The fishing line of life

Life is but a fishing line cast out onto the ocean of being.
In search for the riches of the sea, only to be slowly reeled in one day at a time.

Some lines get cast far from shore. Some are cast close.
The distance is not known until the reel stops with the hook only seconds from the pole.
The distance doesn't matter. The ability to enjoy our time in the sea is what is important.

Whether the riches are caught or not, the fisherman decides if the pole will cast the life again.
If the fisherman stops, so does the hope to catch another fish.
If the fisherman casts, life will rise again.

-In memory of my friend Marc Allain

House of Common Animals...

Once upon an election, I used to get excited. It was a time to voice my displeasure or pleasure with the current administration. I felt important. I felt like I was making a difference with my vote.

Then I realized politics is dirty. Politicians are mostly lawyers who know how to debate the finer points of language. They know how to use words against an opponent to uphold their own agenda.

I read today the name of the lawyer representing parents against school closures. There was no mention that five years ago he was the minister of education.

New candidates represent hope and change. Promises are made that cannot be kept. The public accepts the bullshit because each time it believes this person is going to be different.

But he never is. And it's not his fault.

The system is the same. Parties get elected. Leaders rise to supreme power when a majority of their colleagues of the same colour get voted in. The public doesn't vote for leaders. The public votes for a representative. If the public doesn't like the leader that an elite group votes in, the local representative has to be removed as a show of displeasure for leadership. Yet if other parts of the country don't display the same displeasure, the leader can remain in power.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Only time breeds displeasure. The removal of the leader takes time. The best leaders eventually piss off enough people to get removed.

And that's where our system is flawed. Voting doesn't change anything. As long as a leader remains popular, it doesn't matter how a person votes.  It's easy to be popular. Don't make tough decisions. Don't be polarizing and don't say anything to offend.

That makes me sad. For years I thought the ability to vote was an important display of freedom.

When laws get changed to allow for attack ads, I feel dirty.
When politicians lie and cheat the taxpayers, I feel raped.
When bureaucrats spin the truth because they don't believe there is absolute truth, I get angry.

Politics is a good business for dirty, and cut throat politicians. Change will not happen because the system will not allow it to happen.

Nothing changes with new leadership. For there to be change, processes and systems have to be re-invented. To have change, conventional thought and constructs need to be put aside.

If war is good for anything, it's the removal of conventional thought.

Re-invention can happen without war. But not without courage, humility, and a desire to not quit until success is achieved.

For politics to get back to being about representing the people, there is only one solution. Take away the one evil thing that drives people to get into politics: Greed. Remove pensions from elected officials. Remove expense claims and office stipends. Regulate salaries to the average of the region in which the candidate is elected. Flights and accommodations are paid for by the crown. Any extra expenses are paid for by the elected official.

The greedy will not run. The business of politics will not be appealing. Regular people will start to run for office. People who are honest. People who want to make a difference. Regular people who will not trade their integrity for their vote. Regular people serving regular people. And if they become dirty, another regular person will win the next election.

For things to change, the system needs to change. For the system to change, it's gonna take a maverick, to have enough balls and strength of character to put these ball-less elected officials in their place.

It's going to hurt for that maverick. It always does for the person who insists on change. He will face ridicule, threats, and possible death. That special person needs fortitude of character, the peace of mind and the ability to not quit.

That is the only way I believe change will ever happen. Otherwise the new boss will just be like the old boss. And the cycle will continue with disappointment, heartache and anger.

                                            "Won't Get Fooled Again" - The Who

We'll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that's all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they are flown in the next war

I'll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
Though I know that the hypnotized never lie
Do ya?

There's nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Are now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again
No, no!

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

Towering inferno

Leaving a safe secure job is as exciting as opening the door to your closet when you were four year's old.

It's frightening. There are monsters who lurk and want to eat little girl's tongues. Immobilized by fear, we don't open the door of darkness. We choose to remain on the other side of the room with the lights turned on.

For years I thought fear was the biggest thing holding us back from our dreams. I was wrong. It's something worse.

Humans are born with two fears: falling and loud noises. All the other fears we have are learned. Fear of loss, recognition, failure, what others think, public speaking, and many others are learned over time with our experiences.

I once had a young man working with me who was an amazing technician. He could do the job with little to no supervision. He was the perfect employee with one exception. He didn't like to deal with issues. He would avoid confrontation for any price. And that price hurt his team and my relationship with him. He was gutless. He was a coward.

A coward isn't someone who is fearful.  A coward is someone who lacks courage. If you remember, the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, desired courage.

Courage is defined by acting despite fears.

Fear is not the problem. We all have them. Courage is the real issue.

For the young man who worked with me, he lacked courage. He didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings so he instead lived in a mire of conflict as he chose not to confront any of it.

For me, courage is someone who enters a burning building risking their own safety to save a life. The risk is much different if the life inside is a loved one.

Without courage, a person cannot move forward. Forget about fears. Acting despite fear is courage. Action is the most important step to realizing your dreams.

Courage
We lack to offend.
We desire to unhurt.
We avoid conflict.
So we sweep the issues,
Under the floating floors.
And in the end,
The one we hurt, 
Is ourselves.
We lack the courage to save a life 
Inside the burning building, 
Not realizing the smouldering life inside 
Is our own.

Care Bear countdown

Finding employees is easy. Finding great employees is hard.

Talking to other entrepreneurs, I hear how tough the labour market is. Employees aren't good like they used to be.

How do you know when you have a great employee in an interview?

There are thousands of assessments that can help predict hiring successes. However I don't believe in most of them because of one reason. My world is in retail. Retail is like a war. The employees are like soldiers fighting. They are here today and gone tomorrow.

No time for fancy costly personality assessments.

I believe in hiring on one criteria. "Does the potential hire care enough to act positively in someone else's life?"

Most people will answer positively if you asked if they cared.  To demonstrate that they care is difficult because the answer is just words. They could be lying.

The real assessment is to see if they have done any volunteer work.  Find out if they do things on a regular basis for other people, even when they don't feel like they HAVE to.

The person who served me tea this morning told me how crappy his job was. The person I called at Kawasaki sent me on a wild goose chase. The person at the hotel yesterday barely smiled as she took my money. The person at the gas bar  didn't look at me when I asked her a question. The person at the grocery store saw me as another number in a line of numbers.

Customer service in the retail industry is almost dead because the owners of those businesses aren't hiring caring people. The caring soldiers who are hired get noticed by bigger industry and get poached for higher paying jobs.

You can teach someone to care about as much as you teach them to fly. If they don't have the proper stuff, they only fake it.

In retail, it is the job of the bosses to find and select the next batch of carers.

In the passing of Wayne Dyer, I heard a great story. He was on stage with an orange and asked someone in the audience what he had. Obviously the person answered it was an orange. He then asked what would come out if he applied a bit of pressure. The same person answered that orange juice would come out. Wayne Dyer then preached that people were exactly like oranges. Whatever is inside someone has to come out when you apply a bit of pressure.

Going to work will at times present different pressures or stresses. If a person does not have the "Caring" gene inside of them, they can fake it until too much stress is applied. Then what they really have will come out. If they are caring, pressure will bring out more caring.

Look out for the Care Bears. They can make any business a resounding success.


Who's that comin' from somewhere up in the sky?
Moving fast and bright as a firefly
Just when you think the trouble's gonna pounce
Who's gonna be there when it really counts?
Do the Care Bear Countdown
And send a wish out through the air
Just do the Care Bear Countdown
When you need them they'll be there
Don't be afraid when clouds are brewin' in your heart
If you can dream just send a wish out in the dark
And do the Care Bear's Countdown
5, 4, 3, 2, 1

lyrics from Care Bear Countdown

It's not totally your fault you are afraid.

Fear loves excuses. 

We use excuses to rationalize why we can't do something. 

As long as it's rationalized, we understand it. 

We accept it. 

Fear hates freedom.

Fear is a survival technique. It is formed in pre-frontal cortex. It's been with us since the beginnings of humanity.  Presented with a dangerous situation, our surviving ancestors figured out when to fight or flee. 

Those who couldn't figure out when it was best, died. And their genes died with them.

Our genes come from the ancestors who made the right choices.

Humans are not the strongest beast on the planet. Nor are they the fastest. We weren't born to fly or to remain under water for long periods of time. 

These basic weaknesses should have killed us all. Advancements were made by those who chose to fight at the right time. Fighting evolved the species's ability to solve problems. Technology is the result of someone's fight to find solutions to problems.

Fleeing saves a life, but doesn't advance it. Those who flee are genetically predisposed to flee. It's in their genes. 

If you're a lover not a fighter, realize you'll have to fight for something. If not for yourself, for your future generations. The "flee" genes will be passed down to your future generations if you continue to run.

You can take charge of your life and fight the fear.  To look at fear and act defines courage.

What's the worst that could happen? 

Death? Probably not. But if so, we all gotta go sometime.

Financial loss?  Find a way to make more money.

Loss of love? Find someone better.

Loss of house? Get an apartment.

Loss of friends? Get new and better friends.

There's nothing to fear but fear itself! 

Fear IS the worst thing that can happen to you. 

Remember fear comes from a time when our ancestors were worried about sabre tooth tigers lurking in the forest. 

I know you'd fight for your future generations, so why don't you start now. Be courageous. Act despite your fear.  It's the only way to be free.

Some people just want to be comfortable. They want to be safe and secure.

Freedom is the opposite of Security.

The more security you seek, the less freedom you'll have.

The more freedom you seek, the less security you'll have.

Which do you want for your future generations, more security or more freedom?

Your decisions today will affect your children's children's children.  Do you want your great grand children to think of you as a hero? Or not at all.

The chances they don't think or know anything about you is greater if all you ever do is flee.

The bonding of branding

A loyal customer's relationship to a brand is like a marriage.
Marriage is based on a bond.
For there to be a bond, there has to be something special.
Something special is trust.
Trust to not being let down.
Trust is earned.

In order for a customer to trust a brand, it takes a series of transactions. The first transaction may  start out as a discount.  The discount is used to encourage a potential new customer to try the brand for the first time. The discount is not an effective long-term marketing strategy. Discounting product is a negative value message.  When a business discounts, they're lowering the value of their products.

A new business is the hardest business to establish because its starts with no customers. And no trust...

When a new business starts, it goes through a honeymoon period. Customers are appealed to new offerings in the marketplace, so they TRY it. However, like a first date, if there are no sparks, there's no second date.

There has to be a spark or magic to encourage a blind dated customer to be willing to set up a second date.

It is the role of the entrepreneur to create that magic.
Magic is not achieved through discounts.
Magic creates value.
Value is the difference of what a customer paid and what they would have paid.

Where is the magic in your business?

I was recently watching a variety show which Simon Cowell was one of the judges. A young woman was performing on stage.  Simon was the last judge to comment.  His message was referring to branding. He told her he judged talent based on whether he would remember the performance in one week's time.

A performer who isn't memorable or remarkable would be forgotten.
Businesses are performers.

Think about the people you remember in your life. Think about the people that stand out. The standouts are the ones we love and the ones that do something remarkably bad and good.

To be remarkable one cannot do what everyone else does.
To be remarkable one must be different.
To be remarkable one must not be afraid.
It is not enough to be like everyone else

And it's no different in business. To have love, there must be a bond. That bond is created by a magical little spark that must never burn out. To keep the spark alive,  we can never be boring. We  must strive for continuous remarkability.

Fear and loathing in hospitals

I hate hospitals.
So I avoid them as much as I could.

A good friend almost died in an accident and I didn't go see him. I wanted to. I hoped he was ok. I checked in with other friends to see if he was improving. I couldn't visit him. I felt like a bad friend.

My grandfather was hospitalized for two weeks two minutes from where I worked. I could've easily have taken a few lunch breaks to break the monotony of hospital sounds. But I didn't.  I wanted him to be ok. I checked with my dad almost everyday on his improvement. I couldn't go there. I was scared. When he got home, I went to see him. He asked me why I didn't visit. I felt like a bad grandson.

One time, I had to go to the hospital for blood tests. As I sat in the hardened, loveless chairs, I surveyed my surroundings. The other blood test participants all looked sick and deathly. The walls were peeling and needed a new coat of pain. The floors were well cleaned but felt dirty. The conversations were all about "so and so" is dying, or "so and so" is sick. Every moment I had to wait made me sicker. Too much time here and anyone would be sick, I thought. I felt a weight on my shoulders pushing my torso closer to the ground. I sensed my stomach turning over. My brain fogged. My heart beat faster.  I felt sick.

Hospitals made the healthy person, in me, sick!

My baby girl got sick when she was 5 weeks old. She had a seizure. Being adopted, and no family medical history, we didn't know what the hell was going on. She spent a week in the hospital with my wife by her side as the doctors performed all the necessary tests. I spent more time in the hospital that week than I had ever done in my life. My baby girl needed me and I didn't want to let her down in the first test of dad-hood.

I think that experience rid my fear of hospitals. Spending a week, sleeping on a lazy boy chair, was like entering the dark cave of a lion's den. I wasn't going to leave my baby alone. I wanted to protect her from the morbid evils of that sterilized place. My provider instincts overlept my fears.

Recently, my mother got ill and had to spend two weeks in the death chambers. With the fear gone, I was there almost everyday. I didn't know the fear was gone. I just felt the right thing to do was to be close to my mother.

Not thinking about my loathing of hospitals, a wise old friend challenged me by asking where the fear came from. "Oh, I don't know", I responded unthinkingly.

The answer came five ticks later as it slammed into me head-on like a transport truck.

When I was young, younger than I can remember, I was hospitalized for an infection in my lymph nodes. After being rushed to the hospital, in an hallucinogenic state, the doctor would not allow my parents to be with me.

I was alone. A scared little toddler, away from his life givers, given to strangers as he fought for his life on the surgical table.

My mom thinks that event detached me from her. She said I was different when I came home. Not remembering any of this, I can only suppose what psychological effect it may have had on me.

That event erased from my memory but engraved in my psyche developed a fear and loathing of hospitals that was only cured by my own child being put into a similar situation.

Where do your fears come from? They can be cured but they need to be faced head on.