Taking The High Road - Be Better, Not Bitter

I love to keep these podcasts real and active in the sense that these are situations, real situations that are going on in my life and in my business and in my world right now.

Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rome, author and world renowned public speaker as he shares stories involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good, spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rome.

So I want to share one with you to give you some insight on how I believe if you learn how to think and feel correctly about the circumstances of life, you will end up being the winner for it in just a few weeks. We have a speakers boot camp coming up in Atlanta. They are on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. People fly in or drive in on Sunday. They go to the hotel, they get all situated. We do the training all day on Monday, all day on Tuesday and all day on Wednesday. They are fabulous on Monday. We have a D and I, an S and a C. The four different judges, a dominant, inspiring, supportive and cautious personality style. Share what they, as a participant in your audience, might be listening for, might be looking for. We do training in the speaking business. We, we do help people understand what how to connect with an audience. We talk about your lighting, your sound system, if you use a PowerPoint, all the different aspects of helping you give a better delivery, helping you be a better speaker. I had the privilege of working with Zig Ziglar and Charlie Jones and many Les Brown, Brian Tracy. I've done trainings with all those great public motivational speakers and so we share tips and ideas that will help you be a better speaker as well. So, so for our upcoming one, and I won't name the hotel because I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but we had a contract with a hotel, had it all squared away. We were going to be using their facility for our training room and then the participants would be using the sleeping rooms at the hotel. We have done this many, many times. We have a great relationship with the hotel. They provide the meeting room, the sleeping rooms. There's food there, breakfast. It's in a great location in metro Atlanta. Everybody's able to fly into the Atlanta airport, get to the hotel and then have the training on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Well, as it turns out, the hotel that we normally use is undergoing major renovations. They're tearing it up, gutting it out and redoing it. Well, that's okay because it's a hotel chain and, and they have a sister hotel by the same ownership, by the same name, only a couple of Miles away. So we had our agreement all signed back in April. We signed the paper that these. This is the agreement. This is how much it's going to cost us. This is the room rate. And we are going to have these rooms for the specific dates in October. We do our training in October and April of every year, two different times. So they moved us to the new hotel. Well, I went by the other day to take a look at it. And usually these hotels have adjoining rooms where they can slide the partitions aside to make the room bigger. And we need all three rooms for our speakers boot camp because of the large attendance and the. The take the training that takes place. We do video training. We have a professional photo shoot that takes place in the room. I mean, it's a big deal. We have a videographer who videos everybody and also vid videos all the judges responses. It's a very. Think American Idol. Someone performs, then the judges share what they like, what could be done a little bit better. But it's all done in a very safe, positive, uplifting, edifying environment. So I went over and looked at the hotel and I was talking to the gentleman who was showing me around. And I said, yeah. And I said, now, I noticed the first room was closed off and it was small, but the second and third rooms were open up and they were large. So I said, so I. For our event coming up, I guess we're going to move this partition so we can have all three rooms.

He stopped and looked at me and said, well, no, you just have the first room. And I said, well, no, we have all three rooms. I said, that was our agreement that we have all three rooms. I said, but I could. I said, let me check with Gina. She's my assistant. She's handled the contract. I got in touch with Gina. Gina showed me. She sent me a copy on the contract. Yes, we have all three rooms. We have all three of the rooms. The partitions are opened and we have the entire area for our training. So Gina got back in touch with the gentleman at the new hotel, the sister hotel that we had been moved to. And he said, well, I'm sorry, you only have the one small room.

Well.

Now listen carefully. I am human like all the rest of you. Here's what went through my mind. Well, you're just going to have to tell the other group that you have made a mistake because we have a contract with the previous hotel that clearly shows we have all three rooms. And the fact that you've rented out these other two rooms on the same Date that we already had them at the other hotel. True, true. They're transferring us from their hotel over to your hotel. They're transferring us over, but we still have all three rooms. And you'll just have to tell the other group, sorry, we made a mistake. They said, no, we can't do that. And it turns out, as I have done a little further digging into this, it's during the time that the World Series is going to be played in October, and more than likely, not for sure, but more than likely, the Atlanta Braves are going to be in the World Series. And their stadium is less than a half a mile from this location. Now, it'd be real easy for me, first of all, to have this kind of attitude. Let me tell you something, pal. We have a contract, and I'm gonna call my lawyer and we're gonna sue you, and we're gonna be here at this room, and you're not changing the price on us. And just because the Braves are gonna go to the world and yada, yada, yada, Yan Yang. Yeah, on and on. But I have lived long enough to know this. When something goes wrong, don't go with it. So I took a deep breath and I said, so just to be clear, you're saying that we had three rooms at this hotel, but you cannot transfer the three training rooms over to the new hotel? You can only transfer one? They said, yes, we're very sorry.

Okay.

So Gina and I begin to talk and begin to look and begin to think. Now listen carefully. I did a little research. From the Atlanta airport to that particular hotel is 30 miles. All of a sudden my mind went to the fact, you know, there's a brand new hotel that's just been built in Griffin, Georgia, where I live. Griffin is south of the airport. I wonder how far it is from the Atlanta airport to the Griffin airport. We checked it out. It's 36 miles. There's a six mile difference. And if you go from the Atlanta airport to north Atlanta in the Marietta, Georgia area, there's 8,462,000 cars on the road. I'm talking about traffic from beneath the earth. It is awful. I mean, it's terrible. Anybody who lives in metro Atlanta knows the traffic here is incredible. You can even get a map and see how some brilliant person made. I75 and i85 connect in South Atlanta and go through downtown Atlanta together. Two of the largest interstates in the United States of America. The join and go through Atlanta and then they part on the north side of Atlanta and Go on to South Carolina or to Tennessee. It's unbelievable. Whoever those highways, I don't think there's another situation like that in America where two major arteries come together in a downtown area. So I began to ask myself, why would we go to that hotel anyway? I mean, we've been doing this for years and it's always a problem with traffic. And wait a minute, maybe there's something else going here. What if we took the high road? What if instead of being nasty and hateful, we just said, you know, maybe there's another plan that's trying to unfold. Maybe there's another opportunity that we haven't considered yet. So my wife and I went to the hotel in Griffin. We looked at it. It's beautiful. The room, the meeting room is fabulous. And, and it doesn't have three partitions. It just has one huge opening. And it is great. Brand new. We checked on the dates. They said, yep, they're available. It was hundreds of dollars cheaper.

So we put our heads together and we said to all of those coming, we've got some good news for you. Instead of you having to fly into Atlanta and fight traffic and get to the other side of town, and by the way, we always have people having to leave early on Wednesday to fight traffic to get back to the airport. Guess what? All of that's going away. We are going to have the event at a brand new hotel in Griffin. It's only six miles further and there's a whole lot less traffic. As a matter of fact, there's very little traffic from the Atlanta airport to Griffin. If you get a map, you can look straight down. So straight shot down 1941 all the way to Griffin. We've got the hotel secured. The sleeping rooms are all brand new. This is going to be great. But wait, wait, it gets better. My wife said, since it's here in Griffin, I think we ought to have everybody who's attending speakers boot camp over to our house with. We'll have dinner one night. We'll provide dinner. We'll have it catered. My wife's sister's a caterer. We'll have it catered. We'll have the food here and everybody can come hang out at our house. We'll show them around on our farm a little bit. We will show them where we live and we will get connected with them and we will make them part of our life as well. After all, we want the people who come to our training to. To be part of our family. We want them to be considered close to Us. Not just somebody who pays to come through the training, but someone who is part of our Personality Insights family. We'll have them over at the house to eat, and we'll all spend the evening together. And you can show them your office, and I can show them how I've decorated this house. And who knows, even if it's warm enough in early October, we can all jump in the pool together. This thing is developing into a whole new adventure for Personality Insights. The training hotel is only about five minutes from our house. Instead of us having to go fight traffic and deal with Atlanta traffic and the hotel situation and then the restaurants, it's now becoming much more. More personable. It's becoming much more intimate, and I think it's becoming much more better. Now. Listen. Listen to what I'm saying. All of that. I believe all of that came about as a direct result of not going nuts when something didn't go my way.

You've heard of the great quotes. If you're going through hell, Winston Churchill said, keep going. If things are falling apart, don't fall apart with them. If things don't go the way you want them to go, well, maybe you need to go in a different direction. Are you aware that there are hundreds and hundreds of mistakes that have happened over the years that have turned into brand new opportunities? I have a book about mistakes that change the world. I won't go into all of them, but my favorite ones. Chocolate chip cookies. I love chocolate chip cookies. They were a mistake. The person that ordered them ordered chocolate cookies and the person that made them. On the Toll House Road in New York, you can look this stuff up, put the chocolate morsels in, thinking that they would melt and the cookies would become chocolate. Turns out they made the cookies and the chocolate morsels inside did not melt and turn into a chocolate cookie. They stayed intact and it became a chocolate chip cookie. And when they got them out, the person came to pick them up. They said, wow, you know, it's big. This big mistake here. I am so sorry. I thought these cookies would be chocolate. Turns out they didn't become chocolate. They stayed in the chips anyway. The person said, let me try one. The person ate it and said, it's the best cookie I ever put in my mouth. And that's how chocolate chip cookies were born. It was a big mistake. You can check that out. Look that up. There are so many of those I love. Again, I have a book called Mistakes that Changed. I think it's called Mistakes that Changed America. There are lots of them that's not the purpose of this call. That's not the purpose of our podcast today. Here's what the purpose is. Stay calm. When things fall apart. When things fall apart, don't fall apart with them. Ask yourself, is is God trying to show me something new? Are these circumstances trying to point me in a different direction? Is this situation trying to help me to become better? Or is it trying to help me to become bitter? I doubt very seriously if the situation has been sent your way to destroy your life. Someone once said, I love this. Someone said, God will test us to develop us. Satan will tempt us to destroy us. But those two circumstances feel and seem very much alike. Learn to take the high road. See, when things go wrong in my life, I say to myself, maybe God's testing me again. I'll say it again. It's a grace worth writing down. God will test you to develop you. Satan will tempt you to destroy you. And those two sets of circumstances feel very much the same. We're not sure what's going on. The whole story of Job was given to teach us. The things that Job was facing in his life were a direct result of Satan attacking him. Job never even considered that. Job said, the Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. See, that's my attitude. I'm going to take the high road. The Lord provided the hotel for us in Marietta. The Lord took away the hotel in Marietta and now we have one in Griffin. And it's going to be better. Less traffic, closer to our house, more intimate, and everyone is going to have a better experience. Next time you face some challenges, take a deep breath. Step back. Take the high road. Ask if something is going on that could make you better rather than making you bitter. And you, my friend, will be the one to profit from it. I'm Dr. Robert Rome. I hope this podcast has been a blessing to you. I look forward to talking to you soon. The next time we're together. Have a great day. God bless you. Thanks so much.

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