And speaking of motivation…

A man went to the pet store looking for a talking parrot. The owner showed him a very fine specimen that easily demonstrated a vast vocabulary, so he took him home. Sure enough, when he got him home the parrot started talking – and wouldn’t stop. But this didn’t bother the man so much as the fact that he seemed to have developed what you might call a “sailor’s vocabulary”!

The man tried everything to get the parrot to either shut up, or at least use more socially acceptable language, until finally, in a fit of anger he grabbed the parrot, took him to the kitchen, threw him into the freezer and slammed the door. Alas, the blessed silence only lasted a few seconds.

For nearly five minutes the kitchen was filled with the sound of muffled screaming and curses, until suddenly all was quiet! In a panic, the man thought he might’ve gone too far and killed the bird, so he pulled the door open to check.

The parrot stepped out and said, “Thank you so very kindly for opening the door, my good man. I want you to know I appreciate what you’ve done for me and I promise never to use questionable language again and obey you in all things.”

The man was of course surprised and gratified. “Very well,” he said. “Let’s get you back to your perch.”

The parrot replied, “Thank you very much, I would really like that. But may I ask you a question first? Would mind telling me what the chicken did, and how long has he been in here?”

Epiphany (n.) (1) a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something; (2) an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking; (3) an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure

I had an epiphany once.

Back in 1993, it hit me (sound of dull thud); I suddenly and inexplicably realized I would like to finally finish my engineering degree and move into project management. (Up until then, I had been perfectly happy working as a piping designer – a designer of complex piping systems – on various types of industrial facilities such as refineries, chemical plants, etc.) I use the word inexplicably because for the longest time the very idea of attempting an engineering degree left me with cold sweats and an extreme case of the heebie-jeebies (if you don’t know what that means, ask your mother).

No doubt this attitude stemmed from the memories of my first encounter with Calculus (insert flash of lighting and sound of terrified scream here). Up until Calculus (once again: lightning, scream), math and science subjects were usually fairly easy for me, both in high school and even my early college years. But, within two weeks of starting Calculus (and again, with feeling), I was so traumatized that I had withdrawn from school and was looking for a job.

But it wasn’t Calcu- (uh, never mind, you know what I mean); the problem, you see, was motivation.

Motivate can be defined as, “to provide with an incentive; move to action; impel” (from the Latin verb motivatimus, which means a sharp kick in the butt), and if you think about it, it could be argued that motivation is the only reason we do anything. (Ok, I made that up about the Latin part.)

When I started college, the best way to describe my choice of major is that everyone “assumed” I’d be an engineer. After all, my dad was an engineer, my mother always worked for engineering firms and as a child I loved building stuff (and, um, taking things apart) – it was just a natural assumption. But I can’t say I ever had any passion for the idea; it was just, I don’t know – an idea like “one day I’ll be a spaceman” (which, alas, is now only a dream *sigh*). So when it came time to face the pain of a difficult subject, such as you-know-what (don’t make me say it), I wasn’t really motivated by a passion for being an engineer. Thus, the obstacle of a difficult subject became insurmountable.

Now step into my time machine and move toward the present by about twenty years. As I said, one day it hit me that I’d like to move into project management. Unfortunately, this required a degree in engineering. Ack! What to do? Here’s where it gets weird, though. To my surprise, the idea of tackling that degree was actually exciting! Huh? What was different?

Ah, you know the answer already; good for you! The difference was the amount of motivation I had. The goal was no longer “get an engineering degree” but “become a project manager”. I was able to move the focus from the pain to the prize, and (almost) that simply, I was on my way. I received my engineering degree in 1996, and in fact it was only the first of three degrees I hold now. Within a few years of that first degree, the opportunity came along to move into project management, and that is where my career has me today.

I didn’t say all the above just to gain your admiration (or your sympathy, depending on how you look at it), but to ask you these questions:

Have you ever had an Epiphany – a moment when your life changed because of a particular decision that was perhaps a long time coming? What was your “Calculus” (bright flash of light, deafening explosion; end of the universe as you know it)? What was it that tipped you over the edge of wishful thinking and motivated you to (if you’ll pardon the expression) “just do it”?

Related posts on this subject:
Turning Dreams Into Goals
Sometimes It Just Takes Awhile…
It’s Nothing a Size 18 Boot Wouldn’t Fix

So funny, I just had to repeat this one from Seth.

“Just because a marketer says something is amazing, exciting or just plain wow doesn’t mean it is.”

Grim faces. Supposedly exciting message. Sheesh, makes ya want to rush out and upgrade, doesn’t it – uh, not! It reminds me of a employee “town hall” meeting I attended some years ago while working for a large engineering firm in Greenville, South Carolina.

The company had been running an employee contest to come up with a new logo design. All during the meeting, of course, the logo was up on stage and covered by a cloth while the CEO and other big shots pontificated about what a good logo should represent, what attributes it should have, etc., ad nauseum (I always wondered – do these guys really believe this stuff?)

Finally the moment arrived, and the cover was whipped off – to stunned silence! Seriously, there were at least three seconds of total silence. You could almost hear the crickets.

It was pink. Shiny, metallic pink.

Luckily, one of the VPs bravely stood up and started clapping, which seemed to break the paralysis of the crowd, who then dutifully started clapping along with him. (In the meantime, the hapless VP of Marketing was curling up in a ball onstage.)

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions here, but suffice it to say the color of the logo changed to blue in short order. (Not that there’s anything wrong with pink, mind you. But it WAS a bit, shall we say… daring, to say the least. The company had ALWAYS had blue logos, after all.)

Just a funny memory I thought I’d share. Anyone out there remember any similar experiences? More importantly, what did you take away from it?

You always knew it would happen some day: the day I turned B.A.D.! It’s not what you think. (Well, at least it’s not what you think this time.)

Liz Strauss at Successful Blog started calling a blogger a day (hence the B.A.D.) back in November (sort of like verbal blogging) and her conversation with yours truly was posted today. Ironically, we have more in common than I would have thought. Her husband, Wayne Strauss, is also an engineer – perhaps that’s how we ended up talking, not about blogging, but about bridges!

It wasn’t an interview so much as just a chat over coffee, with the conversation flowing freely wherever it would go on its own. Good thing, too, because I’m a poor interviewee (stage fright and cold sweats, you know).

Check it out, should you be so inclined. Better yet, drop her an email and volunteer to join the ranks of the B.A.D.!

For your edification, today I present a few choice bits of inspiration from the famous, the infamous, and the not-so-famous. And the fictional. Check these out:

• “In looking for someone to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But the most important is integrity because if they don’t have that, the other two qualities, intelligence and energy, are going to kill you.” – Warren Buffet
• “If you want perfection, you gotta expect a few flaws.” – Wayne Strauss
• “When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.” – Thomas Szasz
• “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” – B. F. Skinner
• “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” – Dorothy Parker
• “The ultimate effect of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.” – Herbert Spencer
• “I was so naïve as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.” – Johnny Carson
• “Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
• “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” – Henri Bergson
• “The most wasted day of all is that in which we have not laughed.” – Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort
• “What luck for rulers than men do not think.” – Adolf Hitler
• “Things are only impossible until they’re not.” – Cpt. Jean-Luc Picard
• “A newspaper consists of the same number of words, whether there be news in it or not.” – Henry Fielding
• “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” – Arthur C. Clarke
• “My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.” – Stephen Wright
• “Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!! What a ride!” – Lou Karnazes
• “If you ask me to write a song about the ocean, I’m stumped. But if you tell me to write a ballad about a woman in a red dress falling off her stool at three in the morning, I’m inspired.” – Stephen Sondheim
• “We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.” – Robert Wilensky
• “He hasn’t an enemy in the world – but all his friends hate him.” – Eddie Cantor
• “No matter what, I believe that in our quest to exploit the ‘We’ in Web, we must not sacrifice the ‘I’ in Internet.” – Kathy Sierra
• “The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.” – Frank Herbert
• “If you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, eventually one of them would write Hey Hey We’re the Monkees!” – unknown
• “There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.” – Marshall McLuhan
• “I don’t mind what Congress does, as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.” – Victor Hugo
• “There are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan or pool.” – L. M. Boyd
• “Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.” – Paul Valery
• “I struggle to be brief, and become obscure.” – Horace (Roman poet)
• “First you’re an unknown, then you write one book and move up to obscurity.” – Martin Myers
• “By all means marry; if you get a good wife you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one you’ll become a philosopher.” – Socrates
• “I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.” – John D. Rockefeller
• “Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.” – Franklin P. Jones
• “If life were fair, Elvis would still be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.” – Johnny Carson
• “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” – Flannery O’Conner

And to cap off this month’s edition of Great Quotes:

• “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” – Lewis Carroll (from Alice in Wonderland)

Did you know Liz Strauss at Successful Blog hosts “open mic” night every Tuesday night? It’s a lot like a giant get together over coffee (or whatever else you might happen to have on hand) where everyone gets together and chats about whatever subject Liz initially selects (it was winter vacation spots this time). It’s pretty freewheeling, and lots of fun; it’s a chat without the chat room.

I know that sounds weird, but you should try it sometime. The advantage over chatrooms is you can keep track of every conversation and even participate easily, via comments. Every Tuesday night, 7 pm CST (-6 GMT).

The reason I brought it up is because of belly button lint. Yep, you heard me – belly button lint.

You see, it’s like this…

Monique Attinger challenged us last Tuesday to give her various topics, and she would then write a post on her insurance blog about how that topic is related to insurance. (Monique sells… well, you know.) Barely had I managed to think up a few but doggone if Liz didn’t beat me to it by suggesting “Euclidian Geometry and insurance”, “sequins and insurance”, and “thixotropic and insurance”. Pretty quick on the keys there, Liz!

Anyway, I suggested “lawn darts and insurance”, “the Roaming Gnome and insurance”, “sushi and insurance”… and “belly button lint and insurance”.

Well, a tip of the hat and an OOB (Out Of the Box) Award goes to Monique, because sure enough, she actually wrote a post titled “Belly button lint and insurance“. I gotta tell ya, Monique: Great Job!!

If you’re sitting there thinking to yourself, there’s no way belly button lint can have anything with insurance, then think again! Do yourself a favor and read it for yourself.

Excellent thinking outside the box, Monique!

Just wondering… Seth Godin posted a good one recently that’s been bouncing ’round the cerebral cortex for a few days; it’s so short I’ll repeat here.

The article in the Times didn’t set out to say something vitally important about marketing, but it did. In starting off a profile it says,

“For the past couple of years Jun Kaneko, the ceramic artist…”

It didn’t say “a ceramic artist.” No. It said, “the ceramic artist”.

The entire tone of the piece changes. It’s so much better to be a ‘the’ not an ‘a’.

Which are you?

I don’t think it’s a trivial distinction. In fact, I’d argue that it’s worth an enormous amount of your time and your budget to focus on becoming the.

Pretty profound distinction, wouldn’t you say? So does that make me “the six-word stories guy”, at least for a few weeks? (But I wasn’t the only one, according to Google.) “The Middle Zone Musings guy”? “The strange and weird blue shark guy”? One thing’s for sure: I would be far more pleased to be a “the” than an “a“! (Aack! I think my grammar checker just exploded.)

But there’s yet another possibility: What if you’re “that” whatever? Is it better than, less than, or the same as being a “the“? I’ve been trying to recall instances of when someone or something is described as that, but my brain has turned to mush today, so no help there.

Just wondering… what’s your opinion?