Absorb what is useful

"Absorb what is useful, disregard the rest, Add what is uniquely your own." ~Bruce Lee

This is one of the best pieces of advice I have ever come across. It is important because everyone perceives the world differently. This means that one piece of information may be important to one person and completely useless to another. 

Personally I like to listen to as much information as I can. If the information that is being presented is not making some kind of movement within me, I move on to the next piece of information. If there is something I find interesting I will try to listen to it more than once. I want to listen to or read that information enough to absorb what it is trying to say to me.

That is another point I would like to suggest. The same piece of information could mean two totally different things to two different people. One might be thinking about the person who is talking and be focused on how the information changed the speakers life. The second person could be thinking about how the information could benefit the project he is currently working on.

When Bruce made this statement, he was talking about martial arts. The same techniques of different martial arts may not be as effective for one person as it is for another. He wanted his students to take the techniques that were beneficial for each person and build upon them. There is no point in spending time on a technique you can't do or don't do well when there are other techniques that will get you to your goal faster. Take what works for you and build upon it. That is my suggestion.

Do What You Know You Can Do

"Don't let what you can't do stop you from doing what you can do." ~ John Wooden

Sometimes there are just things you can't do. For the majority of us, we can't fly to the moon. That is something we can't do. Are we going to let that stop us from getting into orbit? Today it is possible to buy a ticket to get on a shuttle and spend a few days in space orbiting the Earth. The only thing it will cost you is money and a bit of astronaut training.

I think sometimes we have it set in our mind that we cannot do certain things. Maybe you think you can't speak in front of large groups of people. That is not true. It might take some practice and a lot of self focus, talking yourself into getting up in front of those people. Once you are up there, I think you will find that people will be willing to listen to you. If there are those in the audience who are not interested in what you have to say or actually try to make fun of you, that is OK. Those are not the people you are speaking to. You are speaking to the people who are going to get something out of what you have to say. If you don't get up there, then the people you are there to speak to will not get the benefits of learning about what you are going to speak about.

Most of the time the things you think you believe you can't do are just that beliefs. You can change those beliefs. All you have to do is sit down and start writing down that you can do these things. Think about it. When you write something, you make that thing concrete in your mind. If you can make that concrete in your mind then you will be better prepared to do the things that you once thought you could not do.

Go Ahead and Do It

"If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission." - Admiral Grace Hopper

This quote almost feels like bad advice. But upon second look, I don't think that it is. The admiral is telling you that if faced with a choice of making a decision to do something without permission, if it is a good idea, then you should go ahead and do it. It is better to take the chance of being wrong than to miss an opportunity when you can grasp it.

I think this quote is great advice for leaders. It is something that anyone in management is faced with on a regular basis. If you are left in charge, you will have to make decisions without the leadership of your superiors. That is why they gave you a management roll.

I work retail and I am in charge of a crew who stocks shelves. I often have to decide what to do with stock that comes in that we don't have space for in the normal spots. Sometimes this will lead me to make a special display for upcoming sales just to get the stock out of the stockroom. Now I make these decisions knowing that my boss may come in the next morning and tell me to take down what I have taken the time to put together. Sometimes I fins that my work is for nothing. But, other times the work is noticed and appreciated and it leaves my stockroom clean and empty, just the way it is supposed to be.

When the Admiral made this statement, I wonder how many of his decisions without permissions dealt with the life and death of his soldiers. I don't know if I could make those kinds of decisions. It takes a stronger man that me to put someone's life at risk to do a particular job. That is why he is a Military Admiral and I am a Retail Manager.