Just another case of hUmAn networking…….
Not the kind that has given “networking” a bad name — that superficial, insincere, manipulative stuff that we all can smell a mile away. No, I’m talking about the true art of networking, based upon respectful and caring relationships that promote mutual success.
Let me start with one of the most fundamental aspects of human relationships: For each and every thing you want to achieve in life — whether it’s landing a job, earning respect and/or recognition or finding that lifelong romance — there will be at least one person on the other end deciding whether to give you or help you get what you want. Everything we do can only be accomplished through and with other people. Simply put, success, of any kind, requires a relationship of some kind.
Just think of the words of Margaret Wheatley:
“Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone.”
If this is the way the universe works, you can see why human relationships and human networks are so important.
The most common mistake people make when building relationships for their success is by treating all contacts differently than personal friends.
How exactly do you do it then?
The same way you make genuine friends. Build trust through intimacy; show them that besides being ‘qualified’, you’re also human. Skip the small talk and go deep into what really matters — your dreams or fears, your children or the social issues that keep you up at night. And don’t think for a moment that they’ll think less of you……in fact, usually the opposite happens.
When I tell people about my unprivileged beginnings – growing up without parents as a bona fide ‘swamp boy’ in rural Savannah and how it took me forever, it seems, to overcome the insecurities of being poor & dissolute, while being picked on by those who just couldn’t grasp the extent of my pain and loneliness – people rarely think less of me. They immediately empathize and feel more endeared to me than ever before. All you have to do is let your guard down and show enough vulnerability to help others feel more comfortable with opening up to you.
Don’t compartmentalize your personal, professional and community lives. Blur the boundaries! You’ll have more fun and do more for all three parts of your life in less time.
So you you want the inside scoop, do ya?
Fair enough. I’ll sum up the key to ‘successful human peer bonding’ in two words:
While I would say that your relationships are the most critical piece of your personal brand, before you can develop those relationships you’ve got to know something and have something to say. Just having a brain and an MBA won’t get you anywhere anymore. If you want to become more valuable in the marketplace or more intriguing to the world at large, you must develop some deep expertise in your mind and root some higher-order passion in your heart.
This rule is obviously one no one can follow 100 percent. It’s just a great way to remember to share your passions — to invite others into the activities you already enjoy doing.
If you’ll just remember to share your passions, building and deepening relationships will take no extra time than you already devote to your favorite activities, and people will see you in your best light (instead of in those nasty [dead light] fluorescents of Office Space).
………………
If you don’t ask, you won’t get.
I learned this from my Indian Grandmother. She simply could not be embarrassed when it came to fulfilling my needs.
I remember when I was a young boy, she and I were driving down the road to our little cabin house when she spotted a broken Big Wheel tricycle in someone’s trash. She stopped the car, picked it up and knocked on the door of the home where the discarded toy lay waiting to be picked up.
“I spotted this Big Wheel in your trash,” she told woman who answered the door. “Do you mind if I take it? I think I can fix it. It would make me feel wonderful to give my son something like this.”
What guts! Can you imagine such a proud and plebeian lady approaching that woman and, essentially, admitting that we were so poor that she’d like to have her garbage? Oh, but that’s not the half of it. Imagine how that woman felt, having been given an opportunity to give such a gift to another person. It must have surely made her day.
“Of course,” she gushed, explaining that her children were grown and that years had passed since the toy had been used. “You’re welcome to the bicycle I have, too. It’s nice enough, but I just couldn’t throw it away…”
So we drove on. I had a “new” Big Wheel to ride and a bike to grow into. That woman with the Big Wheel had a smile and a fluttering heart that only benevolence breeds. And my Grandmother had taught me that there is genius, even kindness, in being bold.
Every time I start to set limits to what I can and can’t do, or fear starts to creep into my thinking, I remember that Big Wheel tricycle. I remind myself how people with a low tolerance for risk, whose behavior is guided by fear, have a low propensity for success. The memories of those days have stuck with me. My Grandmother taught me that the worst anyone can say is “no.” If they choose not to give their time or their help, it’s their loss. My Grandmother understood something that many people don’t: To be successful, you have to not only accept generosity when it’s offered, but sometimes, you must also go out and ask for it.
There are times when I can make a big difference in another person’s life. I can open a door or place a call or set up a meeting of like minds — one of those simple acts by which destinies are altered. But too often the offer is refused. The recipient will say, “Sorry, but I can’t accept the favor because I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to repay you,” or, “I’d rather not be obligated to anyone, so I’ll have to pass.” Sometimes, they’ll insist right then and there that they return the favor somehow. To me, nothing is as frustrating as encountering such blindness to the reciprocal nature of generosity.
Remember folks………we’re all in this together.
IF YOU think the complex microchips that drive modern computers are models of deterministic precision, think again. Their behaviour is inherently unpredictable and chaotic, a property one normally associates with the weather.
Intel’s widely used Pentium 4 microprocessor has 42 million transistors and the newer Itanium 2 has no fewer than 410 million. “Their performance can be highly variable and difficult to predict,” says Hugues Berry of the National Research Institute for Information and Automation in Orsay, France.
Berry, Daniel Perez and Olivier Temam say that chaos theory can explain the unpredictable behaviour. The team ran a standard program repeatedly on a simulator which engineers routinely use to design and test microprocessors, and found that the time taken to complete the task varied greatly from one run to the next.
But within the irregularity, the team detected a pattern, the mathematical signature of “deterministic chaos”, a property that governs other chaotic systems such as weather. Such systems are extremely sensitive – a small change at one point can lead to wide fluctuations at a later time. For complex microprocessors, this means that the precise course of a computation, including how long it takes, is sensitive to the processor’s state when the computation began.
read more here:
http://www.arxiv.org/nlin.AO/0506030
A letter written to the more ‘liberalized’ news outlets in the North & South Carolinian region span:
I am appalled that many Americans believe that fathers [a vast majority of non-custodial parents] are to blame for the problems of absenteeism in their children’s lives and the non-payment of child support.
For starters, many of these father’s are not “dead-beat” at all, but forced into [bankruptcy] becoming dead broke by mothers and the family court system that profits off of it, which in turn utterly fails them. Non-custodial parents are being forced to pay child support way beyond their financial means. Many of these supposed “dead-beat” dad’s have even lost their jobs because their ex’s have harassed them to the point where they’ve gotten fired or let go from their jobs……and finding a new one, especially in the current climate, with similar income, is next to impossible.
To make matters worse, if they do find a new job and it is at a lower income, the courts refuse to acknowledge this and normally refuse to reduce their child support. While unemployed or working for lower wages and waiting to get a modification of child support, the arrearages build up. These are not retracted or retroactively reduced even when a modification is ordered. This amounts to highway robbery and over charging of the father, which puts them further into debt and thus unable to get back on their feet, while still facing jail time.
Did you know that the suicide rate of non-custodial parents who are forced to pay child support beyond their means and/or who are denied a relationship with their children has risen dramatically since the onset of harassment for child support/denial of visitation/etc of these financially devastated fathers?
Did you also know that many mothers deliberately falsify father’s information? From lying about a man being the father to deliberately supplying false mailing information on the supposed father, the women deliberately gain financially by using the system.
When false address information is often supplied about a father to the state when they apply for child support assistance the state then uses it to notify the supposed father that they are being listed as the parent and need to come to court about child support. Because the address information is false, these fathers never get this notice and so cannot come to challenge the situation. They are then found to be the father without being there and charged with astronomical child support based on whatever the mother wants to claim is that persons income. Once the intended victim of this crime finds out that he owes child support for a child he had no idea he was being accused of being the father to, he is practically ruined for a good 2+ years, until he proves his innocence?!?
In addition to these problems, many women deliberately destroy the relationship between the father and the children. They deny the children access to their other parent and deny the parent access to their children. This is considered Psychological Abuse and can and should be classified as Domestic Violence of the worst kind, as it is mental and very hard to retract. This type of abuse is called Hostile Aggressive Parenting which leads to Parental Alienation Syndrome.
But here in lies the problem. These abusive parents are never held accountable for this disruption and impediment of the children and other parent’s relationship. Yet, the other parent is held to a devastatingly higher standard to pay child support for children they are denied a relationship with. And I should know, as I run numerous email support groups with over 1000 members alone in many of them, who are victims of these same atrocities.
To boot, many of these custodial parents file false allegations of abuse against the non-custodial parent in order to maintain this authoritative and abusive control over their ex and the children. In fact, one of the telltale signs that an allegation of abuse is false is when an accusing parent keeps dragging the other parent in to court for additional child support and harassing them when they are behind in support. The last thing that a truly abused victim cares about is financial gains from their ex. In fact, they want to keep as far away from them as possible, making court the last place in the world they want to be with their ex.
Until the system equals out this inequality and holds these abusive ‘custodial parents’ [85% mothers] accountable for their psychological and financial abuse of their ex-spouses and their children, I will never support the actions of going after a non-custodial parent for child support. These custodial parents are abusing a system that was initially set up to help families, not destroy them.
In my eyes, the system needs a total overhaul, immediately, before more children suffer at the hands of their abusive custodial parents and the abusive family court system. Until the system stops favoring custodial parents who destroy their ex-spouses and their relationships with their children, I will continue to fight tooth and nail to make legislators and congressional leaders aware of the gravity of this dire situation.
Best regards,
d
