The Wake Effect
When I work with businesses and corporations as a consultant or trainer, I always include a session on what I’ve named “The Wake Effect.” To explain what that is, I try to paint a mental image:
Picture in your mind a delightfully warm, sunny day without a cloud in the sky. Now, see yourself sitting in a small speedboat looking across a beautiful lake. Since the winds are dead calm, the surface of the lake is smooth as glass…not so much as a ripple is in sight. You fire up the engine, cast off and start moving through the water, your bow slicing smoothly across the lake: like a warm knife slicing through butter. Really concentrate on it…actually SEE yourself gliding across that mirror-like surface. Can you see it? Good! Now turn your head around and look at the trail of turbulence you’re leaving behind you…in your wake. Tons of roiling water cascading in on itself. And you never really pay any attention to it: you mostly stay focused on that smooth water ahead.
Whether or not you’re aware of it, The Wake Effect is what follows every move you make and affects everyone you pass. Every action produces a reaction. Sounds pretty obvious, right? Yet very few of us ever realize that it applies to each of us. We rarely check behind ourselves to see what’s happening back there. For example, a business manager gets to work and goes from the front door to his office. Nothing special happens but, unbeknown to him, his “Wake Effect” impacts every employee in that company. “Is he angry?” “Is he worried?” “Is he happy?” Those questions, driven by fear and insecurity, then jump to: “Am I in trouble?” “Is the company in trouble?” “Can I ask for a raise?” All that turmoil and uncertainty coming from one innocent walk to the office. That’s The Wake Effect.
Here’s a story that pretty well sums it up: The owner of a company was driving to work one beautiful spring morning, in a great mood, when he was pulled over and given a speeding ticket. To say that he was no longer in a great mood would be an understatement. He storms into his office and yells for his sales manager on the intercom! The sales manager, who had just closed a big sale and was in a great mood, enters the bosses’ office. The boss, still seething about his speeding ticket, lit into the sales manager about delinquent accounts. The sales manager, now furious, leaves the office and screams for his bookkeeper. The bookkeeper, whose husband had just sent flowers to her desk and was in a delightful mood, went to the sales manager’s office…where screamed at her for not keeping him better informed about receivables. Now the bookkeeper is furious, and as she heads back to her office she passes the receptionist who appears very happy. The bookkeeper stops and chews her out for not getting all the messages right. The receptionist is no longer happy…she’s irate. She drives home after work and encounters her seven year old son in the front yard. He’s playing in the dirt while still wearing his good school clothes…which is a no-no. So the receptionist spanks the kid and sends him to his room. The little boy storms into his room and kicks the cat.
The Moral of the Story? Just think how much time, money and aggravation could have been saved if the boss had just driven straight to the receptionist’s house and kicked the cat.
And that my friend, is the Wake Effect.
Epilogue
You never know who's watching you. And someone always is, whether your boss, your employees, child, your sibling, your spouse, your friend, or a stranger in another car on the road. Emotions and inner life statements are transmitted like viruses along the vectors of our words and actions, even from the quietest and smallest. Stop and think. What better service can you provide someone else besides being a good example to them? Not with phony enthusiasm, which always seems contrived and has little power to encourage, but by becoming the examples you yourself want to see.
Thought for the Day
An obstacle is something you see when you take your eyes off the goal.
Turn the radio on
Listen to God & Ed’s Excellent Adventure on the Radio. Monday through Friday at 4pm on “The Word,” 98.5/99.3 FM. Or listen on-line at KLGO.net. It’s the place for Christians of all varieties to hang out and be loved, entertained and uplifted.
Semi-interesting fact
An average dairy cow produces four times its body weight in manure each year.
Forward…Mail!!
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Joke du Jour
A little girl walked daily to and from school. Though the weather that morning was questionable and clouds were forming, she made her daily trip to school. As the afternoon progressed, the winds whipped up, along with thunder and lightning.The mother of the little girl felt concerned that her daughter would be frightened as she walked home from school, and she herself feared the electrical storm might harm her child. Following the roar of thunder, lightning, like a flaming sword would cut through the sky. Full of concern, the mother quickly got in her car and drove along the route to her child's school. As she did so, she saw her little girl walking along, but at each flash of lightning, the child would stop, look up and smile. Another and another were to follow quickly, each with the little girl stopping, looking up and smiling. Finally, the mother called over to her child and asked, "What are you doing?"
The child answered, "Smiling, God just keeps taking pictures of me."
Cool Music
We’ve added more cool songs you’ve never heard on radio. Check the player on the upper right, click and brighten your day.
Questions I ask myself:
When an agnostic dies, does he go to the "great perhaps"?
Really?? Actual News Stories
Penny for your thoughts
A once-cent copper coin from the earliest days of the U.S. Mint in 1793 has sold for a record $1.38 million at a Florida auction. James Halperin of Texas-based Heritage Auctions says that the sale was “the most a United States copper coin has ever sold for at auction.” The coin was made at the Mint in Philadelphia in 1793, the first year that the U.S. made its own coins. Heritage officials said that the name of the buyer was not revealed but that he was “a major collector.” One of the coin’s earliest owners was a well-known Baltimore banker, Louis E. Eliasberg, Sr. “Mr. Eliasberg was nicknamed, ‘the king of coins’ because before his death in 1976 he assembled a collection that consisted of at least one example of every coin ever made at the United States Mint, a feat never duplicated.” The final bid for the coin last week was one of the largest sales at the Florida United Numismatists coin show and annual convention, which runs through Sunday. Halperin said a five-dollar gold piece from 1829 also was sold.Churchgoers wired American churchgoers are just as likely to use Twitter, Facebook and the Internet as non-churchgoers, according to a study designed to show the impact technology can have on spreading a church's message, Baptist Press reports. The survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life project showed that 79 percent of churchgoers use the Internet, nearly the same as the 76 percent of the general population. Forty-five percent of churchgoers use social networking sites, compared to 47 percent of all adults. Nine percent of both groups use Twitter, and 60 percent of both groups use text messaging.
Wait A Cotton-Pickin' Minute! - Parents in Gwinnett County, Georgia, were outraged after students at Beaver Ridge Elementary School were given a worksheet with math problems based on slavery. For instance, "Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how many did each slave pick?" And "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?" School officials apologized, saying teachers were trying to incorporate history into math class, but the questions didn't go through the usual approval process. They said they'll try to come up with more appropriate questions, perhaps after some diversity training classes.
It's a bad year for people who suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia — the fear of Friday the 13th. Why? There are three this year, instead of the usual two. There was one in 2011. That's not all. For the first time since 1984, those three Friday the 13ths — today, April 13 and July 13 — are exactly 13 weeks apart. Three Friday the 13ths happen every few years. The last was in 2009, and the next is 2015. What's special about 2012 — and what won't occur again until 2040 — is that this is happening during a leap year, says Tom Fernsler, a University of Delaware math professor who sometimes goes by the name Dr. 13. It's hard not to feel something about Friday the 13th, Fernsler says. "I find that 95% of people in the world are superstitious about something, and the other 5% are liars," he said. The number 13 and Friday are recurring presences in mythological, spiritual and religious tradition. In Christianity, 13 people attended the Last Supper before Judas' betrayal and Jesus' death on a Friday. Fernsler has made it a hobby to find dates and events associated with the number 13, as well as Friday the 13th. The day has hosted some famous births, such as Fidel Castro and Butch Cassidy. Dominguez argues Friday the 13th fears are "self-fulfilling prophecy," adding there's a "strong power in people convincing themselves something unlucky will happen."
Are you kidding me???
Brazil boasts the largest number of Catholics on the planet
Groaner
What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches? A nervous wreck
Point to Ponder
What we need today is not anger but anguish, the kind of anguish that Moses displayed when he broke the two tablets of the law and then climbed the mountain to intercede for his people, or that Jesus displayed when He cleansed the temple and then wept over the city. The difference between anger and anguish is a broken heart. It's easy to get angry, especially at somebody else's sins; but it's not easy to look at sin, our own included, and weep over it. Warren W. Wiersbe
Remember, Christianity is more about walking than about talking
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1 Comment:
Hi Ed, how are we doing with our goal to stay in touch? Well, I was just going through archived emails and was very happy to get my memory jogged when I found a copy of previous emails.
Your old email address didn't work but my brilliant youngest Son works for me and he probably took an entire minute to locate you.
Hope all is grrreat with you! My architectural business is finally improving. YEA! Joy and I were just in Dallas for my college roommates birthday. He's getting old.
Okay, 2012 hope we communicate more. Best Wishes!!! Doug W.
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