Wayne’s Blog

From Dale Carengie (1888-1955)

Become a friendlier person: your “likability”:

1. Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain. (boy do I need to work on this one!)

2. Give honest, sincere appreciation.

3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.

4. Become genuinley interested in other people.

5. Smile.

6. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

7. Be a good listener.

8. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.

9. Make the other person feel important- do it sincerely.

The real tragedy is not being remarkable… blending into the background… average… mediocre.  Nothing great ever came from average or mediocre.

Do we do just enough to get by, just enough to make the grade, or do we try to get as much out of everything we do as possible?  For example, college classes or assignments.  What’s the real reason for college classes or assignments?

When we do just enough to get by, who are we really shortchanging?

Why do we shortchange ourselves so much all the time?

There are 3 kinds of people:

1) External Locus of Control People- you know this person: it’s never their fault; other people are idiots and always causing them problems; they have excuses for everything that goes wrong in their life (sounds like a bunch of college students!).    It’s not their fault.  It’s out of their control.  They’re victims.  Victims?… sounds like a bunch of Americans doesn’t it?

2) No Control People- just go through life letting whatever happens happen without giving any thought to why it happened or what they might do to make something different happen.  They trudge or follow along with whatever’s happening at the moment following the easiest path.  They spend little time thinking about their future or their past.  I think most people fit into this category.

3) Internal Locus of Control People- are in charge of what happens in their own lives.  They try to make whatever happens to happen.  They don’t let themselves give or accept excuses because they know that you can find an excuse for everything, for every mistake, every failure, and that always leads to us letting ourselves off the hook, not holding ourselves responsible, or setting our standards so low that they serve us no benefit.  They know that they’re in charge of their own success in life, and failures, mistakes, and even tragedies are simply learning experiences.

So, you have to ask:
Which one am I?
Which one should I be?
Which one is the most successful and happiest people?

The other night I was talking with an upstanding member of the community and an LSUS alumni from several years ago.  Kind of surprisingly, he had a pretty negative opinion of my university and had no support for the school.  I learned that his opinion came from LSUS’s lack of growth.  One statement was something like this: LSUS could have been a great university but it has just sat there all these years not doing anything new… BPCC and everybody else has just passed it by and left it behind.

So, there you go, there’s lot’s of reasons for LSUS’s lack of growth, one reason is in fact its lack of growth.

It’s hard to be proud of something that’s not dynamic and successful.

We have to be very mindful and conscious of what we think about because our thoughts have a way of becoming our words and actions and our words and actions are huge elements of our character.  So, the foundation of our character is our thoughts.

The older I get the more aware I am of the difference between education, intellegence, and common sense.  Each of the three are mutually exclusive, one has absolutely nothing to do with the other!

There’s also something else: I think education and character are mutually exclusive.  In fact, I’m beginning to think that for some people, the more educated they are the lower their character is.

There are only two kinds of people in this world, adders and subtractors.  Everyone you come into contact with either adds to you or subtracts from you… the same goes for everyone that comes into contact with you!

Which are you?

Measure your success by what you had to give up and what you had to go through to get it.   Nothing of any great value comes easy or free.

I love this.  Problems, roadblocks, jerks, mean people, buracracies, policies, prerequisites, rules, tradition, complacency, procrastination, laziness, tests, assignments, 8:00 a.m. classes, Jerk professors, etc, etc, etc, are there simply to test our level of “WANT TO!”  Since “want to” is the greatest force on earth, you know it has a ton of testers because the lack of want to is what separates successful people from the other 99%.

SO, next time I’m being lazy or I run into problems, I’ve got something to help me combat it.  I’ve got to think about how bad I want to.