want to share with you a basic concept which you will hear me repeat over and over—namely, that failure is an event, not a person; yesterday really did end last night. Today is a brand new day, and it gives us another choice to do with it whatever we wish to do.
One of the things I'm going to cover in the series is how do you get along with other people? How do you get along with that bloodsucker of a boss who wants to squeeze every ounce of blood out of you and only pays you minimum wage because it’s the law? How do you get along with that lazy, irresponsible employee who wants all the benefits and does none of the work, who thinks they ought to show up when they want to, where they want to, how they want to and do what they want to?
How do you get along with that man I’m married to that no human being alive could ever tolerate? How do you get along with that woman? How do you handle that irresponsible, lazy teenager? How do you get along with all of these people?
How do you handle a job you hate? Now, I know you love your job, but there are a lot of people who have jobs they’re just not very excited about. I was going through the Dallas Fort-Worth airport, through the security bit, and this young man was there and I said, “Thank you very much. How ya’ doin’?”
He said, “Just awful! I hate this job!”
And I smiled at him and said, “Well, you know, that’s interesting. I'm certain that there are literally thousands of people in Dallas, Texas, alone who would love to have this job that you absolutely hate.”
The young man did a quick double-take and said, “You know, I never thought about that.”
I said, “Well, don't you really think you ought to think about it just for a moment?”
How do you learn to love a job you hate, and if you can’t learn to love it, how do you get to be productive?
Let me tell you a story. It’s about a guy named Richard Oates. Now, Richard Oates was a superintendent with one of the nation's largest homebuilders. For five years he worked with them; the last three years he was under such intense pressure that he said, “You know, I hated Sundays.”
I said, “Well, why on earth did you hate Sundays?”
He said, “Because Sunday was the last day before I would have to get back in the rat race, and I was under so much pressure I was stressed out to an incredible degree.”
In the five years he was there he only missed four days because of illness. In the last three years he was there, he was never late a single time, regardless of the weather, regardless of how he felt, regardless of what the car trouble was. He never used the complete vacation time. The last year he was there he was recognized as one of their top superintendents; would undoubtedly have gotten the award as being the best, but he had, in the meantime, accepted a better position, and they just don't give those awards to people when they have left the company they were with.
Perhaps the most amazing thing, though, is that although he had four hundred home units that he was in charge of, fifteen to twenty homes going up at all times, in the last ten months he built and closed eighty-three homes without missing a single move-in date. Now that is absolutely unbelievable. I asked him, “Well, how’d you do it?” He said, “Well, first of all, you know, there is a question of survival. I do have responsibilities; I just love to eat. I have a responsibility to my wife. I have other responsibilities. I had a responsibility to my company. I’m known as ‘a company man’. My responsibility was to give them the very best I had, regardless of how I might be feeling at the moment.”
Now, folks, that’s what we call character. Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed. That is accepting responsibility. He said, “Not only that, but I had a mentor, Stan Sermonak, who had really taken me under his wing, had made it possible for me to get this particular job, had been my mentor and encourager. I did not want to let him down.”
Now what is all of that saying, folks? There are some absolutes in life.
So, how do you change all those people I’m talking about? You don’t. You change you. And when you change you, that’s when the world begins to change. See, God said to build a better world and I said, “How? It’s such a cold and lonely place, and I’m so small and useless. There’s nothing I can do.”
But God, in all His wisdom said, “Just build a better you.” That’s what this is about—building a better you, because you’ve got to be before you can do, you’ve got to do before you can have. You’ve got such a wide range of choices and we are filled with them.
I read a story of some twins. One of them was an alcoholic. One of them was enormously successful. Their father was an alcoholic. In separate interviews they asked the alcoholic twin, “How did it happen that you became an alcoholic?”
He said, “I had no choice. You see, my father was an alcoholic.”
They asked the very successful young man, “How’d you do it?”
He said, “I had no choice. You see, my father was an alcoholic. I didn’t want to be like him.”
The choice, you see, is ours and we go through life with that.
Now as you can tell, I do tell a lot of stories. I’m going to share a lot of philosophy with you. Philosophy simply means the love of wisdom. One of the things I will say over and over is that you can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. I’ll be quoting an awful lot of people. I’ll be quoting Fred Smith, I’ll be quoting John Maxwell, John Johnson, Mary Kay, Mary Crowley, Solomon, Lincoln, Confucius, Emerson, St. Augustine, Christ, Helen Keller, Mother Teresa, Dr. Forest Tennant, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Martin Luther King, George Washington Carver. I’ll be quoting Mahatma Gandhi and many, many others. I try to give credit when somebody gives me information. I do that for three reasons. Number one, it is the right thing to do. Number two, it indicates I’ve done my research. Number three, if it’s wrong I can always say, “You know, that fella ought to have known better than that!”
Let me say to you without any fear of error that you were born to win. But in order to be the winner that you were born to be you’ve got to plan to win, you’ve got to prepare to win, and then and only then can you legitimately expect to win. Dr. Lewis Terman, in 1920 at Stanford University, started a study on 1440 gifted youngsters. When he retired, another professor was assigned to them. They followed them to the end of their life. Many of them were extremely successful; brilliant young men and women. Many of them went on to great success. Not a single one attributed their IQ to their success. What they attributed to their success was their ability to focus on the issue at hand. You see, a lot of people, when they’re working on the job, are thinking about other things. They’re thinking about the family. When they’re with the family, they’re thinking about the job, and they’re not doing either job very effectively. You really need to be able to focus on what’s going on.
Now, let me simply say this. You were born to win. But you’ve got to plan, you’ve got to prepare and you’ve got to expect to win. Bobby Knight, who has won three national championships at basketball at Indiana University, says that the will to win is nothing without the will to prepare to win. In the National Football League—and I’m not a football expert; the only thing I know about football is that when the official calls a foul on the Cowboys, he is wrong! But I do know one other thing about it, and that is this: In the last two minutes of the half and in the last two minutes of the game, they score twenty percent of all of the points that are scored during the entire 60 minutes. And
