It isn’t easy taking risks, especially if the outcome could go either way. If you’re a public speaker, a business owner or occupy a position in which you are judged by the public, every decision you make will have some kind of impact on your success.  (Photo:  redfriday)

There’s much talk about the importance of carefully nurturing a public persona, creating an air of professionalism if you will. But at what cost? Do people hire you because you appear polished with perfect videos, perfectly created websites, perfect blogs?  Or do they hire you because of your authenticity?  Or both?

When I gave my presentation to a group of engineers last week, I started off by telling them that although they’ve experienced much adversity on the job ranging from unreasonable people, next-to-impossible deadlines and on the job stress, nothing compared to the video below.

If you are viewing this article via email subscription or RSS, please click on the title of this article to be led back to the blog so you can see the video:

Next time you think you have problems, remain calm and be thankful you’re not as crazy as you think you might be!

Brad Baggett of Juice of Champions recently tagged me in a new meme about thinking differently that was started by Peter at I Will Change Your Life. 

It took me a while to get around to it because I wanted to make sure that if I got involved, I’d be bringing value to the readers of Adversity University.  Memes are a great way to build community and link love both of which are perfectly wonderful and valid reasons to start one.  However, there are some out there that I perceive as nothing more than empty vehicles focused solely on bringing the originator a lot of link love in the hopes of building traffic and more subscribers for their sites. 

I’d like to introduce you to someone who has truly made the best of his situation.  His name is Nick Vujicic of Melbourne, Australia.  

Please take a few moments of your time and watch as he goes about his daily activities.  It will truly put things in perspective for you.  It certainly did for me!

If you want to learn more about him, check out his website and see for yourself what this young man is aspiring to do. He dreams of not only becoming financially independent, appearing on Oprah but also wants to spread God’s message to people around the globe!

Everyone once in a while I stumble onto a story that I did not write but want to share with others. This is one of them. I chose to share it with you because it reminds me so much of what my fifth grade teacher did for me so many years ago. The Friendship Story has been floating around the Internet for some time now but I have no idea who wrote it. If you own the copyright to it or are the original composer of the piece, and wish to claim credit for it or want it taken down, please contact me immediately. Please also inform me if you are aware of its origin.

I am a subscriber to my mentor’s electronic newsletter that he sends to all kinds of leaders around the world. He is Howard Putnam, former CEO of Southwest Airlines.

In today’s newsletter, he had a very interesting thing to say about “winners and losers” that pretty much complement my thinking on this subject. Without further ado, here is the newsletter, reprinted with his express permission. Thanks Howard.

Leadership: “It Isn’t Winner Take All”

Volume 2 Number 24

by Howard Putnam

Reading a post by Steve Olson led me to a set of humorous real estate pictures. You know I love writing about how life is colored by the way we perceive things. The next time you sell a piece of real estate, bear in mind how we all can be looking at the same thing yet perceive it in different ways. Check it out:

http://www.toilette-humor.com/home_building/your_home.shtml

I have several new posts coming up, many of which will involve my trademark short stories at Adversity University. One of them will chronicle a flight that almost cut my life short. It will be called “The Flight That Almost Killed Me.” It’s about what happened when I rented a small plane and flew myself back to Michigan after spending the Christmas holidays with my family in upstate New York. If you’ve liked my writing style up to this point, I think you’ll like this one too.

While I believe that there is no such thing as a mistake but rather a series of experiences, that doesn’t stop me from wanting divine confirmation, reassuring me that I made the right decision with something I want to accomplish. Don’t we all wish we knew what the ramifications of our decisions would be like, ahead of time, especially when the outcome was uncertain?

No matter how many times you’ve taken a chance and went with your instincts, you’re still going to experience some level of “wonderment” (I just made that up), wondering whether the decision you made was going to lead you down the path you envisioned for yourself. Ever been there? Me too.

The other day I was reading an article somewhere on the Internet (I regret that I did not save it for future reference) on whether speakers, writers, authors, coaches and other so-called personal development experts follow what they preach. In other words, are they “walking the talk”?

How about you? Do you walk the talk? Do you find yourself doling out advice and then following it yourself? Or do you preach one thing but behave in a contrary manner?

In March 2007, I took it upon myself to share some thoughts in “No Such Thing as Competition.” It was about how we are trained to believe in competition whether we’re in business for ourselves, seeking to climb the corporate ladder or get ahead.

Tonight, I have an another opportunity to touch upon this subject. I stumbled onto a very informative blog called “A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing” by JA Konrath. Even though Konrath happens to be a mystery-thriller author, his material applies to everyone who dreams of getting published. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. While I realize some of you may not necessarily want to be an author, I am sharing one of his articles because it touches upon the competition issue. We’ll get to his piece in a moment.

YOU.

Yes, there are circumstances outside our control causing adversity but the originator is usually YOU. Think about it.

What thoughts did you allow to circulate in your mind and what decisions did you make as a result from those thoughts? Did you take necessary action or did you procrastinate? Did you allow self defeating thoughts permeate your way of being and therefore attract a mountain of debt, the wrong people in your life or perhaps gain unwanted weight?

Among the top five ways I deal with adversity is taking responsibility. See the post about Adversity University’s interactive tagging experiment here.

Yesterday I wrote about how I dealt with a literary agency’s rejection over my book proposal for That’s Right, Stephen! At the end of that story, I promised to cut and paste an article (”Why Does an Agent Pass?”) written by a Rachel Vater from the Lowensten-Yost Literary Agency.

It’s about what goes on inside the mind of literary agents like herself who are faced with piles of query letters and book proposals from prospective authors seeking representation every week. It’s quite interesting. The source was taken right from her blog.

Take a look:

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Wow, what a week.

Isn’t it interesting how sometimes everything is flowing easily and effortlessly where you feel nothing could go wrong and then BAM! WHAM! you are hit with a most unexpected jolt, literally turning your world upside down?

Remember the miraculous encounter I had with a local woman (Katina) who was in the audience at one of my speaking engagements earlier this year? She unexpectedly volunteered to help me whip my book proposal in shape for her literary agent’s review and consideration. Her thinking throughout my presentation that night was: Hey, Stephen where’s your book?

Click here to read more about that fateful evening.

James Arthur Ray, author of “Science of Success,” put it rather eloquently in his book. Your unconscious and conscious minds are like the garden and gardener. The conscious mind is the gardener where thoughts from the outer world are formed while the unconscious is like the inner garden where they are deposited on a daily basis. We plant seeds of conscious thoughts in the unconscious mind and then if we choose to do so, water them with new thoughts, emotions, feelings and actions. Interesting analogy, isn’t it?

What happens if our conscious mind is left to its own devices on autopilot? The unconscious becomes strewn with weeds and eventually becomes unwieldy, making it difficult to attract what you want in life.

When you make a decision to commit to a lifestyle change, you are in effect “metabolizing” your thoughts on a deep cellular level, leading you to change your way of being. How you think, act and behave are permanent altered.

Ever since “The Secret” hit mainstream consciousness, a lot of people have misunderstood the principles behind the law of attraction. They think it’s about sitting in their favorite recliner and imagining themselves being, doing and becoming the things they want to attract.

Yes, that’s part of it but there’s more. A lot more.

It involves elevating your level of consciousness and becoming more aware of your thought process, examining your belief system and actively changing what doesn’t work.