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A lot of people take action, but give up when they don’t see immediate results. They don’t persist for a long enough period of time. Imagine a straight line running for 100 meters down a flat canvas. Imagine that straight line is the current course of your life and you would like to change the results you’re getting in your life. So you make a change, you take action.
You roll a ball one single degree off the center of that line. After rolling for 5 meters, the ball is only slightly off course, and if you stopped the ball there, there would be hardly any change. But give it time, and persist, and by the end of the 100 meters you have a big gap between the ball and that line. The longer the ball is allowed to roll, the bigger the difference. Imagine the line running from Johannesburg to Cape Town. One degree will make an enormous difference.
I am firmly of the opinion that the majority of the life-changing breakthroughs humanity has experienced has been brought about by people who knew when to challenge the rules.
There are people who are so stuck on following their rules, upon which they hang their sense of security and from which they make sense of the world. That annoys me. I guess it shouldn’t cause we’re all different, but it does.
I know I’ve made a case for rebels/rule challengers in part 1, part 2 and part 3, but in truth, it’s just a rant against hard core rule followers. As with everything in life, balance is key.
Rebels are people who don’t like to live their lives based on other people’s thinking and other people’s rules. As one of my childhood heroes, Steve Jobs, a man who knew the balance between when to break and when to follow the rules, and, who at the time of writing died 5 days ago, said in his Stanford speech…
“Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” – Steve Jobs
This nice lady came with us on holiday recently. She seemed to have a great general knowledge and despite the age gap, I found it so easy, in fact, fun to converse with her.
At one of our dinners my friend and I were talking about something which, despite her impressive general knowledge, we knew she knows nothing about. Irrespective, she agreed with us assertively. It was then that it struck me that she was using it as a conversational tactic.
If all you do is work for money then no matter how much you make, you’re poor. How much time do you have left to enjoy it.
My concept of wealth involves two factors:
Firstly, the idea of ”Units of Resources” – if Person A makes the same amount of money as Person B with less resources, Person A is richer. I was often told growing up that I should get a good education because if I didn’t I would feel inferior to others who had a good education. I support finishing school and getting a good education, so don’t get me wrong, but if someone buys a Mercedes without a university degree, then by my measure they’ve done better than someone with a degree who bought the same Mercedes. They’ve achieved the same but needed less to do it. Read more »
The purpose of the “Minor Attributes in Confident People” series is merely to guide those who, like me, are not naturals at this to start feeling more and more comfortable in social situations and even eventually start leading the conversation if they so desire.
I personally believe that the idea of introvert and extrovert is over-rated. Even introverts come out of their shell when they feel safe among friends they know well. An “introvert”, by my definition is somebody who has associated anxiety or some other discomfort to the process of relating to people or to strangers and has not yet been introduced to the deep sense of reward of meeting and relating to all sorts of people.
Since I started my endeavor to become a people person, there have been times I wished I could meet every single person on earth. There is serious reward to mastering this area of your life and I’m continuing to find out just how true that is.
My road to becoming a people person has been a hard one – one that I still struggle with. Some of my friends are absolute naturals when it comes to relating with people, public speaking, and so forth.
For me, even telling a joke to someone, even someone I know well, has been a source of anxiety sometimes. I worry I’ll forget the punch line and then I often do (for reasons relating to the brain that will be explained below).
I must confess that I used to feel very uneasy when speaking to people. At first it was because I couldn’t think of what to say and that would result in one of two scenarios:
“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth”
- Albert Einstein
So far, my case for rebel rule breakers has been little more than emotional rants well and truly exposing my early childhood issues. But I believe there’s a well-grounded case to be made for the rule-breaker non-conformists among us – those who say “up yours” to some of the commonly accepted conventional wisdom.
Rebels like to challenge commonly held beliefs of what can and cannot, should and should not be done. As you might expect they get heavy resistance from those who appreciate the status quo. Often rebels are wrong but sometimes they are right and when they are, a better way of thinking and doing is adopted which is eventually considered “obvious”.
WARNING: If you’re like me then this article may affect you in ways ranging from unsettling you to pissing you off. If you are prone to spontaneous crying or fits of, well any fits whatsoever, then you may want to steer clear. But who are we kidding right? You’re gonna read this if it kills you…
How you perceive a situation or an event could be so incredibly far away from how it is in reality. You would stake your house and your mom on your version of events, but in reality you could be wrong.
Some people say you should never talk about someone behind their back. It’s gossiping. I disagree. I think that there are times when talking about someone behind their back is quite healthy.
I’m not talking about gossiping and telling stories. That is a different thing. Have you ever had it where someone does something that irritates you and you don’t say anything… until one day you lose it and go postal on their ass? That may have been avoided if only you spoke about it to someone. Read more »
Webmail in this article refers to South African company Webmail International – a subsidiary of Interface IT Media, and should not be confused with the web-based software or any other entity. As well, these are my words and my interpretation and does not qualify as legal advice.
[UPDATE: 08/2011] I have, since I first published this, been approached by Webmail in an attempt to rectify things. They have offered me Google advertising instead of the email campaign in the amount that I had lost. I appreciate their willingness to make things right, but would like to stress that I still consider the below point lessons I’ve learnt from the experience.
I recently had the great misfortune of being swindled by South African email marketing company, Webmail International.
Webmail Intl have a free email system like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Hotmail, with one difference: They use their email database to hook people on expensive marketing campaigns. Of course, with a system like that, people who have signed up for what seems like a good deal – i.e. free email – are being spammed left right and centre.
I signed an agreement with Webmail Intl, the company didn’t perform, and I found myself in a position where I was asked to hand over R25,000 for absolutely no returns – i.e. a literal R25,000 donation. When I made it known that I believe this to be unethical at best, I was threatened with blacklisting and legal action.
I had a chat with my lawyer and after being told in the nicest way that I’m screwed, I took home some lessons. I have identified several red flags I should have seen during the sales process which you can look out for when you’re in a position to sign an agreement.
When signing any agreement, look out for the following red flags:
When you are pressured to sign immediately and discouraged from thinking it over. Of course no one will directly tell you not to think it over, but they might sweeten the deal every time you object, until you reach the point where you cave in and sign. Or they might try to close you again simply using different words every time. Never sign a document at the first meeting. Always take the document home and read over it, or preferably have a lawyer read over it.
When you have to pay an unreasonable percentage of the balance you owe in order to cancel the agreement. Webmail International have a clause in their agreement requiring that you pay 75% of the outstanding balance when you want to cancel the agreement. Major red flag. That one point alone is basically the company saying that they don’t care whether they meet your needs or not – only that you get locked in. The very second you put your pen to that paper, they shout, “CHEDDAR COMING!” on the inside, and from that point you’re screwed.
When the contract states that you are only signing the words written in the contract, and not any verbal statements made during the meeting. What that means is that, the sales person you’re meeting with can say what they want and show you evidence that is completely false and misleading, simply to convince you, and then you cannot take them to court for misrepresentation when their product ends up being total rubbish. Big red flag.
When the company doesn’t guarantee results. Again, it comes down to taking responsibility for what you’re offering. If a company doesn’t guarantee results, there can often be a good reason for it. In my case, my marketing material could have been poor which would result in a poor response. I happen to know it’s not my marketing material simply because we use another marketing company as well and the exact same text gets a great response every week. In my case, at the meeting I asked the salesman at Webmail International whether I could pay per lead or per sale. You can imagine that that was something they avoided like cancer. So always try go for an agreement where remuneration is tied to performance. If a company doesn’t want to take responsibility for their own performance, RED FLAG!
These are the major lessons I learned from my dealings with the South African company, Webmail International. Some amateur mistakes were made, but you live you learn and if one person reads this and saves themselves some bucks, my experience may have been worth it.
My favourite comeback for “There is no ‘I’ in TEAM” is “Yes, but there is a ‘ME’”.
Jokes aside. It’s a natural, almost reflex reaction when we see a report on our strengths and weaknesses to make a plan to develop our weaknesses. Most of us want to be the best person we can be.
It’s one thing developing your weaknesses in your own time, but when you’re part of a team, that’s not the time to work on your weaknesses. In fact, once you’ve identified what you’re good at in life, there’s very little reason to develop your weaknesses at all as far as I’m concerned.
I’m not talking about character flaws, I’m talking about skills and talents. You have God-given talents. So why is it that so many people focus most of their attention on improving their weaknesses? Why do so many teachers and parents insist their children should develop their weaknesses? It’s idiotic!
One of the dangers of writing a book and having this blog is that I might come across as thinking that I’m some hero that thinks he has all the answers. The truth is that I’m unapologetically voicing random or otherwise thoughts – I haven’t mastered anything yet. But of all the things I want to master, becoming a person of encouragement is high on the list. It’s my latest project!
The value of being a person of encouragement will change your entire life for the better in a way you cannot even begin to imagine right now. It’s one of those things where you have to do it to see the benefits but until you see the benefits you never do it, so it never gets done.
It can change who you marry, the quality of your current relationships, who you spend time with and as a result how you spend your time, how you see yourself and feel about yourself, and it hugely affects the lives of others – how they interact with people and feel about themselves, and as a result a positive cycle develops. Read more »
In Part 1, we spoke about guarding our moral and ethical frame of reference, but there is another type of framing we should be aware of.
The kind of frame I’m talking about is a concept from social theory. Frames are emotional filters by which we make sense of the world.
Frames are essentially templates we develop as we go through life. We use these templates to more efficiently interpret the meaning of a situation or event and as such these frames determine how we will respond to the situation or event.
To explain: As we go through life, events happen. In an effort to explain and understand the events we attach a meaning to significant or recurring events. Different people can attach different meanings to the same event. They develop a different filter through which they view that event. Read more »
I’m writing a book. I’m not a Harvard graduate like Frasier and Niles Crane, hell I don’t even think I finished school. When I was expelled from school I later wrote my grade 12 exams but I haven’t bothered to check my results.
I started this blog not because I thought I’m an expert at anything. I just had thoughts running through my mind and I wanted a medium to express those thoughts and hopefully in the process help those who can relate to me.
Of course, I think more carefully about my blog entries because it is being “broadcast” internationally, but the point is, I just did it, despite all my apprehension and feelings of being unqualified, and it led to me writing a book.
I didn’t let the thoughts of “who am I to teach anyone anything”, or “what have I really accomplished in the grand scheme of things”, or “I don’t have the qualifications” stop me.
For no apparent reason this random thought occurred to me. Actually I think we were talking about the cell phone company Cell C and their re-branding effort in South Africa. And I thought to myself, companies have an awful lot of systems and policies in place.
Policies and systems that dictate how and what to do and not do… if this happens, this is what the response should be.
I started to think about how, when a company’s founder passes away, those systems ensure the company continues to grow and operate soundly in the spirit of the founder even though the man or woman whose vision it was in the first place, is no longer there.
It only makes sense that the person who had the vision for the company will be more driven to make it work and continue to grow. So what happens when the company founder dies?
In Part 1 I tried to offer a balanced view on the benefits of being a rule follower who does everything by the book, and being a rebel-type personality who doesn’t always follow conventional wisdom and rules.
Rebels are too often seen as counter-productive types who just cause trouble. Though I tried to be unbiased in part one (except for the title), I admit here freely in part two that I prefer being around people who are rebels. I will explain in no uncertain terms why I prefer being a rebel and why.
Only within the last two years of my life have I made any effort to become a people person, but not long ago something happened that made me declare war on my lack of people skills. And as you may have guessed, it involves a woman.
I was playing taxi for Brothers in Beat’s African branch of corporate entertainment, called Authentic African Experience. Emperor’s Palace hired two drummers to lead a parade for the opening of the FIFA Soccer World Cup 2010.
At this parade a woman caught my attention. She was leaving, and what a coincidence, so was I. I noticed she was calling someone, and I assumed someone would pick her up within moments, so I only had a minute or two to make my move. Read more »
I was reading a book called “The One Day MBA” by Marvin Nieland. In it he quotes Σωκράτης…
“Never tell someone something that you can ask them instead” – Socrates
…and man did that get me a thinkin’!!
I started imagining how you would ask someone something that you would usually say to them in a declarative statement.
You see I love telling people stuff. I love to tell them how I see it. Reading Socrates’ quote made me realise how much more effective my communication would become if I took his advice.
I’m a suitable candidate to write about this subject because I’ve come from a place where really, you had to be family to like me. I had precious few friends growing up and had a very lonely childhood.
My family was often telling me that I’m very intelligent and talented and so I tried to make sense of people not liking me by telling myself they’re jealous, shallow, or whatever.
I was a good person inside, so the people who did give me the benefit of the doubt and took the time to get to know me really grew to love me, but few people did that.
Only within the last few years did I realise that relating to people is a skill and I can become skilled at relating to people if I make the effort to learn it.
I’ve learned some things on the subject and about myself which I’m sure you will relate to if you also have poor relationship skills.
Even if you’re a great people person, you will certainly benefit from this post in some way.
About three years ago I started Israeli Special Forces hand to hand and weapons combat training. It’s painful, but it’s made a man out of me, and continues to do so.
Since starting I’ve never been more fit. One of my instructors is Idan. He was in the Israeli Special Forces for many years and was then approached to work as part of the Israeli Intelligence, the Mossad.
If you asked me to put money on a fight between Idan, man alone, and 10 of the biggest, strongest, angriest people you’ve ever met, one at a time or all at the same time, without a moment’s hesitation I would put my money on Idan, seriously.
Idan has taken the fighting style of the Israeli military, Krav Maga, and refined it into Kalah.
Apart from the many benefits, including confidence, greater ability to defend myself and my loved ones in this dangerous South Africa, fitness, spending time with my great friend Harry, developing a marketable skill, and learning how to do random crazy special forces stuff like jumping off of a moving ship, I have learned a couple of life lessons. Read more »
This past Sunday night at church we had a guest speaker called Sy Rogers. He’s widely described as one of the best communicators in the world.
This post is just some random, largely unstructured thoughts about the new distinctions I made from listening to him and how I tie that in to what I already know about love.
Right from the start, let me give you the definition of what love is and is not: Love is not what you see in movies and popular culture. Popular culture has not the first clue about love.
According to Sy Rogers, love at it’s core is to value someone. I love this definition for it’s simplicity. Using this definition, it’s easy to spot love.
This has truly been a life changing distinction for me. Whenever I hear or read the word “love”, I now always replace it with the word value, and then I know how to act on the information.
It’s hard to know how to act when I say “You must love this person.” But it’s easy when I say, “you must value this person.” Read more »
I racked my brains trying to come up with a way to explain what I mean when I say character. What is a person’s character? When I say character in this post, I’m not referring to someone’s nature or their personality.
Here’s what I mean when I refer to character:
“Your character is to your inner being what your skeleton is to your physical being. It’s the framework on which all your progress is supported”
I really don’t know why I think of things like this, but last night I was pondering the subject of conspiracies.
I like conspiracy theorists. I like the way their brains work. I think they keep people honest, cause they’re doubting Thomases by nature. They keep it real.
But as I was lying in bed, I realised that conspiracy theorists lack credibility because they make two mistakes in forming and communicating their theories.
Here are the two mistakes and how they can benefit you in a huge way if you apply these two lessons to your own life. Read more »
Bartering is basically when you exchange your product or service for another company’s product or service, leaving cash out of the equation.
I love bartering with my whole heart. With the new toll fees on the N1, the increased fuel tax, the 50%-and-climbing increase in just the last year in electricity prices, and excessive service charges by South African banks and government-owned enterprises like Hellkom, bartering offers a way to do business that appeals a great deal to me.
When you exchange your product at your sell value, for another product at it’s sell value, there are more benefits than just having the product you wanted.
I love bartering, not just because I can leave Uncle Sipho (My South African equivalent to Uncle Sam, i.e. the tax man) out of the equation. It’s such a powerful concept. But I love bartering when it has some beautifying elements to it.
The beauty behind a well structured barter agreement is that it is a win-win, and it has profit within the profit. What do I mean?
In part 2 of How to Become a Make-It-Happen Person, I mention the importance of having a detailed schedule. If you have that in place, you can then implement one of the most powerful concepts I’ve ever experienced in my life: Scheduling thinking time.
I mention this in part 3 of How to Become a Make-It-Happen Person, but I have since decided that because it’s such a powerful idea, it needs it’s own dedicated entry.
After a quick Google search, I’ve noticed that most people only apply a schedule to business, and those who have discovered the power behind scheduling thinking time only spend time thinking about business related stuff. But this idea doesn’t only apply to business.
There are a number of keys that I’ve learned and continue to learn about making things happen in life.
One day I was looking at a guy in a Ferrari and started thinking – many people think that wealth and success in life is something some are just blessed with – a matter of luck and good fortune.
What a day when I realised that you can make anything happen as long as you have a strong enough realisation that you can. You might not be able to make it happen over night, but you can come up with whatever you need.
Here are some more keys to becoming a Make-It-Happen person.
I was watching a gripping interview with Four-Star General Stanley A. McChrystal, the guy smiling in the picture. He’s the new Obama-appointed commander of US forces in Afghanistan.
You know, you can get a sense when someone speaks that, listen, now I must pay attention, this is not someone to be taken lightly. General McChrystal is clearly one of those.
He was talking, amongst other things, about how he creates the right culture in the units under his command and how the main difference between a great unit and an average unit is the expectations each member has for every other member in the unit.
General McChrystal has created a great culture of excellence, hard work, and reliability in his teams, but he now has the tremendous task of creating a favourable culture in an entire country, i.e. Afghanistan.
The strategy in a nutshell is, once you have an entire country with the right culture, in other words, an entire country accepting certain things as good, normal and beneficial to all, you can then start withdrawing the troops and they will gradually carry on and protect that culture.
So if General McChrystal has been entrusted by the US president to change the culture of an entire country (and he’s doing a great job so far), I think we can pay attention to what he has to say on the issue. Read more »
I used to hate Christmas just because I hate being bombarded by the same old carols and adverts. I get so sick of them. But recently I’ve decided to drop my crap and embrace the Christmas spirit.
This time of year, people I’ve worked with send season’s greeting emails wishing me a merry Christmas and a prosperous new year.
As a side note…
I was compiling one of those same merry Christmas emails to send to my valued customers and then had a realisation. I removed all traces of merry Christmas, rewrote the email to wish them a prosperous 2010, told them a little about how we grew in 2009 thanks to their support, and saved the email in my drafts to send mid-January.
Why? Because if I send Merry Christmas, they say thanks, delete, go on holiday and forget me. If I send Prosperous New Year mid January, it’s the same best wishes from my sincere heart, but they’ll be reading it right at the point where they’re winding up to a new year.
“I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece. I challenge
you to join the ranks of those people who live
what they teach, who walk their talk.”
— Tony Robbins
I’ve listened to a lot of people talk about what they want to do but never doing it. Just yesterday I was speaking to my Brothers in Beat partner Harry. He was saying how you only live once and he wants to go work on an island or on a cruise ship.
After discussing the pro’s and con’s, I began to be convinced. For some reason the phrase “you only live once” hit hard. “…Plus we don’t have a family or anything that would keep us in South Africa”, Harry added.
I noticed he kept on talking about why he wants to do it, being quite repetitive, “The crime in South Africa, the cherries are full of it, the rat race of it all!”, for 20 minutes on and on.
Eventually I stopped him and said, “you keep talking about why you want to do it; Let’s talk about how we are going to do it”, essentially I was saying, “Let’s figure out what the action goals would be toward achieving our dream.” Read more »
I was reading a piece about Rupert Murdoch complaining about Google indexing their news articles and the newspaper companies losing out on revenue. Apart from saying that fighting against Google is committing suicide, I don’t want to talk about that issue; but Mr. Murdoch did say something that made me think.
He said he “couldn’t promise to meet his own deadline” – but did say it remained a work in progress and “we are all working very hard” on delivering the pay solution.
It made me think, does he know what a deadline is? What’s the point of a deadline if you’re already preparing to miss it?
The problem with deadlines is that they are essentially results goals, not action goals. You’re aiming to achieve something that you don’t necessarily have 100% control over.
I understand there’s a need for deadlines because a project cannot just continue indefinitely, but when I was working for a boss, I saw too many deadlines come and go and there was nothing I could do about it. Read more »
Faith has two ingredients:
I am firmly of the opinion that the majority of the life-changing breakthroughs humanity has experienced has been brought about by people who knew when to challenge the rules.
The purpose of the “Minor Attributes in Confident People” series is merely to guide those who, like me, are not naturals at this to start feeling more and more comfortable in social situations and even eventually start leading the conversation if they so desire.
So far, my case for rebel rule breakers has been little more than emotional rants well and truly exposing my early childhood issues. But I believe there’s a well-grounded case to be made for the rule-breaker non-conformists among us – those who say “up yours” to some of the commonly accepted conventional wisdom.
Some people say you should never talk about someone behind their back. It’s gossiping. I disagree. I think that there are times when talking about someone behind their back is quite healthy.
My favourite comeback for “There is no ‘I’ in TEAM” is “Yes, but there is a ‘ME’”.
One of the dangers of writing a book and having this blog is that I might come across as thinking that I’m some hero that thinks he has all the answers. The truth is that I’m unapologetically voicing random or otherwise thoughts – I haven’t mastered anything yet. But of all the things I want to master, becoming a person of encouragement is high on the list. It’s my latest project!
In 
I’m writing a book. I’m not a Harvard graduate like Frasier and Niles Crane, hell I don’t even think I finished school. When I was expelled from school I later wrote my grade 12 exams but I haven’t bothered to check my results.
For no apparent reason this random thought occurred to me. Actually I think we were talking about the cell phone company Cell C and their re-branding effort in South Africa. And I thought to myself, companies have an awful lot of systems and policies in place.
In 
The brother and cousin twice removed of this blog post is 
I was reading a book called “The One Day MBA” by Marvin Nieland. In it he quotes Σωκράτης…
I’m a suitable candidate to write about this subject because I’ve come from a place where really, you had to be family to like me. I had precious few friends growing up and had a very lonely childhood.
About three years ago I started Israeli Special Forces hand to hand and weapons combat training. It’s painful, but it’s made a man out of me, and continues to do so.
This past Sunday night at church we had a guest speaker called Sy Rogers. He’s widely described as one of the best communicators in the world.
I racked my brains trying to come up with a way to explain what I mean when I say character. What is a person’s character? When I say character in this post, I’m not referring to someone’s nature or their personality.
I really don’t know why I think of things like this, but last night I was pondering the subject of conspiracies.
Bartering is basically when you exchange your product or service for another company’s product or service, leaving cash out of the equation.
In 
You can read 
I was watching a gripping interview with Four-Star General Stanley A. McChrystal, the guy smiling in the picture. He’s the new Obama-appointed commander of US forces in Afghanistan.
It’s Christmas time again.
I was reading a piece about Rupert Murdoch complaining about Google indexing their news articles and the newspaper companies losing out on revenue. Apart from saying that fighting against Google is committing suicide, I don’t want to talk about that issue; but Mr. Murdoch did say something that made me think.