#bobby-c

Two ears, one mouth. Let that simple math guide you

“If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.” (Robert Baden-Powell)

Some years ago I was a teacher of Religious Education at my Church. Every Monday night, for 90 minutes, I would sit with a class of about 12 members of our Church who were in the 8th grade. We would discuss many topics of faith, exploring important points and helping them to…

Preparation is the key to finding agreement

“It’s easy to find reasons for division between people; finding common ground is harder, but a step towards happiness.” (Unknown)

I will admit to you that this next principle sometimes gives me fits. It isn’t that I am unclear on the concept, I understand the concept of getting momentum toward an agreement. And, I have used the construct many times when delivering a formal talk. Where I struggle…

“A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.” (Abraham Lincoln)

I will admit, I have used this quote before but never really checked what the definition of “gall” was in this context before writing this piece. It turns out that it is just what I expected. Gall is the contents of the gall bladder, proverbially known for its bitterness. I am not sure that anyone was slinging buckets…

“Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.” (Bruce Lee)

I am a sports fan. There are quite a lot of American Sports that have held my interest over the years. The highest among them has always been baseball. I have been a fan since I was a child, and many of my sports heroes have been men who put on a cap for a living and chased a ball around a field. In the 1990s and…

Taking a lesson from a very old “dad joke”

“I’ve only been wrong once in my life, and then it turned out I was mistaken.” (My Dad)

Those who have been longtime readers of my blog know that my daddied when I was only six years old from a heart attack. My actual memories of him are fairly minimal, but there are stories. One that my mom used to tell me was that he would say the sentence above from time to time. It was meant to be a joke,…

“A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still” (Unknown)

I mentioned in a recent post that I was once on my High School debate team. For 4 years, I worked hard to hone the skill of finding flaws in other people’s arguments, and exploiting them to win my point. And, I learned how to cover the holes in my own arguments, and how to dance around them when necessary. When I was…

“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” (William James)

A few years back I worked in a large building, with about 1,500 people in it. All of us worked for the same company. There was a gal there who worked in the mail room. Her job was to take the mail for all1,500 of us, and deliver it to our desks on a daily basis. There was just this one woman, and she was…

“The royal road to a person’s heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most” (Dale Carnegie)

This section of Dale Carnegie’s 30 Human Relations principles is subtitled “Become a friendlier person.” Often when people are working through this section, they want to know when do theyget to talk about what’s important to them? Sometimes people will say that it seems like Mr. Carnegie was…