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Wife killed in head-on crash while pursuing her husband in another vehicle

Originally posted at: http://abc13.com/news/wife-killed-in-head-on-crash-while-chasing-husband/793464/

Saturday, July 23, 2016

HOUSTON (KTRK) —

A woman is dead in a tragic car accident in northeast Houston, after she struck another vehicle head-on. And she was apparently chasing her own husband at the time.

The accident happened at 4pm Thursday in the 13000 block of Wallisville Road. According to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, Nancy De Acosta was driving eastbound, while following her husband and his mistress in another car. Authorities say Nancy tried to force her husband’s car off the road, but lost control and spun into the path of an oncoming SUV, slamming into it nearly head-on.

Nancy De Acosta died at the scene. The driver of the SUV sustained severe injuries and was taken by Life Flight to Memorial Hermann Hospital. Nancy’s husband Fredy Acosta and the woman with him were unhurt.

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This Is How You Change The World

Originally posted at: http://thoughtcatalog.com/%tc-coauthor%/2016/08/this-is-how-you-change-the-world/

by: Becca Martin

You change the world by being kind and empathetic. You change the world by being honest and by being compassionate. You change the world by giving without looking for a return. You change the world by doing the right thing and by being yourself. You change the world by finding a passion and pursing it. You change the world by being generous, forgiving and authentic.

You change the world by being kind to everyone you encounter, regardless of their skin color, race, religious beliefs and social or economic status. You treat the homeless man sitting outside your office with the same kindness you treat your coworkers with. You don’t judge people on their stories and their backgrounds. They might have made a few wrong decisions to end up where they are today, but everyone makes wrong decisions, but most of us are lucky enough to have people to help us fix them. You don’t act like you know their stories, but you’d be willing to listen. You’d be willing to ask how they’re doing and wait for a real answer. You wouldn’t make assumptions or belittle anyone, you would wish them the best and let them know you care.

You change the world by being honest and compassionate. You don’t lie your way out of things. You don’t place blame on someone else to save your own ass. You own your mistakes and you try to be as honest as possible because the world doesn’t need anymore liars and people throwing each other under the bus. The world needs more honest people that aren’t afraid to admit when they messed up. The world needs more people who care about how others feel instead of just being concerned with themselves. The world needs your honesty and the world needs your heart.

You change the world by giving without expecting anything in return. You find a organization you’re passionate about and you help them, you volunteer your time and you donate when you can. You don’t do it because you’re looking for a reward out of it, you do it because it’s the right thing to do and because you’ve been so blessed in this life time that it’s only right you give back. You give without expecting because once you start expecting things the reasoning behind the good you’re doing becomes corrupt.

You change the world by doing the right thing and being yourself. You change the world by standing tall in what you believe in and supporting that cause. You do what is right, you don’t act with violence or out of anger, and you act with kindness and with love in your heart. You dedicate time to find who you are and by being yourself you know what you believe in. You know what you’re passionate about and believe in those values. Do what is best for you, don’t be influenced by other’s decisions, find your thing and make your mark.

You change the world by finding your passion and pursing it. You change the world by being yourself and dedicating time into what you love. You change the world by pursing your passion and inspiring one person or a million people to follow their dreams, as well. You show others that it is possible if you put your mind to it. You should other’s how amazing life is when you do what you love everyday and they should never strive for anything less. You change the world by believing in what you do and doing it with all your heart.

You change the world by being generous, forgiving and authentic. You change the world by not being greedy. You help a friend when a friend is in need. You donate to a cause that you know will help those who need it. You give up your seat on the tram to the older woman who is standing. You pack an extra lunch for the homeless man outside your office. You change the world by thinking of other people besides yourself.

You change the world by not holding grudges and forgiving those who might not deserve it. You forgive them not for the sake of them, but the sake of yourself. You forgive them so you can move on and find peace.

You change the world by being authentic and not pretending to live perfectly inside a glass house. You inspire others when you’re honest and when you’re raw. You humanize yourself when you stop posting pictures of perfect beaches and the flawless smoky eye. You become real when you are authentic, when you stop trying to make the world think you’re perfect through the lens of a camera.

You change the world when you become the best version of yourself. It might take time; it might take the earth breaking you in order for you to grow bigger and better. It might take inspiration from someone important to you in order for you to see the bigger picture, but it is possible. It is possible to change the world, but in order to change the world you have to start by being the change.

Change the world one day at a time, one decision at a time. Rome wasn’t built in a day and the world can’t be saved in a day, but you can start changing the world by being the best version of yourself possible.  Be the change, I believe in you.

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O Sweet Exchange

“You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us; as you can see, he has done nothing to deserve death. Therefore, I will punish him and then release him.”

With one voice they cried out, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!” (Barabbas had been thrown into prison for an insurrection in the city, and for murder.) (Luke 23:14–19 NIV)

Like Barabbas, we sit on the floor of the dusty cell, awaiting the final moment. Our executioner’s footsteps echo against stone walls. Head between knees, we don’t look up as he opens the door; we don’t lift our eyes as he begins to speak. We know what he is going to say. “Time to pay for your sins.” But we hear something else.

“You’re free to go. They took Jesus instead of you.”

The door swings open, the guard barks, “Get out,” and we find ourselves in the light of the morning sun, shackles gone, crimes pardoned, wondering, What just happened?

Grace happened.

Christ took away your sins. Where did he take them? To the top of a hill called Calvary, where he endured not just the nails of the Romans, the mockery of the crowd, and the spear of the soldier but the anger of God.

Saturate your heart in this, the finest summary of God’s greatest accomplishment: “God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God’s anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us” (Rom. 3:24–25 NLT, emphasis mine).

God didn’t overlook your sins, lest he endorse them. He didn’t punish you, lest he destroy you. He instead found a way to punish the sin and preserve the sinner. Jesus took your punishment, and God gave you credit for Jesus’ perfection.

Today’s devotional is drawn from Max Lucado’s Second Chances.

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To Be a Better Leader, Learn This FBI Hostage Negotiation Tactic

Originally posted at: https://medium.com/the-mission/this-fbi-hostage-negotiation-tactic-makes-you-a-better-leader-a4afe919c18d#.h32qerqg5

by Andy Raskin

Before getting to yes, strive for “that’s it.”

As a strategic messaging and positioning consultant, I preside over lots of contentious meetings. They go with the territory: Sometimes it’s just really hard to get leaders of high-profile startups to agree on a single version of their strategic story.

About six weeks ago, I was trying to do exactly that while facilitating a meeting at a Series B startup backed by A-list investors (Andreessen Horowitz, GV and others) — and things were not going well. In particular, a salesperson named Troy (not his real name) would not buy into the strategic narrative framework that I had led his CEO and co-founders in crafting over the previous four weeks. Troy was an important member of the team, and the CEO wanted him excited about the shared strategic vision.

Just as I was losing hope of ever getting Troy on the same page as the rest of his team, the CEO stepped in and began asking Troy a series of questions. And in a shift that seemed almost magical, Troy came around. By the end of the meeting, Troy agreed to fully support the new messaging, and I could tell that he meant it.

Beyond impressed (more like in awe), I approached the CEO after the meeting.

“What did you just do?” I asked.

“It’s a tactic I read about in a book by an FBI hostage negotiator,” the CEO said.

Needless to say, I asked the CEO to send me a link to the book.

The Role of Emotional Connection in Leading People to Embrace Your Ideas

The book, I learned, was called Never Split the Difference, and had, indeed, been written by a 24-year veteran of the FBI named Chris Voss, along with a co-author named Tahl Raz. (I have no relationship with either, and no stake in sales of their book.)

From 2000 to 2007, Voss served in the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit. During the last four of those years, he was the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator, running high-profile cases in global danger zones like Iraq, the Philippines, and Colombia.

Voss’s game-changing insight was that nearly every successful hostage release happens only after the chief negotiator establishes an emotional connection with the kidnapper. In spite of that truth, the FBI’s traditional negotiations tactics—and most of the ones taught in schools (Getting to Yes, most notably)—were focused on removing emotion from the equation to reach a win-win solution through logic and reason. As Voss writes in Never Split the Difference:

I mean, have you ever tried to devise a mutually beneficial win-win solution with a guy who thinks he’s the messiah?

Thankfully, Troy, the reluctant salesperson in our meeting, didn’t possess a sense of himself that was that grandiose. But he did exhibit a certain messianic zeal (which I share) about the importance of a well-crafted strategic messaging and positioning architecture. A few days earlier, Troy had sent an email to his CEO and leadership team with the subject “Problems with New Messaging”; it contained a detailed accounting of the deficiencies he saw in the version of the story that his leadership team and I had designed.

The Tactic that Moved Us Forward: Getting to ‘That’s Right’

Noting my utter inability to bring Troy into the fold, the CEO stepped in and took charge of the meeting. He said to Troy, “I have a call scheduled with a New York Times reporter tomorrow at noon, to brief her on on our company and strategy. What should I say when she asks, ‘What do you guys do?’”

Troy wasn’t quite prepared for this question, but he did his best to describe a version of the story that he wanted to tell.

What the CEO did next was the key. He said, “Now, I’m going to summarize what you told me, and I’d like you to let me know if anything is missing or incorrect. OK?”

This was the tactic the CEO had learned from Voss. In his book, Voss calls it “Getting to ‘That’s right.’”

When Voss analyzed the transcripts of his most unlikely hostage negotiation victories, he discovered that the turning point frequently occurred right after his team took the time to listen to the captor’s argument, summarized that argument back to the captor, and then got the captor to say, “That’s right.”

Those two words, Voss asserts, may not seem like a big deal when you hear them, but they mark a crucial turning point in any negotiation. That’s because they signal that your negotiating partner feels heard and acknowledged, which opens the door to previously impossible solutions:

It all starts with the universally applicable premise that people want to be understood and accepted. When your adversaries say, “That’s right,” they feel they have assessed what you’ve said and pronounced it as correct of their own free will. They embrace it. … Reaching “that’s right” in a negotiation creates breakthroughs.

As his leadership team and I watched, the CEO summarized what Troy had said. Perhaps most importantly, he did it with total openness and lack of judgment and anger, which is impossible unless you truly make yourself open to what the other person has to say. When he finished, Troy added a few points that he felt the CEO had missed. This happened three or four times.

Finally Troy said, “Yeah, that’s right.”

How Everything Changed After Troy’s “That’s Right,” and My 3 Big Takeaways

The really interesting thing was that, when the CEO finally arrived at the version of the story on which Troy signed off, it wasn’t that different from the one the team and I had originally drafted. There was one key addition — some (very good) detail around recent global trends that made the company’s solution more timely (an element of strategic messaging that I call “Why now?”).

Everyone agreed that Troy’s addition strengthened the narrative, so we incorporated it into the final version. That became the one the CEO told to the New York Times reporter. It’s also the story that powered the company’s funding announcement, their new website, and their new sales deck. The company’s VP of Product presented the new strategic story to the entire company and received rave reviews — including one from Troy.

In the end, the project left me with three big takeaways:

#1. Leadership is a negotiation that depends on emotional connection

By starting with the team’s draft version (his adversary’s position) and asking Troy to suggest changes, I left Troy feeling unheard. It didn’t matter that we weren’t that far apart; until Troy felt understood, there would be no forward movement.

Interestingly, I had never thought of leadership as a negotiation before, but in a very real sense, it is: team members want a story they can get excited about, and the leader wants everyone’s “that’s right.”

#2. “Active listening” is the key to establishing that emotional connection (and, therefore, to leadership)

A lot of business storytelling experts talk about the importance of listening as a leadership skill. While I always assumed listening was important, I realize that, until now, I basically considered it the art of sitting there while the other person talks, not saying anything, and doing one’s best to look interested.

Voss’s technique shows that to really reap the rewards of listening, you have to not only take in what the other person says, but also prove that you’ve accurately received the message. As Voss says:

This is listening as a martial art, balancing the subtle behaviors of emotional intelligence and the assertive skills of influence, to gain access to the mind of another person. Contrary to popular opinion, listening is not a passive activity. It is the most active thing you can do.

I now make active listening — that is, Voss’s summarizing and repeating back until you hear a “that’s right” — a core part of my business storytelling workshops for leaders, as well as a standard part of my strategic messaging and positioning facilitation.

#3. There’s still more I want to learn from Voss

I’m still wrapping my head around everything Voss has written, and I have a feeling it’s going to continue to affect my work, my approach to leadership, and my personal relationships in profound ways.

About Andy Raskin:
I help leaders craft strategic stories—for better fundraising, sales, marketing, product, and recruiting. My clients include teams backed by Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, GV, and other top venture firms. I’ve also led strategic storytelling workshops for leaders at Uber, General Assembly, HourlyNerd, Neustar, and Stanford. To learn more or get in touch, visit http://andyraskin.com.