Greetings! Here is your weekly edition of “Treasure Tuesday” with five quick and hopefully inspiring nuggets.
There are three ways you can enjoy this content:
- Most Complete: Watch the interactive video I made with Prezi (below)
- Fast & get all the visuals: Click through the Prezi presentation at your own speed (without my narration)
- See the short notes below (they might cause you to look more closely at either #1 or #2)
This week’s Treasure Tuesday In A Nutshell:
Gratifying Brilliance Extracted This Week
This week I’m featuring PTI and its Violence Prevention Summit. I’m so proud of Bruce C. Carter, whose immense experience gives us a real opportunity to prevent violence by changing the mindset of people. I’m grateful to be in support of this worthy project. Please check it out.
Enlightening Visual
- The visual is a set of three concise bullets this week. Bullets that encapsulate, at a glance, what this amazing business does (human factors research).
- What was magical was how quickly these bullets came together in a conversation between Joely Gardner (it is her website), my marketing friend and guru, Robert Donnell, and myself.
- It often is so hard to do this on your own – you know too much about what you do. We all do. The same thing happens to me in my business.
Inspiring Book of The Week
The inspiring book of the week is by Donald Miller, “A million miles in a 1000 years.” Essentially, it is about editing your life into a compelling story. After successfully publishing his memoirs, the author was approached by filmmakers to make a movie about his life. During the process of brainstorming about the plot of the movie, he realized that his life is actually boring. Life is a great story, but only if you leave out the “meaningless passages,” he realizes. He comes to the conclusion that he might as well think about planning and living his ife more intentionally. It is a fantastic read – I highly recommend it!
Interestingly, he also writes this:
I’ve wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don’t want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn’t remarkable. then we don’t have t do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants.
Donald Miller, Author
The book made me realize that the biggest value Brilliance Mining™ brings lies in the transformation of the people who do it. Their life’s story becomes even more meaningful.
How so? A good story is about transforming its main character, the hero of the story. The hero wants something that is important to him, but he needs to overcome some obstacle/s to get there.
Typically, humans avoid change, but they step into action when there is a good reason to force the change. Movie professionals call that an “inciting incident.” It is the doorway to transformation. And yes, action is required for a story/life to be great.
For example:
- An innovative business owner is changing his consulting business into a PRODUCT company. That is his want. The company takes on investors who expect the much higher valuation that comes along with a product. That change turns the want into a need.
- Several team members resist the change.
- Others want to rewrite all of what has been developed this far instead of productizing what they have developed already. Much of the knowledge the company runs on is in the business owner’s head. These are all obstacles.
- Then “Yoda” shows up, guiding the business owner through these obstacles. The fight is not always easy or pretty, but the character wins in the end. He is also a stronger, more capable, wiser person. He is a transformed hero.
- A great story indeed. And by the way, the audience has to like the hero. He has to do something to be likable in the beginning, or else no one will root for him to succeed.
- A business owner who grows tired of doing most of the “heavy lifting” himself sees that growing and scaling his business has taken away the very freedom he hoped to have when he started the business.
- Maybe the inciting incident is a health issue or an unhappy spouse who wants more time together. It might be retirement nearing, bringing to the forefront the nagging question, “How can I ever sell this if it is all in my head?”
- The hero meets Yoda. They extract and polish the “Secret Source.” Then they finally teach it to everyone on the team. The business doubles and gains even more momentum from there. The hero ak business owner can breathe a sigh of relief, go fishing in Alaska, and spend more time with his family. His retirement plans also look a lot rosier. Why do we root for him? Because he is a super nice guy who cares about others.
- A Coach who has traveled all over the country, touching the lives of half a million people, realizes that he cannot keep this up forever and must reach even more people.
- He says, “I’m glad I meet you (Dr. Stephie aka Yoda). Without you, I would have never thought of pulling my brilliance out of my brain and putting it into what were are building. A momentary speech doesn’t change lives, but what we are building will!”
These are just some of the stories. I finally figured out what I’m really doing!
Bold Idea Implemented
The bold idea I implemented this week was to launch the new DrStephie.com website. Please check it out. It is all about my speaking – keynotes and workshops. Please let me know if you would to explore this opportunity to inspire your team.
The Surprise
I was nervous to attend a martial arts championship this past weekend. But I went (they told me I needed the “points” to be eligible for the Black Belt test in Spring. So, I went. Low and behold, it was great, and I won three medals. That was unexpected!
But the moral of that story is that things often seem harder than they are. Go for it – you just might surprise yourself!
I’m Curious
Which Treasure did you get from this Treasure Tuesday?
Perhaps
Please remember each step forward is enough. One little step is way better than none. The sum of all tiny steps taken consistently is utterly unstoppable. Okay. See you next week. Cheers.
Dr. Stephie
P.S.: I appreciate you commenting and sharing this with others. Thank you!
