Andrew Carnegie who is considered one of the richest men in the history of the world. At one point in the late 1800s Carnegie had almost 50 millionaires working for him which would be incredible in even today dollars. He was asked once by a reporter how he could justify paying someone a million dollars. To which he replied that they were not worth a million when he hired them but that they had developed to the point that they were worth a million dollars. The reporter than asked, “How did you develop these men to become so valuable to you that you have paid them this much money?” Now, I believe what Carnegie said was utterly profound and it could change our lives if we listen. Carnegie said that "you develop people in the same way one mined for gold." He said, "when you enter a mine to get gold you are expecting to have to dig out a lot of dirt. As a matter of fact you will have to haul out tons and tons of dirt! The most important thing when mining for gold is that you have to remember that you don't go into a mine looking for dirt. You go in looking for gold and you always find what you are looking for." So it is with people, We all tend to have a lot of dirt. Tons upon tons of dirt but we need to know that if you want to develop your children, spouse, neighbors or those you work with you must not start by looking for dirt or that is all you will ever find. We need to look for the gold in everyone and remember, "You always find what you are looking for."
Why Change?
I have one question for you. What if you could live to 160 years old? Lets say you would normally live to 80 and all of the sudden you get another 80 years. What would you do? I want to take a guess at what you would do. You would head back to elementary school and work your way through Junior high and high school. Maybe if you do good in school you will be able to go to a good collage or a university like Stanford, Yale or even Harvard. Maybe you will want to play it safe and become an accountant or maybe you are feeling ambitious and want to be a doctor or a lawyer. Now if after collage you are lucky you could find a good job and work way up and eventually retire at 145 years old. Maybe you take an early retirement at 140 years. Remember you started at 80 and if you add 65 years that would put you at 145 years old. Now you can start to live your life. You have 15 years left to travel and have fun and do all the things you have put off because you wanted to be responsible and save for your retirement.
Doesn't this sound like an amazing plan? Would this be your plan if you could live to 160? If you answer no and I hope you do answer no then why in the heck is that your plan right now? Maybe it is because you are insane? No, you say. Okay, maybe you have a belief system that you have been raised with your whole life and that is what you have been taught. Let me tell you now that there is a better way to living life and anyone and everyone can do it. Maybe you are a skeptic and are saying not every can do what they love because who would pick up the trash. If you think that way then I want to say I agree with you and you should probably get off this site and look up some negative news.
If you believe in a better life than keep coming back or subscrbie to my blog and I will be sharing with you all the things that I am learning and how I and others around me are finding more joy and peace in their life.
The grass is always greener on the other side.
I bet you have never heard that the grass is always greener on the other side. I have to say to you, if that is what you believe than that will always be true. I am so surprised in how many people jump from thing to thing their entire life and never end up finding what they want and they just keep going from thing to thing. Even worst, I am sick and tired of people saying that when they retire they will live the life they want. That is a lie and when you retire nothing is going to change for you.
This is what I call the grass is green on the other side mentality. When I purchased my first home I learned something that I didn’t know. Grass is really hard to make green. We moved in at the beginning of summer. The home was vacant and the lawn had been neglected to say the least. I had to figured out how to get the water on. Remember that I live in Utah and unlike some places nothing grows unless you put water on it. Needless to say I had to figure out our watering system so that I could try and revitalize my new grass that I thought may be completely dead. There must have been thousands of weed everywhere and the grass was so dry that when you’d step on it and it would crumble like ash.
After running the water on it every day for over a month some of it started to look green again. I was getting excited about it but there was still a lot of dead spots, there where areas where it was dirt and the weeds were overgrowing everything. I had to mow it like crazy to keep the weeds down. I started adjusting all the different sprinklers to different amounts of time some I would do for 30 minutes others I would do for 60 minutes. The dry spots started to look better and the dirt sport started grow some grass after I had purchased seed from the local store and planted it. The more water I gave it the more the weeds would grow. I had to keep dropping more and more seed because the birds would fly down and eat the seed before it could take root.
“THIS IS CRAZY!” I said to myself. I started to have lawn envy towards my neighbors. I thought can it really be this hard to make my grass green! I thought for just a second that maybe it was impossible to get my grass as nice looking and as green as others that I had seen. I even thought that maybe that grass was greener on the other side of the hill. Don’t we all say that too much! The grass is greener on the other side.
Finally I started to ask around and I had some people tell me that I need to call a lawn service company and they will bring weed killer and fertilizers that would make my grass beautiful. I did that and it made a world of difference. They came in and gave me insight that I didn’t know. They started to work on the lawn. They agreed that it was pretty nasty. After sometime it got better than it started to get worse again. I thought how in the world! I called and they sent a guy out to work on it more. He said that I was cutting the lawn to short and watering it too much. NO WAY! I thought how could that possibly be the problem. I put my blade higher on my mower and low and behold it helped.
Now I have gone on for far too long about my grass. But I wanted to make a point and that it is sometimes very difficult to make your grass green and that it takes time, hard work and a lot of adjusting of things. Now don’t forget this ever! You make your grass green!
Once you realize that the grass is not always greener on the other side but that you make your grass green right in your own backyard that will change your life.