Choosing to Making a Positive Difference

How and when can we choose to make a positive difference?  Part of this depends on understanding what needs to change and knowing what to change to.  The circle of concern has a role in this decision.  We can choose to make a positive difference in our circle of influence and our circle of control.  We need to move through the three phases of change--awareness, acceptance, and action (Slides 8 and 9)--before we can begin to take the action to bring about the change that will make a positive difference.

We have lots of freedom in our choices.  I have chosen to make a positive difference for clients and organizations I worked with as an organizational development and change management consultant.  More recently (on 9-11-2001), I decided to make a difference by being a classroom teacher for English language learners (ELLs). 

This year I am looking to make a positive difference in new ways--working with new clients and organizations and school systems.  In my earlier choices, I made lots of one-on-one differences.  Now it is more effective to make a difference by teaching others to duplicate these efforts.

In my volunteer work with the American Red Cross, I started as a water safety instructor, then became a first aid and CPR instructor.  After teaching classes for years, I became an instructor-trainer in each of those health and safety areas and eventually cross-trained in disaster services and became a leadership volunteer.  Many years later I made a positive difference with the American Red Cross by helping organize a "CPR-Sunday" event where volunteer instructors came together in facilities provided by the community and trained 800 people in CPR for free in one day.

Making a positive difference is habit forming and is a habit I thoroughly enjoy.

Getting Read--RSS Feeds--Why Promote a Blog?

Why would I want anyone else to read this blog?  What difference could it make?  What is an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) link and service.  Why should I promote this blog?

Those were questions I answered for myself before starting this blog.  I do want others to read the blog posts.  I write things I think are important memory joggers or insights that I want to share with others who may want to read them.  One way to make that an easy process--for people to get the updates--is to have people subscribe to and RSS feed--Real Simple Syndication.  I've just added the "gadget" to this blog to make it easy for people to subscribe to posts, comments, or both.  http://www.bloglines.com is a good source for managing subscriptions.  This allows readers or "followers" of the blog to be notified automatically when something changes on the blog.

So, why should I promote the blog?  One of my goals is to make a positive difference in the world--for everyone I contact and touch.  This is another way to reach out and touch someone.  These reflections, ideas, and insights I have found to be valuable in my own life and I want to share them with others who may want to read them.  Could it help for my business?  Perhaps, if someone who needs the kinds of things I offer and begins to trust me by reading my blog posts, they can find ways to contact me and we can do business.

I have had the same goal for 40+ years as a professional, to make a positive difference in the world by helping people and organizations learn to change in order to improve their quality of (business) life now and for the future.  Want to help me do this?  Subscribe to my blog via an RSS feed and share it with others.

I don't have many comments to my blog posts yet, though some friends care enough to read my blogs and to give me feedback--including finding some typographical errors I can come back and correct.  Thanks for the feedback and corrections, by the way.  Part of delivering value is to have the blogs spelled correctly and make sense.

While I am fluent in more languages than English, I write better in English, so the blog posts are in my native language.  My apologies and congratulations to English language learners (ELLs) who have learned to read English as a second (or additional) language.