As I sit, my belly full after a great breakfast following a new Personal Best time on my 6-mile walk this morning (1:24:58), I am wondering what am I going to do today. I mean, what am I going TO DO today. Sure, I have a bunch of things to do, such as taking my son to his baseball practise and meeting with a client, but there’s more to life than that.

I’m wondering how I am going to change people’s lives today; what things will I end up doing that will have a lasting impact on some people. Let’s see now, I’ll check in on my Kiva.org and see what’s happening there.

In case you don’t know about it, Kiva is a microfinance organization through which individuals can loan amounts as small as $25 to help entrepreneurs around the world. Check them out – we’ve lent out some money over the past year, and now about 1/3 of it has been repaid, so we can re-lend it. Yep, that’s something TO DO today that will change people’s lives.

What will you do today to change the lives of people?

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I was talking to my ma on the phone the other day, and she said the words that make
my heart stop, my pulse simultaneously race, and a fear-filled sweat break out
across every pore of my body. Okay, so that's a bit of an exaggeration, but every
time she says those words, it takes me back to my childhood in the 1960's in
England, when parenting was, in my community, seemingly done with fear as a major
tool.

What do you think those words were?

Do these ring a bell with you? "I need to talk to you about . . . ."

Yes, my entire 52 years of life, ever since I can remember, those words have filled
me with terror of what it could be about. A sort of worry creeps across me, and I
wonder what on earth I've done wrong this time. 

And so I beat myself up over it, feeling really stoopid about being so perturbed by
such meaningless words. And then I think about the other things that my ma said to
me when I was a kid, that used to strike unbridled terror into me. Things like:

 - "Wait til your father gets home!" (I can't think of anything that could terrify
a kid more, in the type of physical discipline environment we grew up in)

 - "You do that, and I'll tell your father" (that strikes me as so wierd now, but,
I was a pretty unruly kid back then)

And then there's the things my dad would say. Things like:

 - "I hope that, when you grow up, your kids are as rotten to you as you are to me!"
 (Well, there's plenty of times I could look at it and say 'Hey Dad, yer wish came
 true. 
Routing Number VIRGINIA COMMERCE BANK 

 Thanks!!")

 - "You'll never amount to anything!

[It's important to note that as I've grown older, I've learned that my parents, and
yours too, always did the best they were equipped to do, and I've learned and
accepted that they loved me.]

The power of words - what a huge lesson this is for me. I see this all around me
all the time - people being affected by the words that they hear on an ongoing
basis throughout their lives. Its why I make it a point to tell that smarter-than-
the-entire-planet teenage son of mine that I love him every single day. And its why
I've always, since he was 2 years old, told him that he is free to tell me if he
thinks my actions are deserving of a time-out. And he has in the past told me to
take a time-out and we've discussed it and he has been right, and so I've taken
the time-out.

But I'm curious - what things that you've heard over the years have stuck with you
and have an impact on you such that you shudder, smile, cry, cringe, or any other
reaction that you automatically trace back to those words? I'm curious.

Tags: chris, newell, of, power, the, words