Friends

Friends As you know, we’ve been here in New York City for more than a year; and because it’s always been a temporary thing, cultivating new friends has been difficult.  It’s like: hey, where do you live, or: how long you gonna be here??  The answers to those questions usually don’t encourage the kind of deep and long-term friendships that ultimately develop any benefits. So it’s at times like this that the old friends we have are so much more important to us.  Last week one of my old friends stopped in NYC on her way from Europe back home to Florida.  And we got together.  And we laughed and re-connected just like there had been no lapse in our friendship.  And then she took out her iPad and showed me pictures she’d taken at a dinner the night before with 3 friends – one was from Central America, one from Africa and the last from Europe.  Those friends don’t get together often, but they got right back into the benefits of friendship.  The pictures were filled with smiles and obvious good cheer, just the kind you’d expect from a group of… well, friends.  I asked: how long’s it been since you’ve seen any of these people?  And she replied: too long!  And that sums up the world in which we each live. We’re online lots of the time, we’re traveling at other times, and we’re busy all the time. So it’s not easy, but certainly important, to make time – somehow, somewhere, some way – to keep and maintain the friendships we develop.  And with Skype and the Internet it’s easier today than ever to stay in touch.  But let’s not mistake staying in touch with those tools, or clicking the like button on Facebook, or the occasional tweets we send, or checking in on Foursquare, as substitutes for the face-to-face and in-person connections that we should and need to have in real life.  That kind of up close and personal getting together, doing the things you do with friends – like the dinner party in the pictures my friend showed me – those are the real benefits of friendship.  So don’t wait too long, or let it go too long, before you have a real moment together with your friends.  My message this week is about being creative and innovative in this game of life: “I do not know the word 'quit.' Either I never did, or I have abolished it.” -Susan Butcher Susan Howlet Butcher (1954 – 2006) was an American dog musher, noteworthy as the second woman to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 1986, the second four-time winner in 1990, and the first to win four out of five sequential years. If you’re ever going to create something, anything, then you better have a “never quit” attitude like Susan Butcher.  Check out Susan or the Iditarod Race on Google to see what she went through to be the champion of that event so many times.  Lots of people throughout history have had this kind of attitude and all of them were hugely successful in their endeavors.  Winning at anything, like creating anything, takes dedication, perseverance, guts and a ‘never quit’ attitude.  And if any successful people couldn’t succeed, it wasn’t because they didn’t give it their all.  Do you give your all to the things you do – both big and small – and do you make the total commitment needed to be a creative and innovative winner?  Life is complicated, competition is fierce, and only those who don’t quit come up with the big ideas and wins.  Do what it takes today to be that kind of winner.  Forget the word quit today – abolish it from your vocabulary – and then go out and work at being successful! Stay well!