Your Responsibility

I can easily put myself in their position and imagine; how effortless it is for them not to care because they are not ones eating it. However, truth is that they just lost their customers and, God knows how many more because whenever I have a chance; I will spread word. We used to call them at least once a week or two. Not anymore though!

Five Ways to Stand Out from the Crowd

Some people are content to just to be another face in crowd. By assuming this attitude, they are saying, in effect, to rest of world, "I'm just average; there's nothing special about me." For those of us who would rather stand out from crowd, there are some relatively easy ways in which we can accomplish this mission. None of them require a whole lot of skill or money. They do, however, require a little bit of commitment on our part. The first way to stand out from crowd is to take time to do little things right. The old saying goes that "if it were easy, everyone would be doing it." Well, that's not necessarily true, as there are some easy things most people don't do because they just don't think those things are worthwhile. Here are two examples. The next time you go to grocery store, notice how many people actually take time to carry carts back to cart-return. You will probably notice that only a very few of them do. Most will leave them between parking spaces, in handicapped spaces, or they'll simply turn them loose, allowing them to roll freely through parking lot. By default, they are saying to world, "I don't have time to do things right" or "everyone else is doing it that way and I am no different." If you always take time to take yours back to cart-return, you will stand out as positive example. The other example has to do with making proper turns while driving, including using your turn signal. Remember how you were taught in driving school or driver's education class to make turns? You are supposed to make sharp rights and wide lefts. Amazingly, many drivers will do just opposite! Make turns way you are supposed to and always use your turn signal. These are just a couple of examples, but taking time to do little things right will make you will stand out for right reasons. The second way to stand out from crowd is to find alternatives to profanity. A person who relies on profanity in his or her speech patterns comes off as someone who is boorish and has a limited vocabulary. There are plenty of ways to tell someone exactly what you think about him or her without being profane. Even a person who is not all that intelligent seems a lot smarter when he or she avoids use of profanity. At a minimum, that person seems more high class than people who just can't help themselves from using profanity. The third way to stand out from crowd is to memorize things that most other people commonly forget. Most people have short memories when it comes to subjects like politics and world events. For example, I'd wager that 90% of citizens of my home state cannot name losing candidate in last gubernatorial election. Ten years from now, majority of Americans will not be able to name John Kerry as loser of this year's presidential election! Too many people are just so caught up in their own little worlds that they don't bother to retain certain things that don't directly affect them. You don't need a photographic memory to memorize stuff. Anyone who doesn't have some type of memory-affecting brain disease can do it. All you have to do is practice. Write things down. Repeat them to yourself over and over. If you can commonly remember things that others have long forgotten, you'll really stand out. The fourth way to stand out from crowd is to live below your means. This is probably toughest item on my list to follow as our culture dictates that we mortgage ourselves to hilt. We are taught to keep up with Joneses. We are taught to buy everything banks and our credit cards will allow us to buy, whether we can afford it or not. However, we should strive to leave as big of a gap as possible between our income and our bills. I know there are people out there who have large families and/or limited incomes and are struggling to make ends meet. I know that not everyone can have as big of a pad as I have between my income and my bills. However, it hasn't always been that way for me. I grew up in a very poor family. We lived in housing projects from time I was six until time I was 18. However, we were always able to pay our bills on time because my parents didn't buy things they couldn't afford.