I referenced Alan Turning several years ago in a blog about how he led the team that broke the code to the Germany Enigma machine that changed the outcome of World War II. I have thought a lot about this over the last week and wanted to add some thoughts to the subject.

When Alan Turing was recruiting a lady to serve on his team, she asked why me? His response was one of the greatest answers in history. He said, “Sometimes it is the very people no one can imagine anything of that do the very things no one can imagine.”

You see, during World War II, the idea of a woman serving in the intelligence field was unheard of. It was all men. Alan Turing however didn’t care what race, what sex or what skin color. He knew that the future of the civilized word hung in the balance and he hired whoever he believed could help the cause. She was very instrumental in breaking the German code that changed the course of history. It might be a stretch on my part, but very possibly, if he had not hired this lady, the world as we know it today, most likely would look very different.

If you really took the time to look at history from the disciples to modern day success stories, what you will find is that in many cases the very people that have all the capabilities, looks, brains, dress, education, and personality are not the ones who do great things. It is usually the ones no one expects anything from that go on to change the world. I think of the unpopular kids, and in many cases the ones that barely made it through high school, that went on to invent Microsoft, Apple, Chick-fil-A, Coke, IBM etc. I even think about Charles Henry Dow who invented the Dow Jones Industrial average and the Wall Street Journal who had no formal education and left home when he was 16 years old.

It’s usually the very people no one imagines anything of that do the very things no one can imagine. Just because you may not have all the opportunities or abilities others may have, don’t think God cannot do a great work through you. KT

When a dog is hunting, he is focused on one thing. Whatever it is he is chasing. When that same dog is laying up on the porch of the hunting cabin, he yawns, sleeps and scratches at his fleas. The difference is when he is at idle, he is focused on his problems. The dog that is hunting never stops to scratch his fleas because he is fully engaged in the hunt. In fact, if he is chasing something, he doesn’t even know he has fleas.

Hopefully, you see this story as the metaphor it is intended to be. I am talking about life, jobs, businesses, relationships, finances, church etc. etc. I am talking about how we are in life.

I have hired and trained many hotel brokers over the years. Many of them could have been great, but they never could figure out how to get off the porch. They were always complaining about something that wasn’t going the way they thought it should or they would come up with a 12-step program and form a committee to begin exploring how to fix the problem, all while they were still on the porch scratching and licking themselves. ha

You can see this porch mentality in every office environment that has ever existed. There are doers and then there are whiners. Don’t get me wrong. Some meetings are very important like when the Army wants to meet and go over the strategy before an attack. If you on the front lines, you need to be at that meeting! What I am talking about is the need to meet for meeting sake. John Galbraith said it so well when he said, “meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.”

Put yourself in the hound dog’s mind. He is the happiest when he is doing the thing he does best which is hunting and looking for birds or squirrels. He is the unhappiest when he is at idle and laying up on the porch with nothing to do. We as humans are a lot like dogs in that we need to be doing something to be happy and something we can feel a part of. It can be a job or volunteer work but we all need to be involved and to be in action mode versus porch mode. KT

Disappointments happen to everyone. No one is exempt. The real question is how you move forward when disappointments happen. I don’t have the answer, but I do have some thoughts on the matter.

I remember years ago I was selling a 17-property portfolio of hotels in the Midwest. I was so excited about it that I made a mistake in allowing myself to envision what it will be like closing that transaction and (at the time) the impact the income would make for my family. Well you guessed it, the deal didn’t happen, and I was faced with how to handle the disappointment. I could have rolled around in the muck for days but instead I did the only thing I knew to do. I got on the phone and started going after new business and in doing so, it lessened the pain of the disappointment.

That answer is good for a selling example, but what if the disappointment is about health, life, relationships, financial stress, death, marriage etc. There is a different solution for every situation and in some cases, there is no solution. That said, I believe in all the examples mentioned, you must move forward. There is something about moving forward (as best you can) that emboldens your faith, hope and drive. Hope is a very misunderstood and often mis-underestimated emotion.

This is important… Hope, for the future could be (in my humble opinion) the most cherished, most valuable and most sought-after emotion we can have. See, it is the thing that keeps us going when disappointments come our way. It is what enables us to feel joy, peace and love and allows us to see the world through a lens that offers meaning to our life.

Therefore, we all have disappointments that come our way but the very act, of moving forward, does something inside our soul (hope) that helps restore us. KT