self improvement

Thought for Today – 3/28/10

/ SupremeCmdr / Leave a comment

People are often unreasonable and self centered

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind people may accuse you of ulterior motives

Be kind anyway.

If you are honest people may cheat you

Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness people may be jealous

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow

Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough

Do your best anyway.

For you see in the end it was between you and God

It was never between you and them anyway.

– Mother Theresa

What Matters? A Thought For The Decade

/ SupremeCmdr / Leave a comment

whatwillmatter-1203

A Life That Matters

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.

So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It won’t matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end. It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built; not what you got, but what you gave. What will matter is not your success, but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught. What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example. What will matter is not your competence, but your character. What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you’re gone. What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you. What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident. It’s not a matter of circumstance but of choice. Choose to live a life that matters. It really matters!

Michael Josephson

A New Paradigm for Education

/ SupremeCmdr / Leave a comment

Reining in College Costs – BusinessWeek

In the “learning” paradigm, the teacher is not the expert provider of knowledge, but rather a guide who first specifies what students are expected to learn and then lays out pathways they can follow to meet the learning goals. The teacher becomes a supporter, a collaborator, and a coach for students as they learn to evaluate and gather information, test ideas, and explore their application to different issues and problems. Students begin to learn how to develop and pose their own questions and to explore alternative ways of finding and framing answers. So instead of working only to master the subject matter of a course, students are developing the skills to learn on their own. They no longer wait to be taught—they come to realize that, if they are to succeed, they must take a good deal of responsibility for their own learning.

Read this article written by Michael Bassis,  President of Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah.  We need to rethink corporate training methods if you agree with Mr. Bassis’ paradigm shift assessment.

Choose Success

/ SupremeCmdr / Leave a comment

You have to get people to make good decisions. Wherever you are in life, good or bad, it’s because of the choices you make. Choose to succeed rather than fail. Choose to work hard rather than to loaf your way through it. We had a plan, a vision and we wouldn’t compromise our core values.

Lou Holtz at his induction ceremony into the College Football Hall of Fame

Survival Strategies – A is For Attitude

/ SupremeCmdr / Leave a comment

Lou Gehrig’s famous speech was reproduced in yesterday’s local newspaper.  It was the first time I read the entire speech.  This speech was an awesome speech.  Gehrig’s attitude in the face of certain death remains impressive 70 years later.

Whatever your struggle, try to maintain a positive attitude.

“For the past two weeks, you’ve been reading about a bad break. Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.

I have been in ballparks for 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

When you look around, wouldn’t you consider it a privilege to associate yourself with such fine-looking men as are standing in uniform in the ballpark today? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have (Yankee owner) Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow. To have spent six years with such a grand little fellow as (Yankee manager) Miller Huggins? To have spent the next nine years with that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Who wouldn’t feel honored to room with such a grand guy as Bill Dickey?

When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift, that’s something. When the groundskeepers and office staff and writers and old-timers and players and concessionaires all remember you with trophies, that’s something.

When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles against her own daughter, that’s something. When you have a father and mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body, it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed, that’s the finest I know.

So I close in saying that I might have had a bad break, but I have an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”

Compiled by biographer and author Jonathan Eig.

Underwriting Solutions LLC – A New Theme

/ SupremeCmdr / Leave a comment

If you are a repeat visitor you will no doubt notice the theme change for this blog.   Over time, the content of this blog has evolved too.  At first, I focused on success tips.  As my writing matured, this blog has become an online archive of news I find interesting and relevant to the life underwriting profession.  I hope you find this website useful.  As always, your comments and suggestions are welcomed.