One of my associates, Bob Dickman, received a major distinction in 2008 – he was named the top-producing commercial real estate broker in suburban Maryland. The magnitude of this accomplishment is greatly increased by the fact that Bob works for McShea, which as a relatively small, local company normally does not stand a chance against the much larger, national companies at earning this kind of award.
I’ve worked with Bob for 24 years and have never heard him say a bad word about anyone. One day I tried to bait Bob into saying something harsh about someone in our business. I brought up a broker, John*, who had recently wronged Bob. True to form, Bob didn’t take the bait. He simply said John was John, and he didn’t always agree with the way John did things. So I called Bob out and asked him why I had never heard him say anything negative about other people in all the years we had worked together. He smiled and said, “That was my Dad’s number one rule: If you don’t have anything good to say about someone, then don’t say anything. Never speak ill of another human being.”
Bob’s father died at a young age, and his mother was forced to raise 5 kids on her own in Wheeling, West Virginia. She was dealt a tough hand in a steel town known for hard times. If anybody had the right to be bitter and spiteful, it was her. Instead she raised those five kids on her husband’s golden rule. Bob has had a very successful career as a broker. His brother is a doctor who came back to West Virginia to help the people in his home state. Neither of them has let the tough hand dealt to their family stop them from succeeding in life.
Call me crazy, but it seems like our lives would be a lot healthier if we just didn’t worry so much about people we don’t like. This is one of the upsides to Papa Dickman’s golden rule – if you’re not saying negative things about other people, you aren’t wasting your time and energy on people you don’t really care about.
When asked what had helped him become so successful, General (and later President) Dwight D. Eisenhower responded, “I never spent two minutes worrying about people I didn’t like.”
Have a great weekend,
Ro