Life is a Bell Curve

I took Statistics in college at San Diego State University. I hated it...Okay, maybe hate is too strong. I disliked it, however I did learn something very valuable. I am fascinated with patterns and the Bell Curve predicts the lifecycle of many things. Take friendships for example. They typically start out slowly then build to a crescendo and diminish over time. The challenge with programming a computer to play the game Go is that there are so many potential moves that it can only present a tiny fraction of the potential moves. The same can be said of friends. You know what your potential moves are, but you don't know your friend's potential moves. Will you be shot down? Hence, the problem.

Confusing Self Promotion With Shelf Promotion

Our Creator has endowed us with certain gifts and talents. Often we keep those gifts to ourselves and don't share them with the world. I call this 'shelf promotion' because we keep these gifts on the shelf and don't use them.

Revelation

Periodically I go through a period of self assessment or self reflection. I thought about everything that I have accomplished so far and I asked myself had my life been to perfect before? Had it been blemish free? For the most part it had. I mean, I had hit a few potholes in life, but who hasn't? For the most part it has been blemish free. That's almost scary... Many of you know that I am now an author and I was reading an article about the importance of revelation or an epiphany in the story. What is my revelation? My eureka moment.

Forming Friendships

Much has been discussed about the advantages and disadvantages of the current method of communication and forming friendships. I can see the inherent disadvantages of communication via texting, email and IMing. Much of the face to face communication has been lost. Since I started this post, I connected with a friend that I haven't seen since High School nearly forty years ago on Facebook! Let me go on record as officially endorsing this social media trend!

Expectations

I have done an incredible amount of reading on intelligence, the difference between races and ethnicities and cultures. I've discovered in my fifty-six years of living on this rock called Earth that the difference between us has never been about intelligence or aptitude, but expectations. In certain cultures the expectations that a child was going to excel in Math or Science is baked in. Just like the expectation that a child would excel in sports is a foregone conclusion. You probably could picture that child as I described the characteristics... It's all about what a parent expects from the child. I am reminded of the story of Thomas Edison. It is said that as a child he came home from school one day and handed his mother a note from the teacher wrote that she instructed him not to read. Thomas Edison's mother opened the note and read it silently to herself. Then she read it aloud to her son. "Dear Mrs. Edison, your son has exceeded the abilities of our staff to instruct him and we will no longer be able to teach him at our school." Several years later when Mrs. Edison had passed, Thomas Edison was going through her letters and found the note from the teacher. It read, "Dear Mrs. Edison, your son does not have the intelligence to keep up with the other students and we cannot address his needs at this school. Please find an alternative." Mrs. Edison had homeschooled him from that day forward.

Persistence

Of all of the virtues which have been portrayed in writing since ancient times one of them takes prevalence over intelligence, wisdom and charm. It is persistence because it is the engine that powers the other virtues. You can get all of the other virtues if you try long enough.

Word of Mouth

In marketing circles it accepted that the best form of advertising and marketing is word of mouth advertising from a friend or associate. It is the least expensive and the most credible as well. I finally figured out where my word of mouth advertising comes into play... There's a Spirit deep inside each of us that desires our word of mouth testimony. This Spirit craves it! It's free! It's from a credible source. This Spirit provides you with everything that you need and some of what you want.