The Workedge Blog
Mark's RemarksWinning Over Worry
Dr. David Rosmarin…made the intriguing observation that people who worry usually do not have high levels of anxiety. A worrier experiences the illusion that he can control outcomes. The fact is there’s much more outside of the worrier’s control than he would want to believe. Worriers mistakenly think they are in control of much more than they are.
Don’t Do What You Don’t Do Well
One of the most critical decisions in television history and for my personal entertainment was made over 60 years ago. A young television writer and sometime actor for a popular TV variety series in the 1950s decided to write a situation comedy in which he would star…
Never Discouraged
As baseball season winds down, I am reminded of one of my favorite stories. It seems that a man stopped to watch a Little League Baseball game. He asked one of the youngsters what the score was.
“We’re behind 18 to nothing,” the kid answered. “Well,” said the man, “I must say you don’t look discouraged.”
“Discouraged?” the boy said, puzzled. “Why should we be discouraged? We haven’t come to bat yet.”
Perspective
One hundred years ago,* the bodies of two men were pulled from the Hudson River near New York City on the same day. One was a poor man who had won $5000 in a sweepstakes contest. He had gone on a spending spree and spent it all.
The other body was that of a wealthy man who had lost all but $5000 in the stock market. Down to his last $5000, he jumped in the river to end it all!
Perspective makes a lot of difference.
How much or how little we have matters little; what matters much is our attitude toward what we have.
Mark
Author of Holy Chaos How To Walk with God in a Frenzied World
https://www.amazon.com/sk=mark+edge&crid=3B1BM6W3LHOG0&sprefix=%2Caps%2C137&ref=nb_sb_ss_recent_2_0_recent
*The source of this story has been lost to history.
Life is Like a Boxing Match
Life is like boxing; you can’t leave the ring just because you’re getting hit. The fact is we all face trials and tribulations. And I must admit, I face certain kinds of adversity where I tend to feel self-pity, at least on the inside. If that happens, I lean into frustration and anger, which is never good. The problem is that in life, we have to expect the challenges.
A Successful Flop
I watched the high jump the other night on the Olympic TV coverage. I was amazed at how high the contestants could jump. They also all jumped using the same technique. When I was a boy, no one jumped that way. Let me explain.
In high school, Dick Fosbury was tall, skinny, and not a very good athlete. He liked sports, though, and he tried several before settling on the high jump in track and field.
He attempted many well-known methods as a high jumper, including the western roll, the straddle, and the scissors. At last, he did something weird; he approached the bar with great speed and jumped—head facing up and back facing down—with his head leading the way over the bar. Several officials initially protested, but since Fosbury jumped off one foot, the jump was ruled legal.
Great success did not arrive quickly. Fosbury spent years working on his technique. No one—NO ONE—felt inspired to imitate it. Many ridiculed him for it.
Finally, during college, he became one of the top fifty high jumpers in the world. In 1968, he made the U.S. Olympic team. Incredibly, in the Olympic games in Mexico City later that year, Fosbury won the high jump, setting an Olympic record of seven feet four inches.
Little by little, the style caught on. In 1972, Juri Tarmak won the Olympic gold medal for deploying the straddle technique. Since then, every winning jumper has used the Fosbury Flop. For years, it has been the standard in high jumping.
Last year Dick died of lymphoma. Today, you can look at his entry in Wikipedia and find this for the first sentence, “Richard Douglas Fosbury…was an American high jumper, who is considered one of the most influential athletes in the history of track and field.”
Not bad.
Sometimes, a leader is so far ahead of the pack that people cannot comprehend where he is going. If that is the case, the leader must build bridges with people, persevere, and lead on.