Working From the Outside, In

People have often asked me, “How can I build strong relationships?”  It’s a good question and one that each of us should be asking ourselves every day.  Relationships are at the very center of all your success; professional, personal, family, recreation, everything.  In fact, if you do a little reading about building your personal brand these days you can spend hour upon hour reading about networking and how to do it.  Unfortunately, many people reading such advice can’t follow it effectively because they don’t understand the true basis for a proper network; relationship building.

So, if you’re looking to have a better life, in any area of your life, you can have what you’re looking for in a very rapid fashion.  It just takes some time, effort and caring.

I say caring because when people tell me that networking doesn’t work it’s because they have usually joined a networking group full of people who are there for one reason; to get leads for their business.  How do you think that goes when everyone is there to receive and not to give?

It’s just that obvious! And, what is also obvious is that the opposite is also true. It will lead you to the opposite result.  The perfect example of how this works is the time my daughter Kilee spent with me this last weekend.

I’ve been a small rancher for quite some time now and wanting to expand my interests to include a vineyard.  My daughter Kilee has become a very good gardener so I asked her to help me pick and order some varieties of root stock to plant.  When the plants arrived, I asked her to come and help me plant the first row and enjoyed her teach me the art of planting grape vines.

We spent the afternoon on Saturday planting the recently arrived root stock, and it gave us time to have wonderful talks about her life, work and dreams.  Then toward the end of the afternoon, as she continued to help me, I taught her more about drip irrigation as we installed it at the base of each vine.  Through all of this process we created the beginnings of my vineyard and deepened our relationship at the same time.  We could never accomplish the same quality of relationship building had we not been giving of ourselves first from the outside through work!

Creating a strong relationship with another person always requires that you work your way from the outside in!  You only gain access to another person’s heart after you’ve demonstrated caring through your external behavior.  You must gain their trust by being the one to offer help, assistance and care.  Then you must make good on that promise by being the initiator of action.  It is through your actions of caring and kindness that other people will see that you are the type of person they want to have a relationship with.  If you try it any other way every single person will see that you are - a fraud; you are only there to use them and take what you can.

You deserve to have strong, long lasting relationships that will enrich your life as well as the lives of those you love and want to love more.  Take an opportunity to build stronger relationships today by giving yourself to others by working from the outside, in.

Warm Your Life

“My mother sold real estate.  They used to call her the “Condo Queen.”  She loved it.  She sold until she was 85 and then she had to quit because of health.”

- Glenn Earl

Warm Your Life

Thursday in the middle of the afternoon isn’t marked on my calendar as a time where I expect to receive some inspiration.  But, it is as good of time as any, and since I can’t recall ever having received inspiration at that time before, it must mean that encouragement can arrive into one’s mind at any time and in any place.  Sometimes it comes to us at the least expected time and place.

The key to knowing whether an inspiration or an experience will enhance your life is to measure how active or passive the encouragement becomes within your heart.  If you receive a flash and you remain utterly passive about it then it has accomplished very little to change you.  For instance, time spent thinking about the stimulation does little to move you forward if it is not followed up by action to make it a reality.  After all, aren’t you looking to warm your life with a little more love, success, friendship and fulfillment?

What does this have to do with a Thursday afternoon?  Well, I was in a foyer waiting to go into a meeting when the office manager asked me what I did for a living.  I told her, “I sell real estate.”  And, she like most people I meet said, “Oh, how is the market?”

We spend a few minutes talking about the real estate market when her husband said, “My mother sold real estate.  They used to call her the ‘condo queen.’  She loved it.  She sold until she was 85 and then she had to quit because of her health.”  I listened to him and soon became enthralled with his stories of her.

As I listened, perhaps the one single valuable point I learned was that her life was all about building relationships, not expanding her contact manager.  For most people this one single point is both the hardest to absorb and, at the same time, the most valuable clue to successful relationship building.  We must be trying to build relationships with other humans, not seeking new people to use.

During this time when many of the people I come into contact with are discouraged by the fact that their portfolios have been wiped out; and, they don’t see a clear way to their dream of retirement any more.  This point, as taught by Glenn’s mother can be a beacon of hope.  Succeeding in genuine relationship building will eventually increase you income.  Just as important, it will immediately start improving your entire life.

I’m sitting in my chair right now visualizing my future and wondering if I’d like to have a life surrounded by people I like and admire or if I’d rather have money to live a life of leisure alone.  Would I like to spend time with people who are constantly helping me grow in life and joy?  Would I like to be doing something I love?  The answer is clear to me.  I’d rather constantly warm my life by succeeding in genuine relationship building.  If you’d like to improve and warm your entire life, build heartfelt relationships with other human beings by adding value to them through constructive interaction.  It will take  you places you never dreamed!

Is Anybody Listening?

“I told you before and nobody would listen to me.”

“I keep telling him I need his help and he won’t do anything about it.”

-      Two Different Friends

Is Anybody Listening?

I was looking across the table at a close friend telling me about the challenges he was facing in his work.  Then the next day I was standing outside a building listening to another friend, and Client, say, “I told you before and nobody would listen to me!”

I can still hear their voices and I can still see their faces.  I feel the genuine dissatisfaction rolling from their bodies on its way to cover me in the same way I’ve seen fog engulf the Golden Gate Bridge.  Their discouragement is a cold damper to my peace of mind.  I didn’t know what to say to them at the time.  I sat speechless, helpless and ineffective.

So, I’ve thought a lot about each instance and have been searching the experience trails throughout my mind in an effort to give each one of them a sure fire method of solving the issue.  I was hoping for the discovery of a formula that has worked for me in the past.  But, I haven’t thought of one!

Now I think there’s a reason I haven’t been able to find one simple formula.  Perhaps it’s because every situation and the dynamic between singular people is different.  Trying to force what someone else is going through into the prism of one’s own experience can be a mistake.  In fact, it can compound the situation and can even make it worse.  It can signal to another person that there is no effort being given to understanding their point of view.

Another wise friend of mine said, “Why do you want to spend your time walking the same trail over and over again when you know it won’t take you where you want to go?”  Relying on our past’s personal experience too much can lead all of us into the same unwinnable trap!

It’s important to actively listen to others in order to stay out of this trap.  What I mean by actively listening is: ask questions until you can feel as if you’re looking through the other person’s eyes.  Really work to make sure you hear exactly what they’re meaning is.  I find myself jumping to conclusions too quickly and too often.

So, I’ve set up a little frustration signal for myself; whenever I look into another person’s eyes and begin to see the fog of frustration beginning to flow from the center of their iris, I know I need to just take a deep breath and stop.   Then I take the conversation back one step and ask them to “tell me again because I don’t think I got it all,” and sure enough, I didn’t!  Slowing the conversation for clarification is lot better than having them take me by the throat while shouting, “Is anybody listening?” as they scramble my brain! 

If you and I can adjust our listening skills just a little bit we can improve our relationships with countless numbers of people.  We’ll have more close friends and best of all; we’ll have other people willing to listen to us when we need to be listened to.

Mirror, Mirror

“When my grandpa would see me he would say, ‘Megan, where’s your curly hair!  I love your curly hair!” - Megan

Mirror, Mirror

I looked in my mirror over and over again for about a full week and when I did, the first thought that came to my mind was, “you need a hair cut!”  I’ve tried lots of ways to keep to a good schedule for keeping what’s left of my hair trimmed up on a regular basis, but nothing has worked very well so far.  Thank goodness for a good mirror.  Sometimes it’s the only thing that allows me to see what I’ve become.  I took one last look and then turned my mind to the day ahead.  I realized that I had a couple of meetings very close to the barbershop I usually go to, so I vowed to take the time to drop in and make myself look a little more presentable; better in my mirror.

When I finished the two meetings on my early schedule I drove the two blocks to the barbershop and walked in.  I was greeted by a young woman with a smiling face and long, curly brown hair.  Her name is Megan.  She invited me to sit in her chair and then she began to talk with me about what I wanted to have done.  It just goes to show that there are people who are a great deal more creative than I am because I can’t imagine taking time to think about how to make my hair a lot different than it is.  I replied to her question with my simple, reliable answer, “Just trim it up so it looks as good as it can.” I said. (The whole time thinking that since at least 25% of my hair is plucked away to the wind that I should be getting a discount for the lessened work involved.  Silly notion!  I should be paying her 25% more because she has to work so hard at making my depleting mop look great.)  “Enough thought about such a depressing notion!  I should change the subject to something more pleasing,” I said to myself.
I looked in the big mirror in front of me and saw Megan’s long wavy hair and said, “Does your hair naturally curl that way?”

“Yes.” She said. 

“I love naturally curly hair.” I responded.

“I love it now,” she said.  “When I was younger, and didn’t know how to style it I really hated it.  I learned to straighten it and then spent all my time working to make it straight.  When my grandpa would see me he would say, ‘Megan, where’s your curly hair!  I love your curly hair! When I was a boy we always drew evil witches with straight hair!’ Then he would get out his pencil and show me how he had drawn witches with straight black hair as a boy.”

She took a quick glance through the mirror and looked straight into my eyes.  I looked back and searched her eyes for the meaning expressed, beyond her words.  What I saw there is so important!

Her grandpa was telling her over and over again that he loved her for who she naturally was.  He knew that if she rejected her true self that she would eventually become dark inside and then unattractive on the outside as her belief would escape her skin to be revealed to everyone.  She felt the love in his words and even though he is not with her any more, her undying memory of his love will always brighten her heart.  His effect on her life is immeasurable.

You can have the same immeasurable effect on people around you!  When you see someone who has not accepted something beautiful about themselves, take a moment to express your admiration for their beauty, intelligence, talent or whatever you see that they’re not seeing at that moment.  Sometimes our mirrors don’t reflect ourselves as “the fairest of them all!”  That’s when you can become a “mirror, mirror” to show a different reflection; a brighter, clearer expression that they’ll always remember and treasure deep within their heart.