On the Fridge Door

Over 15 years ago I ran my training company from my basement. That's where i would sit thinking about, and designing the content for, the training programs I would deliver.

One time I was designing a program about how successful sales people operate. Part of that program was about goals -- not only the need to have them but the need to stay focused on them. So I created the sentence, "The more often you glance at the goal, the straighter the path." The idea, for example, is that if you are walking in a field towards a large tree or a tower or something, the more often you looked up to check for the tree, the straighter your path to the tree would be.

A couple of months ago, more than fifteen years after I designed and delivered that training program, a colleague of mine received an email. As do many email senders, at the bottom of the email, in her signature area, the sender had a quotation, "The more often you glance at the goal, the straighter the path."

My colleague, a trainer who has periodically delivered that same message to other groups, recognized the sentence. He was excited for me. He ran to my office with a printout of the email. We shared a lovely moment about the effect we get to have in our industry. He wrote back to her asking about the quotation in the signature section of her messages--where it came from, why she chose THAT saying.

She replied, "I don't know where I got it from, but it's very important to me. I have used it as a guide for the longest time. I even have it posted on my refrigerator door at home. Isn't it neat?"