Howard Behar
speaker
126 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Howard Behar’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So I won't go into the whole story, but I struggled at one time because somebody wanted me to change. And it wasn't like they were asking me to change the color of my slacks. They were asking me to change who Howard was. But the problem was I wasn't capable of having a conversation with that person about who I thought I was. because I'd never done the work.
And so the same guy that taught me about affirmations and Greenlee's work introduced me to this idea that he gave me this book. And it basically was one of those self-help books. And the first chapter said, you have to identify your core values in life. What do you stand for? And so in this book, there was a list of 300 words that represented human values.
And it said, you need to get it down to eight to 10. So I got it down to 50, but I just got trying to get it down to eight to 10. And finally, over about a six, eight month period of time, I was able to work it down to the eight to 10 core values for me.
It wasn't that there wasn't 50 or a hundred other words that fit me in some way or another, but these are the things that absolutely mattered to me. My first core value is honesty. So it wasn't enough that I said that my first core value was honesty, that I was an honest person. I had to define what that meant to me. Because everybody is told a white lie in their life.
So what will you not lie about? What do you hold yourself accountable for? And so I had to define each of these core values. And then it said, create a mission statement for yourself. Well, the first mission statement I had was I was in the home furnishings industry. I wanted to be one of the leading executives in the home furnishings industry. That's what I said. That was my mission.
Didn't have much soul to it. And I changed it when I plagiarized some of Starbucks because when Starbucks was working on this work with Jim Collins, you know, who Jim Collins, good, great, built the last. Before he did any consulting, before the books had come out, he came and helped us and he helped us create our BHAG.
And our BHAG was we wanted to be one of the most well-known and respected organizations in the world. known for nurturing and inspiring the human spirit. When I heard those words, nurturing and inspiring the human spirit, I said, that's me. And so I just plagiarized it and created it for myself. And then I had my six P's, how I do everything in my life.
The first P is everything in my life has to have a purpose greater than myself. It's not about me. It's about serving others. And if I have a purpose greater than myself, then I damn well better be passionate about it. I better get up in the morning thinking about it, be passionate about what I'm doing. and scream it from the highest mountaintops, you know, blow the shofar and let everybody know.
And then the third P is persistence. In these rivers we call our lives, there are rocks. And some of the rocks are below the surface of the water. And we're going along and all of a sudden we're floating along. Boom, we hit that rock. What the hell happened? And then some rocks are sticking above the surface. And for some reason, we see them out there and we hit them anyway.
It's like it's a magnet carrying us towards that rock. And some rocks our parents tell us about and try to warn us or our coaches tell us about. And we ignore their advice. And we've got to learn to have the persistence to get either through the rock, over the rock, out of the rock or blow up the rock. Right? So persistence pays in this life. And then the fourth P is patience.
You'd say, well, patience, persistence, patience, aren't they kind of opposite each other? No, you got to have patience. When you've got a team that you're working with that report to you, not everybody comes along at the same pace that you are. And not everybody comes along at the same pace that their coworkers come along. And most important person you have to have patience with is yourself.
Not everything is going to come at the timeframe you want it to come. It just doesn't. And, you know, Starbucks, it didn't come at the timeframe we wanted. We had to have patience sometimes. So patience is important. And then the fifth P is performance. The facts are human beings don't like to be measured. We don't like to be measured. We don't like to be evaluated.
But the facts are that we are every day. Your significant other, your spouse, is evaluating you every day. Whether you know it or not, they're giving you a performance review. They may not say, hey, today's your lucky day. You're going to get a performance review. But trust me, you're getting a performance. Your kids are evaluating me. They're evaluating your performance.
If you say you're going to show up at their soccer game or be there to pick them up, you better be there. That's performance. At work, if you commit to getting something done, then you better get it done or tell your boss or whoever it is, you're not going to get it done and you need some help. But performance matters in this world.
If you get married and you commit to a monogamous relationship, then you either stay in a monogamous relationship or you have a conversation. right? But performance matters. It just does. And so I take out the garbage in our house. My wife shouldn't have to yell, Howard, you forgot to take out the garbage. I should be taking out the garbage. Why am I supposed to take out the garbage?
So you're getting evaluated. So performance matters, like it or not. And then the most important P, the six P, it's always about people. Nothing you will ever do in your life isn't about serving another human being. In a marriage, it is about serving your husband or your wife or your significant other or your kids.
In work, it's about serving the people that you're working with first, and then those human beings we call customers. Whether you're a doctor, a lawyer, a fire chief, an architect, or you're a widget maker that makes widgets that goes into a printing press that gets sold to a publishing company to produce a magazine or a newspaper that gets delivered to somebody's home to inform or entertain them.
The lowly widget maker's purpose is to help people have a better life through making that widget. And sometimes we don't take the time to connect ourselves between the greater purpose, which is always serving people, And when you do that, you never burn out. You may get tired, but everybody gets tired. You'll never get bored because you'll always be serving somebody else.
And so whenever you start to get tired, take a rest. But remember, we're here to serve others, and that'll give you the energy to go forward.
Figure out who you are. Most important thing you'll ever do for yourself is figure out who you are, write it down, and then create a personal mission for yourself. Create one that has meaning, that's soulful. It doesn't have to be perfect. Put something down that carries you forward. And then I'll always have goals. I've been setting goals for my whole life about my marriage.
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