Recently, I came across the beautiful Starfish Story in a twenty-year old book by Susan Jeffers called Dare to Connect. I did some further research on the story. It seems that the story first appeared in a book of essays published in 1978 called “The Star Thrower” by Loren Eiseley.

Here is the story. “A little girl goes out after a storm to throw back some starfish that have become stranded on the beach. She is told by her mother that there are too many starfish for her to make any difference. She says, as she throws one back, “I made a difference to that one, didn’t I?”

Like many of you, I learned the business ropes in a corporation. I learned that the most important business concept is the bottom line of getting ahead at any cost. At the expense of people, quality, integrity, humanity, friendship, sustainability, etc. Who cares if we do bad things to people and the environment to get there? If we have the largest market share then we must be the best, right?. If we make 40 million dollars then we must be brighter and more important than the company that makes $1 million, right? (more…)

In other parts of the world, business owners take a lot longer vacations. Pretty cool in my book. In the US, people seem to get paranoid about taking vacations from a corporate job and especially from their own businesses. They think they’ll lose their jobs or their businesses will close up.

Two weeks in a year just isn’t enough time to rejuvenate. If you work for 40 years that’s just 80 weeks off and 2000 week working. No wonder folks seem so frazzled or acquire stress related illnesses.

I wonder how many folks have been fired for taking a vacation. I can’t believe it’s that many. One of my old bosses took a vacation but he gave them his phone number and his bosses called him night and day. He probably did more work on vacation than he did at work. That’s not a vacation. (more…)