Siemens People Builders

Stop All Criticism
Criticism never changes a thing. It leads to defensiveness, non-listening, no
problem solving, and disaster. Refuse to criticize yourself and others. Accept yourself
exactly as you are. Do the same for others. Everybody changes. When you criticize
yourself, your changes are negative. When you approve of yourself, your changes
are positive. The same is true for others

Don’t Scare Yourself
Stop terrorizing yourself with your thoughts. It’s a dreadful way to live. Find a mental image that
gives you pleasure (mine are mountains and oceans), and immediately switch your scary
thought to a pleasure thought.

Be Gentle And Kind And Patient
Be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself. Be patient with yourself as you learn the new
ways of thinking. Treat yourself as you would someone you really love.

Be Kind To Your Mind
Self hatred is only hating your own thoughts. Don’t hate yourself for having the thoughts.
Gently change your thoughts. Remember the proverb: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

Praise Yourself
Criticism breaks down the inner spirit. Praise builds it up. Praise yourself as much as
you can. Samuel Taylor Cooleridge says, “The happiness of life is made up of minute
fractions–the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look or heartfelt
compliment.” Tell yourself how well you are doing with every little thing.

Support Yourself
Find ways to support yourself. Reach out to friends and allow them to help you. Be
strong enough to ask for help when you need it. Great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave,
and impossible to forget.

Be Loving To Your Negatives
Acknowledge that you created them to fulfill a need. Now, you are finding new, positive
ways to fulfill those needs. So, lovingly release the old negative patterns.

Take Care Of Your Body
Learn about nutrition. What kind of fuel does your body need to have optimum energy
and vitality? Learn about exercise. What kind of exercise can you enjoy? Cherish and
revere the temple you live in.

Mirror Work
Life is like a mirror. If you frown at it, it frowns back. If you smile at it, it returns the greeting.
Look into your eyes often. Express this growing sense of love you have for yourself.
Forgive yourself as you look into the mirror. Talk to your parents as you look into the
mirror. Forgive them too. At least once a day say: “I love you, I really love you.”

Love Yourself
Do It Now - Don’t wait until you get well, or lose the weight, or get the new job, or the
new relationship. Begin now — and do the best you can. As was said in the movie,
Dead Poet Society, “Carpe Diem!” Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to
the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think.

If you don’t think every day is a good day, just try missing one. And if you don’t think you
are a person of value and worth, just think of the emptiness so many would feel if you
were not in their lives.

Treat yourself and other RIGHT today!

And these are just my thoughts on a Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving!

THE PEOPLE BUILDER,

Steve Siemens, CSP
Siemens People Builders

The power of words is not only amazing, it is powerful. It is a power that many people don’t understand or use properly.

Words begin a marriage and words finalize a divorce.

Words create a mental picture and words destroy the image.

Words win an election and words lose the race.

Words cause people to support and they cause people to withdraw.

Words start a war and words end a war.

Words create action and lack of words creates apathy.

Words reflect the person and the person reflects the words.

Here are five principles to remember when you are thinking about words and their power.

Wisdom is not in words, it is meaning within the words.

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you can get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” –Tom Stoppard

Carefully choose your words focusing more on the meaning than the word. The goal of every person should be wisdom in words. You become a very powerful communicator when the words mean what you say.

Observe your tone, timing, and total picture.

People often respond to our attitudes and actions more than our words. Many petty conflicts occur because people use the wrong tone of voice. Timing is best summed up by Lady Dorothy Nevill: “The real art of conversation is not only to say the right things in the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

Resist saying everything you know or think.

A saying that sits on my desk reminds me daily of this point: “Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it.” If you say everything you know or think, you’ll think you know way more than you do plus the people you are speaking to will know the truth.

Deliver your thoughts.

To deliver your thoughts the best and in the most effective way, ask, don’t tell. When you ask questions to deliver your thoughts, people will tell you what you would have told them, only it came from them, not you. When people think it is their idea, they buy it.

Remember “the delivery” percentages: 7% is verbal; 38% is vocal; and 55% is visual, or body language. Work hard to deliver your thoughts using the right delivery.

Speak less and listen more.

As a society, we can’t stand silence. We thrive on noise. That makes us think we must fill in the pauses of silence. If you don’t believe this, just evaluate all the noise in your life. How many of us fill the silence using radio and television just for noise?

Two ears and one mouth should be enough of a visual reminder for us to get it. Since many of us don’t, we need to know that listening is a learned behavior and it’s a behavior worth learning.

Words are remembered long after actions are forgotten. Don’t underestimate the power of words. Don’t over-estimate your ability to use them properly. Comfort or discomfort comes from how we use them, how we communicate them, how we hear them.

Words make the difference or words cause the difference. Understanding the difference determines your power.

And these are just my thoughts on a Friday morning.

Steve Siemens, CSP
The People Builder

Here’s a challenge: for the next 14 days, begin each morning by writing down eight things you are grateful for in your life. Why eight things you ask? Simple! For the first eight hours of your day, whether at work or at home, focus on one gratitude per hour. If you will do this exercise with a spouse, trusted friend, or co-worker, it will double the blessings. You will also be amazed at how fast your day will go because of the underlying sense of gratitude. You will respond to people better, you will handle challenges more creatively, and you’ll smile a lot more often.

Whom are you grateful to have in your life? Do these people realize the extent of your gratitude?

What are you grateful to have in your life? Do you regularly remember how blessed you are?

Gratitude makes your fears disappear and the blessings re-appear.

When my children were my responsibility living under my roof, I told them on a regular basis, “If you don’t have something to be grateful for, make up your minds there is something wrong with you!”

Gratitude is an attitude – it is a philosophy – it is a way of life. It is the way we were intended to live.

When we have a total understanding of gratitude, things aren’t colored by stress, inconvenience, obstacles, or set-backs. We accept all of these as a part of the process and understand the pot at the end of the rainbows is filled with peace, understanding, hope, confidence, and stability.

Gratitude turns a crappy hour into contagious minutes. Gratitude turns a burden into a blessing.

Gratitude turns a heap into hope and with gratitude, you stop hoping and you start hopping.

Gratitude is the difference-maker, the deal-maker, the confidence builder and it is the energizer. It turns problems into gifts and the interruptions in our lives become purpose-filled moments.

We live at a time when we have so much and act as though we have so little. Our garages are full, our closets are overflowing, our “stuff” quotient is off the charts and yet tomorrow, we’ll buy more.

May I suggest that when we begin our day with an attitude of gratitude, we’ll appreciate the journey, learn the lessons, and live abundantly in the process.

Gratitude, is one of the best medicines, maybe prescriptions, you’ll never buy. In the assignment of 14 days and 8 hours, we’ll discover how full and rich our lives are every day. And if you already know that fact, it will serve as a good reminder.

Gratitude is a daily commitment. When we fill ourselves daily with gratitude, we’ll have something meaningful to give to others. It will be a double blessing and a reminder of that ageless truth, it’s more blessed to give than receive.

And these are just my thoughts on a Tuesday morning.

Steve Siemens, CSP
The People Builder

I have lived with a simple philosophy and commitment that you should appreciate people
while they are living. Saying “thank you”, “I love you”, “I need you”, “having you in my life has been a blessing”, or any words that convey heartfelt gratitude and appreciation should happen daily.

Recently I read about Sue Williams, a lady I’ve never met but would have loved to,
and what she taught her children. She said, “We should give our roses to the living and not
save them for the dead. When a person dies, everyone who loved them will cancel their other obligations, send a big bouquet of flowers, jump on an airplane and fly across the country to look at their dead friend in a box.” She waited a moment for this to soak in. “If I’m going to cancel my plans, buy roses and travel because of friendship, I’m going to do it while my friend is alive to smell the flowers and enjoy the adventure with me. And if my friend passes before I do, I’ll sit quietly at home and remember the trip we took together.”
Once a year, Sue Williams would treat a friend to a small adventure, a 3 or 4-day trip together to some place interesting. These are the people Sue Williams cares about too much to attend their funerals.

Barb and I have done that. We’ve taken special people on special trips, done crazy things here at home with and for our friends, made unannounced, silly phone calls, uniquely celebrated victories and defeats, and enjoyed every minute. We’ll continue to do that. I even do these kinds of things for Barb, our children, and their families. I’ll continue to do that for family and friends until I die at 110 or beyond.

Stephen Levine puts it in perspective: “If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?”

A part of every day for me is appreciating, thanking, and recognizing how blessed I am to have people like you in my life. So when you get a “balcony” note, an e-mail, flowers, a phone call, a visit, or a trip, just remember you were a part of my personal mission statement on that day.

And these are just my thoughts on a Wednesday morning.

Steve Siemens, CSP
The People Builder

The 92-year-old, petite, well-poised, and proud lady, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coiffed and makeup perfectly applied, even though she is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today.

Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary.  After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready.

As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window.
“I love it,” she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.

“Mrs. Jones, you haven’t seen the room … just wait.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied.

“Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged… it’s how I arrange my mind.

I already decided to love it. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up.

I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.

Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open I’ll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away just for this time in my life.  Old age is like a bank account: you withdraw from what you’ve put in.  So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories. Thank you for your part in filling my memory bank. I am still depositing.”

Remember five simple rules to be happy:
1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.

Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

And these are just my thoughts on a Monday morning!

Steve Siemens, CSP
THE PEOPLE BUILDER