We hope you've been enjoying your Monday Morning Motivator. If you've received this issue for the first time - welcome aboard! It only takes a couple of minutes to start your week off right with the MMM! Be encouraged by the success or great ideas of others in your business community. The MMM has a community of 80,193 subscribers.
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We All Live Three Lives
This week we share a message from best selling author, Stephen Covey. One of our favorite Covey books is, The 7 Habits of Highly Efective People. In today's message Stephen challenges us to look into our secret life.
(We are producing a series of videos for our new site, here is one of them. We welcome your feedback)
The secret life is the key to a quality life and that in turn is the key to a quality culture, products, and services. Once in New York City I attended the Broadway play The Secret Garden. The play was particularly poignant for me that evening because my mother had just died.
The Tony Award-winning musical is the story of a young girl whose mother and father die of cholera in India as the play begins. She is sent to live with her uncle in a large British manor. The old house is filled with romantic spirits. As the restless girl explores the grounds of the estate, she discovers the entrance to the magical secret garden, a place where anything is possible.
When she first enters the garden, she finds that it appears to be dead, much like her cousin, a bedridden boy, and her uncle, still haunted by memories of his lovely wife who died giving birth to the boy. In harmony with natural laws and principles, the girl faithfully plants seeds and brings new life to the garden. As the roots are warmed and the garden cultivated, she brings about a dramatic transformation of her entire culture within one season.
In my many years of teaching and training, I have seen several such transformations brought about by proactive people who exercise principle-centered leadership and the Seven Habits in their secret, private, and public lives.
When I returned home to Salt Lake City the next day to speak at my mother’s funeral, I referred to The Secret Garden, because for me and many others, my mother’s home was a secret garden where we could escape and be nurtured by positive affirmation. In her eyes, all about us was good, and all that was good was possible.
Our Three Lives
We all live three lives: public, private and secret. In our public lives, we are seen and heard by colleagues, associates, and others within our circle of influence. In our private lives, we interact more intimately with spouses, family members, and close friends. The secret life is where your heart is, where your real motives are the ultimate desires of your life.
Many executives never visit the secret life. Their public and private lives are essentially scripted by who and what precedes and surrounds them or by the pressures of the environment. And so they never exercise that unique endowment of self-awareness, the key to the secret life where you can stand apart from yourself and observe your own involvement.
Courage is required to explore our secret life because we must first withdraw from the social mirror, where we are fed positive and negative feedback continuously. As we get used to this social feedback, it becomes a comfort zone. And we may opt to avoid self-examination and idle away our time in a vacuum of reverie and rationalization. In that frame of mind, we have little sense of identity, safety, or security.
Examine Your Motives
The most critical junctures in my life take place when I visit my secret life and ask, “What do I think? What do I believe is right? What should my motives be?” These are times when I choose my motives. One such time occurred when I first heard Dag Hammarskjold say, “It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.” That statement had such a profound effect on me that I started to say to myself in regard to my relationships with other people, “Wait a minute; it’s my life. I can choose whether I want to make reconciliation with this person or not. I can choose my own motives.”
One of the exciting fruits of “the secret garden” is an ability to consciously choose your own motives. Until you choose your own motives, you really can’t choose to live your own life. Everything flows out of motive and motivation that is the root of our deepest desires.
Now, when I get into a frustrating or perplexing situation, I enter into my secret life. That’s where I find not only motives but also correct principles; that’s where the inner wisdom is. As I learn to be proactive in exploring the secret life, I tap into self-awareness, imagination, conscience, and into the exercise of free will to choose another motive.
People who regularly explore their secret life and examine their motives are better able to see into the hearts of others, practice real empathy, bestow real empowerment and affirm worth and identity.
A healthy secret life will benefit your private and public lives in many ways. For example, when I’m preparing to give a speech, I read aloud a favorite discourse on faith, hope and charity because it helps me to purify my motive. I lose all desire to impress. My only desire is to bless. And when I go to a public setting with that motive, I have great confidence and inner peace. I feel more love for the people and feel much more authentic myself.
Executives who attend our leadership training in the mountain setting of Sundance often tell me, “This is the first time in many years that I’ve done any soul searching. I’ve seen myself as if for the first time, and I’ve resolved that my life is going to be different. I’m going to be true to what I really believe.” Recently, many people have written me to say, “Your habits and principles have made the difference. I’d never really thought about some of them before, but I resonate with them.” That’s because these principles are found in people’s secret life.
And yet most of us spend our busy days privately doing our thing, never pausing long enough to enter the secret life, the secret garden, where we can create masterpieces, discover great truths and enhance very aspect of our public and private lives.
Having a healthy secret life is the key to having a quality private and public life, as well as a quality culture, product or service.
Have a great week unless you choose otherwise. (by the way you can also follow us on twitter now @AdamAdGroup)
PPS - We have some exciting news going on at The Adam Ad Group. We have spun out a new company to handle our amazing growth in online marketing, SEO, PPC , video production and business consulting services, our new company is called The Rainmaker Group. We are in the process of building new websites for Adam Ad Group and Rainmaker Group that will better showcase who we are and what we do.
We also recently announced the arrival of Arthur Zhang to The Rainmaker Group/Adam Ad Group. The team continues to grow. We are now pleased to welcome Gerry Shea as the latest addition. Gerry will be working with us to expand online marketing services in North America. Gerry is focused primarily on helping North American automotive businesses to expand market share while reducing marketing expenses by leveraging the web.
Gerry grew up in Kamloops where he ran a successful chiropractic clinic before a shoulder injury sustained while water skiing forced him to close the practice. In 2002 he began acquiring certifications and now Gerry is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) and a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA). Gerry worked as a Computer Network Engineer for a few years, which led to a passion in website production.
Prior to joining The Rainmaker/Adam Ad Group Gerry worked with ASL Internet, a full-service website development company specializing in design, production and maintenance of websites for the automotive industry. We are thrilled Gerry has joined us! If you'd like to learn more about how The Rainmaker/ Adam Ad Group can assist you company to capitalize on the opportunities present on the web, email or call us at 604.937.8886.
Special Note : Many of you know that my 12 year old son has Type 1 Juvenille Diabetes. We are extremely excited to introduce to you our new program called MyBrandit.
This system offers our customers and subscribers, great selection, pricing and quality on all promotional products and merchandise. The products are hand selected as proven winners and the best part for us is that we will be able to donate a portion of all sales to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Please Click on the banner below to have a look around and let us know what you think! or copy and paste the following link into your browser http://adamadgroup.mybrandit.com/
Testimonial Of The Week - I have had the privilege to know Drago for 15 years on a professional and personal level. He is thorough in his business dealings with his customers best interests in mind. I would highly recommend his company as he has been instrumental in some very successful marketing strategies for us at Sears Carpet Care in Vancouver. As one of Drago's successful slogans for Sears states" Clean is Good" I would have to say "Adam Ad Group is Better.
We also wanted to say Thank You for allowing us to meet with you every Monday Morning. The MMM has experienced incredible growth with a subscriber base of 80,193 people.
To Sign Up For The MMM simply send an email to drago@adamadgroup.comwith the word subscribe in the subject line.
We are truly grateful and humbled by the positive comments we receive weekly. If you enjoy the MMM please pass it along and let others know about it.
This week we would like to recognize a very special couple who not only built a successful company but are making a difference out of a very tragic circumstance, Jack & Margaret Lee.
Jack Lee founded 4Refuel in 1995 and it has become one of North America’s fastest growing fuel logistics companies. The company manages nearly one billion litres of fuel per year and is currently growing at 26% annually. Then things took an unsuspecting turn when Jack and Margaret's daughter Janice took her own life, Monday, December 4, 2006. To read about Janice's story click here or copy and paste the following link into your browser (http://www.ok2bblue.com/History).
Jack and Margaret have taken this devastating situation and are making a difference by their creation of The Blue Wave Foundation. The purpose of BLUE WAVE and its website is to be a media/portal where youth and parents can learn about the challenges surrounding mental health issues.
The underlying message is that we all feel "Blue" from time to time, and that it is: OK2B BLUE. However, prolonged "Blueness" or depression, may be a symptom of what could be a more serious mental health issue if left untreated. Hence, the need for broadscale education relating to the mind which, in such cases, would raise awareness for early intervention.
Please help Jack and Margaret spread the message of The Blue Wave Foundation, by visiting or sharing the website with others. www.Ok2bblue.com
Contact Drago Adam at drago@AdamAdGroup.com or call 604 937 - 8886 or 866 923 - 6477
PS: Thank You for sharing your Monday Mornings with us. The MMM started three years ago with 35 subscribers, today's issue is going out to over 80,193 Weekly Subscribers.
“I always tell the kids, ‘You know what’s great about going the extra mile? There’s very little traffic." (Jim Larranaga)
Word of the Week
Concatenate (kahn-kat-uh-nayt) : to link together in a series or chain. eg : As part of her presentation, Tiffany created a flow chart that concatenated all of the company’s suppliers and accounts.
Proverb of the Week
Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the laps of fools.
(Ecclesiastes 7 verse 9 The Bible)
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