- suddenly I started seeing them everywhere -- because suddenly I was paying attention to Jack Russell Terriers. But I like to think that is more like the discovery of fire, which I have heard happened about the same time all over the world.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com