Your Life Bank Account

A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed each  morning by eight o'clock, with his hair fashionably combed and shaved  perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. 

His wife of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After  many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled  sweetly when told his room was ready. 

As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description  of his tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on his window.  "I love it", he stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just  been presented with a new puppy. 

Mr. Jones, you haven't seen the room; just wait. 

“That doesn't have anything to do with it,” he replied. 

“Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. 

Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is  arranged ... it's how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it.  'It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up.. I have a choice;  I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the  parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful  for the ones that do. 

“Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I'll focus on the new day  and all the happy memories I've stored away.. Just for this time in my life. 

“Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw from what you've put in. 

"So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank  account of memories!”

We’re all still depositing. 

Remember the five simple rules to be happy: 

1. Free your heart from hatred. 

2. Free your mind from worries. 

3. Live simply. 

4. Give more. 

5. Expect less. 

Getting Ready for the Dance!

Workplace learning is becoming increasingly informal and more social, with the integration of Social Media tools. All this is changing the traditional classroom, event-based training approach to one of more user control.

To keep pace (or set the pace!) training professionals must become facilitators of a new learning process by integrating social media into their training activities. For example, Learning 2.0 means more collaboration, learner-to-learner connections, and the ability to contribute to a vast body of organizational knowledge so that workers can easily access 'learning in real time' and become more effective.

"Getting Ready for the Dance" means preparing now for new models of workplace learning. In their book, The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop and Keep Tomorrow's Employees Today, Jeanne C. Mesiter and Karie Willyerd wrote:

"Thriving in the 2020 workplace will require organizations to understand the various needs, expectations and values of all the generations. Companies will need to start making some fundamental changes in how they design jobs, careers, learning programs and even benefits."

Join Vital Learning for our next webinar, "Learning Becomes Social: Getting Ready for the Dance with Vital Online 2.0" on Thursday, September 15 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time (1:00 p.m. Central, 12:00 p.m. Mountain, and 11:00 a.m. Pacific)

Registration Link

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How Could This Be Handled? #3 Resolving Team Conflicts

This edition's Leadership Problem: Resolving Conflicts within the Team

How many types of conflict can a team leader have to deal with among team members?! At least as many as there are people on the team...and more!

Conflict can become a daily happening without warning, disputes flaring up unexpectedly and over things that will surprise you. Very often the conflicts seem trivial, based on nothing! But of course, they surface from somewhere don't they?

Maybe it's been a long-simmering-below-the-radar dispute between two team members, perhaps someone came into work that day with lingering issues on the home front, someone new has joined the group or assignments have altered - pick any topic, any situation and it has the potential to cause disruption among team members!

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