National Breast Cancer Foundation, Inc.

Wheels Up, Wheels Down, Wheels Off

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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Position Yourself As a Winner

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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What Does it Take to be a Winner?

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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What it Takes to be a Winner

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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We are finishing a three-part approach to getting organized. For those who are tuning in late, please read my blog, I’m Too Busy to Get Organized-Part 1 to learn about the first step—”Getting to Ready” and blog, I’m Too Busy to Get Organized-Part 2, which is about “Creating New Habits”. Today we are talking about “Building Effective Systems”.

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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