“I suppose the most you can hope for is to make some kind of difference, but what kind of difference have I made? What in the world is better because of me?”

and

“Relatively soon, I will die. Maybe in 20 years, maybe tomorrow, it doesn’t matter. Once I am dead and everyone who knew me dies too, it will be as though I never existed. What difference has my life made to anyone. None that I can think of. None at all.”

It’s never to early to think about a legacy, to think about how one’s own life can make an impact far exceeding the years one can live.  An a vital link must be made between personal development and legacy, because that is one of the things that brings true joy.  Knowing that you’re becoming a good person, or becoming a better person and knowing that your development is a blessing to others is a feeling that can’t be bought.  While none of us may be able to reach the heights of Mother Teresa, we can change the lives of others by sacrificing of ourselves simply to allow others the opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have.

Here are some tips and thoughts on how giving can improve your own life, and how to figure out ways to give:

• Scientific research has shown that bringing joy to others actually benefits one’s own mind and heart.  In fact, they found that the biblical proverb “it is better to give than to receive” was extremely true.  When people gave, it satisfied certain parts of their brains more than when they won money.
• Make sure you know where your money goes.  A recent article revealed that barely 10% of the $248 billion donated last year by Americans went towards helping the poor.  That’s not very much obviously, and one way to become discouraged in your giving is to become hardened by corruption and inefficiency.  So, before you start giving, research the organization you are giving to, make sure a significant percentage of the money given goes towards the cause, and make sure you keep tabs on the people within the organization as much as you’re able to.
• Research at Johns Hopkins University showed that devoting time to causes improves a person’s health, in part because it gives them more of a purpose, more of a reason to live.
• Find a cause you have a personal connection to.  Has a loved one died of cancer, then donating to a cancer fund or cancer treatment might be a good idea.  Were you abused as a child or as an adult?  Then giving to a battered women’s shelter or donating time to Big Brothers/Big Sisters could be the way to go.  If all your charitable billing becomes is a bill, then you’ll miss the blessing.

• Some people eat when they’re happy, some when they’re sad.
• Some people cope with grief by pigging out.
• Some people have chronic pains that make exercise difficult.
• Some people exercise too much, and then binge on food.

Here are five tips to personally develop your weight loss:

1. Keep a daily list of what you eat for one week. When you have to sit down at the end of that week to see how many donuts, candy bars and pizza slices you’ve eaten, you’ll be extra motivated to get in shape.

2. Leave your debit card at home. Working at an office can mean afternoon trips to the deli to get something sweet. Without any way to pay for it, you’ll save money and calories.

3. Don’t start too hard. Sometimes motivation/shame get the best of us, and our first work out in months makes everything too sore to continue. Keep it simple and build.

4. Stay away from Chuck Norris. Infomercials make their money convincing you that a c-level celeb got totally fit by stepping up for 20 minutes, doing ab work for 8 minutes, taking a magic pill or some other silly idea. Jogging for 30 minutes a day and making one meal entirely fruits and veggies will keep your weight down more than some tonic.

5. Any progress, even slow progress, is progress. Sure, losing 20 lbs in two weeks sounds great but it’s: a. not healthy; b. not sustainable; and c. not realistic. Lose one pound a week for twenty weeks and that weight will be easier to keep off.

1. Hulk Fought Giants - In Wrestlemania III, Hulk Hogan body slammed Andre the Giant.  How many of us have giants we’re facing in our own lives?  Addictions, bad relationships, horrible personal finances and dead-end careers are the giants which keep us trembling in fear far too often.  Like the Hulkster, standing toe-to-toe with such giants is hard, but the only way to free ourselves from the headaches of mediocrity.
   
2. Saying Your Prayers and Eating Your Vitamins - Hogan’s persona was pure good guy (with the exception of his strange reversion to Hollywood Hogan for a few years).  Far too often we see ourselves in complex fashion, trying to compromise our ethics to move forward.  But we’ve all felt the emptiness inside of ourselves that can only be cured with purity and good.  It’s a complex world we live in today, with wars we may not agree with and corporations we despise.  Being a good guy is the only path to truth.
   
3. Transparency and Vulnerability - Cat Stevens sang a song that basically said he wouldn’t have known love if it weren’t for pain and hurt.  Pretty much every guy Hulk Hogan befriended turned on him (Andre the Giant, Randy Savage, Scott Hall) yet he was always willing to make friends.  Pursuing relationships is the richness of life, and while they will turn on us occasionally, that’s no reason to reject them.
   
4. Consistency - From 1983 through today, Hogan is Hogan.  He puts himself out there, and after decades of wrestling and public appearances (and some terrible movies) he was fans, friends and fortune.  He has his ups and downs, but he’s consistent.

George Bernard Shaw, the great Irish playwright, once said “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”

It’s easy to give up on an endeavor, a person or a situation as failure, or failures, mount. But, if we allow failures to stop us then we should completely throw away any notion of success, development and hope.

Failures are our learning opportunities, even if it’s a major failure. Failed marriages can teach us things about ourselves and our desires that we didn’t know before. Failed attempts at losing weight can allow us to figure out how our bodies work. And in truth, history is filled with people who achieved great things in part because they failed so much.

• J. Paul Getty was an extremely wealthy and successful man, yet was married and divorced more than five times. His business success and acumen wasn’t something he could bring into his personal life.
• Abraham Lincoln lost multiple elections and was often berated for his stances against slavery.
• Jim Plunkett, who led two Raiders teams to victories in the Super Bowl was considered a failure during his days as a quarterback with the New England Patriots and San Francisco 49ers.

Dealing with failure is hard, it’s not easy to look into the mirror after a terrible loss and try and believe that success is possible. It’s easy to use all sorts of cheesy sounding sayings and terms and then let failure sit in your belly. What’s difficult is taking time to examine your failure, learn from it and fight to get over your fear of it.

We’ve all been dumped, fired, yelled at, fallen down during a big event, allowed a bad habit to get the better of us and simply failed at something that seemed easy. However, if we’re going to succeed in life, achieve our goals and do anything of merit, than we have to allow these things to make us stronger.

1. Confidence - Granted, it’s easy for a team with such historic players as Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson and Alex Rodriguez to be confident, but even in the lean years the Yankees always acted like the first place team was simply keeping it warm for them.

2. Create History - Sometimes children who didn’t know their parents, or who didn’t want to know them, have a hard time being successful because there is no history of success. History begins now, and starting your own legacy will hold you responsible to a cause and a goal.

3. Know When to Spend Money - Whether it’s buying a stock, a new home or signing a big free agent, you have to know when it’s important to spend money and when it’s not.

4. Collect Monuments - In Yankee Stadium there are monuments of the great Yankees of the past, and that helps the new guys know what is expected of them. Keep pictures, sayings and other monuments of great people around you to keep in your memory what it takes to be successful.

5. Dress for Success - The Yankees invented pinstripes in Major League Baseball. You’ve got to invent a successful you, so ditch the sweat pants and dirty t-shirts and start to look successful. Don’t break the bank, but remember that image is vital.

If becoming your own boss is your goal, or even the next step in your life, here are some tips that’ll help you both get off the ground and to keep in mind, given by a small business owner:

A. Don’t have a business partner

It’s easy to think that having a partner can minimize risk and bring a variety of ideas, but it can also bring headaches, failure and lawsuits. Ownership is a tricky issue, parents often butt heads about how to raise kids, and they’re in love. Imagine owning a store with someone you violently disagree with?

B. Get payment before delivery

Trust is a tricky thing. It’s important to trust your customers, but you can only trust them so far. Everyone has their priorities, and no one’s priority is to make sure you get your money. If a client has needs at home, or if their business is going under, they probably aren’t going to make sure you get paid. Keep that in mind as you deal with individuals.

C. Don’t be afraid to fire clients

Desperate times make for desperate people. Whether you’re a web designer with a large client or a t-shirt maker with a few small clients, even the most annoying and obnoxious client can look attractive when the checks roll in. However, headaches, stomach aches, lack of sleep and more aren’t worth one idiot’s money. My father actually had a client call on Christmas Eve to complain about something, something that could have waited two days. He was too desperate to fire the client, but he should have cut the chord right then and there.

D. Word of mouth is king

Buying marketing materials, advertising space and web designers is all fine, well and good, but when it comes down to it, a suggestion from a friend outweighs them all. Whether you’re starting your own medical practice or law firm, relationships are vital and referals are the mother’s milk of a successful business.

Well, in developing yourself personally, finances play a big part, and analyzing your goals and your current situation is vital. Here’s a quick look and which bank might be right for you:

1. Bank of America

No bank has had more complaints about it than BofA. Poor customer service, hidden fees and more profligate the comments section of blogs and websites set up to discuss this bank. There are quite a few branches, and it is the largest bank in America, but the availability simply doesn’t seem worth the hassle to let them watch your money. In a survey of poor customer services, this MSN article highlighted BofA specifically as one of the worst customer service providers in the nation.

2. Wells Fargo

This is a regional bank with most of their branches on the West Coast. They seem to be better than Bank of America, and having banked there I can say they aren’t that bad. The challenges however are many. Despite being a West Coast bank, their computers switch over after 3:00 or 4:00 pm EST and all deposits made after that aren’t cleared until the next day. This is extremely frustrating. They were ranked as the number one online bank by one survey, and I can attest to their prowess in online services.

3. Citibank

If BofA is the Devil, then Citibank is the anti-Christ. I’ve had my money with Citibank since my wife and I started saving for our wedding, it’s been about 2 years now. I haven’t really had a problem with them, but we’ve made sure never to let our account get close to zero or god-forbid, overdraft anything. Everyone I’ve ever spoken to though has nothing positive to say about them, except that they are everywhere. Opening an account in Los Angeles was very frustrating as their bank people are morons for the most part. Between spelling my wife’s name wrong on her debit card and then not shipping the card at all, they scored major idiot points with us.

4. Washington Mutual

I banked with them for a while, but WaMu plays themselves off as the anti-bank, the bank that has free checking, that cares about its customers and so on. However, as shown here, that’s not always true. Reality is, they’re a business just like everyone else. Their free checking isn’t necessarily free, they used to offer a program that would allow customers a $500 negative balance on their account (complete with fees of course) and other items that seem great but turn out to be very dangerous. Washington Mutual does offer a favorable savings account interest rate however, but unlike HSBC you need to have a checking account lined to your savings account. Otherwise it’s no good.

5. Wachovia

Beyond the fact that this bank’s name is unpronounceable, its 50/50. Not everyone is happy with them, and their branch and ATM locations are spotty, but they seem to get the job done and at least they aren’t BofA. I recently opened a Wachovia checking account to link with my Paypal account so I can transfer money. We’ll see how easy they are to work with. I hate their website, but opening the account was easy enough.

6. JP Morgan Chase

On a recent Marketwatch.com survey, Chase was second only to BofA in complaints. Their lack of responsiveness is terrible, and although I’ve heard some good things about their savings account interest rates, they don’t satisfy their customers at all.

7. HSBC

We have a savings account with this bank, which we started online. There’s no checking account necessary, and while they don’t pretend to be the friendliest bank, they seem to have the online banking thing mastered. Their complaint rate seems to be the middle of the road, and everyone who looks into their online savings account seems really enthusiastic about it.

Here are some basic banking tips:

1. Banks are a business

They aren’t going to take care of you, they not only want to hold onto your money, but they want to take it for their own. Be prepared to fight with them and get everything from them that you can.

2. Large Banks Suck

Whether it’s WaMu, BofA or whatever, they’re terrible. They outsource customer service overseas, they are impossible to talk to, they mismanage your accounts and in the end the guys who run the bank only care about stock prices and dividends, not your happiness.

There’s a wonderful episode of the show “The Office” where two characters (Dwight and Jim) show a business owner how bad the big company’s customer service is. That being said, credit unions are local and are limited in their abilities. Keep all that in mind when banking with them.

1. Make a decision. Don’t sit back and wish you had a stronger belief in yourself. Make a decision to become more confident and then make life changes to back up that decision.

 2. Spend time with positive people. We all know a “Debbie Downer,” someone who has nothing positive to say about the world around him/her. People like this should be left in the dust. Get around those who see themselves as strong, bold or otherwise confident. Their attitude will rub off on you.

3. Allow for mistakes. The biggest blow to confidence is failure (obviously), but the greatest success stories are riddles with failure. Noah’s ark was only filled with seven people to go with all those animals (not a very good preacher), Abraham Lincoln was defeated in all sorts of elections before becoming president and Steven Spielberg was rejected from the USC Film School before becoming an Oscar winning director.

4. Find something your terrible at and get better. It’s easy to get better at something you love or something you care about. But, as a training ground, find a sport, hobby or activity that really is just a palate that’ll help you learn principals. When your passionate about something, it’s easy to lose focus. But, if you’re taking a cooking class just for the heck of it, you may learn that you’re impatient with carrots, which may give you insight into other areas of your life.

1. Don’t give up on your dreams. Granted, when a 19-year-old sings about heartache I find it painful, but these are kids who refuse to compromise. While reality television may have dumbed down and already dumbed down medium, it has brought us waves of young people unwilling to quit their passions in order to pay the mortgage. We should spend some time being enchanted by passionate people pursuing their dreams and allow that to sink in deep with us.

2. Not all judgment is bad. I’d probably either break down in tears or throw my shoe at Simon if he critiqued any part of my life, but it’s not as if he’s ever that off base. We need people in our lives who are willing to hammer us with criticism and help us become stronger, better people. Our talents often need stress and hardship in order to bring out the best.

3. Know when people are laughing at you. Sometimes we can get so caught up in our pursuits that we can become the butt of people’s jokes without knowing it. The first three or four episodes of American Idol every season are painful to watch, but dozens of contestants swear they have talent and the rest of the world is crazy for not realizing it. Honestly, not every writer is a good writer, not every musician should make an album and not every accountant can balance a check book. Know when to get out of a situation with grace, rather than forcing your ideas or perceived talent down someone else’s throat.

4. Competition brings out the best in us. We live in a society where competition is frowned upon, and where little league moms worry every time their child strikes out, that maybe his mistakes in little league will haunt him for life. Failure is good, it brings out new sides of us. Some of the most successful Idol contestants didn’t win the whole thing. Chris Daultry has a chart topping band and he fell out fairly early, Clay Aiken is on Broadway and Jennifer Hudson won an Oscar. All of these “lost” on American Idol but used the opportunities given to them in order to achieve far more than even the winners.

5. Be upfront and honest. Every season there’s a sex scandal, an arrest scandal and a “professional” scandal. Someone has nude pictures of them on the net, or they were arrested for something dumb, or they completely forgot they already had an album out. Whether it’s during an interview, during a date or whatever, honesty isn’t the best policy, it’s the only policy.

Here are some tips, insight and philosophy on how to not only dominate, but elevate your office:

1. Do what you love.

Lebron James could have been a football player, a baseball player, a salesman, etc. But, he wisely chose basketball. Choose your career based on passion and love, not on anything else. The only way to make some major achievements is to love what you’re doing enough to press through the hard times.

2. Practice, Learn, Practice and Learn

If you’re a copywriter, accountant, administrative assistant, financial advisor or office manager, get better at what you do everyday. Take classes, both at your company and at a local college or learning annex. Buy books about what you do and read them. Work on practice projects that’ll improve your skills and allow you to practice new techniques. Whatever it is, bet determined to improve your skills.

3. Work on Your Weaknesses

Lebron the rookie couldn’t hold a candle to Lebron today. Why? Because he got better, practices and doesn’t rest on his laurels. Where once he was accused of being lazy, or taking games off, he’s now known as a competitor. We each know what our weaknesses are, maybe you’re a great writing but an average administrator, so you know where you need to work.

4. Be Someone a Company Can Build Around

There are many good players in the NBA, many all-stars and even a few superstars and hall-of-famers. But, when a team looks for their top dog, they want someone they can build around. That means having the right talents, attitude, heart and charisma. Your office needs leaders, because every office does. Your office needs someone who cares about others first, but knows how to take charge. Develop not only our leadership skills through classes and books, but develop your eye on who needs help, who you can serve and who should stay away from.

5. A Winning Attitude is Key

The reason the Cavaliers chose Lebron James is that they had the worst record in the NBA and the number one draft pick. Lebron didn’t walk into a winning situation, he walked into a terrible situation with a terrible team. You may find yourself in the middle of hell, in a company that doesn’t know what it’s doing, working with people who are terrible, but true winners help others win. Keep yourself positive, keep your mind and heart focused on success, and let others see how dedicated you are to helping the company achieve it’s goals.