Return on Life: Abundance Mentality at Work

I've written previously (January 31, 2008) about what Steven Covey calls "abundance" mentality, which is basically an attitude that suggests that there's plenty to go around for everyone, that someone having something doesn't preclude us from having it as well (money, love, happiness, etc.). It also includes the idea that sharing can be a positive experience for everyone involved.

In today's news, we have a real-life example of abundance mentality: The Spungen family, former owners of Peer Bearing Co. in Chicago not only sent turkeys home with their previous employees, they included sizable checks (a total of $6.6 million between 230 employees!) from the proceeds of the sale of the business earlier this year.

Now, I'm not imagining that they didn't keep anything for themselves. But no matter how much they netted, no one expected them to just give away nearly $30,000 average to each employee. How often have we seen, in recent months, CEOs who not only would never entertain such a thought, they are busy laying off employees and begging the government (read taxpayers) for bailout money while declining to forgo their multi-million dollar bonuses.

So, hooray for the Spungen family. They are the example we all should emulate. What's interesting is that not only are the former employees happy, as you would expect, but amazingly, so are the Spungens!

How can you be more abundant in your mentality? Give it some thought!

Return on Life: Be Flexible With Holiday Traditions

Yes, I know it's not even Thanksgiving yet, much less Christmas, but we're getting there quickly! Having lunch with a friend yesterday reminded me of one of the ways we can all reduce stress and truly enjoy the holidays.

My friend Michelle loves Christmas. Every year she puts up not one, but three decorated trees (one of them is probably fifteen feet tall and greets you in the two-story vaulted entrance to her home), assembles a model train layout, and bakes cookies which she shares with friends and family. She thoroughly enjoys it all. However, this year she has been traveling extensively both for business and pleasure and has been busy, busy, busy with a very quickly growing business (she has become a best-selling author with her first book!!). It's been an exciting time for her, but has just about used up her energy reserve--mental and emotional as well as physical. As she thought about putting up all the Christmas decorations, instead of total excitement, she began to feel overwhelmed. Many of us, at that point, would begin to feel frustrated that we were too tired to create our traditional holiday time. We'd feel guilty and sorry and sad. What Michelle decided to do instead was to create a new tradition--to change her paradigm. She decided that she will perhaps put all the trees up only every other year, and this year won't be one of them. She allowed herself to change without getting stuck in thinking that this would make her holiday less than what it should be.

Holiday traditions should be fun, warm, comforting. Don't let them become sources of frustration and guilt! If you have a tradition that can't or won't work this year, increase your return on life by creating a new one!

Return on Life: Respectful Discourse

One of the ways to increase your return on life is to reduce stress by being more respectful in your communication with others. We are sometimes told not to keep emotions in, to be able to vent. I agree that some venting is helpful and healthy, the other side of the coin is that there is a limit to how much creates any postive effect, as well as constraints involving time and place.

Case in point: McCain's concession speech and Obama's victory speech. Both were delivered in a manner that was respectful of their opponent. We've certainly not always seen this in past elections. Obviously, losing a presidential race, after all the months of long hours, little sleep, money spent, and emotional upheaval, is extremely disappointing, frustrating, even maddening. But it is not helpful to the losing contender's image or to the psyche of their voters to "share the pain". McCain did the right thing to immediately help his supporters to move past the emotion of the moment into the new reality. After all, they can't change the outcome of the election. They can learn from the experience, but the reality is that their candidate didn't win. By openly stating his acceptance of this fact and his support of Obama as President-elect, he helped his supports to do the same.

Obama made a great contribution as well, by acknowledging McCain respectfully. He also acknowledged that there are those who are not supportive of him, but that he promises to be their president as well.

Both speeches were good reminders of the lessons we all learned as kids: Don't be a sore loser, and if you win, don't gloat. At least not in public!