It’s May 15th, 2020 and I am self-isolating in the living room of a time share that I bought 35 years ago in the Wisconsin Dells. We decided we are safer here than we are at home where we would otherwise be going to work at the sober house we manage with 7 people in it who are out and about daily and may not necessarily be following the guidelines for social distancing and hand washing. So, with with our food in tow, so as to not have to leave the place once we got there, we traveled less than 2 hours to my resort on Mother’s Day.
We arrived only to find that my quiet back in the woods, nicely isolated unit that was “mine” was not on the schedule to be used this week. I was not happy to be moved so had a little rant until I was told to check out where they had moved me. Expecting the worst (human nature) I went to scope out the other option only to find my dream vacation had been laid at my feet.
Here, to my amazement, was a lakeside villa only 50 yards from the water and a water falls nestled on the other side that meandered into a little pond within earshot of my new unit. The Canadian Geese and their goslings met me on the deck seeking some morsels followed by the beautifully decorated mallard ducks, chickadees, wrens and blackbirds.
As I sit here in the living room at 9pm I am overwhelmed by the deafening sounds of the crickets and frogs, the colorful water spout in the lake and the trickling water fall. The other villas are all dark. We are virtually alone here which is what I was told when I called to see if it would be hard to socially distance at the resort. God is good. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t need it but then again maybe He knew that I did.
I also didn’t need five time best selling author, internationally known speaker, advisory board member for NASA and founder of several successful businesses, Peter Shankman, to be on my fledgling “Speak to Me God Podcast” today either, but he was. I didn’t expect it, I didn’t beg for it and I did nothing to deserve it but he was doing what we all should be doing, paying it forward by being nice, just because we can.
Peter Shankman
As a business owner, Peter’s philosophy not only makes sense to me, but he has a proven track record of it’s effectiveness. He says that you should just “be awesome to the customers you have and they’ll bring you the customers you want.” He also says “don’t chase the likes, do likeable things.”
At the time Peter agreed to be on my podcast I wasn’t even his customer. I was just a fan who also has ADHD and who appreciated his open, honest and positive approach to seeing his “neuroatypical brain” as a blessing and not a curse. His book, Faster Than Normal has changed my life and for that I am grateful and I let him know.
As people of faith, the same principles should be applied. If we are awesome to others they will be drawn to us. If we are obnoxious in trying to convince people to “follow us” it won’t take long before we get “unfriended ” and lose every opportunity to be the Faucet of HOPE we were all created to be.
At that point it doesn’t matter how good the message is, we have blown it because we were more concerned about convincing people our way is the right way rather than respecting someone else for who they are and what God has given them to share with the world. Another helpful quote of Peter’s is “ No One Believes how great you are if you are the one that has to tell them.”
Life, and having serenity while you live it, is a matter of perspective. It is what you make it. You are what you think. Your thoughts create your feelings and your behaviors are driven by them them both.
We are in an uproar right now throughout the world. This pandemic is literally killing us. Not only taking innocent lives but destroying hope, peace, sobriety, joy, love and sanity. There is division and hatred, fear and doubt, anger and hostility. Why? Because we just can’t seem to be consistently nice to others because they see things differently.
We can’t accept that someone else has a different perspective, different experiences, different knowledge, skills, abilities and talents. That’s how God made us, but we want others to be like us and if they aren’t, we get mean, start wars, split churches, develop different political parties and get divorced.
We quit working together and stop playing nice and the very fabric of our world, house by house, town by town, state by state, country by country, fall apart and then we wonder why we can’t find solutions to our mutual problems.
If we could just go back to God’s simple Golden Rule from Matthew 7:12 that says we should “do to others what we would like them to do to us…” and Peter Shankman’s business philosophy that “nice finishes first” the world would be a better, safer, healthier, more peaceful place.
