The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.  I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. — Jack London
Let us use our time wisely and live fully.  Let’s be be fully engaged this week in work, at home and at play.
 Kirk Out
I recieve a thought each day from personal friend Sanford Berenberg. Today I want to share his with all of you. If you love it I invite you visit his blog and consider recieving them for yourself. His contact information follows his well written piece on “Becoming the Standard”. Sanford writes….
In Marcus Buckingham’s book “First, Break All the Rules” (http://www.amazon.com/First-Break-All-Rules-Differently/dp/0684852861) he talks about how Netscape, Adobe and Sun Microsystems gave out their programs for free. That is, the web browser, Adobe Reader and Java, the programming language. Why would a company give a project or service away for free?
On the outside it does not appear like a sound business decision. In reality, it is genius.
A company that shares with others what they do best, especially services, the company that is giving is becoming more widely known for their product or service. In fact, in many cases, this acceptance becomes the standard in the field. How many companies use PDF documents these days? The answer is millions. PDF is the standard for unalterable soft documentation.
So how can we become or create the standard? Most of us don’t have the money to invest in making or selling millions of copies or products or hours of service. The good news is that we don’t have to!
We can start by giving the best of ourselves to others.
We can do our best in anything that we do. Like my wife Karen’s meatloaf. All meatloaf is now compared to Karen’s, it is the standard. And for the record, all meatloaf is inferior to Karen’s. My best friend Howard is a chiropractor. All chiropractic adjustments I receive are compared to his, as he is my standard. My chiropractor in Louisville, Dr. Michael Baker, has matched this standard. Both Dr. Howard and Dr. Baker give their best, and that has become the standard that I based all chiropractic care against. I will not go to another Chiropractor who does not meet the standard I have come to expect. I just need to go see to Dr. Baker more often.
By doing what we do well, and sharing it with others, what we do can become the standard for others. These standards are then used as the basis of comparison by others. It does not matter what you do, just that you do it. It could be telling tales, cooking, preparing spreadsheets or PowerPoint slides, or coming up with strategic solutions. When we continue to do our best in what we do, the bar is set, often very high.
Strive to do well in whatever you do, and you can become the standard in the eyes of others. And others will want to learn from you, or use your services or get your help.
Enjoy!
Sanford Berenberg
 The “friendship study from UCLA” included below today’s T4D reminded me of all the great research that went into Tom Rath’s wonderful book Vital Friends. Enjoy and get your friends off the back burner as you explore the limitless potential of your friendships. ~Kirk Out
The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, a new continent unexplored, a world of possibilites waiting to be released and channeled toward some great good. — Brian Tracy
UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN By Gale Berkowitz
A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special.
They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more.
Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis.
A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It’s a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research— most of it on men—upside down.
Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible, explains Laura Cousin Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study’s authors. It’s an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber toothed tigers.
Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just fight or flight; In fact, says Dr. Klein, it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the fight or flight response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect.
This calming response does not occur in men, says Dr. Klein, because testosterone—which men produce in high levels when they’re under stress—seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen, she adds, seems to enhance it.
The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic “aha” moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded, says Dr. Klein. When the men were stressed, they holed up some where on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something.
The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health.
It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the “tend and befriend” notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol.
There’s no doubt, says Dr. Klein, that friends are helping us live longer. In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%. Friends are also helping us live better.
The famed Nurses’ Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidants was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight! And that’s not all! When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate.
Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That’s a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls’ and Women’s Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women, explains Dr. Josselson. We push them right to the back burner. That’s really a mistake; women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they’re with other women. It’s a very healing experience. Taylor, S. E.; Klein, L.C.; Lewis, B. P.; Gruenewald, T.L.; Gurung, R.A.R.; & Updegraff, J. A. (2000). Female Responses to Stress: Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight” Psychological Review, 107(3),41-429.
T4D subscriber Simon from Toronto sent me the following thought last week.Â
We have all heard the old adage that ‘playing sports builds character’. Whenever I read or think such a thing it seems to be in Tim Allen’s alter egos growly voice (Tim Taylor) from Home Improvement.
A few years ago I stumbled across a variation of the phrase that rang a bell and has since never been far from my mind as I interact with people.  ‘Playing sports does not build character, …it reveals it’.
Far beyond what happens on the field of play, as stakes get higher in your role in life be it at work or in your relationships, remember that your character or how you conduct yourself influences others and can turn people ‘on’ or ‘off’ to you.
I want to be ‘on’ what about you?
Thank you Simon….great thought. I think playing sports actually does both. It can both build and reveals character. On the right team with the right moral compass the building of character can happen in more positive direction. Either way….character as Simon says, either attracts or detracts - it builds or destroys - it turns people on or off!Â
So let’s light UP, TURN ON and SHINE ALL DAY LONG! Who knows maybe our example will inspire others to do the same!
Kirk OUt
Wanting things to be different without a strategy for making them different will keep them the same. - Mark Goulston, M.D.
Some of you have enquired about what I dressed up as this year for Halloween. Well I went as Sulley from Monster’s Inc.
The kids went as themselves…. well almost.
“There are no hopeless situations; there are only people who have grown hopeless about them.” ~ Clare Boothe Luce
Be a bringer of hope! Hopelessness leads to helplessness…. so the need for us to be more helpful so that others might become more hopeful is perhaps some of the most meaningful and joyful work we can be engaged in. ~ Kirk Out
