Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Family

Are You Paying Attention?

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“Pay attention!” our mothers and teachers tell us.

Have you ever wondered why we must PAY to be attentive?

My reasoning is that there’s a price to pay for being focused on something of importance. The commitment of our time, energy, effort, and resources narrows our choices and so we will miss out on something else.

My personal, family, fitness, and business schedule keep me on the go from the time my feet hit the floor when I wake up until I fall asleep. So much opportunity, so little time and help.

This means I need to pay attention with intention.

In 1992,Image of clock on wall. "Invest your time. Don't spend it. Don't kill it. Don't waste it." in The On-Purpose Person, I introduced the idea of investing one’s time versus spending it. Paying attention runs along the lines of furthering your investment of your life.

In a world that increasingly tells you “You can have it all,” I’ll be the contrarian and say, “No, you can’t have it all.” Life involves making choices. The sentiment and the reality are miles apart. The cost is distraction and even less traction in life.

Admittedly, there are exponentially more opportunities today than there were 100 years ago. Just because they are there, doesn’t mean that we need to experience them all or can.

My attention span isn’t getting shorter. The span of what captures my attention, however, is more defined and refined. I don’t have time for every trivial thing or thought that comes along. Frankly, I’m becoming less tolerant of trivial pursuits. That doesn’t mean I’m not interested, amused, or entertained by many things. I just won’t pay them as much attention.

Please consider becoming far more selective about where you invest your attention.

Being on-purpose requires us to become a more discriminating and, dare I say it, less tolerant person. It is all a sign of maturity about where we invest our lives and love.

FYI: Shady Side Academy, Fox Chapel, PA. I graduated from SSA in 1973 as the president of the last all-male graduating class. The next fall the school went coeducational. Good move! With over 40 years of coeducation, I reflected on those all males with a measure of fondness for a roommate, Dave Succop, and more close friends Ted Bream and Roy Uptegraff. We were the Morewood Crazies!

Are You Getting Smarter?

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As you learn more and get smarter, are you gaining in arrogance or humility? You’re headed in one direction or the other. 

Here’s an On-Purpose Proverb to ponder:

Humility is knowing self relative to God.

Knowledge is a good thing, but going all the way back to the original sin in the Garden of Eden, let’s not mistake our smarts with being a self-referenced deity.

As you learn and experience more of life do you ever find yourself asking, Has the world gone crazy or have I? No one of us knows everything. Be gracious toward yourself and others that the smarter you’re becoming the more you are realizing all that you don’t know.

Ignorance isn’t the absence of knowledge. Ignorance is knowing better but doing nothing with it.

Learning is the basis of personal and professional growth throughout life. There’s a downside to learning, however, called frustration. This sets in when we’re in a situation and can prophetically see what’s unfolding next, yet the crowd remains blind.

The elderly are often knocked with being grumpy. Maybe they have good reason. Imagine watching person after person repeating the same stupid mistake you made 50 or 60 years ago. Wouldn’t you want to help them too? Yet when you voice your insight you’re discounted as being too old and out of touch to have a worthwhile perspective. As events happen and a pattern repeats, the quieted elderly person watches and shakes their head knowing that life lessons are very hard to borrow.

We all have a measure of personal pride bordering on arrogance.

Humility, when partnered with curiosity, makes for an inquisitive mind and heart. Asking, rather than telling, opens up someone’s world and lessons to us. It expands our bubble of knowledge.

The truth is somewhere in between. Seniors in years can learn much from seniors in high school and vice versa. Rather than writing the kids off as moral vagrants, the older generation can benefit from the kids’ adaptability, pace, and technological prowess. Teens can benefit from the perspectives of lives lived long, mistakes made, lessons learned, and the humility found in frailty and from wearing Depends.

It can all resolve itself with one word: respect. Despite the riches of the internet, no one has a monopoly on information and knowledge. These advantages are relatively flattened in minutes or seconds thanks to an internet connection and a Google search. WiFi, however, will never replace wisdom.

This On-Purpose Minute provides answers and insights into why knowledge is power and why it can also be confusing and confounding.

Use your power respectfully. True humility is quiet confidence in action.

So the next time you experience a “grumpy” elder, invest a minute or two to learn what they see and understand it from their point of view. Ask questions. Borrow their wisdom. Learn their lessons. You might even bring a smile to their “grumpy” face. More importantly, you might walk away all the wiser.

Will You Have A Happy, Healthy, & Prosperous New Year?

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(This video was originally recorded in 2011. While the year mentioned is not current, the message shared is timeless.)

To kick off the New Year, I’ve gathered a handful of On-Purpose Minutes and Business Minutes relevant to the popular New Year’s toast for a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year. Rather than it being a mere sentiment, why not make it a reality or at least invest your self in making your good life even better?

Put your good intentions into action!

For each aspect of this New Year gesture, dig deeper by clicking on the provided links to relevant Minutes.

Happy On-Purpose New Year!
Kevin

A Happy New Year

Happy is rightfully a great word to be associated with New Year’s Day. Much like time itself, happiness is fleeting, yet so desired. Who doesn’t want to be happy? The term “Happy New Year” embraces the chronological odometer as it turns and makes a fresh start for 2018. Relish the reminder.

Comparing Christmas Day to New Year’s Day reveals an interesting shift of words and implications. We will say Merry Christmas, but the word most reverently associated with this Christian holy day is joy, as in the song, Joy to the World.

Joy can be one’s reality regardless of whether circumstances are happy or unhappy. Trading in happiness is a far less stable currency of emotion. Joy is the gold standard.

Are You Happily Distracted?

How Do You Get The Job Of Your Life?

How Do I Find Peace In My Life?

A Healthy New Year

Several years ago, this over-50 former athlete turned business advisor, author, and speaker was resigned to wearing “my fat suit.” This is going to sound awful, but I was so accepting of my extra pounds that I used to say, “Unless I have a cancer, I probably won’t lose this weight.” Ugh!

Fortunately, that changed in March 2008, when I was booked by Dr. Wayne Andersen (sight unseen) to be the keynote speaker at the Take Shape For Life National Convention. I did the program, lost the weight, and haven’t really looked back at my old weight since. Admittedly, the holidays are the hardest part for me because I get so out of my normal routine; it is a festive time, and I’m addicted to sweets.

Are You Starting A Diet Monday?

Do You Want To Grow Into Maturity?

A Prosperous New Year

Prosperity is so overused, abused, and misunderstood. Let’s set the record straight.

Are You Prepared to Prosper?

Blessed Are The Profitmakers For They Shall Enrich The Earth

 

What Is In Your September Plan?

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(This video mentions the year 2010. No matter the year, having a September plan is good for your business.)

Summer is almost over.

Many of us are just returning from vacation and others are just getting ready to close out the summer by heading on vacation. We’re executing on our family and personal plans put in place some months ago. Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?

Northern hemisphere is highlighted in yellow a...Image via Wikipedia

September in the Northern Hemisphere provides a restart of sorts.

It isn’t like New Year’s Day, but in a sense it can function much like it because it gives us the opportunity to finish the year strong. September is a time to reboot the business.

From now until New Year’s Eve is a great stretch to really make strides in your career or business.

But you need a plan. So let’s talk about a September Plan.

With just a couple of weeks left in August, let’s get our heads ahead of the game and start making plans today for September through the remainder of the year.

  • What do you want to accomplish?
  • Who do you need to see?
  • What decision do you need to make?

Plan now and you’ll hit September in full stride and have the momentum to carry you through the fall and into the first days of winter.

Ambition. At What Price?

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Click on text for more information about the On-Purpose Small Business Package

The desire to make a positive difference is the sweet, soulful heart of ambition. In contrast is blind ambition that tramples all in its path to accomplish an end, perhaps even a noble end at that, which is fraught with unhealthy costs. Much of this rests on your view of people.  

Which will mark your life, career, and legacy?

Herein lies the rub for many a business person. To what lengths are you willing to go to realize your ambitions?

Results, especially in the form of company sales and profits, are outward and tangible measures of success. Measurable signs, however, tell just a portion of the story. If you want to know the full story, ask the people along the way who helped to produce the results.

Here’s a painful example. For 12 months spanning 2008 to 2009, I worked nearly full time with a CEO client to author a book that codified his corporate culture, leadership development moves, and business strategy for internal use. Intending for the company to go public via IPO, the book also targeted Wall Street analysts and investors so they could readily grasp what truly made this company great.

The IPO market at that time dried up with the challenges in the economy. Instead, the company was purchased by a national competitor for $130 million. By the CEO’s own admission, the book helped them get more than $15 million in greater value for shareholders over the IPO price, plus they kept their name, and the CEO was offered the position of President over the merged companies.

“Wow!” you may be thinking, “That CEO had to be a happy man.” You would think so. Eight months after delivery of the manuscript, a client satisfaction clause I wrote into the contract was used to deny issuing me an “earned” six-figure stock bonus despite personal assurances from the CEO to the contrary. My concern for my client’s satisfaction and best interests was used against me. Ouch! That hurts on so many levels.

Just because one can take advantage of another person, does that mean one should? Best-selling books on the art of war and being a prince would say go for it. But I say there’s nothing noble in selfishness and greed. True nobility is knowing one has the upper hand and using it to raise up the other person instead of jamming them down further.

The deeper value is seeing people as being above things. Translation: relationships are greater than transactions. Results with responsibilities and citizenship can coexist and produce true greatness.

For a couple of decades I’ve worked with my CEO clients to get them to stop saying things like, “Our people are our greatest asset.” Assets are bought and sold as in slavery. Relating people to assets dehumanizes them and places them on par with the photocopier. By the way, the investment in the photocopier maintenance agreement often far exceeds the equivalent “maintenance agreement” for the people in training, development, and benefits. How sad is that!

Along this same line, the term Human Resources certainly isn’t endearing and doesn’t advance the cause of people as human beings. Resources is just another name for commodities or assets that are traded, discarded, and otherwise moved about indiscriminately. The Human Resources Department is a blind co-conspirator in the loss of human identity and dignity. Instead, rename the department to something like, “People Development” or “Talent Management” but not “human resources.” It is degrading.

I hold no delusions of grandeur that either the perfect person or company graces the face of the planet. Self-serving serpents slither the planet preying on others. We are all capable of being this way, yet deep within our spirit we yearn to a higher self, call, and standard. We’re better to aspire and fail than to have no aspiration at all.

Gazing with admiration upon the shells of “successful” men and women may provide inspiration, but it tends to deliver little instruction. You know better. Get the true back story from the secretaries, bookkeepers, janitors, clerks, delivery persons, and cafeteria workers in corporate headquarters. Look at their personal life. Are their personal lives as captivating as their business headlines? You’ll soon discern whether the person capturing the headlines and your attention is gold-plated or 24 karat solid gold.

Do this: Whether you’re leading your life, a team, or a business, you need to decide: Ambition, at what price? Knowing your purpose and defining your values is a great start to building a life and a career where you can put your head to your pillow at night and sleep soundly.

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Here are some famous quotes about money for your consideration and amusement.

“Money makes the world go around.” $100 bill stack

From the song Money (Watch the performance!) in the Broadway play Cabaret sung by Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey.

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

 1 Timothy 6

“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”

Jonathan Swift

“Get all you can [money], without hurting your soul, your body, or your neighbor. Save all you can, cutting off every needless expense. Give all you can.”

John Wesley

“With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well, too.”

Yiddish Proverb

One Love

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Thanks Anne McCarthy for this challenge to post the look of One Love:

Hamlet first love

Our dog Hamlet provided our family with deep and abiding unconditional love. Since dog is God spelled backwards and God is unconditional love, then I nominate Hamlet as God’s living stand-in for the years he graced our lives. Yes, I know that the challenge is to make this “about people” but dogs are family members too — often the nicest, most loyal and forgiving member of the family. And when he died on Oct. 5, 2015 his One Love has yet to be replaced in our home, but mostly in our hearts!

I learned yesterday that Maggie, one of his best doggie playmates, died last week. Her owner and I stood in the neighborhood consoling one another and counting our blessings for the One Love, respectively, we had in our homes each for over a decade.

Four-legged love aside, being On-Purpose is another way of expressing One Love: It is the ability to see and feel another person’s heart in such a way that our preconceived notions and impressions melt away as the shell relents to the soul of the person.

 

 

 

Is Your Life Getting Better?

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Note: The video mentions an upcoming On-Purpose Leader Teleseminar. For this updated On-Purpose Minute, I instead want to refer you to the Power of Your 2-Word Purpose Statement webcast, linked below.

Are you or is someone dear to you the proverbial “victim of circumstances”? Don’t Be! A victim of circumstances is a person in an unfortunate position, but those circumstances need not dictate your future.

You may not be able to control your circumstances, but you can manage your responses. Resigning to your current set of circumstances can be negatively habit-forming and send you in a downward spiral. This response means that you’re on the fast track to becoming a victim, no longer of circumstances, but of self-inflicted circumstances.

Choose a better option. In this On-Purpose Minute, we’ll be looking at how you can order your life around a different, healthier perspective of managing your life.

Are you ready to finally know your purpose in life — in two words! Yes, your life will get a whole lot better by being on-purpose.

The Power of Your 2-Word Purpose Statement may be just the introduction for you to order your life, define what’s most important, and begin living as an on-purpose person in creation.