Embracing our Unique Gifts

This morning provided another fabulous opportunity, not only to start the day, but to also provide some great thoughts to influence future days.  The remarkable Henry Winkler, keynoted an event benefiting Briarwood School, a terrific place to help bright young minds with learning differences achieve their potential.

He was gracious and engaging with all attendees, before and after his presentation, and immensely entertaining and memorable with his remarks.  Some of his share-worthy tidbits include:

• Don't put a period at the end of a negative thought (What a great and powerful way to banish negative, draining thoughts and replace them with positive affirmations and aspirations!)
• If you will it, it is not a dream
• Only one person needs to say "Yes"
• Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable bunch of qualities and if we don't give our gift to the world, something will be left undone
• Let your imagination have personality
• We don't always know the impact we might have (An autistic child who had not previously spoken said, "Fonz" and a year later had a vocabulary of 100 words)

Embracing and sharing our unique gifts beautifully connects everything. 

Unlimited Health Potential

Within 24 hours, I've had the opportunity to validate my assumption that unlimited potential exists, in Houston, to positively impact worldwide health outcomes.

On Tuesday, we had the privilege to feature Dr. Robert Robbins, President and CEO of Texas Medical Center at Comerica Bank's third quarter Business Forum.  He shared his impressive vision for this amazing complex, which is the world's largest medical center, with 54 incredible institutions treating more than 7 million patients annually.  His strategic priorities include health policy, regenerative medicine, genomics, clinical trials and innovation/commercialization.  WOW - what an opportunity to collaboratively leverage an amazing brain trust to tackle some of our most challenging health challenges.

And today, Texas Children's Hospital inspired a capacity crowd, with accounts from several of the world class leaders focused on providing the world's children life-saving innovations, treatments and quality of life improvements. CEO Mark Wallace, Dr. Mark Kline - Physician-in-Chief, Dr. Jake Kushner - Diabetes and Endocrinology, Dr. Kristy Murray - Infectious Disease and Dr. James Thomas - Intensive Care cast a great vision for incredible advances in each of these critical areas.

What a fabulous time to support unlimited health potential!

Big Splash - Little Cash

What's not to love about high, positive visual impact with very low investment!  We love fresh cut flowers strategically arranged in favorite vases in the entry, living room, family room, my home office, powder room and kitchen.  Nine days ago, Edgar brought home 2 beautiful bunches of cheery yellow daisies that allowed me to fill all the normal vases and add bouquets in his home office and the master bath.  The flowers are still perky, with only a few stems removed.  He frequently surprises me with fresh blossoms of various kinds, which is awesome.

My inspiration to mention it now is the longevity of these blooms, the number of arrangements and the very modest investment, less than $10 including tax.  We all owe it to ourselves to bring inexpensive cheer into our lives, whatever forms the cheer may take.

2:1

We just returned from a delightful road trip to Austin.  We made this 5 hour round trip trek on great highways, through beautiful country to spend 2.5 hours with Gar.  Ratios are great for measuring business success, but can't begin to capture the benefit of time spent with those we love.

This experience reminded me that impact and importance trump statistics in our personal relationships.

Be Successful Where You Are

Recently, I had the chance to hear Jay Steinfeld, Founder and CEO, of Blinds.com talk about his company's incredible company culture.  I've embraced one of the vivid ways he casts a vision for personal and company success:

• Be Successful Where You Are

As he made successive steps across the front of the ballroom, indicating that each step toward a goal could be viewed as failure, until achievement of the goal, it made a huge impact in my way of addressing success. Though setting and achieving goals is enormously important, we need to be careful not to define success solely by achievement of the next milestone.  We owe it to ourselves to celebrate current success while striving for even greater successes each step of the journey.

Absence to Presence

Though all of my zoo visits have been delightful, I've not made frequent trips since Julia and Gar lost interest in these family outings several years ago.  So, I'm amazed that I've been to two wonderful zoos 1400 miles apart within the past week.  And, absence of giraffes at one, was contrasted by the special opportunity to actually feed a giraffe at the other.

Since I readily seize new opportunities, I would have eagerly embraced the chance to feed a giraffe this week.  However, it wouldn't have had the same significance, had I not realized the previous week,  that not all great zoos have giraffes.

Interestingly, this made me vividly aware that sometimes absence, contrasted with presence, enhances the impact and appreciation.

Memorable

We had a fabulous time celebrating Julia's birthday in D.C. this past weekend!  She's an amazing young woman with an incredible intellect, perpetually positive attitude and amazing ability to get others to seize a broad array of diverse entertainment and dining opportunities.

Our wonderful nonstop activities included wide-ranging conversations, spectacular museums, the national zoo, professional baseball, canoeing on the Potomac, a mini spades tournament, painting with a pro, meeting her friends at unexpected venues all around town, birthday brunch, and many other remarkable foodie feasts.

For me, spending time with my precious angel and her equally adoring father, would have been celebratory. However, her perfectly planned, nonstop birthday weekend elevated celebratory, to indelibly memorable.