"It might have been."

"I should have."

"I could have."

"I wish I had."

"If only I had given a little extra."

Never leave till tomorrow which you can do today.

--Benjamin Franklin

I am sure all winners wanted to be procrastinators but never got around to it.

When people say, "I will do it one of these days," you can be sure it means none of these days.

Some people keep waiting for all lights to turn green before they leave home. That will never happen and they fail even before they start. That is sad.

16*Stop procrastinating: Isn't it time that we put off putting things off?

Step 3: Develop an Att.i.tude of Grat.i.tude

Count your blessings, not your troubles. Take time to smell the roses. It is not uncommon to hear that someone, because of an accident or illness, became blind or paralyzed but won a million dollars in settlement. How many of us would like to trade places with that person? Not many. We are so focused on complaining about things we don't have that we lose sight of the things we have. There is a lot to be thankful for.

When I say count your blessings, not your troubles, the message is not to become complacent. If complacence was the message you got, then I would be guilty of faulty communication and you of selective listening.

To give you an example of selective listening, let me share with you a story I heard about a medical doctor who was invited as a guest speaker to address a group of alcoholics.

He wanted to make a demonstration that would be powerful enough to make people realize that alcohol was injurious to their health. He had two containers, one with pure distilled water and one with pure alcohol. He put an earthworm into the distilled water and it swam beautifully and came up to the top. He put another earthworm into the alcohol and it disintegrated in front of everyone's eyes. He wanted to prove that this was what alcohol did to the insides of our body. He asked the group what the moral of the story was and one person from behind said, "If you drink alcohol you won't have worms in your stomach." Was that the message? Of course not. That was selective listening--we hear what we want to hear and not what is being said.

Many of our blessings are hidden treasures--count your blessings and not your troubles.

Step 4: Get into a Continuous Education Program

Let's get some myths out of the way. It is a general belief that we get educated in schools and colleges. I run seminars in many different countries and ask my audiences all the time, "Do we really get educated in schools and colleges?" Generally, there is a consensus that some do but most don't. We receive a lot of information in schools and colleges. Don't get me wrong. We do need information to be educated. But we need to know the true meaning of education.

Intellectual education influences the head and values based education influences the heart. In fact, education that does not train the heart can be dangerous. If we want to build character in our offices, homes and society, we must achieve a minimum level of moral and ethical literacy. Education that builds fundamental traits of character--such as honesty, compa.s.sion, courage, persistence and responsibility--is absolutely essential.

We don't need more academic education; we need more values education. I would stress that a person who is morally educated will be a lot better equipped to move up in life or succeed than a morally bankrupt person with excellent academic qualifications.

Character building and teaching values and ethics come in the formative years because a child is not born with this knowledge.

Education Without Values

True education is training of both the head and the heart. An uneducated thief may steal from the freight car but an educated one may steal the entire railroad.

17*Universities are turning out highly skilled barbarians because we don't provide a framework of values to young people, who more and more are searching for it.

--Steven Muller, President, Johns Hopkins University

We need to compete for knowledge and wisdom, not for grades. Knowledge is piling up facts, wisdom is simplifying it. One could have good grades and a degree without learning much. The most important thing one can learn is to "learn to learn." People confuse education with the ability to memorize facts. Education of the mind without morals creates a menace to society.

EDUCATION DOES NOT MEAN GOOD JUDGEMENT.

There is a story about a man who sold hot dogs by the roadside. He was illiterate, so he never read newspapers . He was hard of hearing, so he never listened to the radio. His eyes were weak, so he never watched television. But enthusiastically, he sold lots of hot dogs. His sales and profit went up. He ordered more meat and got himself a bigger and a better stove. As his business was growing, the son, who had recently graduated from college, joined his father.

Then something strange happened. The son asked, "Dad, aren't you aware of the great recession that is coming our way?" The father replied, "No, but tell me about it." The son said, "The international situation is terrible. The domestic is even worse. We should be prepared for the coming bad time." The man thought that since his son had been to college, read the papers, and listened to the radio, he ought to know and his advice should not be taken lightly. So the next day, the father cut down his order for the meat and buns, took down the sign and was no longer enthusiastic. Very soon, fewer and fewer people bothered to stop at his hot dog stand. And his sales started coming down rapidly. The father said to his son, "Son, you were right. We are in the middle of a recession. I am glad you warned me ahead of time."

What is the moral of the story?

1. Many times we confuse intelligence with good judgment.

2. A person may have high intelligence but poor judgment.

3. Choose your advisers carefully and use your judgment.

4. A person can and will be successful with or without formal education if they have the 5 Cs: ? character ? commitment ? conviction ? courtesy ? courage 5. The tragedy is that there are many walking encyclopedias who are living failures.

Intelligence is quickness to leam. Ability is the skill to apply what is learned. Competence is the ability and the desire to apply what is learned. Desire is the att.i.tude that makes a skillful person competent. Many skillful people are incompetent. Ability without the right att.i.tude is wasted.

The first duty of a university is to teach wisdom, not trade; character, not technicalities.

18*

--Winston Churchill Educated Whom, then, do I call educated?

First, those who manage well the circ.u.mstances which they encounter day by day; and those who can judge situations appropriately as they arise and rarely miss the suitable course of action.

Next, those who are honorable in their dealings with all men, bearing easily what is unpleasant or offensive in others, and being as reasonable with their a.s.sociates as is humanly possible.

Furthermore, those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not unduly overcome by their misfortunes, bearing up under them bravely and in a manner worthy of our common nature.

Most important of all, those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves, but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober-minded men, rejoicing no more in the good things that have come to them through chance than in those which through their own nature and intelligence are theirs since birth.

Those who have a character which is in accord, not with one of these things, but with all of them these are educated--possessed of all the virtues.

--Socrates (47~399 B.C.) In a nutsh.e.l.l, educated persons are those who can choose wisely and courageously under any circ.u.mstances. If they have the ability to choose between wisdom and foolishness, between good and bad, between virtuousness and vulgarities, regardless of the academic degrees they have, then they are educated.

An expert is someone who knows all the answers if you ask the right questions.

What is a Broad-Based Education?

, Some animals in a forest decided to start a school. The students included a bird, a squirrel, a fish, a dog , a rabbit & a mentally r.e.t.a.r.ded eel. A board was formed and it was decided that flying, tree climbing, swimming, and burrowing would be part of the curriculum in order to give a broad-based education. All animals were required to take all subjects.

The bird was excellent at flying and was getting A's but when it came to burrowing, it kept breaking its beak and wings and started failing. Pretty soon, it started making C's in flying and of course in tree climbing and swimming it was getting F's. The squirrel was great at tree climbing and was getting A's, but was failing in swimming. The fish was the best swimmer but couldn't get out of the water and got F's in everything else. The dog didn't join the school, stopped paying taxes and kept fighting with the administration to include barking as part of the curriculum. The rabbit got A's in burrowing but tree climbing was a real problem. It kept falling and landing on its head, suffered brain damage, and soon couldn't even burrow properly and got C's in that too.

The mentally r.e.t.a.r.ded eel, who did everything half as well became the valedictorian of the cla.s.s. The board was happy because everybody was getting a broad-based education.

What a broad-based education really means is that the student is prepared for life, without losing their areas of specialization or competence.

19*We are All Gifted with Some Strengths

The small size of the hummingbird, weighing only a tenth of an ounce, gives it the flexibility to perform complicated maneuvers, such as beating its wings 75 times a second. This enables the hummingbird to drink nectar from flowers while hovering but it cannot soar, glide or hop. The ostrich, at 300 pounds, is the largest bird but it can't fly.

However, its legs are so strong that it can run at up to 50 miles per hour, taking strides of 12--15 feet.

Ignorance

Illusion of knowledge is not education, but ignorance. Foolish people have a strange kind of confidence which comes only with ignorance.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn to do things the right way.

--Benjamin Franklin

There is nothing wrong with ignorance, but making a career out of it is stupidity. Some people acc.u.mulate ignorance and they confuse it with education. Ignorance is not bliss. It is misery, tragedy, poverty, and sickness. If ignorance were bliss, how come not more people are happy? If a little knowledge is dangerous, so is a lot of ignorance which leads to pettiness, fear, dogmatism, egotism, and prejudice. Wisdom is nothing more than dispelling ignorance.

We live in an information age. It is estimated that the amount of knowledge is doubling every year. With information so readily available, it is easy to dispel ignorance. It is sad to see that we are taught everything but the most essential things. We are taught the three R's (reading, writing, arithmetic), but what good is intellectual education without understanding human dignity and compa.s.sion?

Schools are a fountain of knowledge: some students come to drink , some to sip and others just to gargle.

Common sense

Education and knowledge without common sense has little meaning. Common sense is the ability to see things as they are and do them as they ought to be done.

We are born with five senses touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing. But successful people have a sixth sense common sense. Common sense is gained in spite of, not necessarily as a result of, education. The best education without common sense is worthless. An abundance of common sense is called wisdom.