Being Point

Month: March 2009

  • Legendary – Perhaps “Saintly” – Service

    Our topic this week is service, and today happens to be St. Patrick’s Day. Saint Patrick was credited with bringing the Christian faith to Ireland . . . as well as with banishing snakes from Ireland and using the shamrock to teach the Holy Trinity.

    Service can be legendary. Sometimes, it can even get you canonized! Can you think of service experiences that you would consider legendary?

    What are the elements of legendary service? Is it able to be delivered consistently? Have you and / or anything you’ve been involved with ever delivered legendary service? What was your motivation? How did you do it? How able were you to continue it?

    Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

    Copyright 2009. E. B. Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.

  • Service Is Not Slavery

    My friend, Peter, a 30-year veteran of leading high-end travel tours, once told me that his favorite country is India . . . “Because it’s the only place in the world where people will come up to you and say, ‘Please, sir, may I give you a service?’ It’s part of their culture. Nowhere else in the world is like that.”

    I have recounted Peter’s story often while working with companies to teach them the art of service. The word “service” derives from the Latin “servus” or “slave.” The word has evolved to mean “work done by one person for the benefit of another.”

    We live in a service economy, yet how closely do we identify with the goal of our work’s being for the benefit of another?

    How can we improve our attitude of service? Do our employees and vendors exhibit the optimal level of service? Service is not slavery . . . but do we sometimes see it as if it were?

    Copyright 2009. E. B. Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.

  • Surrendering the Habit of Forcing Others to Give In

    When William Booth said, “The greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrender,” he was talking about the upside of “giving in” to a powerful principle.

    Opportunities for surrender often present themselves in one-on-one relationships. When a power struggle occurs and there is a battle for control, the governing principle has often been to force the other to give in.

    Can you see places in your life where surrender can be to a noble value like collaboration, teamwork and partnership? Surrendering the ego’s need to be in control is a strategy that produces great results.

    Where can you yield or surrender to loyalty, integrity, wisdom, health, love, friendship, hope and optimism?

    Who can you stop resisting and begin to embrace through surrender to your core values?

    Copyright 2009. E. B. Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.

  • Tough Love and Surrender

    Some element of trust is required to surrender to something that may be amazingly good for you, but that you may be afraid of for various reasons – including fear that you may not be up to it. But, most likely, you are up to it or the invitation to surrender would not be in your life.

    After yesterday’s Study Hall, longtime great friend, Sir Erik Hill, sent the following poem by Guillaume Apollinaire:

    COME TO THE EDGE

    Come to the edge, he said.

    They said: We are afraid.

    Come to the edge, he said.

    They came.

    He pushed them and they flew.

    Being pushed by someone whom you trust can help you surrender. Pushing can feel difficult like the tough love that it is, but it results in flying and in even greater degrees of forward and upward movement.

    If someone has pushed you to surrender recently, consider that that person may be lovingly urging you to evolve and grow.

    How do you best respond? With silence or with the strength to fly? Will your ego surrender?

    Copyright 2009. E. B Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.

  • Surrender In Its Most Powerful Form

    Surrender of our limitations frequently leads us to expand ourselves as human beings. For example, we can surrender isolation and embrace feelings of compassion . . . or even surrender being average so we can embrace a desire for mastery in a given situation. We can choose to surrender old limiting beliefs and prejudices in favor of openness and acceptance.

    So, if surrender is so great, why have you and I been afraid to surrender? Ego perhaps . . . or concern over losing ourselves in surrendering to something perhaps bigger than we are? Fear of the unknown?

    Surrender in its most powerful form is our opening up to forces to which we are highly attracted, but which simultaneously frighten us in some way.

    Consider the example of parenting: there is a simple and poignant surrender of the old way of life for the new. Or the example of a person who may have a talent and be fearful of surrendering to expressing it because it may turn out to be “not good enough.”

    Would you like to cultivate a habit of surrendering to your higher values? How does this apply to your profession, your health, your family, your friendships? How can surrender be related to mastery? What specifically would you ultimately benefit from surrendering to?

    Copyright 2009. E. B. Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.

  • When Is Surrender Sweet?

    Surrender can mean defeat . . . or surrender can mean transcendence.

    If it’s defeat, we are called upon to be strong, learn from what happened, and move beyond what we were fighting against. We can learn to be resilient.

    However, surrender can be useful if thought about in the context of giving in to something ultimately larger than ourselves and yielding to it for our own growth and evolution.

    Writer Sara Paddison, “When we know love matters more than anything, and we know that nothing else REALLY matters, we move into the state of surrender. Surrender does not diminish our power; it enhances it.”

    Can you think of a place where “Sweet Surrender” has significantly enhanced your power? Are there any areas of your life where yielding to love or some other great force would actually make you far more powerful as a human being? Has your not surrendering actually diminished you in the past? What are the ultimate consequences of your not surrendering?

    Copyright 2009. E. B. Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.

  • Changing Surrender From Defeat to Allowing

    It’s not often that a word can contain two very different, almost opposite meanings . . . one good and one bad. Consider the meanings of “surrender.”

    Our most common understanding is that surrender means defeat or loss. However, surrender can also mean allowing something completely . . . giving in to something that often requires a transformation of the self and the situation.

    We humans have fought against so many elements of our lives . . . very often fighting to hold on to things that we find precious, but sometimes holding on to limiting patterns.

    Where in your life have you been defeated . . . and, contrasting that, where have you given in to something that you had at first resisted, but then embraced for an ultimately better result?

    Copyright 2009. E. B. Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.

  • “Security Is Mostly A Superstition”

    Almost everyone has seen this Helen Keller quote: “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.”

    Keller, of course, overcame tremendous odds to become a living example of courage and persistence. She had to manifest security from her core – little reliant on the kinds of things that many of us have used to simulate security.

    Times of loss and great challenge reveal the degree of self-security that a person possesses or can access. Have you ever personally experienced – or observed – great loss having an impact on feelings of security . . . one way or the other?

    How able have you been to follow Keller’s example? Are her words just talk, or can we create a grand adventure from adversity and learn to be secure in our ability to get through tougher times?

    Pretty words . . . or words to live by? How can her observation be translated into reality in your life?

    Copyright 2009. E. B. Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.

  • Marketing to Our Physical Insecurities

    The opposite of secure is insecure, and all humans have insecurities of various kinds. We are works in progress, and being compassionate about the insecurities of ourselves and others is kind and loving.

    Insecurities often result from comparing how we think we should be to how we perceive that we are. For example, our media portray physical perfection as the only acceptable way to be, yet most of us are far from that definition of physical perfection . . . which may lead to feeling insecure.

    Many industries are based on marketing to our physical insecurities. Cher said, “I’m insecure about everything because I’m never going to look in the mirror and see this blond, blue-eyed girl. That is what my idea of what I’d like to look like.”

    No one will have to share it with the group, but think about some aspect of your physical self with which you have been insecure. Then ask yourself what impact that feeling of insecurity has had on your life thus far.

    How would you like to change your historic point of view about any feelings of physical insecurity? Have you ever said or done anything to cause another person to feel insecure about her or his physicality?

    Copyright 2009. E. B. Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.

  • Security Is A Paradox and An Oxymoron

    With apologies to General Douglas Macarthur, his words about security may be just a tad strident. He said, “There is no security on this earth – only opportunity.” Apparently, another “security purist” who, to be sure, is technically correct in the absolutist construct of black-and-white thinking on our topic of the week.

    Yet, we all know that life is a paradox. As Louis Adamic (a non-General whom I had never heard of) said, “Living is like licking honey off a thorn.” So it is with security: we can have health, wealth and wisdom . . . and, in the having of them, we can FEEL secure. Yet, since nothing endures, that feeling of security is fleeting . . . even if it last for decades.

    Security may uniquely be both a one-word oxymoron as well as a one-word paradox . . . in any case, tough to reconcile with the realities of everyday life. Most likely, a solid way of dealing with any form of perfectionism – as absolute security is – is to use it to strive toward, but to resist being seduced by the promise of its NEVER CHANGING.

    Dig deep and sense how you really FEEL about security. Not how you THINK about it, but how, deep in your gut you feel. Maybe confused, wistful, curious and perhaps even angry?

    Perhaps the best security is the ability to appreciate the human experience in all its contradictions and up’s and down’s. How do you deal with your desire for security? Have you ever felt driven to make choices based on your perceived need for any kind of security?

    Copyright 2009. E. B. Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.