While most people believe in coincidence, happenstance and such, I believe in the Karmic aspect of life. A goodly number of people believe that to mean, for example, by making a contribution to a worthy cause or individual, I expect to be somehow personally rewarded in some fashion. Does this really make it an unconditional gesture?

In other words, many people believe that we are rewarded BECAUSE we did a goodly deed. However, contrary to popular belief, that is not the way it appears to work. Perhaps the accurate, and karmic, perspective is that we do a goodly deed AND IT JUST SO HAPPENS that we are rewarded. (Please do not misinterpret this as simply semantics.)

Do you see the difference? A majority of the “good” that people do has within it the ulterior motive of a reward forthcoming. There are, however, those who do goodly deeds without any true expectation or anticipation of some form of reward coming their way. This is the truest form of contribution.

The ancient Hebrew philosophy describes the act of “Tzedakah”. Tzedakah is based on a root meaning justice. Tzedakah refers to performing charity, and philanthropic acts, which Judaism emphasizes are important parts of living a spiritual life; Jewish tradition points out that the highest form of tzedakah is to anonymously give donations to unknown recipients. In other words, neither the giver nor the recipient knows of one another. Unlike philanthropy, which is where the giver, much of the time, has an underlying, albeit sub-conscious, ego-driven motive and the recipient is made humbled by the gift…true tzedakah, on the other hand, is seen as a deed, which should be performed regardless of financial standing or acknowledgment, and the sole reward is between the giver and his/her Maker.

This creates a situation where in the deed is not conceived with the ulterior motive of doing this BECAUSE you expect to be rewarded; the deed is made AND IT JUST SO HAPPENS that you are rewarded.

In the latter 1970’s, I was conducting a seminar with over 300 attendees. At the two-thirds point in the program I offered to the participants the opportunity to ask, and receive, a full refund of their monies if the experience of my program appeared to offer no lasting benefits.

A gentleman did indeed ask for his refund. End of story…or so I thought.

Fast forward to the year 2009. More than thirty years have passed. I receive a phone call from this same individual. His name is Don. He found me via ‘Google’. Don tells me that it took years for him to recognize that he did indeed find great and lasting value in my work with him. He goes on to ask if he can do something for me as an act of Tzedakah to compensate for the refund he received. It so happens that Don has vast experience in an arena that I have been seeking help in launching a program that would enable hundreds of thousands of folks, world-wide, to benefit from my life’s work.

Don appeared in my life as an Angel, a miracle, at the precise moment that I was in futility in making my vision a reality. Suffice it to say that, with the expertise offered to me by this man, my vision, my mission, my dream, is about to be launched.

What goes around does, in fact, come around. In ways that I would never, in my wildest dreams, have expected. I fervently believe that I did a goodly and ethical deed, expecting nothing in return…AND IT JUST SO HAPPENED that I was incredibly rewarded.

This, to me, is how life’s full circle operates for all of us.

Our minds are far more powerful than most of us give it credit. Now couple this with a mindset of “I’ll do it my way. After all, I’ve been doing it my way for most, if not all, of my life”. This mantra (we can actually call it that), becomes the rationale to justify our position, hence sabotage any degree of support from those who attempt to offer this support to us. The excuses, rationalizations and stories we tell ourselves seem to be adequate justification to the mind in the avoidance of change.
Raising the necessary courage is coupled with the lowering of our ego. (Remember the “I’ll do it my way. After all, I’ve been doing it my way for most, if not all, of my life”.) I know that many of us pride ourselves on getting things done when the odd-makers tell us “nay”. Yet, I also believe that considerable ego is attached to sabotage the contribution from others.

What I am afraid we have left out in our pursuit, is the understanding of the other party’s intention. This would be what is referred to as ‘empathy’, defined as ‘the capacity for participating in another’s feelings, ideas or point of view’.

I had met a man, unlike most others on this planet, whom I believed I could both learn from and teach. This learning and teaching reciprocity could have gone far beyond each of our individual career endeavors. Sadly,this opportunity never took place. We met years later and as we spoke over a fine bottle of wine, we each recognized that it was our fear of change, and our own egos, that had prevented this opportunity from taking place at that time.

I view the courage to change, and the support from others, to enact opportunities for personal and career growth in our lives, as a most powerful point of view.

While, in this day and age, we cannot live without software, software alone as the sole solution is a fairy tale approach to an overwhelming condition.

What has been incredibly overlooked is, what I refer to as, the ‘Human’ side of information management. Whether it be paper-based or electronically-held, teaching people how to regain control of all that falls upon them in this myriad of ever-flowing channels has to be coupled with tools that transcend software.The ever-growing arena of e-mail is the place that I have come to see as the greatest bottleneck in the wastage of time and productivity. It is not at all uncommon to find hundreds and, in many cases, thousands of e-mails in one’s ‘In-box’. This doesn’t even account for the amount lodged in ‘Sent’ and ‘Deleted’. These compartments really act as archival storage facilities.

Mr. Gates has missed the mark to the degree that there are only two categories in Outlook’s In-box-‘Read’ and ‘Unread’. I believe that there is a far more populated third category I refer to as ‘Glanced at’. It is in this latter category that need-to-know information, appointments, time-critical input is missed with, many times, dire consequences.

In this arena our program begins with the creation eight new folders for gaining control of one’s e-mail dilemma. This, along with establishing sub-folders (and sub-sub-folders where needed), creates a pathway in allowing a person to place, and obtain, their e-mails with INSTANT RETRIEVEABILITY.

Suffice it to say that thousands of our clients who had previously been in an uncontrollable state with their e-mail, will tell you that they have virtually ZERO E-MAILS in their e-mail ‘In-box’ as well as in their ‘Sent’ and ‘Deleted’ categories at the end of each and every day…Just imagine!

Independent studies over the past fifteen years have been conducted in the arena of information management, all of which were independent of one another. However, each study happened to ask one question in common—how much time does an employee spend per day looking for information that they cannot locate? Each study arrived at 60 to 90 minutes per employee per day. Take the low end of the study-60 minutes-now multiply this by the number of employees you have; now multiply this by 22 (working days per month); now multiply this by 12 (months).

While this annual number of hours is staggering, multiply this by the average amount your employees are paid, or better yet, multiply this by the amount of revenue that could be created for your company in this period of time once it is made fully productive.

Our clients will tell you that, as a result of our program, their employees are averaging LESS THAN TWO MINUTES PER DAY seeking information. We are told again and again just how the ROI expensed for our program has been returned in 60 to 90 days.