I'm Sorry. So Sorry. Please Accept, My Apology...

The public apology has become a bit of a sport since the days of Bill Clinton. He wouldn't admit anything, but was still sorry. Some say he wasn't sorry enough. Some say he wasn't sorry early enough. Some say he wasn't sorry LONG enough. Of course, he's still married to our Secretary of State, so he either was sorry enough, or continues to be sorry on a daily basis.

Before him was Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, both performing apoplectic apologies publicly, and year after year, more preachers, writers, politicians, athletes, and entertainers have walked the tightrope of regret.

We begged Pete Rose to admit his sins of betting on Baseball, and apologize, so we could see him in the Hall of Fame. He finally did, but we decided he didn't mean it, and are left empty inside.

The parade of politicians sleeping with women who are not their wives has been rather long of late - with apologies that sound a lot like little boys caught with their hands in the cookie jar - 'It was wrong, I'm sorry, but I couldn't stop myself'. The term soul mate has been a favorite, lately.

David Letterman is the latest apologizer to hit - and he took a unique approach. He has the advantage, of course, of addressing the world from his home field - his own television show. By both apologizing and revealing a blackmail scheme, he introduces a couple of threads to the public discussion. Yes, he's a typical jerk who had affairs at work (at a time when he involved, but not married), but now he's introduced a bigger jerk who threatened to rat him out if he didn't pay large sums of money. An affair of the heart is understandable in today's world, but blackmail is a major crime, and we love our crime shows even more than our soaps.

We all face moments in our lives when we must apologize. We make choices that aren't the best. We hurt people. We let them down. We offend. The very concept of Reclaiming our Power of Choice cannot work outside of the concept of taking responsibility for those Choices, and occasionally having to apologize.

Anatomy of an Apology

A. The Earlier the Better - don't wait to get 'caught' - catch yourself.
B. Acknowledge the Pain - THEIR pain, not yours.
C. Check their Pulse - are they ok? What consequences are they facing thanks to YOU?
D. Propose a Solution - how can you make up for what you did? Warning: sometimes you CAN'T.
E. Follow Through - put the solution into action quickly, with enthusiasm and contrition.
F. If you blow E., return to A. and begin again.

Of course, too many apologies will lower your credibility, both with others and with yourself. Make them, mean them, and then work to avoid them...by making your choices with more precision each day. Be a Champion!

Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Start Over.

Do you remember Space Invaders? The old 80's video game where row after row of aliens would march down the screen as you raced to shoot them down before they reached the ground and destroyed you? It started off easy enough. The aliens were slow, and you gained confidence as each one blipped into nothingness after being faced with your amazing trackball/button pushing display.

As you cleared each wave, the next wave would hit, and they would be faster, seemingly smarter than before. And no matter how quick you became, eventually you would be overwhelmed by that last speedy alien you just missed on the last pass.

You'd let out a breath, or an audible scream, or pound the table, but, if you had one left, you'd stick in another quarter and start again.

Yeah - you're waiting for it, so I might as well say it: Life is like a Video Game. The more you play, the better you get. The better you get, the more life gives you to handle. And in the end, we all die. Well, that's using a bit of a broad brush on today's metaphor.

Today's video games are a bit more life-like - not just in their graphics, but their approach. You still die, but you immediately come back to life, and instead of starting at the beginning, you return to the last checkpoint of your current challenge. You can actually complete a game, and be a winner. You can even win without picking up all the 'goodies' available - and then go back and pick up the goodies later on, if you still feel like playing after winning.

In both types of games, you're still faced with myriad choices at increasing speeds, and the ultimate choice of whether you will play on. You experience great joy upon success, and great frustration when the life is drained from your player.

Yes, there's a lot more at stake with our choices in real life. We also usually get more than a few nano-seconds to make our choices. Sometimes we're going to win, sometimes we're going to lose. Perhaps its time to change the game, perhaps its time to change our style of play. Regardless, the biggest choice we'll face is if we're willing to continue to play, in spite of the consequences of our last round with life.

Being a Champion of Choice isn't easy. It's a daily decision. In fact, its a minute by minute decision. And some days the Aliens win. You can choose to stare at the screen at the little white words that say "GAME OVER", or you can choose to pop another quarter in and start again.
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Thanks to Nigel Reed for suggesting this little video - just for fun.

Is Your Life Really OK?

What a week.

Doctors appts 4 straight days for my kids and my wife. If you've been following my wife's blog Thriving With Neurofibromatosis, you have an idea of what she's been going through, and the choices we may be facing for her in the next few days and weeks.

What she has dealt with over the last 20 years is a pain level that many of us just can't imagine. Constant headaches since her days as a teenager. Doctors would continually tell her they were migraines or stress related. As a result, she built up a tolerance, a coping mechanism that changed her pain threshold. She would constantly be at some level of discomfort, and forgot what being 'OK' felt like. After pushing doctors over the last few months, it turns out she's been walking around with Hydrocephalus and swollen ventricles to the brain for an undetermined amount of time. A ticking time bomb with a random timer.

The most likely course of action will be a shunt, which creates continual drainage of fluid from the brain, lowering pressure, and virtually eliminating her headaches. She will feel 'OK' for the first time in years. Her approach to stress will change, her ability to focus and act will improve.

Her turning point was in accepting her diagnosis of Neurofibromatosis as more than an annoyance. More than something to just bear as a genetic disorder. The more she found out about NF, the more the puzzle pieces of her pain fell into place. Then she had to push the doctors beyond their pill pushing propensities, and dig deeper into what was happening to her. She made the choice to stop settling for her life as it was, even though she'd gone for years accepting that it was just the way her life would be.

Have you been settling? Ignoring your pain? Beyond physical pain, there is emotional pain, relationship pain, even financial pain. Look beyond where you are, where you think it's 'OK' to be, and instead look to a life you wish you had. Then choose to dig deeper, to question or downright ignore those that get in your way.

Be the Champion of your own life.

How Do You Choose Your Responses?

This weekend was birthday weekend - one daughter turned 9, the other 2, both on Friday. Friday night was a slumber party, followed by a lunchtime party the next day. That 18 hour period offered many opportunities to watch people of all ages choose their responses.

A. On Friday night, one of the girls told my daughter the party was boring and she wanted to go home. Red Alert! Riley left the room crying - a typical response. My wife was more than a little frustrated, but of course tempered her response toward the offender, asking her how she would feel if Riley did that at HER birthday party, and offering her a choice: apologize, or have her parents pick her up. It took a few minutes, but she apologized after thinking through her options. Riley's choice was indicative of her place in life right now, and we talked to her about choosing to stand up for herself vs. fleeing in tears. Interestingly, the next day, the same girl talked about how much fun she had at the party, and wanted to stay over Saturday night too!

B. My wife home-made the cakes for our daughters. She was not happy with them. She was using new methods and the results were below her standards of perfection. And then she asked my opinion. Guys, this is right up there with 'Do I look Fat?' as far as the danger zone of answering goes. I looked at it, and thought 2 things: 'This looks really good' and 'I know why she doesn't think so'. I had a choice - tell her it was good knowing she wouldn't believe me, or tell her I understood how she feels, but to me it looks great. Either would have been better than what I said: "Well, from an adult standpoint, I see why you don't like it, but...." - Oops. Took a few minutes to get to the rest of it "but the important thing is Riley loves it!". Not a good choice on my part. I hoped to communicate honestly, but my approach needed a bit more icing on the top. Of course, Kristi could have chosen a different response to my response....but let's not go down that road. We're all about personal responsibility at The Champion of Choice Challenge.

C. My mom brought over gifts for both girls. My two-year-old was too busy playing with one toy to bother opening Grandma's gift. As parent's we didn't want to create a tearful scenario by ripping away one gift in favor of the next, but we also didn't want Grandma to forever sit waiting. My mom could have responded with impatience, indignation, anger - but instead she chose to laugh. She watched her Granddaughter intently and contentedly playing with her first gift, and just waited until Brooklyn was ready. It took almost a half an hour, but she finally gave up the toy and headed to her new gifts. Brooklyn's own choice was interesting to watch. She didn't get upset at our attempts to divert her - she simply ignored us!

We cannot control someone else's response. We can plan for it and even attempt to influence it, but in the end, the only response we can control is our own. It is common to blame another for making us feel a certain way - positive or negative. And we do have a natural emotional response to how others act towards us. As human beings with cognitive brain function, however, we must take responsibility for how we filter those emotions into our responses, and how we form every response we offer.

Being a Champion of Choice means accepting your ability to change a conversation, set a boundary, avoid temptation, defuse an argument, and resist tempting others. Of course, it also means accepting your ability to make things significantly worse, if the surrounding parties aren't Champions themselves.

Remember Champions - with use your powers for good - or you'll end up looking like this guy:


May the Force Be With You.

Are Your Goals Big Enough?

I've been gone a few days. This is what I've been working on, among other things.

I also watched the final performances of 'America's Got Talent' and subsequent finale last night. I was not terribly shocked at the final two, Kevin Skinner, chicken catcher country singer extraordinaire and cancer survivor operatic genius Barbara Padilla, making the cut to face each other at the end.

I was slightly surprised that Kevin won the whole thing, in part because I felt Barbara Padilla was the stronger performer, and more of a slam dunk going into Vegas and the entertainment arena. But then again, so was Adam Lambert, despite his 2nd place finish in American Idol. Even Susan Boyle, who sang before last night's results were revealed, was a clear winner in Britain's Got Talent before losing to Diversity.

It's almost as if voters say to themselves "this person is bigger than this show - I'm going to vote for the other guy, because they need it more". Granted, it could also be a bit of fickleness for over-exposed celebrity by people who haven't done anything yet. Either way, these 'Losers' can turn into Winners in a way they didn't expect at the beginning of their journey.

When you set goals, do you create realistic scenarios? Do you 'hedge your bets' to prevent disappointment? After all, who would be silly enough to say "I'm going to make a hundred thousand dollars this year, even though I've never come close in the past"? Jack Canfield would, actually. How about a million dollars?

Barbara Padilla, Adam Lambert, and Susan Boyle will all have careers that go far beyond what they set to accomplish. Losing actually opens up doors they may have been locked out of in the contracts that bind the winners. If they keep their goals small, and let the competition define them, they will limit their accomplishments as well. Regardless of how you feel about their music, Kelly Pickler, Clay Aiken, and Chris Daughtry have all gone on to great success by allowing goals bigger than winning American Idol to enter their field of view.

When you set your goals, don't limit yourself to reality, or too narrow an outcome. Leave room for a force greater than you to change your path and lift you higher than you ever imagined. If you are in a competition, why does the outcome of the competition define your future? If you can lose 25 lbs, why not 50? Or lose 25 and be in incredible shape? If you can make 100,000 dollars in 12 months or less, why NOT a million?

Make the choice to be open to more. The old saying is that one God closes a door, he opens a window. Perhaps we should change that to 'When God closes a window, he opens a door. A really BIG door."

Why Do YOU Connect?

How many friends, followers, and connections do you have? Have you discovered MySpace yet, or have you long since left it in the dust? Are you on Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? NING? Plaxo? Plurk? FriendFeed?

Only a few of you do them all, and a few do even more.

I started my first MySpace account as a fairly early adopter, then got out, then got back in. If you go there now, it says "You can find me on Facebook. Sorry Tom."

I've been on Linked In since 2004, thanks to my friend LaMont Snarr, who invited me to join, but have been pretty dormant until the last few months. I have just over 430 connections, I think. I like the discussion strings on LI - they reach a broader audience than a typical Google Group. Seems a bit of life has been sparked there recently - but many of my connections are also connections on Facebook.

Google Groups, as mentioned above, cater to a narrower audience. I started a Toastmasters Group almost 18 months ago (to replace an older one, which had been overtaken by SPAM) here - and it offers quite a bit of conversation about Toastmasters International, and has even been known to catch the eyes of the higher ups in our organization.

Facebook has been a blast since January of this year. I had been on it, but barely, for at least a year prior, but didn't start working it til lately. I've got 801 friends at the moment. It's a lot fun, but a lot of time to devote, as well. I had pages up for Go Ahead and Laugh and The Champion of Choice Challenge, but took them down when it was apparent they were to much to maintain.

Twitter - yeah, Twitter. Joined just before the boom hit, 14 months ago. Didn't work it much til December, and now I have close to 19,000 followers. I used to communicate a lot using a third party program called Tweetdeck (I even wrote an article about it here), but haven't opened Tweetdeck in months. Its not even on my new computer. I still tweet regularly, but my conversations have gone down.

I'm involved with many of the others, as well, but to lesser degrees. NING is an interesting program - a niche-oriented Facebook. A great way to create a community if you find a niche that will motivate. As well as being a member of 6 or 7 NING communities, I have created one for The Champion of Choice Challenge here.

So - cool Rich Hopkins - you're involved in SO MUCH. WHO CARES? What's the point? What choices are you making? Is this driving your success, or just sucking all the time out of your life? (And I haven't even talked about blogging, building websites, writing articles....)

There are so many avenues to connect with people without ever leaving the comfort of your chair that nobody with access to an internet connection should ever complain about loneliness again, much less lack of prospects.

Uh oh - did I just call you a prospect? My dear friends on Facebooks are now nothing more than marketing targets? Twitter is all about making money? Well, yes. And no. Do you do business with your friends? Do you buy their books? Do you recommend them to others? Do you support them in their endeavors? Of course you do. Customers are friends, and friends are prospective customers. The more friends you have, the more successful you are likely to be.

Even if you are my best friend in the world, and I give you all my books for free, let you into my workshops at no charge, and give you all the free advice you want, you are still, technically, a 'contact'. Shudder. You just might say something to someone at the right time in the right way that connects me to another gig. Or send someone to my website or blog. If you don't, I probably haven't been a very good friend, right?

I'm still optimizing my usage of these platforms. I'm no social media expert, but I know a lot of people who claim to be, and one or two who actually are. Below, I share my personal rules for social media usage, based on what I want to accomplish. They may work for you, they may not. But, as any REAL social media guru will tell you, the rule is there are no rules. Do what you feel will get you where you're going.

1. Don't be overly political - it's worse than peeing in the pool. If you're just there to be purely you, consequences be darned, then fine. But know the consequences may cost your friends, opportunities, and in some cases, even your job. Or, if you're Larry Winget, it'll simply make you more popular.



2. Use humor, but know your audience. Don't assume others will take your humor with humor. Just trust me on this - or read my post on Michael Jackson a while ago, here.

3. Keep your friends your friends, but remember everyone who's a 'contact/potential customer' wants to be your friend at some level. I don't want to be overly personal (that's why we created email and IM), nor do I want to be overly sanitized. The closer your real personality and your professional personality are, the greater your authenticity and level of integrity becomes.

4. Promote others. Share other people's blogs and products on Facebook. Retweet. Get involved in conversations on LinkedIn. Zig and others say it constantly "the more success you create for others, the more success you create for yourself" (paraphrase).

5. Be consistent, but not manic. I have issues with this one. I'm constantly online, checking statuses, tweets, emails, etc. Even ONE platform can dominate your day, if you aren't watchful of your time. You want to be seen, but 24/7 monitoring may not cast a great image of your business or time management.

My goal is to reach out and connect to as many people as possible - from old classmates to Toastmasters to all the speakers I will eventually sharing the stage with to anyone who might want to see me speak, hire me as a coach, read one of my books, etc. As the connections, friends and followers grow, so will my personal friendships, and professional successes. Sometimes, they are amazingly intertwined!

Why are you using social media? ARE you using social media? If you're reading this blog, you are - even blogger is social media to a point. You have choices to make. Which to use, or not. How you'll use them. Why you'll use them. But make no mistake, social media is here to stay, in one form or another. I suggest choosing to do something about it vs. waiting out its demise. The world is getting closer every day - are they getting closer to YOU?

Climbing The Wall: 4 Week Challenge 2.0 Update

The climb over the wall can get crowded, and busy! Already 4 weeks into the the second challenge - the weeks have flown by.

Several of the habits and rituals I chose to form, reading, food log, push-up challenge (finally into week 3!), and family time, have survived the journey. Others, from journaling to listening to educational/motivational tapes have barely left the gate.

I'm blogging consistently, and have added the Stumpy & Bumpy Laugh Off The Pounds blog to the mix, which compartmentalizes my weight loss challenge. I'm down to 239, and I'm not looking back. I'm about to add another blog to the mix, focusing on speaking and speakers. If you're looking to write a book, create articles, or simply get noticed - blogging is a great way to create and hone content.

I've been focusing on building income on the internet, and partnered with several folks to sell Go Ahead and Laugh to their fans. Affiliate marketing has potential to be a great choice for me. There are several other opportunities I'm looking at, and if you have a product you'd like me to help you promote, let me know.

Twitter continues to be a growing fan base, as I close in on 19,000 followers. I'd originally set 25,000 as an August goal, but there's only so many I can follow per day, So I've ramped it down, expectation-wise. If I have 21,000 by end of September, I'll be doing well. My Facebook experience has been similarly favorable. You can Facebook me at http://facebook.com/richhopkins.

The kids are back in school, reducing my distractions. I'm back in Toastmasters, which has really given me back some joy.

As I look back at my original list, there are many things I have not done. Going forward, there are new things I see myself doing. Ritual works. The white board method, so far, does not. Working with my wife works better every day. Working when the kids get home from school does not. Saying that I'm going to do something, like write a book, or start a blog, doesn't work. Doing them, and then talking about it, works (yes, I know I talked about starting a blog earlier in this post...). I know that I am happier now than I was 4 weeks into the original challenge. The foundational changes I have made in my daily life are key.

My judgment, this morning at least, is that The Challenge, at this stage, is succeeding. I can improve its results, and I am feeling more empowered to do so than I have in weeks.

How is your Challenge going? Have you joined our community at NING? If you are there, have you posted? The community will be worth what we make it worth. I'm looking at some new activities for the community to liven it up - but the best way to do that is for its members to be alive!

Your Challenge (and mine) is meant to create growth. It is not meant to be an easy checklist. Instead, it is a gauntlet of activities designed to test our skills, and create growth, occasionally through pain. Don't judge your Challenge by whether or not it is completely met, but by the growth you have experienced learning to master it.

Make the choice to keep moving forward, to keep climbing the wall. To observe and take credit for the steps you've taken, even if its only been one. Its still one more than you had taken before.