Not Me

I grew up with alcoholism -
My father was an alcoholic, my uncles were alcoholics, when my sisters grew up they both became alcoholics, as I got older many friends and other family members were , and still are, alcoholics.

One of my sisters tried to fight it but ultimately went back and died from it , all the others except for maybe one or two friends would never even admit to it .

The sorry thing is if you suffer from this disease you will never have a chance of getting better until you admit that you have it, that you are an alcoholic- you first must look in the mirror.

The other very sad thing is until you look in the mirror and admit what you are - all of the people around you will also suffer, especially your family and loved ones and co- workers because they can see you need help and you are destroying not only yourself but your whole life and there is nothing they can do.

I see racism the same way -
I have family and friends that are racist- they show it every day in what they say or do or who and what they support but they will never admit to it.
No, they do not come right out and say certain things in my presence because they know I do not agree with them so they kind of play around the edges and say certain things that certainly let people know where they stand.
I had a very good friend who I worked with for years and one day we were at a conference and a black motivational speaker got up to talk and my friend automatically got up from his seat and said this n—- is not going to tell me anything. I was totally flabbergasted. I knew this man for years and had no idea.I was also friends with his two sons, who later revealed their true colors too.

Don’t get me wrong way too many racist are proud of who they are and say it out loud but my dealings with them up here in R.I. and in my circle do not say it out loud and many would never even admit that they are, they will always say something disparaging about the other guy, they NEVER look in the mirror.
And by never looking in the mirror they can never get help or ever get a chance to see things from the other side, meanwhile they are suffering inside and hurting those around them.

I try not to judge others , I see them for who they are and contain my involvement, if given the chance for honest dialogue I will always embrace those conversations.

Our true Judge will be there in the end for all of us.

Look in the mirror-

True story

True story-
In the late 80’s and for the next few decades I worked for a household good mover, when I started it was about a 7 million dollar company and when I left it was over 200 million. So needless to say I witnessed a lot of changes.
I was in operations/dispatch , I planned the jobs on our drivers that ran the entire United States. At our high we had approximately 150 drivers in what we called our permanent fleet, in the perm fleet our operations department planned all the loads and had daily contact with all the drivers , remember this was long before cellphones and computers.
 The perm fleet consisted of drivers that were owner operators , they ran as their own business and had their own LLC , actually pretty much like any other business responsible for claims, taxes, insurance etc the only difference is thier business is on wheels.
In the perm fleet was also drivers that drove for a particular agent in the country that was affiliated with my Van Lines, the difference there was the agent owned the truck and trailer and equipment and was responsible to pay the driver, we paid the agent, they paid the driver.
Because the Van Lines and I were located in Rhode Island there were times that I dispatched drivers and would rarely meet them, example a driver May live in CA and I may dispatch him work from CA going to TX and then when he delivered everything I would dispatch jobs going back to CA.
The make up of our drivers in the perm fleet ran the gambit , big, heavy, short, skinny, black, white, owner op and agent drivers and everything else in between, even gay before people talked out loud about it.
I rose in the ranks and eventually ran the entire domestic operations and I took my responsibilities seriously, we moved military members, FBI, civilians, National Account’s like Hasbro and relocation Realtor’s , everyone wanted to move in the summer when kids were out of school so every year there was a mad dash from May to September and we moved thousands of people every week and even every day.
 Drivers could make a very good living for themselves , making on there 1099 from $200,000 to $400,000 and more a year so there was a lot of competition for loads, some had more weight and miles which paid more, each move was weighed once loaded on the trailer and at the end of a trip the Van lines settled with the driver or the agent.
How we chose who received  what loads was easy to us, we preferred to load the guy that we knew would be where he said he would be and we knew he was professional with how he handled the customers belongings and was polite and helpful to the customer and knew how to handle his finances and logs.
That was essentially it, that is what we cared about and how we chose certain drivers for loads.
Now during that time I was accused by everyone of being biased. There was a hotel near our office that most drivers stayed at called the lucky 8 and from time to time Iwould stop in to share a beer with a driver and share a laugh and story and during some visits the driver would outright accuse me of favoritism. The white driver would say I favored the black drivers,the black driver would say I favored the white, the agent driver said I favored the owner op and so on, crazy right.
All I cared about was taking care of the job and making dates and satisfying the customer ...period.
Sometimes because I never met some drivers I had no idea if they were white black big or short, and I did not care.
The Van lines would help some drivers out with loans so then the word was those were the drivers we preferred because we wanted our money paid back, again - wrong- no one in dispatch was even privy to that and once again we had a job to do - make dates and satisfy our customer.

So YES we did have a culture of favoritism in my operations, we favored those that did their job !!
Simple- if you work hard and people can trust you to consistently do your best you will rise.

Looking back everyone was paranoid about everybody else because they were scared someone was going to take something from them and all along all they had to do was apply all that energy to improving themselves and their work and the rest would have taken care of itself.

The moral of the story is just worry about YOU and what you can do be better at your job and how to just be an overall better person - and stop worrying about the other guy.

Freedom

I cannot believe what I witnessed live and right in front of me on TV the other night.

I was watching a live broadcast of a peaceful protest in front of the White House and within minutes it took an ugly turn, the military and police started to push the crowd back with tear gas and rubber bullets , people went from standing and chanting holding up posters to running and screaming .

And why -

Because the incumbent President wanted to walk out in that street to have a photo op holding up a bible in front of a church.

It sounds so unreal to even write never mind to witness live. It something I have seen happen in other countries, countries ran by dictators.

This country is built around democracy and our constitution and our idealism of Freedom and Freedom and opportunity for every American! In order to sustain these ideas we must be able to speak out and protest when we see wrong being done. 

Just stop for one minute and think about it- do not spin or talk about what someone else did or might have done and just look at this one sliver of time - peaceful American citizens protesting their rights were gassed and shot at by OUR military and police ! I never thought I would witness it in my lifetime, I saw video of this back in the 50’s and 60’s in the civil right movement but I had naively thought that was all behind us- it is not.

But in this case it was our President that directed this attack - an attack on American citizens!

Never - Never in our history has a President taking such action and for what ? A photo Op -

I do not have to agree with everyone and we all have our views but we all have the right to express our views and live the life we want.

Freedom for All and Freedom of Speech 

Make Believe

I can exist in a broken environment
I cannot exist in a make believe environment

What I mean by that is I can learn to live with people I do not agree with either in my personal life or in my work world but that said I need to also be able to express my opinions and with that be able to do what I do without fear of repercussions toward me or others.

Growing up my father was an alcoholic and I said it out loud once and was scolded by my mother, I knew he had issues and by not at least saying it out loud it would never have any opportunity to change or at least discuss it.
At the work place I had a boss that was very abusive to others, not so much me but everyone around him and me and by not saying anything to those in power I felt complete complicit.

If we can’t voice out loud what we see and disagree with we are forced to live in a make believe world and that I cannot do , when we hide our head and live in silence we begin to die inside and we will never truly exhale.

I do not like confrontation and I coil at environments that create yelling and anger and much of that I attribute to growing up in that house with a verbally abusive alcoholic, by everyone staying silent he never had a chance to address his issues and the family never had a chance to address their issues and years later both my sisters became alcoholics themselves.
I watched both my father and one of my sisters die piece by piece because of that disease and presently watch my other sister still struggle with wet brain and drinking.

I do not like confrontation but I do speak out and voice my opinion and if I can conduct change I stick it out and try to do so , more for those around me then even for myself.
If I feel as if I cannot conduct change I leave that situation so not to live in that make believe world.

Change is difficult
Honesty is difficult
But if it comes from the right place - change and honesty is absolutely necessary!

Advice for Graduating Students

Here is my advice for graduating students ... (and for everyone else)

Listen
Learn
Love

These three simple things is the roadmap for a happier more satisfying life.

1) Listen-
Listen to others , especially those you may not agree with. The art of listening is not to always try to get the other person to agree with you but to truly try to understand where they are coming from and why they think the way they do. You may not agree with them in the end but you may walk away with a better understanding of either them or the subject and you may actually think about your side a little different.
Either way if they have a different opinion just pushing them away or hating them will solve absolutely nothing.

2) Learn-
Always want to learn - by listening more you will learn more, no matter what the subject we can can always learn more and grow. When they day comes that you think you are the expert and know everything that is day that you begin alienate yourself and that will begin a very dark road for your future.
You learn best when you lower your shoulders and open your ears and your heart.
Try to keep that little child innocent curiousness in your heart and your mind.

3) Love-
When you truly listen and learn you will understand life more and where people come from and why they may think the way they do and you when you realize we all have struggles you will begin to love more.
To love others you first have to love yourself, forgive yourself for any of past thoughts or actions, learn from them and move on. Use your mistakes to grow and then let them go.
After you forgive yourself - forgive others- that weight of holding a grudge will only stunt your true growth and feeling of joy, and in the end that thing you were hurt or mad about really doesn’t matter.

Listen- Learn- Love

Rah Rah

It is very nice to hear kudos from your boss and thank you from Leadership in your place of work.

That said in business and especially in today’s environment we workers in the pit all know that we can be here today and gone tomorrow, if our boss’s boss tells him to make cuts or to let you go - you are gone.
 So as much as kudos are nice you can not bank them or pay your bills with them.

Here’s an idea- rather them coming down from the mountain or out from your closed door office to rain praise on the workers actually give them tools so they can do their job better, listen and observe to what the workers do so when the time comes to evaluate the staff you know first hand how they go about their day.
 This is where climbing the ranks is essential because to be a true leader you must have at least sat in the chair of a worker or walked a mile in their shoes in order to truly assist them and evaluate them.
Part of being a successful boss or leader is mentoring the people that work for you and keeping them excited and learning and you can only do that if you care and if you listen and observe and “ know the job”.
To many leaders now jump the line , employers think that sheepskin or college degrees are the be all , education is certainly important but so is sweat equity and work experience .

In order to lead you need the respect of the people you are leading and they can smell BS so if you do not know what they do and even worse do not take the time to understand what they do they will never truly respect you as a leader or boss and as a boss you will never be able to improve your business or grow yourself.

So don’t just throw around thank you and atta boys - get involved- listen- mentor- lead.

What side he views the matter ...

A philosopher’s 350-year-old trick to get people to change their minds is now backed up by psychologists.

The 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal is perhaps best known for Pascal’s Wager which, in the first formal use of decision theory, argued that believing in God is the most pragmatic decision. But it seems the French thinker also had a knack for psychology. Pascal set out the most effective way to get someone to change their mind, centuries before experimental psychologists began to formally study persuasion:
When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.Pascal added:
People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.Put simply, Pascal suggests that before disagreeing with someone, first point out the ways in which they’re right. And to effectively persuade someone to change their mind, lead them to discover a counter-point of their own accord. Arthur Markman, psychology professor at The University of Texas at Austin, says both these points hold true.“One of the first things you have to do to give someone permission to change their mind is to lower their defenses and prevent them from digging their heels in to the position they already staked out,” he says. “If I immediately start to tell you all the ways in which you’re wrong, there’s no incentive for you to co-operate. But if I start by saying, ‘Ah yeah, you made a couple of really good points here, I think these are important issues,’ now you’re giving the other party a reason to want to co-operate as part of the exchange. And that gives you a chance to give voice your own concerns about their position in a way that allows co-operation.”Markman also supports Pascal’s second persuasive suggestion. “If I have an idea myself, I feel I can claim ownership over that idea, as opposed to having to take your idea, which means I have to explicitly say, ‘I’m going to defer to you as the authority on this.’ Not everybody wants to do that,” he adds.In other words, if it wasn’t enough that Pascal is recognized as a mathematician, physicist, and philosopher, it seems he was also an early psychologist.