This year at the TJEd (Thomas Jefferson Education) forum in Salt Lake City, James Ferrell was the key note. If you are familiar with Arbinger Institute publications (which I highly recommend), you will be very familiar with this content. Here is the in-a-nutshell version laced with my thoughts.
How to Influence is a topic that is on the brains of all Leadership Education parents. Especially if you are a parent mentoring young adults. Those teen years are the years when we question who is having the greatest influence and if it is great influence.
Mr. Ferrell presented two ways to use our time. There is the wrong way and the right way:). The wrong way is dealing with things going wrong and the right way is helping things go right. Sounds simple, right? If you have experience with Arbinger, you know that the right way is probably going to be a little painful.
Helping things go right means we have to look at ourselves and how our way of being is impacting our relationships and the world around us.
On Monday, I tearfully came to the conclusion that I was spending all of my time dealing with things going wrong. And the universe was in agreement…and decided to continue to aid me in dealing with things going wrong by giving me more wrong things with which to deal.
It’s a natural law you know…the universe always combines for us in our efforts. So, I had to make some sudden and painful changes in order to trick the universe into helping me help things go right. It worked. Or at least has so far. I’m being diligent in focusing on how I am being and I like seeing how things can go right.
Plus, I am so tricky.
