Power to Change » Pat and Ruth Williams with Michael Mink

How to Be Like Amelia Earhart

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:49:30 +0000

Don’t allow others to define you
Earhart was praised after her Friendship flight, but she didn’t believe her press clippings. She looked for a way to earn that praise, and if she hadn’t, her name might have been forgotten a long time ago.
Be honest with yourself
Earhart wouldn’t allow herself to take credit for what Friendship pilot, Wilmer Stultz, had done, even if the credit came from the president of the United States. “I was just a passenger on the journey—just a passenger,” she told the New York Times.
Set clear-cut goals
After the accolades she received from being part of the Friendship crew, Earhart wanted to be worthy of the admiration she was receiving. She was a pilot, not a passenger. She soon set an ambitious goal for herself: to become the first woman pilot to solo across the Atlantic Ocean. It would be an extremely dangerous flight, and Earhart gauged her chances of successfully completing it at “one in ten.” She also said: “Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.”
Study successful people
Earhart kept a scrapbook of successful women and studied their lives carefully. She also developed her own philosophy about being successful. “Women will gain economic justice by proving themselves in all lines of endeavor, not by having laws passed for them,” she wrote.
Do what you love
Earhart said that from the first time she was in an airplane “I knew I myself had to fly…To want in one’s heart to do a thing, for its own sake; to enjoy doing it; to concentrate all one’s energies upon it—that is not only the surest guarantee of its success, it is also being true to oneself. If there is anything I have learned in life it is this: If you follow the inner desire of your heart, the incidentals will take care of themselves.”
Don’t take things for granted
Anita Snook taught Earhart to check everything on her airplane. This included being sure the plane had a full tank of gas.
Prepare for worst-case scenarios
Earhart studied stunt flying so she’d be familiar with the unexpected. This was needed when her plane went into a spin during her solo flight across the Atlantic. “A knowledge of some stunts is judged necessary to good flying,” she said. “Unless a pilot has actually recovered from a stall, has actually put his plane into a spin and brought it out, he cannot know accurately what those acts entail. He should be familiar enough with abnormal positions of his craft to recover without having to think how.”
Ask questions
Earhart learned from asking questions of experienced pilots.
Care about others
Whether it was girls excluded from sororities or soldiers wounded in battle, Earhart gave of herself and helped others. This helped her become the kind of person that Amy Guest was looking for. She wanted a girl of the “right image” for the Friendship flight, and Earhart was selected.
Keep challenging yourself
Earhart may have lost her life doing what she loved to do, but this was the way she needed to live her life.
Evaluate risks
Most of our daily decisions aren’t about life and death, but even so, evaluate the risks of anything you do. Earhart’s formula was to “decide then whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying. To worry is to add another hazard. It retards reactions, makes one unfit.”
Accept responsibility for your decisions and actions
Earhart accepted full responsibility for her attempt to fly around the world and wanted to alleviate her husband of any guilt. She wrote: “I know that if I fail or if I am lost you will be blamed for allowing me to leave on this trip; the backers of the flight will be blamed and everyone connected with it. But it’s my responsibility and mine alone.”
Don’t worry about failing—just try
Earhart’s attempt to fly around the world was the perfect expression of her life’s philosophy. Earhart said: “I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. If they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”

Used with permission from Women of Influence by Pat & Ruth Williams with Michael Mink (Health Communications, Inc., 2003).

How to Be Like Florence Nightingale

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:23:56 +0000

Decide how you will impact the world
Nightingale was born into wealth and the Victorian role of a society woman. She didn’t need to work and didn’t need to accomplish anything by the norms of that society. However, she demanded more of herself. “I see so many of my kind who have gone mad for want of something to do,” she wrote.
Follow your heart and religious faith
When Nightingale was seventeen, she felt a divine inspiration. “God spoke to me . . . and called me to His service,” she said. She listened and then moved into action.
Ignore society’s stereotypes
In Nightingale’s time, nursing was considered a disreputable occupation performed by women who alcoholics and prostitutes. That didn’t stop Nightingale from pursuing her career in health care and, in process, helping to legitimize the nursing profession.
Stand up for yourself
Sometimes you have to stand up to those you love most in order to turn your dreams into realities. Nightingale’s parents were strongly opposed to her pursuit of a nursing career. It would have been easy to buckle under that kind of pressure, or to substitute their judgment for hers, but Nightingale didn’t allow that to happen. She took the initiative and studied nursing on her own, eventually convincing her family that she was doing the right thing.
Be courageous
Nightingale risked her life by going into a war zone and exposing herself to disease on a mass scale, but her focus was always on her patients. Her courage had its roots in her commitment to her cause. Because she was so committed, the cause was more important than the risks involved. On the eve of her departure for the Crimea, her sister Parthe wrote that Nightingale was “as calm and composed as if she was going for a walk.”
When one road is blocked, take another
When those in authority try to block your path, seek an alternative. Upon arriving at Barrack Hospital, Nightingale met opposition from army doctors who resented her presence. She made progress in the areas of cleanliness and food preparation, and in time won the respect of the soldiers and eventually the doctors.
Learn to write well
Nightingale, like Clara Barton, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher and Mother Teresa, depended on letter writing to advance her cause. During her time in the Crimea, from November 1854 to July 1856, she wrote about 300 detailed letters, many of them to government officials, such as Sidney Herbert. Nightingale’s letters on reforms, packed with facts and statistical information to support her points, were used by Sidney Herbert and other cabinet officials to make “important changes in the British Army organization during the course of the Crimean War.”
Move into action
Nightingale said, “Words ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.” Nightingale always followed that path.
Pay attention to details
Throughout her career, Nightingale maintained records and relied on statistical information to make the best decisions as a hospital administrator, and later as a head nurse during the Crimean War.
Don’t be lured by materialism
There is nothing wrong with the pursuit of wealth, but don’t love things more than you love people. That’s the Florence Nightingale way.
Be honest about your accomplishments
After returning from the Crimea, Nightingale became a media celebrity and was praised in poems, songs, portraits and figurines. She could have easily brushed aside the failures of the Crimea, but she didn’t. Instead, she honored the dead by highlighting the medical failures, and used that as the starting point for medical reforms in the British Army. “[Nightingale] used the truth to push Victorian England into a burst of social progress that may justify a claim that the pioneering National Health Service was born on the floor of the Scutari Barrack Hospital,” Huge Small wrote. Nightingale said: “I stand at the altar of the murdered men, and, while I live, I fight their cause.”
Avoid false praise
Regarding the praise she received for her nursing efforts, Nightingale wrote in 1888: “I often think, or rather do not like to think . . . how all the people who were with me in the Crimea must feel how unjust it is that all the ‘Testimonial’ went to me.”
Remember that all progress, however small, is valuab1e
As many as 14,000 British soldiers died needlessly from disease during the Crimean War. Out of that catastrophe, however, came the reforms that led to improved care for the war wounded and sick. “Never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself,” Nightingale said.
Be a hands-on person
To assess the needs of patients at Barrack Hospital, Nightingale, after working hard all day, personally made her rounds at night in the massive structure to talk with the soldiers. When Nightingale opened the Nightingale Training School for Nurses, she personally selected the superintendent and interviewed the prospective students. In order to help change the image of nurses, Nightingale wanted to make certain her students were of the highest moral character.
Don’t rest on your laurels
After the Crimean War, Nightingale could have stopped working because her place in history was assured. However, like so many women of influence, she looked for new challenges and ways to be useful. As she got older, she was still able to accomplish some of her most important work. Through letters and contacts, Nightingale helped introduce health reforms in India.
Defend those who can’t defend themselves
“The soldiers were victims; her deepest instinct was to be the defender of victims,” Woodham-Smith wrote.

Used with permission from Women of Influence by Pat & Ruth Williams with Michael Mink (Health Communications, Inc., 2003).

How to Be Like Helen Keller

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:27:17 +0000

Set goals
After overcoming her disability, one of Keller’s primary goals was to attend a college with hearing and sighted students: “The thought of going to college took root in my heart and became an earnest desire, which impelled me to enter into competition for a degree with seeing and hearing girls, in the face of the strong opposition of many true and wise friends.”
Don’t let obstacles stop you
Keller learned the manual finger alphabet to communicate and then learn. To do her school course work, Keller had to be patient and invest more hours than a sighted person. She was willing to pay the price to be educated. “It takes me a long time to prepare my lessons,” she wrote, “because I have to have every word of them spelled out in my hand.”
Don’t let others tell you what you can’t do
Keller wrote to the academic board at Radcliffe, who were questioning whether she’d be able to succeed there: “I realize that the obstacles in the way of my receiving a college education are very great—to others they may seem insurmountable; but, dear Sir, a true soldier does not acknowledge defeat before the battle.”
Pursue an education
Embrace the opportunity to be educated. Keller’s words apply to all: “I began my studies with eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening in beauty and light, and I felt within me the capacity to know all things.”
Thirst for knowledge
Read good books. “I will devour every book I can lay my hands on,” Keller wrote. Michael Anagnos described Keller as having a “thirst for knowledge” in his 1888 report, “Helen Keller: A Second Laura Bridgman.” He further stated: “As if impelled by a resistless instinctive force [Keller] snatched the key of the treasury of the English language from the fingers of her teacher, unlocked its doors with vehemence, and began to feast on its contents with inexpressible delight.”
Live a life of faith
Keller embraced religion and God’s wisdom. It helped her be at peace with her handicap: “I believe that all through these dark and silent years, God has been using my life for a purpose I do not know; but one day I shall understand and then I will be satisfied.” She also said, “I cannot imagine myself without religion. I could as easily fancy a living body without a heart.”
Help others
After learning to communicate, Keller’s mission from the time she was a little girl was to help others. From little Tommy Stringer to the soldiers who were the heroes of World War II, Keller tried to make other people’s lives better. “I will always—as long as I have breath—work for the handicapped,” Keller said on her eightieth birthday.
Make your own decisions
Keller’s friends felt vaudeville was beneath her dignity, but Keller needed to earn a living and wanted to provide something for Sullivan should she die first. Rather than listen to others, Keller evaluated the opportunity herself and developed what she felt was a dignified act. The world hasn’t thought less of her because of what she did.
Dare to do the impossible
Keller resolved to learn to speak—and worked hard to do so. Although she was never able to perfect her speaking ability, she never stopped trying. That same resolve served Keller well in other areas that she was able to master.

Used with permission from Women of Influence by Pat & Ruth Williams with Michael Mink (Health Communications, Inc., 2003).

How to Be Like Like Mary Kay Ash

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:39:06 +0000

Live by the Golden Rule
Ash showed the power of the Golden Rule as she built a $3.2 billion-dollar-a-year company—and left a legacy of admiration. “I can say unequivocally that every decision we make at Mary Kay Cosmetics is based on the Golden Rule,” Ash said.
Define your priorities
Ash’s priorities were “God first, family second, career third,” which also serves as Mary Kay Inc.’s company motto.
Trust your instincts
Ash launched Mary Kay Cosmetics against the advice of her lawyer and accountant, who predicted she’d lose her life savings of $5,000. She trusted her instincts, basing her analysis on what her new business would have in its favor (no market leader in skin care, a product women would enjoy selling and the potential for repeat business).
Continue to learn and improve
“A laurel rested upon becomes wilted,” Ash liked to say. She studied business and self-help books before and after she achieved great wealth. And she incorporated what she learned into her life and company. She also learned from her everyday colleagues.
Practice disciplined time management
Time is the one commodity we can never get back, so Ash practiced the “Six Most Important Things” to do each day, and gave herself deadlines to finish a task or project. “Over the years,” she said, “I’ve observed that nearly all high achievers know how to make good of those 1,440 minutes in each day.”
Be open to change
Yvonne Pendleton said of Ash: “She was extremely open to change. She knew, especially in the beauty industry, change is a matter of fact. And while your principles never change, your products need to and your business needs to.”
Make everyone feel important
“I have learned to imagine an invisible sign around each person’s neck that says ‘Make me feel important,” Ash said. “I never cease to be amazed at how positively people react when they’re made to feel important.’
Be enthusiastic
“If you act enthusiastic, you become enthusiastic,” Ash said. She believed “Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm.”
Remain humble
Ash never fell prey to an unchecked ego because she had her priorities in order. Her belief in God and Christian teachings kept her grounded, for nowhere in the Bible does it say the accumulation of money makes one better than anyone else. “God didn’t have time to create a nobody—just a somebody…. Each person is unique and special,” Ash said.
Be generous in praising people
People are motivated by pride, not fear. “Mary Kay Cosmetics is known for ‘praising people to success.’ We think this is so important, we base our entire marketing plan on it,” Ash said.

Used with permission from Women of Influence by Pat & Ruth Williams with Michael Mink (Health Communications, Inc., 2003).

How to Be Like Mother Teresa

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:36:59 +0000

Do what you love
Agnes felt that God was calling her to the sisterhood to serve the poor. She consulted experts and the priests at her church to help understand her feelings. “If you are happy with the idea that God calls you to serve him and your neighbor,” Agnes recalled being told by a priest, “this will be the proof of your vocation. Profound joy of the heart is like a magnet that indicates the path of life.”
Read constantly
Reading helped Agnes understand the plight of India’s poor. Her constant efforts to learn gave her greater depth and wisdom.
Accept no limitations for your life
ister Teresa had a desire to serve the poor more fully than the Catholic Church would permit. It seems certain she would have left the Church had she not been granted the privilege of exclaustration and permission to form a new order. “I again experienced a call to renounce everything and to follow Christ into the slums, to serve the poorest of the poor,” she wrote. “I understood that God wanted something from me…the message was quite clear: I was to leave the convent and help the poor whilst living among them. It was an order. I knew where I belonged.”
Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need.
Starting alone, Mother Teresa built the Missionaries of Charity into a worldwide organization through organization through persistent fund-raising efforts. She boldly asked for money and medical supplies to help the poor.
Clearly define what you want to accomplish
Mother Teresa added a fourth vow to be taken by the Missionaries of Charity: “To give wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor. . . . If you don’t have the zeal to help the poor, to take good care of the lepers, then [you] should pack up and go home. . . . no need to stay.”
Set an example
The most effective way to lead is by example. Mother Teresa asked her sisters to take their vow of poverty farther than those in the convent to help them understand the “poorest of the poor.” She said: “If we really want to know the poor, we must know what poverty is. . . . It is why in our society, poverty is our freedom and our strength.”
Be cheerful even if you don’t feel like it
Even if you have problems in your life that make you unhappy, present a cheerful demeanor to the outside world. That doesn’t mean you are ignoring your problems. Rather, you are putting yourself in the best possible frame of mind to solve them. One of Mother Teresa’s conditions in accepting a prospective sister into her order was that she have a “cheerful disposition.” Mother Teresa said, “A cheerful giver is a great giver.” Mother Teresa was known for her warm greeting and powerful smile that conveyed her great love and caring. “Let us always greet each other with a smile, for a smile is the beginning of love,” she said.
Care about those in need
Mother Teresa became, in the words of United Nations General Secretary Javier Perez de Cuellar, “the most powerful woman in the world,” because she cared for those in need. “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or cancer or tuberculosis,” Mother Teresa said, “but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, deserted by everybody. The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference towards one’s neighbor….”
Learn by experience
Mother Teresa said to her helpers and volunteers: “Discover … through direct contact. Go to Kalighat, the Home for the Dying, and learn your lessons, not out of a book, but in the rough and tumble of life, among real people….”
Write letters
Written communications, especially thank-you notes, are a powerful way to make a lasting impression. Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Thatcher were all great letter writers. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said: “I have always believed in the impact of a personal handwritten letter—even from someone you barely know.”
Don’t let age slow you down
Mother Teresa had suffered three serious heart attacks by the time she was eighty-five and had a pacemaker, but she refused to slow down. “I’ve never said no to Jesus,” she said, “and I’m not going to begin now. Every day you have to say yes.”
Speak from your heart
“I make a little cross on my lips with my thumb; then I look straight forward above the audience and deliver my message,” Mother Teresa told Father Le Joly about her speaking style.
Stay humble
A world figure and the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize, Mother Teresa didn’t get carried away with herself. She credited God and Jesus for what she and the Missionaries of Charity accomplished, and saw herself as God’s vessel. “I am surer of this than of my own life,” she said.

Used with permission from Women of Influence by Pat & Ruth Williams with Michael Mink (Health Communications, Inc., 2003).