I am presently sitting in a coffee shop in Jackson, Mississippi. I am on a road trip with my wife, daughter, and granddaughter. We have just left Duluth, Georgia where we connected with my grandson. He competed in the National Junior Judo Competition. He travelled with his team. They had a great tournament. This isn't a diary entry or travel log. It is the account of a memory creation.
I have to begin by saying that for me driving several thousand miles rates really high on the gag me meter. I know some may love it but it just doesn't work for me. I think it is a scar from childhood. With that said, here I am. Creating memories is not about convenience. It is about catching moments. In our case, Savannah, my granddaughter, will be leaving for college in two weeks. I experienced my fifty-eighth birthday this week but that is nothing compared to knowing you have a granddaughter going to college. I am still trying to get over it.
Getting to spend several days with Savannah has been special. We have laughed a lot. We have gotten to sing a lot. We have eaten far more than we needed to eat. We have been able to celebrate her. She has gotten to do pretty much anything she wanted. We have spoiled her. It has been great.
Then, there is Caleb. He didn't really expect that his mom would be able to make this trip. Even though this national competition was important to him, she just is physically limited travel wise. So, we created a bed in the back of a rented SUV and made it work for her. He really didn't think we had the time or money to make it. So, you can probably imagine how he felt when he saw us just before his first fight. He had a great tournament. He came in second in the nation in his weight classification. The memory was made the moment he saw us walk in.
I wanted to rehearse this with you to remind me of how special this week has been. I also wanted to encourage you to stay aware of life moments. Not just yours but the moments you are sharing with people you love. I have to confess that I have missed too many of them in my life. So, I am thankful that I was awake and alive for this one. Do well my friends.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Welcome to Tappe Talk, a Purposed Connection podcast by The Tappe Group. This week Allen spends time sharing some thoughts from his heart to yours.
To have this weekly podcast automatically upload to your mp3 player visit the iTunes Store and Power Search "Tappe talk" and then subscribe.
To comment on this blog, click on the COMMENTS link located directly below. I would love to hear your thoughts!
- Pay attention
- Invest the time
- Make the Sacrifice
- Lighten Up
- Be thankful
To have this weekly podcast automatically upload to your mp3 player visit the iTunes Store and Power Search "Tappe talk" and then subscribe.
To comment on this blog, click on the COMMENTS link located directly below. I would love to hear your thoughts!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
What Are You Thinking?
How consciously do you prepare for living each day? How prepared are you for dealing with things in life that typically provoke anger in you? How about the people and situations that frustrate and create stress in you? Stress and anger are created from the inside, out. What you think about any given thing will define how you manage it. Will you react or respond? Will emotion or reason play the biggest part in those times? Those questions will be answered by what is going on in your heart and in your mind.
The ancient Greeks thought of the mind as the seat of both your intellect and your emotion. It really is the working relationship between these two forces that create peace or stress. Most of what creates anger and stress in your life flows from what you fear. Fear is the culprit most of the time. Fear, however, is defined by you. Your thoughts establish your context. The key is to anticipate and prepare for the life contexts you most often experience. Staying philosophically fit is your challenge.
Reading is nourishment for your mind. What you listen to and what you watch creates so much of what goes on in your mind.
What do you think about rejection for example? If your thoughts define rejection as being failure, you will probably avoid anything where rejection is possible. What if, however, you see rejection as opportunity to create possibility? What if you regard it as a qualifying moment? No failure just opportunity. What you think makes all of the difference in the world.
My encouragement for you is to prepare for the life you are about to live. What are your narratives? Are you afraid? Are you discouraged? Are you stressed? Get behind what you feel and find the thoughts that are defeating you. Rethink life. Read, listen, and be exposed to things that support and encourage you. What are you thinking? You choose. Do well, my friends!
Monday, July 19, 2010
What Do You Fear?
Welcome to Tappe Talk, a Purposed Connection podcast by The Tappe Group. What are you putting into your mind? This week Allen focuses on replacing "fear" with strength and thoughts that will produce response.
To have this weekly podcast automatically upload to your mp3 player visit the iTunes Store and Power Search "Tappe talk" and then subscribe.
To comment on this blog, click on the COMMENTS link located directly below. I would love to hear your thoughts!
- Think first.
- Think new thoughts.
- Think positively.
- Think purposefully.
- Think thankfully.
To have this weekly podcast automatically upload to your mp3 player visit the iTunes Store and Power Search "Tappe talk" and then subscribe.
To comment on this blog, click on the COMMENTS link located directly below. I would love to hear your thoughts!
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Familiar Words, Fresh Thoughts
The 21st century has brought a new brand of change into our lives. Today, we are not talking about small adjustments. We are facing redefinition. Our jobs are being redefined. Many of them are disappearing altogether. The economy nationally and worldwide is being redefined. Purchasing power is escaping the middle and finding its way into the hands of a privileged few. Understanding of family become problematic. What constitutes marriage and what roles husbands and wives play has been redefined, and/or reversed, for many families. Change to the extreme characterizes our culture.
Words once familiar have now been redefined, or at least, expanded in scope. Team, once a word relegated to little league, has now become the accepted description for all organized or sytemized activities. Selling, once descriptive of something done "door to door" and is now descriptive of a dynamic requiring great relational and consultative skill. Connection no longer refers to telecommunication. It now defines the quality and extent of relationship. The list goes on and on.
Of course, their are new words now taking a presumptuous role in our communication experience. Words like "google" would have meant little to people in the late 2oth century. Can you imagine your father or grandfather saying google me? How about the "Internet'? What we regard as an essential today was a mere concept once relegated to an enlightened few. Think about concepts like "leasing". Once a concept for housing or apartment situations now defines the consumer population. It dominates transportation questions, telecommunication decisions, technology purchases and on and on it goes.
So, what do we do? We embrace it. We redefine and season it with new and contemporary thought. We make contemporary application. We take the word "team" and we make personal application to our life and work. We don't wait for Webster to do it. We realize team has an enormous impact upon all we do. To me, team includes anyone I depend upon for my personal success. How do you define it?
How do you feel about "selling"? The truth is you are selling every day of your life. You are asking people do buy into who you are and what you represent whether you like it or not. How about "connection"? Have you expanded the act of communicating beyond "talking" in your life? Insuring clarity and understanding by asking, listening, and learning has taken on greater priority than any other time in the history of mankind.
I hope you get the idea. Your world and mine is being redefined. You have a choice to make. You either choose to learn the language of the times or you can quickly become an island unto yourself. Of course, you know, you were never meant to be without relationship. So, welcome to the 21st century. Learn the language. Do well, my friends.
Words once familiar have now been redefined, or at least, expanded in scope. Team, once a word relegated to little league, has now become the accepted description for all organized or sytemized activities. Selling, once descriptive of something done "door to door" and is now descriptive of a dynamic requiring great relational and consultative skill. Connection no longer refers to telecommunication. It now defines the quality and extent of relationship. The list goes on and on.
Of course, their are new words now taking a presumptuous role in our communication experience. Words like "google" would have meant little to people in the late 2oth century. Can you imagine your father or grandfather saying google me? How about the "Internet'? What we regard as an essential today was a mere concept once relegated to an enlightened few. Think about concepts like "leasing". Once a concept for housing or apartment situations now defines the consumer population. It dominates transportation questions, telecommunication decisions, technology purchases and on and on it goes.
So, what do we do? We embrace it. We redefine and season it with new and contemporary thought. We make contemporary application. We take the word "team" and we make personal application to our life and work. We don't wait for Webster to do it. We realize team has an enormous impact upon all we do. To me, team includes anyone I depend upon for my personal success. How do you define it?
How do you feel about "selling"? The truth is you are selling every day of your life. You are asking people do buy into who you are and what you represent whether you like it or not. How about "connection"? Have you expanded the act of communicating beyond "talking" in your life? Insuring clarity and understanding by asking, listening, and learning has taken on greater priority than any other time in the history of mankind.
I hope you get the idea. Your world and mine is being redefined. You have a choice to make. You either choose to learn the language of the times or you can quickly become an island unto yourself. Of course, you know, you were never meant to be without relationship. So, welcome to the 21st century. Learn the language. Do well, my friends.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Redefinition
Welcome to Tappe Talk, a Purposed Connection podcast by The Tappe Group. The world is rapidly redefining itself. So, the question for our time today is "How do we respond?" Allen shares some thoughts that hopefully you will give serious consideration:
To have this weekly podcast automatically upload to your mp3 player visit the iTunes Store and Power Search "Tappe talk" and then subscribe.
To comment on this blog, click on the COMMENTS link located directly below. I would love to hear your thoughts!
- Don't rely upon past success for contemporary strategy.
- Don't allow your fear of failure to define your present performance.
- Don't refuse to embrace the reality of change..."the way we have always done it..."
- Don't expect your previous education to provide the credentials you need today.
- Don't forget attrition is a life reality. Continue to grow community.
- Don't expect normal to return. Every day is being redefined as your new normal.
- Don't expect affluent times to make up for your inconsistency or ineffectiveness.
- Don't let the time get away from you. It is not the time to get behind a growing curve.
To have this weekly podcast automatically upload to your mp3 player visit the iTunes Store and Power Search "Tappe talk" and then subscribe.
To comment on this blog, click on the COMMENTS link located directly below. I would love to hear your thoughts!
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Being Right Is Wrong
The most important art to master in this life is the art of human relationship. Building and sustaining relationships is our greatest life priority. Unfortunately, history reflects a story of broken and challenged relationships. Nations war. Marriages struggle. Customers complain. The list goes on and on. Understanding the force dividing people is vital to our achieving the harmony we seek.
The dividing force unfortunately making its way into all of our lives is our persistence in being right. Kathryn Schulz, in her book Being Wrong, suggests that being right is the greatest human addiction. We all love it. We need it. Not being right represents our greatest human failure and the one we hate the most. As a result, being right has become an obsession.
While being right is our obsession, being wrong is our bane. Perhaps more than our need to be right is our greater need not to be wrong. Unfortunately, as Schulz develops it, wrongness is our condition. Because we are always in the process of development, we are always in a condition of being wrong. Wrongness is our reality.
That takes us back to the challenge of human relationships. Successful relationship in this life requires humility. Human arrogance divides. Demanding rightness, forces others into the perceived position of being wrong which we all disdain. So, getting comfortable with being wrong is our challenge.
Personally, I realized a long time ago that rightness fits into the category of spiritual conviction. Once you come to grip with the reality of righteousness as a gift as opposed to an accomplishment, life takes on new meaning. The pressure is off. Thanksgiving is on. Following becomes our theme. Humility becomes our new state of mind. Relationships are characterized by peace. Do well, my friends.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Believe It
Welcome to Tappe Talk, a Purposed Connection podcast by The Tappe Group. What we choose to believe is the greatest challenge we face in this life. Why we do what we do is the critical beginning for all performance and all relationship to this life. So, this week Allen ask us to take a few minutes and think about a few basic questions.
To have this weekly podcast automatically upload to your mp3 player visit the iTunes Store and Power Search "Tappe talk" and then subscribe.
To comment on this blog, click on the COMMENTS link located directly below. I would love to hear your thoughts!
- Who is Right?
- What is Right?
- When is Right?
- How is Right?
To have this weekly podcast automatically upload to your mp3 player visit the iTunes Store and Power Search "Tappe talk" and then subscribe.
To comment on this blog, click on the COMMENTS link located directly below. I would love to hear your thoughts!
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