Mitch's Blog

If you read this blog often enough, you know that I really subscribe to 3 moral positions: loyalty, trustworthiness, and honesty. I really believe that’s how you need to be with your friends, with your co-workers, and as much as possible with everyone else you meet throughout your life. Tonight I learned once again just how much my friends can, and have, protected me in my life, and it shows just how much people will give back to you what you’ve given to them.

Back in college, the second half of my freshman year, I had a major crush on a young lady. That crush pretty much lasted for almost a year and a half. I got a little bit of reciprocity back initially, but by the second year things started changing. I knew they were changing, but I didn’t fully know why. But all of us usually know some signs when a relationship really isn’t going to go where you might hope it will.

Still, for the longest time I never really got over her. I had a couple more relationships after that, real relationships, but I never fully got beyond thinking about this young lady. I got to see her in person years later at a mutual friend’s wedding, and that was a really nice time also. But I knew that there was never going to be anything between us.

However, I still called her every once in awhile, and we’d talk. We didn’t live in the same house, and back then there were no long distance plans, so each call cost me enough money. But I didn’t care; loved talking to her. But I knew there were changes going on in her life. The last time I talked to her, I knew there was something wrong, but wasn’t sure what it was. She just didn’t sound right to me. Three weeks later, she was gone.

You see above that loyalty is at the top of my list. That’s why I kept on calling her. I always thought that if nothing else, I could help her solve her demons. I had figured out what they were, but really didn’t know how to overcome them. I hoped that by talking, that would be enough; it wasn’t. Then for a few years I kept thinking that maybe I didn’t do enough; I had one of our mutual friends talk to me and finally convince me that she wasn’t the same person we’d both know, and hadn’t been that person for years. I knew she was right, and was ready to move on.

Last night, I got to talk to another mutual friend of ours from that same time period. She knew about the crush I’d had. She also knew many other things, and it turns out some of the other people I knew back then had the same knowledge. Once I told my friend that our other friend had passed away so many years ago (I was surprised that I’d never told her before), she began telling me a few things that I didn’t know had occurred back in those days. She said they all knew how I felt, and wanted to protect me from any of it at the time. I could see her point; I had made it a point of protecting her and my other friends any chance I could get, so they were going to return the favor. Even back then, they would try to talk me into doing other things, which I eventually did, but I didn’t know the reason behind why they were doing any of it.

After learning some of these things, I thanked her for protecting me back then, and if I had the chance I’d thank a few more of my friends for the same type of thing. They were certainly loyal, and at this point I know they were trustworthy enough to protect my interest. As far as the honesty goes, well, I guess in this case it wasn’t news that I needed to know, and they certainly never lied to me about anything else. I can’t say they lied to me about this; they just didn’t tell me, and in retrospect, I was a different person back then, so it was a really smart move on their part. They all showed a high level of perspicaciousness; who could have asked for a better group of friends?

If you show loyalty, trustworthiness, and honesty to the people you most value in your life, you will get it back in more ways than you can imagine. If you do the same with the people you work with, you’ll be amazed at the good that can come from it. I can honestly say that yesterday was a wonderful day, because I learned more about my friends than I ever knew, and I knew a lot about them before.

A couple of days ago I was reading a blog post by Rose DesRochers called The Online Reputation of Rose DesRochers. In the post, she talks about being asked to write a guest post for another blog, yet when she submitted the post she was told by the person that he had seen something negative about her and had decided he didn’t want her post.

One thing about the internet is that anyone can say anything about you, and often you won’t know anything about it. Sometimes you do, and you can engage in one of those things where you want to debate against someone or turn around and do the same thing to them. This type of thing isn’t new, especially to online issues. On my other blog last year I wrote about another woman who won the right through the federal courts to find out who was slandering and libeling her online by hiding behind a blog using a fake name. Of course the woman who was outed didn’t like it, tried to sue Google, then dropped it when she realized she didn’t have a chance, and was stupid to begin with for saying the things she did about the other woman.

There are times when one has to work hard in protecting their reputations. There are other times when it’s not worth the trouble, for one reason or another. Not all of these things are online; I’m going to tell my story.

About 2 1/2 years ago, I was doing a consulting assignment at a hospital in New York City. The top finance guy in charge was one of those guys who was all about one thing; getting money for the hospital. I understand how that works; it’s something I work on doing myself in my health care consulting business. The thing is that there were some things the hospital wasn’t doing that, according to the rules of the state, they needed to be doing. I had the person in charge of that area to start fulfilling the requirements of the state. What that did, unfortunately, was reduce the amount of money the hospital was getting every week.

That irked this guy to no end. The thing is, he was the one who actually brought the issue to my attention in a way, and I told him I was going to do it once I discovered what the rule was. We even had a meeting with a lot of other people where I explained what was going on, that he had asked about it, and that it was a short term issue that would soon be resolved.

Eventually I knew I couldn’t work with this guy and said I was leaving. He said something that was very unkind to me, in front of a witness, proving just what kind of man he was. Over the course of my last two weeks, he never said a word to me. Even my last week there, when I turned out to be correct, and the hospital had its best cash week of the year, he refused to say anything nice or wonder what I might have done to help them get that great week.

In the time I’ve been gone, he’s refused to pay the company that he had contracted with. That wasn’t surprising because I told the company that I knew he was never going to pay them. This guy has also continued to try to trash me, saying I was the worst guy they ever had there. Yes, miles away, but I still hear this stuff.

Now, I could have said something earlier and more direct. I certainly could have turned him and his hospital in to the state authorities, which I thought about many times, for fraudulent practices. This guy did a lot of illegal things that I and others knew about. I brought a couple of things to his attention, and his response to me was “did we get paid?” Folks, that’s illegal; you don’t do illegal things just to get paid. But there was no one to go to about any of this at the time except the state; lucky for me, I found the issues, but none of them happened on my watch.

The thing is that this man is unscrupulous and many people know about him. I’ve mentioned his name in other circles and no one has ever had a good word to say about him. Even one of his supposed friends said she had lost all respect for him because he wasn’t paying her either, and he owed her millions. So, my thinking overall was, and still is, that it’s really not worth going after this man with everything I could muster (I do happen to know a lot about how the internet works; I could easily crush this man’s reputation online and get away with it, as it would all be true, and he’d never know who did it) because his word means nothing to anyone. He has no sense of honor, and almost everyone who knows him knows that. I have suffered not one bit because of anything he’s tried to tell others. If he knew what I knew about him, he’d be kneeling in my presence hoping I’d stay quiet. Actually he wouldn’t, because he’s not smart enough to know just how much he’s disliked.

As I said earlier, there are times when one has to protect their reputation in some form. Then there are other times when you have to look at where that kind of thing is coming from and not get into the fray. Knee-jerk reactions often end with two casualties. Measured responses can work wonders if needed; if not, don’t waste your time doing or thinking about it. Go on about your business, and know that your reputation is just fine.

It’s another year for Black History Month to try to get people who could care less to understand just what it used to mean to be black in America. I say it that way because based on a lot of what I see, most people care as much about that as they do about what it’s like being black in America today. If that sounds cynical it’s not meant to; instead, it’s meant to convey what I see is still the reality of being black in America, and even with a black president, things aren’t better at all.

As a matter of fact, things have gotten worse. Let’s look at the year President Obama had, shall we? This president in his first year in office has received more death threats than GW Bush did in his entire 8 years, and more than the combined number of the previous 4 president. The New York Post decided to equate him with a monkey that ripped a woman’s face off, as if they were hoping that the President would be shot like the monkey was. Then again, that’s Rupert Murdoch for you, so it makes sense. Then there’s this group that keeps filing lawsuits trying to get him overturned as president because they keep claiming he’s not American (and they obviously have the money to keep filing these claims, as the judges keep increasing the fines for them filing what’s already been determined numerous times as frivolous). And this new fringe radical group calling itself the Tea Party keeps creating all sorts of racist incarnations of President Obama, claiming free speech. All that, then the debate as to whether he really qualifies as being a black president in the first place because his mother wasn’t black. Sure, when there’s nothing left to fall back on, try that route.

What about the year for black people in general? I wrote on my finance blog that unemployment for young black men under the age of 25 is now at 34.5%; for all young black people, it’s 30.5%. For young black women, it’s at 26.5%, compared to 15.4% for all young women. That was in 2009, when the rest of the country lamented unemployment rates of 10% or so. Then there was the story on how blacks and hispanics usually end up with higher mortgage interest rates than whites, even if the economic backgrounds are the same or even better. And it’s not even close; almost 55% of blacks and 46% of hispanics are affected; makes me wonder about my mortgage loan.

You want more? Recently black students started leaving Hocking College in Nelsonville, OH after receiving death threats. Instead of making them feel safer, their spokesperson came out with this: “Any time that there are young people, you know, there’s going to be tension. Young people will be young people.” Comforting, right? You also have the case where a Google Voice program interpreted something one person said to a young black lady as “Hey Negro,” which she didn’t say, and of course dredges up the embarrassment of Harry Reid and his stupid comment from last year’s campaign, only recently released. There’s also a Microwave program being sold in Poland that any time someone goes looking for a picture of black people it pulls up a picture of a monkey; yeah, that’s really subtle. Finally, one really has to question just how far race relations go when even 15 year olds are still dealing with parents who are worried about interracial relationships in the 21st century.

Can we ever get to a point of agreement when, even now, we have polls showing that 90% of blacks still support President Obama as president while the figure is only at 42% for whites? Am I being naive or skeptical in believing that things will ever attain some kind of equal standing for everyone?

What do I want? Here’s 5 things I want:

1. I want people to stop using “black” as the whipping entity for their negative positions. I’m tired of people saying what they want to say, then apologizing after the fact when we all know they’re lying.

2. I want people to stop thinking black people can’t be articulate or intelligent across the board. I’m tired of hearing “you’re so articulate” as if it’s a surprise.

3. I want people to stop saying black people are whining because we talk about problems overall. Did I make up any of the numbers above? You can’t fix what you can’t acknowledge, and that includes racism.

4. I want other people to notice the same things I do when it comes to inequities and lack of minorities in places and situations. Think of Avatar; how many minorities did you see in that movie? Last year’s Star Trek only had two black people in it. The hospital where my wife works has many black people in housekeeping & other maintenance areas, but in technical areas, nursing etc, the percentages are extremely low. As a matter of fact, every hospital in the area except the state university hospital is like that, and I’m not just talking in my particular city.

5. I want more people of all races to participate in programs like we have here in Syracuse called community wide dialogue. Its purpose is to bring people of different racial and economic backgrounds together to talk about race in a safe environment. I participated in the program back in 2003 and found it quite illuminating, if also for the fact that we had 4 people drop out of the program during its six weeks, and all of them were white. If we can’t talk with each other in a safe environment, we can’t talk to each other anywhere.

So, Happy Black History Month; take a moment out for the present as well, please.

At this point, we all know what’s going on. In Massachusetts, the populace voted in a Republican to fill the seat of Senator Kennedy, and that effectively ended the Democratic block that could force a health care bill upon the masses without Republican support.

I think everyone pretty much knew at that point that the health care bill that was in Congress was effectively over. When Rep. Nancy Pelosi came out the next day and said that there was no way the House was going to support the bill the Senate had come up with, that pretty much effectively ended all discussions about the health care bill. At least the bill in its present form, because the President still wants Congress to talk about it and to give him something he can sign.

I think I’ve indicated my thoughts on health care, but if I haven’t, let me reiterate it here. I want there to be health care coverage for everyone. I’ve also said that I’m not sure if the government knows how to get it done correctly. I did define for people what the difference was between single payor and public option. I griped when I heard some people could be fined if they didn’t sign up for health care. I talked about some fears I had regarding a health care bill. I talked to a politician about my thoughts on health care. I even gave my own idea for how one might think about having some kind of health care bill.

I feel like most of the time I was speaking out against a health care bill. That’s not quite accurate. I was speaking out against this one, however. In my mind, the idea isn’t to have a health care bill that’s still going to hurt people in some fashion. It doesn’t do much good if a health care bill is going to cost people who can’t afford it to have to pay some kind of penalty. That was the point of the bill in the first place. I didn’t like how the bill defined all small businesses as having less than 50 employees when determining who would be exempt from some of the rules of the bill, but then altering the rules for the construction industry by making it 5 employees or less. That’s one of the main industries that could help stimulate the economy, but singling out any industry from another just didn’t seem fair.

And finally, I think the bill ended up costing too much, and it didn’t go into effect for 4 more years what’s that about? I still believe a combination of one of my ideas as it pertains to FQHC’s and the recommendation from one of my health care friends could be the way to go. Everyone ends up being covered, the cost would come down, and everyone would finally be covered. But I guess that’s too easy as compared to a 2,400 page health care plan created by Congress; shameful.

At this point, I’m not confident that anything will get done in President Obama’s first four years, and unless there comes a Republican savior at some point it won’t get done in his second term, or ever. It needs to, though; let’s hope some group comes together and comes up with a plan that takes care of everyone, that doesn’t cost the middle class any money, that doesn’t hurt the budget, and brings the United States in line with every other country in the world except Italy.

I tell you, life is interesting in that you never know when things will be good and things will be bad. In the space of the last 5 days, things just keep happening that really works in testing one’s resolve and proves that the laws of attraction will always be there, even if not the way you might be expecting.

Last Friday I was almost living large. Things seemed ready to coalesce in one direction, and other things were working out well at all. Then I got some bad news via email; one of my clients had lost a contract and that impacted my income as well. That I didn’t see coming, but that’s how business goes from time to time. But it left a bad taste in my mouth for awhile, until I came to grips with the thought that there might soon be better things on the horizon.

Then comes Monday afternoon. This good thing I was expecting came crashing down, and suddenly things weren’t looking so good. I have to admit that I was disappointed, and I may have sulked for maybe half an hour.

That’s about it. Then my mind said “hey, it wasn’t meant to be, and it’s time for better things to come into my life.” I felt a sense of renewal, and I was ready to forge ahead towards new challenges.

What’s happened in the last 24 hours is pretty amazing. I was contacted about one possible contract, which fell through quickly because I didn’t know about a particular computer system. I was contacted by two other people about possible contracts. I got another call and I’ll know tomorrow if I’ll be going out of town for a week or two on a quick turnaround contract. There’s a possibility that I’ll be working with someone else on producing some information for a hospital system on a continual basis. I was contacted by someone who wants to advertise on a different website I own for just that purpose. And I was contacted about possibly hooking up with another consulting company to provide leadership training in some fashion to some of their partners throughout the United States.

Wow, how the universe heard my positive thoughts. None of what’s come today came how I was expecting it. None of it came when I was hoping for it. But it came nonetheless; that’s the power of the laws of attraction, and it shows just how things can turn positive when you don’t dwell on your disappointments too long.

How are you dealing with disappointments in your life? Everyone is allowed to have some down time; no one can stay super positive 24/7. But if you can find a way to pull yourself out of it as quickly as possible, alter your mindset towards positive thoughts, good things are waiting to come your way. Trust me on this one; they’ll come.

Something I’ve seen quite often are motivational speakers telling people that the best way to start changing their lives for the better is to wake up early in the morning, take time to meditate and think, plan their day then go for it.

On the surface it might sound good, but I take a totally different approach to it. I don’t believe there’s a one size fits all when it comes to things such as self improvement or getting things done. I believe it’s best for everyone to understand their own patterns, biorhythms if you will, and to try to find ways to work around them.

I’ll take myself as an example. I live two different lives depending on whether I’m at home or on the road. When I’m on the road, I try to get to bed by 1:30AM at the latest, and then wake at least an hour before it’s time for me to be wherever I have to be by whatever time that is. Most of the time I haven’t had to be anywhere until 9AM, which means if all goes well I’ve given myself 6 1/2 hours of sleep time, which is more than I usually average when I’m at home.

At home, I tend to get to bed between 3 and 4AM, and I usually wake between 9:30 and 10AM. That’s because my biorhythms have me at my most productive usually between 8PM and 2:30AM; I don’t know why. Not that I don’t work during the day when I’m home. I plan my days around certain activities to make sure I get to what I need to get to. If I have a big project, I always make sure I’m on it by 11AM at the latest; earlier if I don’t work out (I need to get back to that). And I work steadily during the day, but I’m still at my best later in the evening.

However, Mondays are a different matter entirely. I have always hated Mondays for some reason. I hated them in school, I hate them now. When I’m on the road, Mondays are usually travel day, which is a blessing because that does give me time to get my mind going. When I’m home, Monday mornings are murder. I usually can’t get my mind working properly until around 4PM at the earliest. Isn’t that a shame?

However, because I know my patterns, I set my work schedule up differently on Mondays than I do every other day. I’ll try to set up appointments for Mondays instead of planning to work on projects. I do the same on Friday afternoons, as I know my mind is getting into weekend mode around that time, but on Friday mornings, I’m ready to finish with a flourish.

That’s the point about knowing oneself. You don’t have to fit into someone else’s idea of how you should begin to make yourself successful all that specifically. You take what someone else tells you they do, then modify it to fit your lifestyle. You’ll feel better, and if you notice positive changes, good for you. Also, make sure to build some time in every day for yourself. After all, if you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of anyone else either.

As I’ve gotten older, I find myself sometimes not being able to remember things as well as I could when I was younger. I’ll be thinking about something and then someone will ask me that exact thing, and my mind will forget what it’s called for a minute and I’m stuck and feeling stupid.

Most of the time, I will remember things relatively quickly because I’ve worked hard on setting up proper thought processes to help me get through these things. It’s something that I never did when I was younger and had a better memory, and yet it often helps me find and figure things out better than I could when I was younger.

For instance, these days I sometimes forget why I’ve walked into another room. I know I had something on my mind before I left the original room, but my mind was thinking about other things almost immediately, and it’s suddenly not there. I have found that if I just retrace my steps, even if I have to go back to the exact spot I left, it will come to me and I can proceed in going for what I wanted in the first place. It’s a thought process I’ve worked out that says to do everything I originally did but in reverse, in the exact order, and for whatever reason that seems to work. My mind can remember where my body was almost in perfect order; how’s that for surprising?

The reason that’s better than when I was younger is because back then my memory was so sharp on other things that I didn’t have to worry that if I walked into a room I wouldn’t remember why I was there. I didn’t forget the name of such and such singer who I’ve only seen once, or had heard the name and recalled it for no reason whatsoever. Things just went into my mind automatically, and I remembered them. However, if I lost something, I would have a heck of a time in finding it. That’s because I relied on my memory for so many other things, I hadn’t thought back then about training myself to learn how to retrace my steps. That caused a lot more consternation, because we all know that sometimes we lose things when we don’t know we’re losing them, such as when things fall out of your pocket or might slip behind cushions.

At a certain point, we all need to learn how to do certain things to help ourselves out. I tend to write more things down these days to help me when I forget something for a few minutes. I used to remember every phone number I’d ever heard, but I now have to write them down. I set alarms on my watch and on my cell phone to alert me to things because recall just isn’t what it used to be. All of these things help, and anything that helps is a good thing.

Have you had to find ways to alter your life to help your thought processes go better? Do you need help in learning ways to help yourself? Share your thoughts.

I’ve been working with a friend of mine lately on some of her business goals and personal dreams in my capacity as a business coach and consultant. This isn’t usually the type of thing I do, but I find that it’s sometimes easier to help someone else analyze their business and [...]

On Tuesday night in Massachusetts the Democrats got a rude awakening for their arrogance in thinking that the election of another Democratic senator was a given and lost a seat in the Senate that they hadn’t been expecting to lose. That now means that they don’t have the numbers to [...]

There are two types of people who help others in the world. One are people who help because it makes them feel good. The other are people who are looking to get something out of it.
I think I have one of those faces that makes people think I need [...]