Lately, I’ve been wondering what makes one person more inspiring than another. It seems that our world loves failure turned success. We glamorize the idea that people made consistently bad choices for years, hurting their family and friends, at times even destroying lives. The story of our...
Throughout our lives, we go through experience after experience that shapes us into the person we are. Each experience is evaluated for its meaning to us, and then our image of self is adapted to the label. As we evaluate the meaning of an experience, we choose our reactions based on the meaning...
One of the things I have experienced in my entrepreneurial journey is facing the same problem multiple times. At the beginning of my career, I made the assumption that I could face a problem once and it would never come back. Instead, the experience I had was facing a problem at a small scale...
The Stoics believed that our thoughts create our experience of the world, not our circumstances. They posited that taking full responsibility for our minds allows us to experience the world we desire. The mind itself is simply running the programs given to it through our development. This means...
One of the challenges employees faces is in understanding what their supervisors are asking of them. I have yet to meet a person that wants to fail in life. Of the thousands of people I have worked with, every single one of them wanted to succeed. It’s just that many of them weren’t...
I have been teaching conflict resolution for right at a quarter of a century and joke that 1st Jody 1:2 reads… Where two or more are gathered together, conflict shall exist. Humans simply see the world from their own angle instead of another person's angle. I have often referred to this as...
The first job of a leader is to define reality for their team. This doesn’t mean a leader redefines actual existence, though. It means that a leader defines the parameters within which we pursue success. From the models of work, to the profitability models, to the culture itself, leaders...
We are genuinely an always-on society. I took this weekend and went to my college homecoming. We had a blast walking the campus, noticing all the changes, and reminiscing about who we were back in the day. But I noticed something as I was walking around. I noticed that most college students had...
“Progress is not achieved by luck or accident, but by working on yourself daily.” Epictetus
I have a group of guys with whom I lead a retreat that are all either in upper leadership positions or own businesses. Each year, we come together to help invest in the rest of the group,...
I recently saw a question posted asking what one piece of advice you would want to give to your child for them to carry with them every day. It made me think about my own kids and the advice I hope they carry with them.
“In the end, everything is simply a choice.”
When my kids were...
Three primary habits of success create your experience of this world. How one interacts with or manages these key areas will determine the experience they have in this life. Those who accomplish great things are intentional about managing themselves in relation to these habits. Napoleon Hill...
I sometimes use an opening in my speeches where I ask someone if they have a $20 bill and if they would come to the front with the money. I then wave a $20 bill of my own. I ask the person if we could exchange the money. Then, I exchange my $20 for their $20. I thank them, and they head back to...
