Ideas are like
seeds. They need to be planted in
the ground before they can grow. A
rose makes seeds. The gardener
tends them. The gardener owns them
and can do whatever he likes with those seeds. But it is nice when a rose can see that
the seeds that were planted have grown into something of inestimable
value.
Here are some
seeds of mine that were sown and bore amazing fruit. This is an exercise
in humility for me. Humility is
not downgrading yourself. It is
knowing who you are in relation to the universe. It is the lesson that we should carry
from the movie "It's a Wonderful Life"- that our lives are all
intertwined- that without even one person the world would be a lesser
place. I believe that when a
person always tries to be the best that they can be- when they strive to
live their life in accordance with God's plan- their impact on the world
can be tremendous. These are some
of the things that I have learned about myself.
In the winter of
1980-81, a man asked me to dance at a private club in town. He said that his name was Donald Trump,
that he was a real estate developer and that he was very successful. In the course of our conversation
during that one and only dance, I started to tell him that the only thing
that I know about any incredible building was it's name- the Hartford
Insurance Tower, the Prudential Tower, the Empire State Building
etc. I told him that seeing the
inside of the Prudential Tower changed my image of that company- because
it was just so futuristic that I felt that it was a company with
vision. I told him that if he
built buildings of that caliber, then he should put his name on
them. He was currently working on
something he was going to call Tiffany Tower- he changed the name to
Trump Tower. He wanted to know
more about me, but I needed to get away because I thought that I had done
something to upset him. He had the
most incredulous look on his face.
We all know how that advice dramatically changed his life for the
better. I've been to Trump
University (www.trumpuniversity.com) and taken some courses. I believe that any rose who goes there
and does nothing but make maximum use of the FREE material will grow-
particularly if they use their minds to find supporting material at the
library. And if the FREE material
helps that much, the paid material will help even more. Helping Trump grow, I'm a part of what
he contributes to the world.
In 1988, my
brother-in-law was visiting. I
asked him how his educational game was progressing. He told me that he had been taken off
that project and was now working on improving ATM machines. What he couldn’t figure out was why
people would walk right past an ATM machine and walk into a bank when the
ATM was more convenient. I told
him that when I did that, it was because I needed an item posted to my
account right away. At that time,
ATM machines downloaded all the transactions once per day and it would
sometimes take several days for your bank to catch up with the
transactions. He looked at me with
that look- and told me that the only reason that ATMs did that was
because they always did it that way.
All it would take was a simple move in the computer program to
accomplish that task. So he went home
and did it- and made millions.
A few years later,
I was in Dr. Pallavi Patel's office because my son needed an
immunization. He had been her
patient for several years and I'd seen the incredible growth of her
practice on Nebraska Avenue. When
I commented on that, she told me that I hadn't seen anything- that she
had several locations and had more patients than she could handle because
she was the only pediatrician in town taking Medicaid HMO clients- that
she and her husband needed some time off.
I told her that if she wanted some time off, then she needed to
tell the other doctors in town how successful she had become and that she
needed to find some way to make some money from the HMOs for helping them
grow. She told her husband and
they did help the HMOs grow and did make some money from the HMO
business- eventually- a billion dollars.
Well before the billion dollar mark, she thanked me and told me
that my advice had made her wealthy beyond her wildest dreams. They in turn are using their money for
so many things that I believe in.
They have built charter schools, a performing arts conservatory
where children can take lessons and build self-esteem, free clinics and
hospitals in India, and a research institute to promote leading edge
cardiovascular research. Some of
those things, I had told her were very important to me.
Not all of my
ideas have made a billion dollars.
Sometimes growth does not come in that size. In 1993, a friend of mine asked me to
go to the USF Engineering Expo. He
wanted to show me a cool computer.
He was fantasizing on having that machine for our statistical
analyses. I came out of the Expo and told him that we had to have
it. He wondered how in the world
we could justify that kind of expense for analyses. I told him that it wasn’t the machine
that we needed- it was the thing that it was hooked up to- the
Internet. He laughed at me! Why in the world would anyone want to
spend all that money to send e-mail!
And I told him that we had one full-time employee would did
nothing but feed documents into the fax machine and get them back out-
all day long. That was the only
way that our faculty could write documents with collaborators across the
country. If all that machine did
was to send those documents in 10 seconds rather than get into a cue- it
would pay for itself in one year.
Then Bill discovered that you could set up a web space where all
those collaborators could work on the document at the same time- and he
spent the next 3 weeks writing a proposal for our Internet
connection. Turned out that when we
submitted the application, it was in the nick of time. They had almost finalized arrangements
that would have locked us out of the Internet for five years. When Bill submitted that proposal, it
changed everything. Within a year,
we won contracts that would have been impossible without the Internet-
millions of dollars worth of contracts.
Five years later,
Bill came to me. He was in charge
of Academic Computing for the university and wanted to get us hooked up
to Internet II. People were coming
to an event and he needed several research demonstrations that would
convince the world that we needed the power of a faster Internet. I wrote him a program that was
dazzling- we created hundreds of graphics from millions of records and
displayed them in seconds. We
became one of a very few universities in the country able to hook up the
Internet 2 as soon as it came out- and that helped USF grow.
I wanted to help
Donald Trump realize his dreams because he was and is the only man who
ever sent a drink over to me in the hopes that I would dance with
him. He told me "women like
you intimidate men- you need to encourage men to come up and talk to
you". That was easily the best compliment that anyone ever gave me
and not a bad piece of advice in the hands of someone with the courage to
use it. I have no idea what
qualities he saw- but the idea that was conveyed was that I was beautiful
and there was only one man who ever said that I was beautiful out loud-
Frank Peluso. For a woman with my
rosestory to hear the words that Donald Trump spoke- was a tremendous
gift. I could tell that he wanted
to be a household name. I could
see how to give him that gift- so when I saw how- I told him.
Dr. Pallavi Patel
helped my son more than you could possibly imagine. For the first 30 months of his life, he
was in the doctor's office every 2 weeks with an ear infection. He would be on antibiotics for 2 weeks,
come back in for a check-up and be clear- then within 2 weeks, he would
have another infection. I was
raising him on my own and needed to work 2 jobs and be away from him over
60 hours per week- just to support us without a car in a bad
neighborhood. She was the only
doctor in town that would accept my insurance. She also paid my copayment- because she
felt that I needed the money a lot more than she did- and she was
right. One Sunday, my son had a
fever of 103. The buses did not
run on Sunday. I did not have a
telephone and had to take a 30 minute walk to the nearest pay phone. She left a message with her service to
meet her at the hospital across the street from my pay phone. There was no charge for this
service. You can't pay anyone for
what she gave to me- not in a million years and certainly not with a
billion dollars.
Sacrifice and
treating people with dignity and respect are all parts of the discipline
of self-esteem. You never know
what the smallest kindness that you do to others will mean to them and
you never know what they will give to you in return.
None of those
conversations lasted more than 10 minutes- but they had an incredible effect
on the lives of the people who listened and for the rest of the
world. Those ideas are seeds- and
those seeds belong to the gardeners that planted them, that cared for
them- that made them grow. But it
is also necessary for me to own them- it is necessary for my own
self-esteem to know how my contributions have affected the world in ways
that I would never have dreamed possible.
There is more to
this idea. I've always had an
hunger to share my ideas with others- almost an obsession. Maybe it's because my soul knows that
this is my gift to the world. When
I came to my department, there was no one doing research and they needed
someone to provide research support to a new faculty member. For 10 years, I was research support
for this department. Now my
department, Mental Health Law & Policy, is the unit with the second highest
external research dollars at the University of South Florida, the
nation's fastest growing university in terms of external research
dollars. The subunit within my
department, the Policy and Service Research Data Center or PSRDC,
supports much of the research at the Louis de la Parte Florida Mental
Health Institute, which has just become the #1 college at this university
for research dollars. I am a
founding member of the PSRDC, it was my work that built the reputation of
the PSRDC and contributed to its growth.
My SAS code is the backbone of many of the programs. While the success of these units is not
my fault, it is in my area of contribution.
We never know how
much of the success around us is due to an idea that has been planted and
that moves on!
Ideas are like
seeds. In the right soil they grow
and they grow very well. On rock-
they just rot.
In the summer of
2005, I realized that for me to grow, I had to be somewhere where my
ideas can grow. This web site is
all about planting seeds where they will grow. I know is that I owe it to myself to
allow this to happen and grow as God wills.
I used to be hurt
when people rejected my ideas. I'm not going to be hurt anymore if the
seeds don't grow- I'm just going to realize that wherever ideas don't
grow, the ground is patch of rock and I need to move on.
These seeds are a
gift from God and they must be where God can grow them. And for me, this year is a year of
discernment- about where I go from here in my life- where the Discipline
of Self-Esteem will take me. Stay
tuned as this rose grows.
A large part of my
accomplishments are due to my relationship with my God. I do not believe that these billion
dollar seeds come from me. Instead
they are a part of my relationship with God. It is part of my destiny to be able to
take my soul to God in prayer, to take the dreams of the earth to God,
and to take the dreams of God to the earth. That is where true creativity
happens.
This is a gift
from God, that it is freely given to me, freely given in return, and know
that if I am open to God, that He will place me where He wants me to be,
and that His dreams will find a place to grow in this world- and that is
my purpose in life. If I never
make a penny from this gift, if I never make enough money to own my own
home- I still have accomplished more in my life- had more of an impact on
this world- than most of the billionairres on this planet. That is an awesome thing to realize and
it makes me very humble.
I'm still learning
the Discipline of Self-Esteem- maybe we all are still learning and never
will be done- and still becoming myself.
If so much could be done without thinking about it- how much more
can be accomplished with the self-knowledge that comes from growth? If I lost track of the fact that I
needed to be connected with my source to be effective, then nothing at
all would happen, but to remain connected to God and to know that some of
His gifts to the world travel through me as advice to friends and
acquaintances, is an awesome place to be.
Thank you for sharing in this joy of self-discovery with me.
This Sunday's
lesson (Fr. Len's sermon 9/10/06 at St. Paul's Tampa) was all about being
open- about opening ourselves to the gifts of God- about allowing God to
work through us. If we all were
able to do that effectively, then we all would be able to share the gifts
that God gave us to transform the earth.
Be open, pray, and then listen to your heart and do whatever your
heart is telling you. And if your
heart is singing, then you are learning the Discipline of Self-Esteem and
planting your own seeds upon the earth.
Let us pray for our hearts to be singing always- that is the true
happiness in life. With that gift,
you don't need a billion dollars.
Without that gift, a billion dollars is not worth a penny. So go out and find the song in your
heart today.
Thanks for
listening..
