Shaka Smart's words of inspiration

Here's an interesting article (courtesy of VCU Athletics) about how Virginia Commonwealth University basketball coach Shaka Smart uses his vast collection of inspirational quotes to motivate himself and his team.

Follow this new media darling on Twitter (@coachsmartvcu) and you'll get not only VCU basketball news, but also a selection of great quotes.

Go Rams!

express yourself

As someone with an interest in career satisfaction as well as creativity, a favorite book of mine is Carol Lloyd's Creating a Life Worth Living. Described as "a practical course in career design for artists, innovators, and others aspiring to a creative life" (which, to my delight, Lloyd has decided includes people like teachers, consultants, counselors, event planners, etc.), it uses lots of interviews and examples from the lives of various successful creative types.

This morning I opened the book up for the first time in several years, and on the first page found this quote from Martha Graham in a letter to Agnes de Mille:

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium. It will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

At a time of year when many of us are beginning to think about setting new intentions for ourselves and about making transformations in our lives, this seems like a nice quote to keep in mind.

J.K. Rowling Harvard commencement speech

This funny and moving talk from the author of the Harry Potter books is about failure, imagination, and friendship. Listen, and along the way you'll learn a good deal about her own career journey.


J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

your legacy of leadership?

I've been working this morning on the design of a training module for college-aged leaders, in which the facilitators will be asking them to think about values-based leadership and what they want their own legacies to be as leaders. I found this clip from Pay It Forward on YouTube and plan to use it to introduce a segment in the workshop in which the participants will be reflecting on themselves and the impact they want to have in the world. I find the clip inspiring and hope they will too.



I thought I'd pose a similar question here. How do YOU want to change the world? What do you want your legacy of leadership to be?

it's okay, you'll get over it!

For several months now, I've been collaborating with my friend Kristy Hall -- a talented, insightful, and results-oriented fundraising consultant -- on a series of "self-help" workbooks for fundraisers. The goal of the series is to help the reader overcome common roadblocks to fundraising success -- many of which are psychological, motivational, or relational in nature. Which is why I'm involved. (Some of the topics we're addressing, for instance, are fear of failure, guilt in asking others for money, and difficulty motivating and holding your fundraising team accountable.)

Here's a nugget from my writing this morning which has application well beyond the fundraising realm:

One thing it's helpful for you to know about and keep in mind is something that psychologists call immune neglect (Wilson & Gilbert, 2005). Although it sounds a little like a medical problem, what it actually means is that we humans tend to forget how emotionally resilient we are. When something bad happens to us, the negative feelings are not nearly as awful or as long-lived as we expect them to be. This is partly because we have a variety of unconscious coping and defense mechanisms that help us get over the negative event, and partly because of another phenomenon called adaptation (Myers, 1992) – the fact that any kind of change (positive or negative) becomes the “new normal” and quickly loses its initial emotional impact. This is why a few months after their windfalls, lottery winners are no happier than the rest of us. It’s also why someone who was paralyzed in a car accident last year is no less happy.

Rejections are a part of fundraising [and a part of life!]. Most of the time, it’s not about you personally (we’ll get to that in just a minute). But no matter what the reason for the “no”, it’s helpful for you to remember that it’s not actually as big a deal as you might think it is. You’ll get over it, and pretty darn quickly.