I am a student at Brigham Young University. I love everything that life throws at me. It's the simple things that get you. The sunsets at the beach, playing sports with your friends, climbing in the mountains to get to that lookout point you know will give you a moment that doesn't come very often. Being with those you care for and pushing yourself to new limits. You rest you rust.
This week was a week of reflecting on relationships. All different kinds of relationships, with friends, with professors and everywhere in between. It came to me that there are things that are important when interacting with people and building relationships with them. It made me reflect on how I carry myself and how I can be more poised in manner and speech to show respect and professionalism. Taylor told me this week that the less you talk the more you are respected. And so it comes to the question, what are the guidelines for a relationship? As I listened to Kathleen's lecture to us on Thursday, I thought about what she said about always having a question at the end of an interview to show interest in the company and the person conducting the interview. She also said that it is important to do your homework and research everything about the company. So the key to relationships is to not just see what is in it for you. We should not engage in relationships to be happy and feel good about ourselves and where we are in our lives. Happiness is simply a byproduct of relationships. So starting this week I am trying to speak less and be more interested in people and what they have to say simply for the sake of building relationships with no interior motives. This is a video that I came across this week that talks about relationships, more specifically about marriage relationships from John Mark Comer. Check it out.
This was a golden week! Class went really well and I learned a lot. We talked about verbal and visual presentation. I noticed that the smallest details can make a great difference. John Wooden, the famous UCLA basketball coach said, "it's the details that are vital. Little things make big things happen." The same meticulous attention to detail we have with the things we love, such as soccer, help us to become proficient. For example, in soccer, I pay attention to keeping my knee over the ball when I shoot to keep the ball down and have a good shot on goal. Or the positioning of your feet is everything on defense so you don't get left in the dust or beat off the dribble. As we continue in our professional careers and even in our personal lives, attention to detail is crucial! It could be the difference between success and failure; whether it be visually designing your presentations to present your findings and ideas in a more aesthetically pleasing and clear way, or keeping eye contact with those you interact with. Now what? I need to improve my attention to detail. Such as telling a girl, "Hey you look tired." Yea...that is not the right thing to say gentlemen. This week I am going to focus on the details of my interactions with people, the way I use my hands, eye contact, etc. because Professor Middleton made it very clear that I use my hands too much. I will also make goals and clearly outline them to make sure I am not rushing so that I can take more time and be more detail oriented. Next time you go out on a date ask him/her what they noticed about you during the date. It will be sure to lead to a riveting discussion about detail.
So in my previous post I wrote about a marketing event I attended earlier this week. A guy there named Jake Larsen is a video marketer and makes ads for companies on YouTube. My buddy got in touch with me and said that Jake wanted to talk to me. This was it, all of this grammar practice and sleepless nights over dangled modifiers came down to writing an email to my potential employer. One shot, one opportunity. (Eminem? Anyone? No? Cool.) I made a draft that I thought was pretty good. I called my dad and asked if he could go over it for me. As were on the phone, he picked my email apart. With over 20 years in business, he gave me some good pointers on how to write informative, to-the-point emails that convey a lot of information. I learned a lot from him, and I feel that they are all things that we will go over in class. It was just a cool experience to be able to apply the things that I am learning in this class. Now what? I'm going to get an internship and just start learning. Learning things that textbooks can't teach me.
"A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes-
Also let's all call our dads this week and tell them how much we appreciate all that they teach us.
