A Pig With A Pink Ribbon Is Still A Pig

It's what they are.  

You can wash a pig and spray him with perfume and he's still a pig. You can put a pink ribbon around it and dress it in a pretty pig dress. They look good. They smell good. They look transformed! But let them outside and they will happily run straight to the nearest mud puddle they can find. Why? It’s their NATURE.

 

People with character issues will always disappoint you. 

Never put them in a position of responsibility unless you can keep a close eye on them. People can change but they really have want to and it won’t happen all at once. It’s great to give people a second chance but you better keep your eye on them.

Don’t put them in a position where their weakness can drag them and you down. You may think they are grateful and appreciative. They may even tell you they are, but what they are thinking is that they got away with it. They are thinking you are someone they can control and manipulate with excuses.

 

Don’t try to analyze or reason with them like you would a person you can trust.

The reason is, they don’t think like you do. You can’t really understand how they think and they aren’t even trying to understand how you think. They have their own agenda. They don’t understand give and take. They aren’t interested in fairness. They aren’t capable of considering what’s best for you. They’ll always cut any corners they can to give themselves and advantage. Trying to reason with them is futile. They don’t need you, they need professional help. But guess what? They don’t want help. 

 

If you doubt that, think about this.

One of the characteristics of people with character issues is that they live in denial. They don't take responsibility. They don't feel like they need to change. They are looking for ways to get ahead without working, without earning it. They see things you have and decide they need to have them. Why not? You have plenty.

If you catch them in a lie they will, on the spot, come up with another plausible sounding lie to cover up the first. I’ve always been amazed at the ability of people like this to effortlessly spin another bigger lie or rationalization whenever they are challenged. It’s at moments like this you realize you are dealing with someone who is not like you…AT ALL. Not only can they make up one lie after another, they seem to have the ability to believe it as truth as soon as they say it.  

That’s why if you insist on keeping them around you must keep your eye on them.  
Don't let their weakness hurt you. Sure it's great to give people a chance, but why put them in a position where they likely to fail? It's not fair to them, it's not fair to you.

Pay attention to character. You can’t let yourself be lulled to sleep by appearances. They may make an effort to look, talk and act better. They may make a great effort to act like they have changed. But stay alert. Any change will take a long, long time and they will probably have many relapses along the way. They may look pretty on the outside, but it’s what’s inside, their character that controls their actions. 

If they are rotten inside, they’ll act rotten because they can’t help it, it’s their nature. A pig is a pig is a pig - whether it's wearing a pink ribbon or not.

How to handle Problems Like a Pro

The 90/10 Rule

Since nothing is perfect in life, it helps to have a philosophy about how to look at problems. You aren’t going to be able to get away from problems so why not get a philosophy that allows you to absorb them and keep moving, staying in a happy, balanced and positive frame of mind. Let’s analyze the issue.

 

Perspective - 90% goes well

If you think about things in life you'll find that nine times out of ten or 90 percent of the time most things turn out okay, but 10 percent of the time things go haywire. It’s important to realize you don’t have to fall apart when they do and you don’t have to let it ruin your day. 

 

The problem 10%

I’m sure you’ve had experiences like this. A particular situation goes bad, then for some reason it seems like everything you do to fix it just makes it worse. Nothing seems to help, everything you do makes it worse and it soon becomes obvious that there's going to be no way of fixing it. Life isn’t perfect. Not everything turns out well and some problems just seem to refuse to be fixed. Of course you should do everything you can to correct it but if you can't fix it, you can't fix it.

Breaking down the 10% - Half of it’s your fault

If you analyze the 10% you'll usually discover that about 5% or half of the time what goes wrong is your fault. You can’t escape the blame. You messed up, but on the other hand it’s only 1 out 20 that comes back on you. Apologize or do whatever else you can to make it better. Then move on. 

 

The other 5% is somebody else's fault.

It might be caused by some institution, some situation outside of your control or another person. That 5% is it's somebody else's fault but the result is the same, it’s still a problem that impacts you. They messed up, you get hurt. If you are expecting perfection, justice and fairness out of life you have a real opportunity to get really upset. It’s not fair! You’re outraged! So what. It doesn’t help the situation.

 

Your choice

It’s a matter of what is more profitable for you to focus on, the 90% that goes well or the 10% problems. 

It’s a simple choice.  If something's gone wrong and it's not going to turn out right, you can either make yourself miserable spending your life focusing on it or instead focus on the other 9 things that went well.

 

Consider air travel...

If you fly a lot, one time out of ten you're probably going to have a bad flight, it’s unavoidable. Nine times out of ten it will probably go smoothly but eventually you’ll get one that goes bad. There will be a delay, bad weather, mechanical problem, or something else. You’ll be late, sit on the runway or even have a cancelled flight. It’s infuriating, it ruins your plans and sets off a domino effect of other problems. So what are you going to do? You can rant and rave all you want but it won’t change anything except increase your stress levels. However, if you step back and look on it with perspective, you’ll realize this was only once out of 10 flights and just decide it’s basically a price you pay for flying and shrug the annoyance off. Of course, sometimes you can have problems with several bad flights in a row, but over the long haul it evens out. 

When problems come, remember the 90/10 Rule, it will save you a lot of stress!

They Will Steal From You

THE POINT: You need to watch your money like a hawk, trust no one!

Yes, they will! 

If you put people in charge of your money without checks and balances to make sure nothing, no foul play can occur, sooner or later they will steal from you.  I learned this the hard way.

 For 16 years, my wife's personal assistant, let’s call her “Brenda,” came to work in our office. Since I needed help and she had done such an extraordinary job for my wife at our home, we decided this would be a great move. 

 For 16 years, Brenda worked with me.
She became invaluable. Everyone else noticed what a great job she did.

Every day I would hear three different comments.  1. I really am impressed with Brenda 2. I wish I had a Brenda.  3. What would you do without Brenda? So I trusted her.

Eventually there came a day where we got a call from IRS.
They wanted to do an audit. The next thing that happened was that my full time in house CPA, who was so well respected she was president of the local CPA Association, disappeared overnight.  She said she got a phone call from her father and she was going home to Yazoo City, Mississippi to take over his practice.  Hard to believe it was not related to the impending IRS audit.  During the interim, while we were looking for the replacement CPA, Barbara began overseeing the finances. 

She wound up being in total control of the money, deposits, checks etc.
I wasn't concerned except I was afraid she was overworked.  I pressured her to quickly get help. I encouraged her to step up the interview process and quickly get a replacement CPA since she didn't seem to be in any real hurry to get that job done.  When I would bring up the fact that she was working so hard, she just smiled and said no it's fine, it's not a problem. 

Eventually I found out why.
It came time to pay our taxes, and I noticed that our entire tax account which should have contained $345,000.00 was empty.  A junior bookkeeper we'd hired also asked to talk with me privately.  It turned out he discovered some discrepancy in the books and was able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Brenda had taken off with tons of money, had embezzled tons of other money.  

Best estimates were placed at something just below a million dollars.
And I won't get into the end of that story except that the tax accountant did tell me that it's never the greasy haired guy at the bank that embezzles, it's always the sweet grandmother who bakes cookies for everyone who later is found out to have embezzled $400,000.00 or more from the bank.  It's always the ones you don't suspect that get away with it.  

Although painful, I realize it was all my fault.
I had let it happen and it dawned on me that if you tempt someone long enough, eventually they'll give in. Here’s an example I thought of at the time. Suppose I have a nice big gallon container of ice cream. I rip the lid off and I'm about to dig in. I grab a spoon, then suddenly something happens where I've got to take a call or take care of an emergency. I hand the spoon and the ice cream to someone to hold for me until I get back.  Here’s the truth. It's just a matter of time before they take a bite.  Humans can only resist temptation for a limited period of time, then even the best of people will cave.  Maybe not everybody, but you've got to assume the ones around you will.  And it will be your fault because you created the temptation.

So how do you avoid it?
Don't give them an opportunity.  Stay in control. Keep your eyes on the money.  Have checks and balances.  Do whatever it takes to take the potential for theft out of the equation.

Especially when it comes to money, if you give people a chance to take some for themselves, they'll do it every time.

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Feedback: Are you one of the ones who think it could never happen to you? As long as you think that way it makes you a likely target. Do you see why? Or am I wrong?

Notice Tiger Woods Coming Back?

He’s baaaaaaack!

Tiger Woods is climbing the charts again. Did you pay attention to what happened this past weekend in Australia at the PGA tour?

Greg Chambers won the The Emirates Australian Open Championship.  Finishing second was John Senden. Did you notice who finished third? Tiger Woods! He actually led the tournament for the first 2 days despite the fact that he is usually a slow starter.  ...And the next week he delivered the clinching point in the 2011 President's Cup in Melbourne, Australia by winning his singles match 4-3 over Aaron Baddelely.

It looks like Tiger’s golf game is coming back.
NO surprise to me. Soon after his disaster he started playing golf again. Pretty soon, he had fallen off the charts.

In some of the rankings he had fallen down to the 150^th player in the categories of putting and driving. At the time when people were jumping on him the worst I told my nephew, who is a mini tour player, Tiger would be back because “He’s meaner than the other guys/.”

To me, Tiger is a guy who wants it more.
It’s not that he’s better and more talented. He has developed himself more than everyone. The criticism hits him deeper. It’s not the criticism that brings him down, he just despises it. It’s not that he can’t take it, he doesn’t want to take it because he knows he doesn’t have to.  

He’s a born winner.
There’s a saying that winners win and losers lose. When you make a big blunder of course you’ve got to accept responsibility and spend some quiet time with your maker and the people involved to work things out the best you can.

But, at some point, you’ve got to work things out and get back to what you do.

The Blame Game—Drifting to Denial

It's so easy.

Blame your parents.
Blame your spouse.
Blame your kids.
Blame your boss.
Blame your job.
Blame your friends.
Blame the government.

Blame, blame, blame.
It makes you feel better about yourself. It feels good. It feels satisfying, but it is so very dangerous!
Because BLAMING OTHERS is how you drift into denial. Once you get there you are DOOMED, because you'll never take responsibility.

That’s the reason denial never turns out well. You may work things out in your mind that allows you to believe that you are a victim and are not to blame for any of your problems. It may make complete sense to you…BUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT TRUE.

Living in denial is something that’s understandable in a child, but unacceptable for an adult.

Don’t deny reality, confront it and deal with it. IT’S THE FASTEST WAY TO WHERE YOU WANT TO GO.

The Real World

When you hear the phrase, "Welcome to the real world," what does that mean? 

What does it mean when you go from elementary school to junior high, to high school, to college, to marriage, to careers, to maybe even a business of your own? At any stage along the way you may hear the phrase, "Welcome to the real world.”  So what does that mean?

What's different about the real world?

A lot of things, but here are a few. Things happen faster. It's like going from a country road to the interstate, there's a lot more people in a lot bigger hurry. Another thing is intensity. There's a lot more on the line.  It's in the area of personal responsibility. You no longer have people looking out for you, encouraging you on, like you did in the past.  Now you're surrounded by people competing in the same arena, trying to move up just like you. Things that you do are not assignments for school, are not chores around the house, they involve helping a company become profitable or helping a company even survive.  The intensity, the importance of delivery is much, much higher. 

The support structure is different.  
There is less emotional support. It's cold blooded. It's everyone for themselves. It's finding that people don't really care what happens to you because they don't have time, they don't have the luxury. They're concerned about surviving themselves. They may be sympathetic, they may be sad if you fail, they probably will be, but they can't stop what they're doing to console you for very long because they've got to survive themselves.  

That's why people say it's more cutthroat, more cold blooded. It’s just everybody's trying to survive. You don't have parents at work. You don't have parents on the football field with you. It doesn't work that way. Welcome to the real world. What does that mean? 

It means you are going it alone and you're going fast and it's up to you to look out for you.

It's Up To You

There’s no one but you.

Nothing will happen if you don’t make it happen. “Make it” means if everything goes wrong, everyone slumps, meteors fall out of the sky on your head, you still will win. Making it happen you have assumed disasters strike and you’ve got your contingencies planned so you can still make it happen.  

You’ve given yourself a margin of error.  You don’t expect everything to go perfect.  You’re taking total control.  
You realize… if I don’t take total control I can assume I’ll get beat. You have a clear head about who’s responsibility this is - it’s yours!

There are things that are too important to you to leave to chance.
Take total control of your business or you can safely assume you’ll get beat.
Take total control of your finances.
Take total control of your family and children. No one cares about them like you do.

This is your world. This is what you stand for. It's up to you to make them turn out right.