"The way a person does one thing is the way they do everything..."

I am back from my daughter's college graduation weekend, and we certainly heard a lot of great advice from the baccalaureate Mass and commencement speakers.  However, I would like to talk about another great quote that I heard recently - in this case, the person who originally said the quote is not known:

"The way a person does one thing is the way they do everything."

In other words, how an individual approaches any facet of their life is generally a very good indication of how that individual approaches everything in their life.  How an individual manages any change, challenge, or stress in his or her life is usually how they approach most things.  The quote summarizes a concept that is fundamentally a universal truth, one that I have observed over and over in a myriad of circumstances.  More important, in my opinion, is the fact that we can change our behavior and attitudes about how we react to change, challenges, or stressful situations more generally by modeling the desired behavior and attitudes for the smallest of changes, challenges, or stressful situations.

Case in point - why do you think the military places so much emphasis on wearing a clean, neatly pressed, crisp uniform or making the bed every day to exact specifications?  By making the bed every day or wearing the uniform to perfect specifications, the military is teaching discipline, industry, and attention to detail.  By modeling the desired behavior and attitude (discipline, industry or hard work, and attention to detail) for the small things, the military is hoping to teach their new recruits to practice these behaviors in every facet of their lives (in, for example, the infinitely more stressful, challenging environment of the battlefield).  The way a person does one thing is the way they do everything.

Another example - why do you think hotel maids fold over the ends of the toilet paper roll every time that they clean the room?  The journalist, David Feldman asked that same question to a number of hotel executives across the United States.  James P. McCauley (Executive Director, International Association of Holiday Inns) said, "Hotels want to give their guests the confidence that the bathroom has been cleaned since the last guest has used the room."  Stephen Gill went further, "the neatly made bed, the folded toilet paper - all these things symbolize attention and love.  Perhaps such finishing touches are also an attempt to suggest flawlessness or excellence."  In other words, by folding the toilet paper, the hotel staff has indicated that they take great pains, even to the smallest detail, to make their guests' stay the best it could possibly be - a home away from home, if you will.  The way a person does one thing is the way they do everything.

Final example - there is a story (I don't know whether it is true or not, but I have heard it told a number of times) involving the rock-n-roll band, Van Halen.  Apparently, on the 1980 concert tour, one of the provisions in the contract rider was to stock the hotel rooms with the following "munchies":

 - Potato chips with assorted dips
 - Nuts
 - Pretzels
 - M&M's (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES)
 - Twelve (12) Reese's peanut butter cups
 - Twelve (12) assorted Dannon yogurt (on ice)

The story goes one to say that the band had a legal right to terminate the contract for a tour appearance, without advance notice, if they found a single brown M&M in the bowl of candy in the hotel room before the concert.  Apparently, on one occasion, the band found brown M&M's in the candy bowl and proceeded to trash the hotel room (rock stars will be rock stars, apparently).  Was this just another indication that rock stars were crazy?  Did one of the band members have some weird allergy to the brown color dye?  As it turns out, there was art to the madness - the band reasoned that if they found brown M&M's in the candy bowl, the local venue probably did not read the entire contract in exacting detail.  If the local venue neglected this one small request, how would they comply with something of far greater importance.  The band's lead singer, David Lee Roth stated in an interview, "Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets.  We'd pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max.  And there were many, many technical errors - whether it was the girders couldn't support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren't big enough to move the gear through.  The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function.  So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say, 'Article 48: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes.'  This kind of thing.  And article number 126 in the middle of nowhere was: 'There will be no brown M&Ms in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation."  In other words, the way a person does one thing is the way they do everything.

Hard work.  Attention to detail.  Positive attitude.  Discipline.  Empathy.  Optimism.  It doesn't matter what behavior or attitude that you desire - the important thing to remember is that if you demonstrate that behavior or attitude in every aspect of your life, it will become part of who you are as a person.  If you demonstrate that behavior or attitude in even the smallest, trivial, unimportant aspects, that behavior or attitude will be manifest in the most important aspects of your life.  The way a person does one thing is the way they do everything.