A clerk at the mall gave us what sounded like easy directions to a store where we could get a battery.

“I think if we walk a little further,” I said, “we’ll find the Fix-it Shop for my watch.” We had been coming to this North Dallas mall for eight years and neither of us had ever heard of the store.

“There it is,” I said as we rounded the last corner down a corridor. The store had little more than a short counter and two straight chairs in the corner of an 8×11 room. I gave the attendant my watch to replace the battery and sat down to wait while Neal headed for the nearest sporting goods store.

A young couple lingered around the counter talking to the attendant for a few minutes, then stood waiting patiently while the attendant went behind a curtain. In a few minutes the attendant broke through the mysterious curtain and briskly walked up to the counter. Looking straight at me, he yelled, “YOUR CHICO’S WATCH IS READY, MA’M.”

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I remember stepping out of my hotel and hearing the swooshing sounds of bus brakes squealing, taxis honking, and distant noises of commerce blending into a cadence of activity. It is a sound of energy that I still drink in every time I travel to NYC.

New York on Sunday

Every city has a unique personality, things it is known for that no other city can claim. My husband and I had an opportunity to spend a Sunday in NYC recently. As we strolled along streets, I sang to myself the lyrics of Sunday in New York, “New York, on Sunday. Big city taking a nap…” If NYC takes a nap, it is with one eye open.

We walked about four miles that Sunday afternoon, enjoying the sights and smells of the city. We passed stands where nuts were roasting and irresistible hot dogs begged to be eaten. Hawkers on the street corners flaunted carts of imitator handbags and genuine silk ties for $5.

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Classic violinist Itzhak Perlman, world renowned as the reigning virtuoso of the violin, can bring you to tears with his perfected technique and joy of music as he plays. His honors and awards are so numerous, that I can only tell you about a few of them.

He has appeared with every major orchestra in the world.

Perlman has received four Emmy Awards.

Two presidents have bestowed him with special honors. He received the “Medal of Liberty” in 1986 by President Reagan and the “National Medal of Arts” by President Clinton in 2000.

In 1994 millions saw him when he hosted the U.S. broadcast of the Three Tenors, Encore! Live from Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

One of his most memorable achievements was his collaboration with film score composer John Williams in the Academy Award winning movie Schindler’s List, in which he performed the violin solos.

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How Far Does Influence Go?

Charlton Heston, one of America’s finest actors, died April 5^th at age 84. The power of his influence has affected me since I was a child. He was known for starring in several epics and won the 1959 best actor Oscar for his infamous chariot-race in Ben-Hur.

His most memorable movie for me was Cecil B. DeMille’s, The Ten Commandments. Watching Heston portray Moses, who received the Ten Commandments from God on Mount Sinai, had a remarkable visual impact on my religious upbringing. His portrayal of leading the Israelites through the Red Sea has long reminded me of how God can do the impossible.

Heston’s publicist, Michael Levine, who represented Heston for 20 years said, “The passing of Heston represented the end of an iconic era for cinema.” Heston’s chiseled face and sonorous voice represented a presence of power that was magnificent to witness. Levine said, “If Hollywood had a Mt. Rushmore, Heston’s face would be on it.”

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How much money would you be willing to walk away from to preserve a relationship?

$5 thousand? $50 thousand, $500 thousand? How about $1 million? Half a billion? To what lengths would you go to hold onto a relationship?

It may sound like an unrealistic question, but today I’m going to tell you about a person who did choose relationship over money.

Our “Winner” series has been fun this month. The term winner is used to describe people. We hear comments like, “She acts like a winner.” Or, “A winner takes it all.” There are a thousand ways to say it, but we all want to be that winner. Go back to the first of March and catch the entire series, There’s a Winner in All of Us.

Know When to Walk Away

Back to the mystery person who willfully walked away to preserve her relationship with her father. Her name is Tori Spelling, actress best known for her role on Beverly Hills, 90210. Her father was Aaron Spelling, recently deceased TV producer. He was listed in the Guinness Book of Records in 1999 as the world’s most prolific producer of television drama. At that point in time, according to the Guinness record, he had produced 3,842 hours of television–enough to fill about 3½ years of prime time seven nights a week without any reruns. In his lifetime, he amassed a wealth of at least ½ billion dollars. Some say perhaps a billion.

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Once again airport travel was an experience to remember. While walking through the Atlanta Airport, I was about to get over losing my neck pillow and the lens falling out of my new pair of glasses, when the airport delivered my ballistic nylon, indestructible roller bag with not only a missing wheel, but the entire wheel housing gone.

During March we have been talking about the qualities of a winner, but I confess that I was so self-focused with negative things happening to me, that I almost forgot I was a winner.

Looking Beyond Yourself

While I waited in line to go through security to catch the next flight, a fragile, silver-haired woman in front of me slowly shuffled bags back and forth across the conveyor belt. She didn’t notice she was holding up a long line of impatient travelers backed up behind me. She was trying to handle her bags while helping a blind man in his late 30’s in front of her. He must have been a close relative the way she hovered over him.

I stood there for a short time staring at her, watching her helpless motions, until I could stand it no longer.

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As we are talking about the qualities of a winner, be sure to go back to Part 1 and Part 2 of my blogs, There’s a Winner in All of Us.

Part 1, What It Takes to Be a Winner, gives you an example of an ordinary person who made winning qualities work for her. Part 2, Having a Winning Attitude, gives a unique perspective of the power of persuasion. Today we are talking about how to position yourself as a winner.

Jerold Panas, an executive partner of one of America’s leading fundraising firms and author of several books, tells about an article he read in National Geographic
on barnacles. “The barnacle,” said the article, “is confronted early on with a decision about where it is going to live. Once it decides that, it spends the rest of its life with its head permanently cemented to a rock.”

Apparently that works for the barnacle. I tried to peel one off a rock, and it wouldn’t budge. It had amazing sticking power. The first step toward positioning yourself as a winner is to select your position.

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Winners do not accidently stumble into a successful life. When good things happen, winners are already there, waiting in anticipation for the prize of a well-thought out, well-planned, and well-lived life.

Attitude Sparks Imagination

Have you ever heard of a woman named Imaging Spence? She is an architectural designer who has an educated eye for creating a home out of nothing but imagination. She had no formal training as a designer, yet she has been featured in Architectural Digest.

Imaging grew up as the daughter of Mendel Peterson, head curator of history at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. She spent her summers wide-eyed and full of wonder as she roamed through history-filled museums, dreaming of living on the velvet grassy hillsides of paintings she studied and rebuilding architectural ruins with columns and fountains. Pallets of colors, textures, and historic artifacts drew her into a life of imagination.

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One of the most popular TV shows, Deal or No Deal, is not only a game of chance at winning $1,000,000, but also a study in human behavior. On February 13^th, Katie Henslin, from Forest Lake, Minnesota, walked away with $449,000 and exemplified what it takes to be a winner.

During the month of March, we are going to explore the qualities of a winner. Let’s take a look at Katie and see why she has a winning spirit.

At the beginning of the Million Dollar Mission game on Deal or No Deal, host Howie Mandel asked her why she thought she was a winner. She momentarily looked surprised that he would ask, then answered, “Because I was bred from a long line of winners.”

From her answer, it was evident to me that she knew how to play the game of life. Here are the qualities of a winner that she exemplified during the time she played:

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Marilyn Paul, Ph.D. from Yale University, makes these three points in her book, It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys. Laugh if you will, she has dissected “getting organized” and put it back together.

Systems in Place-Go!

One of the biggest reasons we fail at organizing our time is that we don’t have systems in place for our projects. I’ll give you an example of my own self-created system for meal preparation. For you men, who read my blog, don’t leave me now. Pretend I am talking about setting up and improving your golf game. The principles for systems have underlying likenesses, no matter what you are organizing.

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