Stan Sewitch has over 35 years in business as an entrepreneur, consultant and executive. His adventures include founding HRG Inc., Emlyn Systems, Chromagen and KI Investment Holdings. Stan serves as a director on several boards as well. Stan holds an M.S. in Organizational Psychology from California State University at Long Beach, and a B.A. in Physiological Psychology from San Diego State University. He serves as the Vice President of Global Organization Development for WD-40 Company. Stan can be reached at stan.sewitch@sddt.com

I’m sure most of you have observed that the news media daily provide a steady torrent of bad news: tornadoes in the Great Plains, wildfires in Colorado, floods in the Northeast and Great Lakes region, suicide bombings in the cradle of civilization, mass demonstrations in Istanbul, ethnic wars in sub-Saharan Africa, vanishing species in the oceans and on land, vanishing glaciers everywhere, nuclear weapon proliferation in unstable nations and home invasions in suburbia.

Once again, clichés clearly exist to remind us of universal truths. I was treated to a personal experience of this axiom, accompanied by a large dollop of embarrassing irony, while giving a talk to fellow human resources professionals last night.

Master Chief John Urgayle quoted D.H. Lawrence in the 1997 movie “G.I. Jane”: “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”