Performance Enhancement || Business Influence & Leadership || Family Unity || Parent & Child Communication || Personal Habit Patterns

Where is that elusive point when you have had all you can take and you snap mentally? What is it that will be the final straw and drive you over the edge and what would you do?

Bruce Pardo found that elusive point of madness. Something inside him snapped and he lost all control over his anger, rage and imbalanced form of reasoning.

Bruce went where few people have ever gone and didn’t live to return from that place. Nine other people also didn’t live to talk about what it was like to be confronted by someone beyond the brink of madness.

Each of us has a unique mental makeup and set of limitations on our ability to cope with the distress, stress and the pressures of living. Some have more strength than others.

When that point of enough is reached we change from normal and nice to nasty and uncontrollable. A person beyond the brink isn’t the person you once knew anymore. They have evolved into a creature driven by base desires and emotions often without sane reasoning and emotional attachment.

Many of the people who knew or spoke to Bruce Pardo just before his mad killing spree on Christmas Eve said he seemed nice and pretty much normal. However, a few hours later he had disintegrated into someone that would shoot an 8 year old child in the face without remorse on his way to fulfilling his need to kill those with whom he had issues.

Past feelings and emotions couldn’t stop him and neither could third degree burns. He was beyond the mere limits of normal human pain in a place where the brain shuts down everything except the intense focus on singular purpose.

It was a terrible event that is for certain. Terrible for the innocent people injured and killed and also terrible that something could drive someone like Bruce Pardo to commit such a crime.

Speaking to others I see nothing but seething hatred for Bruce Pardo and what he did, but we must always try to remember that except for a specific course of events it could have been any one of us standing in that doorway spewing flames and shooting people.

Until you have actually been there you can never say never and claim that you would or will not go beyond your sense of human reason.

Something snapped inside Bruce Pardo that day and it could happen to anyone at almost any time under the right circumstances.

The best defense is to vent your pressure. If you find yourself under extreme distress stop and take the time to talk it out with a friend, family member or seek out professional help. Don’t allow the stress and pressure to constantly build thinking that you can handle it all by yourself.

Once you step beyond the brink it’s simply too late.

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What you are about to read may seem shocking to some and emotional to others, but I assure you that once you read it you will never be the same. I know I haven’t been since experiencing the event.

How can I say that? Because once an emotion is triggered, once a thought is generated it changes the person in ever so slight a way. It lights a spark within that instinctive human need inside each of us to do the right thing and help our fellow man.

I travel extensively and was due to see Glenn Beck in his final performance of The Christmas Sweater in Charleston, S.C. on Wednesday evening.

After two weeks away from my family I wanted to leave my home studio and travel back to our home in North Carolina with enough time to see my girls off to school and a bit of rest before trekking to Glenn’s show.

So at 2:30 am I was off and a little more than four hours later was pulling up into our driveway.

Nothing says more than the look in a child’s eyes when you truly care for them and their interests.

After a few hours of rest I was again on the road headed toward Charleston. After about 150 miles I stopped to get fuel. After I got out of my vehicle another car pulled up to the pumps.

The vehicle was a little rough and missing some hubcaps and the man that emerged was somewhat tattered and dirty. He circled his car in almost helpless confusion for a moment or so and then approached me.

He told me he was travelling to Charleston and simply didn’t have any more money and wanted to know if I could spare him a few dollars of gas so that he could get back to his family.

Now, I’d heard the story before, but something else in this man’s eyes told me his words came from the heart and not from greed or lazy intentions.

So I did pump some fuel into his car, but before he could turn to leave I took him by the shoulder with one hand looked him in the eyes and said;

Now you must repay me for the favor. A puzzled look can over his face, but I continued.

Maybe not today, but tomorrow or soon YOU must do something for another person. Not just some simple act like picking something up or holding a door open, but rather something that takes some effort or commitment on your part.

You must find it in your heart to return this good deed to another. I cannot tell you when, but you’ll know when the time is right. You must promise me that.

He looked directly in my eyes and I could see tears welling up as he promised he would and wished me a Merry Christmas as he got into his car and drove away.

I fueled up and after lingering a while I was back on the road.

The weather was foggy, chilly and raining at times and after about 20 minutes of driving I noticed another vehicle stopped on the side of the interstate highway. Inside trying to stay warm was a woman that appeared to be easily in her 70’s and outside kneeling by the front of her car in the misty rain was the man I had helped earlier.

He had stopped for her and was now changing her very flat tire in the rain.

I made it to the show that night and listened to the message of hope and inspiration that Glenn offered and after a few minutes of chatter afterward with the show’s producer Don Brenner and congratulating Glenn on a wonderful performance I was once again back on the road heading toward home and my family.

However, my mind kept going back to the look in that man’s eyes and the sight of him kneeling in the rain to help that elderly woman.

I want to challenge you. If you are reading this message I want to ask you to do the same. To go out today, tomorrow or whenever the opportunity and need is before you and do just one good thing, one truly good deed for another person.

Then look them directly in the eyes and ask that they do the same for another.

Create a chain of good deeds that passes from person to person. And if you feel so inclined please share this written story message with another person. It is my gift to you and to all the other people that we can reach out to in their time of need.

The spirit of giving is the greatest gift we have to offer.

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One of the strangest aspects of the proposed bailout efforts on behalf of the Big 3 automakers is the degree of concern suddenly shown. Why now, why them?

The government has been handing out billions without so much as a handshake or a kiss, but once the automakers started asking the microscope came out.

They focused on private jets, mismanagement and all forms of delay.

All this after giving hundreds of billions to AIG, GE and other financial institutions without any real regulatory control at all other than simple suggestion.

Why are the automakers under such a spotlight? Don’t misunderstand, I am certainly aware of the slipshod management practices and Union influence that has created many of the concerns, but trust me the financial world has been rife with their versions of the same.

This coin has tails on both sides so it doesn’t make any sense to stare longer at one side than the other.

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