Helpful Insights Online» Attitude

That New Year’s Resolution

Gil Pizano — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 03:27:37 +0000

A new year has begun and a countless list of New Year’s resolutions have been made by many. A large number of those resolutions won’t last the month! OK, I admit I tend to be optimistic about people (because many will tell me that most New Year’s resolutions don’t last the first week). Resolutions are great decisions that people usually commit to in order to change their life or the life of someone else for the better. So why do so many “forget” or “lose track of” whatever it is they said they were going to do? I’m sure you’ve never been one of those people. Admit it. We’re all guilty of not committing to the resolutions we’ve supposedly committed to. But why is that? It’s simple…a sincere passion for it is missing. It’s so much easier to commit to a change that can help you follow your passion…whatever that passion may be.

Principle: Follow Your Heart

I’m sure this is not the first time you’re seeing the above phrase. If it is, then I’m glad it’s being introduced to you here. If you have seen it before, I hope you understand what it means. Early in my career, I thought I understood what it meant, but I discovered that I didn’t really. At first I always focused my education on helping me get the job that would make me the most money. When I started along that track, I discovered that even though I was beginning to make some serious bucks, I wasn’t feeling fulfilled. If I kept on that track, I knew I would end up in a place I didn’t want to be at in the future. So, I decided to go into another type of field where I felt I made more of a difference. That helped me to feel better about what I was doing. That feeling that one gets when they are following their heart is a personal feeling that only you can know how it feels when you’re on the right path for yourself

How do you know you’ve found your passion? Find something you love to do so much, you can’t wait for the sun to rise to do it all over again. Connecting your New Year’s resolution to something you’re passionate about will help in achieving your goal.

Principle: Do Not Fool Yourself!

By fooling yourself, I’m talking about making yourself believe something in order to avoid something you know you need to do. This principle for helping to stick to the commitments you made to yourself is a short and simple, yet powerful one. It’s a principle that all of us at one point or another have used to rationalize ourselves out of doing something we needed to do (e.g. I can have one more ice cream ‘cause I’ve had a very stressful week).

If you want to succeed in what you’ve committed yourself to do, be honest with yourself. Don’t fool yourself into not following your passion. Earlier in this post I briefly described how I was not on a path in my career where I would be personally fulfilled. I was originally fooling myself into allowing money be the focus of my occupation. Had I not realized that I was fooling myself, I would still be doing something that I didn’t want to do and thus, would still feel as though I was missing something in my life.

Principle: Baby Steps

Ah! Here is the old adage about taking baby steps. If one of your goals is to read more books rather than watching TV or surfing the internet, why not start by reading no more than 15 minutes in the morning or at night before going to bed? There was a time not so long ago when reading for fifteen minutes felt to me like three days…in fifteen minutes. Oh it was brutal for me! I was reading so slow it would take me 15 minutes to read one or two pages of a paperback. No fooling…I was bad! I did manage to overcome this by taking baby steps. First I made it a point to read one page and then stop for a minute and then read the next page. I’d read the second page and then stop for a minute before I continued. This allowed me to not get as bored with reading as I would’ve had I read straight thru at first. Over the next few weeks I began to notice that I was reading faster and not getting as bored reading as I was when I first started. In time I was reading two, then three and four pages a minute. Today, I find reading fun and cannot imagine myself finishing the day without reading.

Do You Know Someone…?

Do you know of anyone who has a passion for something? If you believe you do know someone like that, observe them. Do they appear to have more enthusiasm, energy, and excitement than others? Do you find that they often appear to be creative in what they are passionate about? They appear to come up with really unique and yet simple ideas?

Do you know someone who succeeded at losing the weight they wanted to lose? Ask them how they did it? Did they quit eating everything that was bad for them and going to the gym six to seven days a week or did they take baby steps to reduce or change the types of foods they were eating?

Do you know of someone who succeeded in whatever they chose to commit to last year? Look back on how they did it? Did they use some of the above aspects to succeed at what they chose to commit to?

What are some ways that you believe will help you succeed at achieving your goals for the new year?

25 Great Articles on How to be Empathetic

Gil Pizano — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:05:28 +0000

Empathy enables a person to establish a connection with others and is necessary for mutual interaction and full comprehension of the experience. It is probably one of the most important aspects of being a leader in every situation. Without it, a person is virtually guaranteed to become out of touch with the environment, he or she is in. Without empathy, a leader cannot lead. Without empathy, a person cannot be in any type of mutually beneficial relationship. Without empathy, a person is basically asking to be completely alone in life.

Have you ever wished to be more empathetic in order to become a better leader? In order to have a better relationship with a friend, loved one or colleague?

There are many great and free resources about empathy available. Here are some great articles, posts and videos that talk about empathy and it’s importance in leadership, parenting and relationships:

5 Tips for Empathetic Listening — Really a quick read from Stepcase Lifehack on the five simple steps one can use to be more empathetic.
Are You Empathetic or Sympathetic? — A brief post by Robbie Miller Kaplan (author of the book “How to Say It When You Don’t Know What to Say”) on how he words sympathy and empathy are often thought to be the same, and yet they are distinct expressions.
Avoiding the Five Pitfalls to Becoming an Empathetic Listener — A very concise article about why more people are not better empathetic listeners.
Being a Good Manager/Mom: Be Empathetic — Quick post from Sarah Rottenberg who describes it well by saying that a recent post got her “thinking about what I think it takes to be a good manager. And I think it’s simple: be empathetic.”
Empathetic Voice Improves Doctor-Patient Communication — Doctors who use an empathetic voice with patients can elicit more information about their health problems and encourage them to stick to their treatment regime, a Monash researcher has found.
Empathetic Understanding and School Leadership Preparation — a paper written by Diane Ketelle and R. Pete Mesa, Mills College. Successful leaders seem to share one thing in common – empathy. The authors posit that empathic understanding is foundational to leadership.
Empathy and Showing Empathy — Interesting article descibing the importance of empathy in leadership positions.
Empathy is in Our Genes — a quick read from the Thaindian News website citing a few research studies on the topic.
Empathetic Customer Service — a short article on how empathy played such an important role in the lasting of one of America’s successful companies of it’s day.
Exercise in Creative Classroom Management — How to Become a More Empathetic Teacher – The title speaks for itself.
Gandhi’s Neurons: The Practice of Empathy – Article by Bruna Martinuzzi on
How to be an Empathetic Listener – article on steps for being a better listener with empathy.
How Empathetic are You? — Interesting article with a link to a test where one can determine their Empathy Quotient.
How to Practice More Empathy in Your Business Management — Sometimes it’s hard to be a business manager, especially when you are in difficult situations with your employees. One of the important things that you need to exercise in these difficult situations is empathy.
How to Teach Your Kids to be Empathetic – A story post from the website “Effective Parenting” that gives a good example of the results of teaching empathy to a child.
Make Empathetic Listening your Super Power — a very good article on being empathetic.
Mirror Neurons – Video of discussing a recently discovered system in the brain that may help explain why we humans can get so worked up watching other people.
Principles of Empathic Communication — From Leadership University, an itemized summary of “Habit 5 — Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood” from Stephen Covey’s “THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE”.
Resilience: Compassion and Empathy — The quality of your relationships, and not the quantity of them, is what matters for you in terms of your emotional resilience. One of the attributes that differentiates people with higher quality relationships from people with lower quality relationships is their ability to be compassionate and empathetic.
The Art of Empathetic Listening — an article by Gian Fiero, an educator, speaker and consultant who specializes in business development, career planning, and personal growth issues.
The Benefits of Empathic Listening – an article with some good guidelines for understanding and being a empathic listener.
The Caring Child: How to Teach Empathy – Good article of giving a child a head start in having the ability to be empathetic.
Three Steps to Empathetic Listening — Oftentimes, people are too busy, they don’t make the effort, or they simply don’t know how to listen empathetically to others. And it is because of this that people have difficulty getting in touch with their feelings and they harbor negative emotions about others.
What’s Empathy Got to Do With It? — a very good article by describing empathy in detail along with ten leadership tips on being more empathetic.
What is Empathy? How to be Empathetic – Very short and concise article by Gwendolyn Cuizon on empathy.

If you know of other good articles on the subject of empathy that you believe someone else needs to read or know about, share it with us in the comments below!

Sometimes It Comes Down to a Choice

Gil Pizano — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:14:34 +0000

Last week I was fortunate enough to be a participant in a two day leadership retreat. I was one of among thirty or so regional leaders chosen for a year long training program where participants will be involved in the development of a community based project. The two day leadership retreat was the first time everyone involved in the year long training program would be getting together. When I found out that I was going to be one of the people chosen to go through the course, I was really happy and looking forward to being part of the group. That was back in November of last year.

As the time for the retreat come closer, I began to think about how the retreat would be handled by the staff organizing it. After all it was suppose to be the first in a series of learning workshops for the coming year and the tone of the first program in the process would most likely be the tone to expect in future trainings. For me, not knowing what to really expect caused a little bit of anxiety for me but at the same time I still was greatly looking forward to it.

The location of the two day retreat was just over an hour from where I live. People in the group had the option of going to the retreat center on a private coach rented by the organization holding the retreat, or to go by car. Since the organizers hinted that the retreat would actually be starting on the bus on the way over I chose to take the bus ride. I will say it was a fun bus ride, I got to learn about some of the people who were going on the retreat with me. Coincidentally, one person I got to know was actually someone I was communicating with via the social media world. Thomas Clifford is more known to many in the northeast as “Director Tom”. For those of you who don’t know him, check out his blog!

Once we all got to where we would be spending the next two days, we got to work on various team building, leadership development and personal self-awareness exercises. There was also plenty of instruction given on the various areas of leadership to complement the exercises. For me, some of the facilitation seemed to almost cross the line of sounding as though they were facilitating to grammar school children. Author’s personal note: I’m not the type of personality that takes very well to a learning environment where instructors sound as though they are speaking to grammar school children. But given the number of people that were there (two to three facilitators for thirty to forty participants) each with a distinct personality, it would be difficult for anyone’s teaching style to please or be taken well by everyone.

I Needed to Make a Choice

Being that I was chosen to participate in the group, and the year long leadership training that went along with it, I chose to keep one very important aspect…an open mind. That said, the next two days turned out to be very eye-opening to me. Why? Because I was able to get a much better understanding about others as well as myself. Not saying that it was some sort of religious experience necessarily, but I did learn a great deal more than I expected. Looking back now in retrospect, I would not have been able to get as much out of those two days or learn as much as I did if I didn’t choose to keep an open mind and listen to what others had to say. That alone taught me the most because how many things would I have missed or have go over my head if a decided to keep a closed mind (remember I mentioned earlier that I was interpreting the teaching style of some of the facilitators as “grammar school teaching style” like).

Do you remember a time when you decided to keep your mind closed when someone was telling you something you didn’t agree with or believe? Was it possible that you missed an important lesson in the process? Do you remember a time when you chose to keep an open mind when someone was telling you something you didn’t believe or agree with? I guess it can be more comforting to think YOUR way is the only right way…they say ignorance is bliss. But at what cost?

Think Your Too Old to Learn Something New? Think Again.…

Gil Pizano — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 02:35:45 +0000

The other day I was talking with a close family friend who I hadn’t seen in a number of years. I asked him how he was doing and what he had been up to since the last time I spoke with him. His name is John and he mentioned to me that he had been doing given the circumstances of being out of work for a period of time. He’s now working once again, but not in the area he was originally working in. I asked him where he was working now and he told me he was working for a small marketing company doing some marketing in addition to some IT (Information Technology) work for them.

I was surprised that John was doing marketing because for most of my life, he was the engineering type who enjoyed tinkering with gadgets of all types. His main career for the past 25 or so years had been in the computer industry so when he mentioned that he was now doing marketing I found it really interesting. I had to ask how a person in their early 50’s, who has been working for so many years in one field, goes from working in the computer industry to working in the marketing industry. John mentioned that he always found the computer field very rewarding, but that recently he had been looking at other areas to apply his mind to. When he was laid off earlier last year, he decided he needed a change for himself.

“That was an interesting change” I told him. I then asked him how he was able to “break into” the marketing field at this stage in life. “I wasn’t aware that you knew enough about marketing to go into it” was my exclamation. He told me he didn’t. He thought he knew a little about marketing, but when he looked for positions in marketing, he quickly found out (unfortunately during interviews) that he really didn’t know much at all. John told me that this made him self-conscious at the thought of applying for any more marketing positions. But instead of giving up, John said he decided to learn as much as he could about the aspects of marketing. He enrolled in a couple of summer courses at a local community college in his hometown. At the same time, he went to the library and read up on marketing careers, professional marketing companies, marketing consultation and almost every area of marketing he was able to get his hands on. He also did research on the internet.

After doing this level of self education on marketing, and after the two summer courses were done, he proceeded to start applying for marketing positions once again. The result, he had a couple of job offers within a month or so of applying. Today he is really happy at what he is now doing. What stuck out to me during this whole conversation is that many people I know, many of which are younger than my family friend John, look at themselves as too old to learn a new field or trade. I was never a follower of such a philosophy and here was living proof that it is possible to learn new things at any age. As my late grandfather (R.I.P.) found out in the last few years of his life, after learning about emailing and computers in his mid-eighties (and writing electronic articles for his town paper in this manner), we never really loose the ability to learn. Some people just allow themselves to believe they aren’t able to learn anything new.

What would you like to learn about?

How Good is Encouragement?

Gil Pizano — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 01:38:43 +0000

A while ago I read a story about an elderly man who approached the famous nineteenth-century poet and artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The old fellow had some sketches and drawings that he wanted Rossetti to look at and tell him if they were any good, or if they at least showed potential talent.

After looking over the first few carefully, he knew that they were worthless and showed no sign of artistic talent. But Rossetti was a kind man, and he told the elderly man as gently as possible that the pictures were without much value and showed little talent. He was sorry, but he could not lie to the man.

The visitor was disappointed, but seemed to expect Rossetti’s judgment. He then apologized for taking up Rossetti’s time, but would he just look at a few more drawings — these done by a young art student?

Rossetti looked over the second batch of sketches and immediately became enthusiastic over the talent they revealed. “These,” he said, ” these are good. This young student has great talent. He should be given every help and encouragement in his career as an artist. He has a great future if he will work hard and stick to it.”

Rossetti could see that the old fellow was deeply moved and asked, “Who is this fine young artist?” he asked, “Your son?”

“No,” said the old man sadly. “It is me — forty years ago. If only I had heard your praise then! For you see, I got discouraged and gave up — too soon.”

The author of the above story is unknown, and this story has been mentioned in many books, blogs and seminars. For me it’s a perfect example of how much some encouragement can mean to a person who may need it in their life. We may not always know when a person needs the encouragement or we may not see the result of it, but giving encouragement may be one of the most powerful tools each of us has in positively changing our world.

A Person with a Gift that Was Never Opened

The above story always reminds me of something that happened to one of my uncles. He always wanted to learn how to play the piano. Now in his early sixties, he noticed me playing piano and then guitar one day. He looked at me with a strange and at the same time proud look. After I was finished playing he came over to the piano and started playing a little bit. His level of playing was more by ear and at a beginner level of playing. I asked him what was on his mind when he was watching me play. His response was, “I wished I learned how to play an instrument at your age.”

When I saw how quickly my uncle picked up a melody and how easy it seemed to him, as a musician myself I realized he had a natural gift for playing music. I asked him why he never started learning an instrument earlier in his life. He told me that while he was in his pre-teens and then his teens, his mother would always be telling him that he didn’t have a musical ear and couldn’t possibly learn how to play an instrument. This discouraged my uncle so much that he accepted what he called his personal “lot in life”. No one ever told him he had a natural talent for music. People would see him in musical instrument stores and in school (playing on the piano) and never say anything to him about it. At the time he was a little too shy to ask another person’s opinion about his musical ability.

Who Would Benefit from Encouragement?

What would have happened to him had someone given him a little encouragement?

Would he have created some of the world’s favorite music? Would the elderly man in the first story have gone on to paint some of the most beautiful images people would ever see? We’ll never really know will we.

Have you ever noticed something in someone else that you believed deserved some praise?

Have you ever seen a person discouraged at something good they are attempting to accomplished? What remarks could we share to uplift that person’s spirits?

“Those who are lifting the world upward

and onward are those who encourage

more than criticize.” – Elizabeth Harrison

We never know how much the encouragement may mean to someone else until we give it. That someone else may be you in the future. Hey…you never know .

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