I’m sure you have heard the expression “put your best foot forward.” Well, when is the last time you put your best foot forward? When is the last time you tried your best? Worked your best? Looked your best? And who did you put your best foot forward for?
Read MorePointing out that the second mouse gets the cheese is not celebrating being second. Rather, it is celebrating being smart. Sometimes being first comes with a cost that it may not be wise to pay. Sometimes it’s better to be the second mouse. The first mouse can be so eager to get the cheese that it doesn’t see the trap. The value of being the second mouse is that you can learn from the mistakes of the first mouse.
Read MoreThere are times when we should extend our time, our resources, and our experience to assist those in need. However, a refusal to establish boundaries is a recipe for manipulation, resentment, and fatigue. We must learn the crucial skill of learning to say no.
Read MoreIgnoring the elephants in the room is a recipe for failure. Problems just don’t disappear. They must be intentionally identified, defined, and addressed. This process is usually uncomfortable and embarrassing. It requires courage and honesty. But it a pre-requisite for personal and organizational success.
Read MoreFar too many of us aim too low. Our fears, insecurities, frustrations, disappointments, mistakes, and both our real and imagined inadequacies lead us to pursue goals and objectives that are far less than what God may have in mind for us.
Read MoreSadly, far too many of us are under the impression that we have to be someone other than who we are to receive love, gain acceptance, or acquire blessing.
Read MoreAbraham Lincoln once said that if he had five hours to chop a tree, he would spend four hours sharpening his axe. Defining my values, understanding my purpose and evaluating my choices sharpens the axe of your ambition, so when you start cutting, you make more progress with less swings. Not speed. But direction and purpose are differentiators and accelerators.
Read MoreWouldn’t it be interesting if Heaven kept a search engine like google that was able to provide us with some data on the top ten prayer requests across the globe? I wonder what the results would be. If would even more interesting if we could sort the results by country, city, class, race, nationality, and gender, and even religious affiliation. I wonder what the results would be. What do you think most of us pray for? Love? Health? Wealth? Prosperity? Peace? Promotions? Vacations?
Read MoreRisk-taking is not natural because taking risks exposes you to injury or loss. And who wants to gets injured or lose? But there is an old adage: “no risk, no reward.” Tis true. The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. Perhaps your unhappiness with the rewards you are currently enjoying has everything to do with the risks that you are unwilling to take.
Read MoreSomething deep within us knows when we are around the type of people, doing the type of work, and functioning in the type of environment for which we were designed. All of us can “make something fit,” but it only results in delaying the inevitable conflicts and enormous frustrations that accompany knowing that you are out of place.
Read MoreTasha Eurich has written that self awareness “represents how clearly we see our own values, passions, aspirations, fit with our environment, reactions (including thoughts, feelings, behaviors, strengths, and weaknesses), and impact on others.”
Read MoreWhen life throws you a curve, don’t spend so much time trying to straighten it out that you miss the lesson it is designed to teach.
Read MoreFar too many of us win, and then carelessly, thoughtlessly, and recklessly throw away the stuff that helped us triumph—not recognizing that our next battle may not be a new battle, but an old battle in new clothes.
Read MoreDon’t be so quick to disregard, diminish, dismiss or decamp from your current environment. All of us are tempted to think if we “traded places” with someone our lives would improve. But perhaps you are standing on Holy Ground.
Read MoreGod wants us to build our lives on fundamentals. When you understand the fundamentals you are aware of and understand the basic rules, principles, and laws that undergird something. To know the fundamentals means I know why something works and how it works—and to understand it so well, that I can explain it to a child. Building our finances, our families, and our faith on the fundamentals is the key to maturity
Read MoreOne of the most common sources of discouragement is our unfortunate tendency to want to get our “superman on” and ascend to the pinnacle of whatever mountain we are trying to climb in a single bound. We want to lose 30 pounds in a week, earn a million dollars in a month, and become the boss in a year. But while we must think big, in order to achieve lasting success we must start small.
Read MoreMany of us can’t possess our promised land because we can’t describe what it looks like! If you can’t describe what your promised land looks like how will you know when you have arrived in it?
Read MoreOne of the most important decisions we all must make is to resist the deeply embedded human tendency to evaluate people, opportunities and situation based on what they look like. That tendency is probably responsible for the overwhelming majority of mistakes that most of us have made. That tendency us also probable responsible for the overwhelming majority of blessings we have missed!
Read MoreTo be successful, we must all learn how to make adjustments. Adjustments are often necessary because what we are doing is not working.
Read MoreSecond order thinking is a mental model that is employed by great decision makers that encourages you to think about the consequences of what happens after you make a decision.
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