Karius and Associates Blog

The door slammed as Timothy stormed out. “What a kid.” Marta thought dryly to herself. She knew that there were issues with his behavior. She knew she needed to be reigning him in.

She looked towards her husband dropped in front of the tv with a drink. Is this what I need in my life? Does this help me?

The stack of work on her table beckoned her. What about a job change. Maybe that was the answer, or a location change?

She sat down…and nothing changed.

We need to be motivated sometimes to do things both large and small, start an unpleasant conversation, make a dreaded telephone call, change our habits, change our jobs, change our location.

Decision making is the first step to that. When we stay at a place in our minds where we don’t make a decision, whether it’s because of fear of failure, or fear of change, or even fear of success, we limit ourselves.

I am encouraging everyone to make a decision today. Large or small. Make the dreaded phone call, start the worrying conversation, pick up the piece of paperwork that you haven’t dealt with yet.

And have a motivated day.

I’ve just finished re-reading Black Like Me. I read it when I was young but it’s had a very different effect on me this time around. It’s the story of John Howard Griffin, who, in 1959, changed the pigment of his skin and went into the South as a black man.

I believe that so much of the racism and prejudice still remains. In Saskatchewan, we see it primarily towards First Nations people, but the concept is the same in many races and cultures. When we believe a stereotype, we engage in the behaviors that follow. Mr. Griffin talks about the “hate stare”; a concious or concious look of hate thrown at people with different skin colors. He talks about the sets of beliefs that frame people’s perceptions, disallowing them from seeing others as they are.

Most poignantly for me, Mr. Griffin talks about seeing the people who hate, in other contexts; sitting down for dinner with their families, talking to their grandparents. When someone is hating us, for whatever reason, if we can see them as human, then there’s a chance that they might see us as human too.

Heroes small and large overcome racism. A smile, a handshake, finding out the answer to “What’s life like for you?”, without assumptions and regardless of color will help to disintegrate these stereotypes.

Please share your own stories of yourself or people you know making strides, large and small, to know people as they are - rather than as they might be perceived to be.

Have a thoughtful Friday!

A son is telling his mother what a bad new driver his sister is, carrying on about near misses, highway swerves and spin outs on gravel roads. His mother looks at him with terror and replies ‘Kid - don’t tell me about your driving lives, and I won’t ask about your sex lives.”

Questions:
Do we need to know EVERYTHING about our kids lives? Is this statement good parenting or bad parenting.
Does this idea transfer over into business? Does the boss need to know everything about what employees are doing in parts of their lives that don’t apply to business?
Are there parellels between parenting and supervising employees?

Have fun with this!
Kelly