Why You're Missing Out if You Don't Believe in Teamwork

Working with other people can be difficult.

Really difficult.

They don’t always have the same viewpoint as you and they certainly might not always agree with your plan of action. Many times, we believe we can work better by ourselves.

And though that may sometimes be true, it may also lead to us slamming our pinkies in the door jam.

200 years ago today, the Unites States and Britain, with Canada as the chopping block, were fighting the War of 1812. Britain/Canada started out well but by 1813 the cupcake was upside down.

American guns from Fort Niagara started wrecking havoc with British Fort George on May 25^th 1813. To mount things up the American Lieutenant, Oliver Hazard Perry, who later won the Battle of Fort Erie, taking the Great Lakes away from British domination, brought in fourteen ships of varying sizes to increase American firepower.  The ships helped outgun the British.

The navy then worked with the American army to move 4000 troops over to the Canadian side on May 27^th, 2013. The British/Canadian defenders had no option but to retreat to safer ground, losing one of their capitals of commerce to the invaders.

The thing is it wouldn’t have been possible without the American Navy working at first with Fort Niagara’s guns to overpower the British and then by supporting the American troops on the Canadian side.

Like the American navy and army at the Battle of Fort George, we must remember to work with the strong people closest us, the ones who have the skills to turn things to our advantage. We may not always like them but without their skills we wouldn’t be quite as effective. Sure the Americans might’ve beaten the British by shear force of numbers but they hadn’t to that point in the war (Detroit, Queenston Heights) nor did they later with battles like Lacolle Mill afterwards.

Combined skills, working with others, will cover weaknesses that even the most skilled find when working by themselves. We are powerful beings, not perfect beings. Working our strengths off others can win a battle or change our lives.

But only if we allow the magic of teamwork to flow.

Alex H.

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How Mothers and Bodybuilding are Alike

Helloo0O Ladies and Gentlemen!

Welcome back to Graceland Ontario, your one stop location for success advice from the greats. Today, in light of Mother’s day a couple days back, we’re going to talk about being thankful for getting to where we are today. And I think some of you might be surprised by what I say.

What’s your earliest childhood memory of your mother? If you’re like me, you probably have a couple. I couldn’t tell you for sure which one was first, but I think it’d be of my Mum driving me while I was in the back of her car, playing with me while I watched TV or at Christmas dinner. I remember as a kid always wanting to impress my Mother because I loved her so much. Sometimes, I felt like I fell short.

But, as you grow older, sometimes it’s easy to get the whole “grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side” mindset, in everything. Now, I’m not saying settling’s good, but all of a sudden you feel like you aren’t enough and others are better. And, many times, mothers become embarrassments you’d rather not show your friends.

Now, first off, I’d like to say after dealing with Mother’s other than mine, I’d take my Mum any day over them. They may seem cooler at first, but you tend to find they make all the “mistakes” your Mum makes while tending not to love you as much.

Whatever your relationship with your Mother, it’s important to realize how much you owe them. Without her, you typically wouldn’t have been born (quite literally) and you certainly would’ve grown up to be a different person. You are indebted to her for the way you are today.

But I hear some of you saying, “my Mother was terrible and I hate her and she made my life a mess”. To that I say, even if she contributed to making your life less than it could’ve been, she’s done something great for you. Instead of directly teaching you how to behave, she’s given you a challenge to overcome. And if you’re here, you’ve probably either overcome or are attempting to overcome it. Like the pain it takes in a gym to forge beautiful muscles, she’s given you a barbell to lift up.

And when you make it, you’ll have taken your life to a whole new level.

So, whatever your current situation or relationship with your mother, be thankful. Challenges are learning opportunities. The person who gave you them, or taught you to deal with them, is the person who helped shape your character most.

As Abraham Lincoln said, “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother”

So do you.

Alex H.

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Being Thankful for Surviving a Plague of Flying Crocodiles

Helloo0OO Ladies and Gentlemen and welcome back to Graceland Ontario, your one stop location for success lessons from the greats. Today we’re going to talk about gratitude,

As you probably didn’t know, my birthday was the other day and, like happens for most people, I went between happy for all the presents and attention to shocked by the extent of my age. But, thinking about it, I put things in perspective and it might help you to hear my conclusions.

Every year, every month, every day, there’s a thousand things that can go wrong, at least half of them lethal. You can electrocute yourself, poison yourself (in multiple different ways − through cleaning supplies!), you can drown, be murdered, hit by a car, beaten by an angry spouse, and consumed by an epidemic of flying crocodiles. In short, there are a lot of reasons why both you and I shouldn’t be here (and I haven’t even gone into the biological improbabilities of it or the chances of super illness).

Yet, chances are, if you’re reading this, you are! I mean, isn’t it fantastic that despite the overwhelming odds, we’re still alive.

Every birthday provides us with a mark of stability, like the Queen does or the Olympics. It’s something so human and so natural it can’t help but ground us. At this point, it allows us an opportunity to see how far we’ve come since the previous year, to see what went right and wrong.

But it offers something much more… the chance to be grateful that we survived. There’s only so many birthdays you have. If you have one hundred of them, you’re fortunate.

Enjoy each and every one of them and celebrate with open heart. After all, you never know when those flying crocodiles are going to show up, hungry and waiting to take you away before your next birthday.

Alex H.

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There's No Reset Button on Life

There’s a lot of talk in the media about “starting anew”.

We get indoctrinated with it from when we’re young and the grownups have their New Years Resolutions. But from there, things just go down the driveway.

Before you know it, people are giving you “clean starts” and “new beginnings”, even if you’ve been shoved in jail all night for unsuitable touching.

There’s nothing wrong with changing the way we act, it’s just the way we approach it. There’s this thought that life has a reset button, like a game. That if we don’t like what’s going on, we can get back to the last save point – an ok situation where nothing’s great but nothing’s bad – and start all over again.

But life doesn’t work like that.

That view of life misses all the lost opportunities you’ve forgone, it doesn’t recognize that just because you reset, most other people won’t accept your decision.

It doesn’t even recognize the good you can learn from making mistakes.

Instead of looking for the reset, the start over, look for the turn around. This is where you say, “that does it! I’ve had enough. No more twinkies. I’m losing weight”.

Or when you say, “I’m taking control of my life. I need to take more responsibility for my actions if I want things to get better”.

When we decide we want things to change, we CAN change them.

But we must realize that we’ve got to create change out of the crumbs of our old life. Only by navigating the struggles of the old can be find the wonders of the new.

Not by “resetting”.

Alex H.

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Holding Grudges is for Idiots

Helloo0O Ladies and Gentlemen!

Welcome to Graceland Ontario, your one stop location for success advice from the greats. Today, we’re going to talk about moving on.

Earlier this morning, I saw the largest military parade to march through Toronto since the Second World War. We’re talking over 1500 servicemen. And, in Canada, that’s not something you see everyday. The reason? Today was the 200^th anniversary of the Battle of York in the War of 1812. American gunboats pulled up into Toronto harbour on the morning of April 27^th, 1813 and pushed British forces back from the coast. Then, men were landed on shore, slowly moving Anglo-Canadian and native troops back to their base at Fort York. When the British commander, Major-General Roger Sheaffe, felt the battle lost, he fought a retreating action that included blowing up the powder magazine of Fort York; the explosion annihilated the fort and injured or killed about 250 people, including the American commander, Brigadier General Zebulon Pike, who were too close.

The Americans burned York a couple days later before returning to the U.S.

But, though the battle was a low point in the city’s history, the parade was one of commemoration of service; not a bandage of past failure, but a recollection of challenges overcome.

And that’s what astonishes me − in talking about this war, from what I’ve seen from both sides, there’s no animosity. There were some brutal consequences for both the Americans and the Canadians in the last major, official conflict between them. But both respect the other now.

To me, it’s the ultimate show of forgiveness and moving on.

The Canadians, the Americans, the British and the natives realize the seriousness of the affair their forefathers were in. But they also know they, more than anything, fought for peace. Sawing into old wounds won’t do anybody any good. Today, there weren’t any “Bash the Americans” parties in Canada (to my knowledge) to get back at the Americans for “wrecking our town” a couple centuries ago. War in general is either a mistake to start with or a last resort. Turning that into any long-term hatred’s a waste of everyone’s time.

Just as the War of 1812 and the Battle of York are ancient history now, so you must recognise are the pains of your past. Sure, some relationships are still sour years after a conflict. But is that smart or just an emotional reaction, not allowing yourself to let go of something that’s long done?

Canada and the U.S. get on pretty well today. But, if we lived based on our past, we’d be vying to blow each other up. And it wouldn’t do either one of us a pound of good. As is it with your life. Unless something’s current, forget it. If a city can forgive being burned down, you can overcome whatever happened to you. It may not be easy, might take time, but in the long term, wouldn’t it be better to say, “here’s commemorating the day I forgave so and so after so many years” rather than “it’s just another day hating whoever”?

You know it is.

Alex H.

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There’s Only ONE Thing that Matters

Helloo0O Ladies and Gentlemen!

Welcome back to Graceland Ontario, your one stop location for success advice from the greats. Today we’re going to talk about dieing for what you believe in… literally.

As many of you know, today is St. George’s Day, the feast in celebration of the man who’s patron saint of more countries and cities than I’m willing to list (England, Georgia and Malta are on there, though). And though he’s most famous for a debatable story about killing a dragon to save a princess, St. George was a real man.

Now, I’ve done a couple of these saint posts (check them out, if you haven’t already: St. Patrick, St. David) but this fella might be one of the harder ones to find information on. He was supposedly a Greek born in Palestine to nobility who ended up as a tribune (second-in-command of the basic Roman military unit, the legion) for Emperor Diocletion after George’s father, also a military officer, and mother passed away.

Everything was looking like lollipops and bubblebaths for George. But there was a problem − Diocletion issued an edict saying all Christian Roman soldiers were to be arrested.

And George was Christian.

Diocletion didn’t want to get George in trouble so he offered gifts to George in the hopes he’d convert.

He didn’t.

Left with no other options, Diocletion had George tortured and decapitated. But, in recognition of his faith and loyalty, fellow Christians made George a martyr.

Now, I’m not suggesting you go out there, contradict people and get yourself executed (yes, I know it’s not too likely anyways). But, what I am saying is bear in mind George’s strength. He couldn’t be tempted by anything, including the promise of life, to do something he didn’t want to do − leave his religion.

Everybody’s unique in some way. And, especially as we get older, most confident people believe their way’s right, even when they don’t really know enough to state an opinion. And, sometimes worse, they want you to change to their way of thinking.

Now, writing this on a self-development blog might seem a bit crazy but you need to realize you’re all that matters! There’s only one person you have to live with and that’s the guy in the mirror. Everyone else, however painful it may be, can be slap-shotted aside.

Though you should seek to learn and be reasonable with others, and while acknowledging there are things you’re ignorant of (keep cool… we all are of something), you need to know what’s important to you, deep down, and stick with it no matter what. George didn’t want to live life without Christianity and was willing to sacrifice himself for that. There are things just as important to you − maybe your family, your work, your business − and you’ve gotta be that loyal to them.

Just because others tell you it’s wrong doesn’t mean a thing.

It is your life you’re living.

Talk to you later!

Alex H.

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Had a Bad Day? Smell a Rose!

 

Helloo0O Ladies and Gentlemen!

Welcome to Graceland Ontario, your one stop location for success advice from the greats. Today, we’re going to talk about appreciation.

It’s also my Mum’s birthday, so this one goes out to her.

When, I was young, my Mum and I had very different opinions on certain things. She liked looking at pretty things in shops, I liked buying toys. She liked gardening, I liked watching television. She liked walking for exercise, I liked gluing the rug (no joke).

She’d say, “isn’t that a beautiful flower?” and I’d nod my head before quickly going on to play. I didn’t understand how you could be happy by watching a flower.

But, as years go by, though we still have disagreements once in a while, I’ve come to understand and live by her perspective.

Everything’s beautiful, even in ways we wouldn’t maybe see at first. Everything’s strong, but tender; colourful, sometimes while looking bland; wonderful while coming across as normal.

And, the more I learn about people, that they like to be liked, that they fancy someone who listens and cares about what they say, that they are, in general, inherently good, the more I thank my Mother. You see, she taught me something most people never learn. She taught me how to appreciate good things and, by not much of a stretch, other people.

Now, before you stop reading because this is either sounding way too new age-y for you or just “soft”, wait a sec.

When you appreciate life, others and yourself, you develop true kindness. You honestly enjoy seeing the best in others. Now, I’m not saying you aren’t already like that. But I am saying we’re all a work in progress and that it never hurts to put in a bit more to up your skills. Through appreciation, it becomes hard for us to be put down and hurt for, as Albert Schweitzer said, “Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate”. It helps us become stronger and more likely to go out there and live a full life because we realize at a deep level how good everything is, even the bad. You’ve gotta be part of a world like that. Sitting out is wasting all the beauty and opportunity. When you have that mindset, you realize the bounty open to everyone and, with your deep appreciation of others, it makes it that much easier to persuade and work with other people to fulfill your goals.

I don’t know how you live, but I’m sure you make a similar choice to me in the morning. You decide to have a good day, no matter what, a so-so day, no matter what, or a bad day, no matter what. Chances are, your day will turn out that way simply because you’ll only focus on the information that makes something a “good”, a “so-so” or a “bad” day. You can go, “wow, she’s looking great for eighty” or you can think, “she’s a week away from the grave”. You can breathe deeply and savour the gift of air or you can complain about pollution.

I tell you, whenever I choose the more positive, more appreciative viewpoint, take what my mother taught me and thank God for the smell of roses on a mid-August day, I always, always feel better.

And, from experience, I’ve learnt it’s not just me.

Happy Birthday Mum and talk to you all next week!

Alex H.

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