HOW IMPORTANT IS YOUR CONSCIENCE TODAY?

Voting Your Conscience - The Right Answer?

I've been pondering this concept of "voting your conscience" for a long time now. I am one who has been completely disgusted with the results of our national political process for many years now. As a nation we are allowing ourselves to be "hi-jacked" by an entire generation of political corruption masquerading as "progress" and "change". This progress and change are actually destroying our nation and the freedoms that we supposedly hold so dear.

Why is it happening?

Because very few of us are actually willing to study and learn the true principles that govern obtaining and maintaining true liberty and freedom in this world. This world and in fact our entire universe is governed by unchangeable principles or laws of nature that say, if you take this action, then this will always be the result. Those things are real. We cannot change them. The concept that there is no such thing as absolute truth, is one of the biggest falsehoods that has ever been perpetrated upon mankind. It is so misguided that it holds within itself the obvious truths of its own foolishness!

We can either learn to live in harmony with these true principles and bring great results upon ourselves or we can play with fire and loudly proclaim that they do not exist and that we can act any way that we want to and still get the results that we think will happen just because we say so. The only possible outcome of the second choice is a loss of our freedoms and our liberty.

So why this discussion on the eve of this election? Because I am still hearing so many of my friends loudly proclaiming that they are going to "vote their conscience" rather than vote for either of the two major candidates. Is that a legitimate, principle-based position to take? Many, many people think so. I happen to disagree.

Here's why.

At my age, I have had the distinct misfortune of living through two of the worst presidencies in the history of this country. Why were they so bad? Because they have managed to do more damage to the principles that this nation was founded on, which have produced an absolutely unprecedented amount of freedom at every level of society than ever before in the history of the earth. In their combined years in office they have introduced measures and violated powers that have set in motion forces that will ultimately destroy our nation and wipe true freedom from the face of the earth.

All of their misguided actions have been tolerated because they were done in the name of greater freedoms for one specific group or another or to protect us from ourselves. Both of these concepts are in direct violation of the true principles that govern real liberty.

Again, back to why I am so opposed to "voting your conscience"... Both of these presidents were handed the office because we had a major chunk of our voting population who were philosophically opposed to that candidate and would never vote for them. However they also didn't like the other major party opposing candidate either and couldn't "morally" bring themselves to vote for that one either.

Unfortunately both of these races were close enough that  when a large enough block of the potential supporters of the "lesser of two evils" candidate were distracted by the misguided notion of "voting their conscience" for a third party candidate who may have been a "morally" stronger person but who had no statistical chance of winning,...we effectively handed the most powerful office in the world to the worst possible person we could have put there.

I see that exact scenario developing again today.

Now anybody that knows me knows that morals are deeply important to me. What we must never fail to understand is that we must carefully watch ourselves to see that our "morals" are actually built upon a foundation of true principles and that they (our morals) actually bring about a correct result when we apply them. If when we follow our beliefs (morals) and they bring about a result that we really didn't want, then we must question whether we really acted upon a true principle or just upon our own personal belief system which, by its very nature, has the inherent potential to be flawed because we may not have taken the time to evaluate it properly.

If our "morals" lead us by default to place the person who is most dangerous to our freedoms into office because we pulled our vote away from the one candidate who had any chance of defeating them, then our "morals" and our "conscience" failed us!

The sad reality is that one of the two major party candidates WILL BE our next president, period...end of story. Like you, and almost everyone else I talk with, I am deeply disgusted with our choices.

In my never to be too humble opinion, one of them has a distinct agenda that will destroy this nation and the freedoms and liberties that its principles have created. The other, no matter how misguided and morally bankrupt they may be, at least believes that they are going to strengthen our nation.

That is a fundamental, philosophical difference that matters a tremendous amount to our future. 

The race is close enough that you can put the worst possible choice of the two into the most powerful office in the world by either voting directly for them or by "voting your conscience" for somebody who has no possible chance of winning and thereby drawing away your vote from the only person who could defeat them. It is as simple as that...period.

Now, I've got to address two critical arguments here.

First, the "lesser of two evils" - Many of my friends are attributing this comment to a certain person whom we all have a great deal of respect for. From everything I have been able to ascertain, this is a misquote. Besides that, I think I have made a reasonable argument to support that it is a principally flawed concept in the first place. Voting for the lesser of two evils still being a vote for evil, doesn't really hold water in the first place because many, many of our political choices boil down to that same scenario whether we know it or not.

The bigger answer lies in the real truth behind "voting your conscience".

The real place for exercising our "conscience" is in what we do in the next four years leading up to the next election. We as a nation should be working together to prepare a candidate who would be worthy of our vote because they actually understand the principles that govern true freedom and liberty. We also, if we truly have a conscience, should be doing everything that we can to educate ourselves, our friends and neighbors more on the true foundational principles of freedom and liberty.

Our founding fathers clearly stated that the freedoms and liberties that they put into motion for us could never be maintained by an ignorant people. Why? Because ignorance leads to selfishness, and selfishness opens you up to being manipulated by a more powerful group of people with an agenda that could destroy everyone's freedoms by deciet and false promises.

I hope you will ponder this thoughtfully and that it has an impact on what you do at the polls.

Besides that, I hope that you have an awesome day!

STOP HONORING YOUR FEARS!

Stop Honoring Your Fears!

What?

What do you mean HONORING my fears?

Yep! It's a real problem in our society. We have taught ourselves to honor our fears and put them on a pedestal to allow them to control our lives instead of doing everything in our power to rip them off of that pedestal and crush them under our feet!

I was reminded of this again last night as I was talking to some new friends and experienced an oft repeated scenario in my career of trying to inspire people to chase after excellence and their passions in their lives.

So often when I talk with someone about chasing after some great desire or dream in their life, I find them reluctant to do so. While the object of their desire, be it a thing or a purpose, is something that they really want to obtain or accomplish, they allow themselves to be held back from its attainment by some type of a fear.

These fears don't always manifest themselves as some big scarey obstacle that could easily be identified as a fearful thing or consequence. Sometimes it is a weakness, a lack of talent or skills, a lack of financial means or some other thing that impedes or holds us back from attempting to do something great or wonderful.

Still deep down at the heart of the matter, the solution to each of these problems is for us to push ourselves out of our comfort zone to develop a new skill. Or maybe to simply do the hard thing long enough so that we develop the ability to do it well enough and without fear and trepidation so that it finally becomes second nature to us and eventually becomes a new habit that begins to produce the desired results.

So often when I talk with someone about overcoming a challenge with their finances, I hear things like, "I just don't have time", or "I'm not a salesman", or "I don't like to talk to people".

Sometimes it's someone who really has a passion to serve the world or share some message, but they will bow to a "fear" of public speaking or a lack of money.

Other times it's someone with health or weight issues who says, "I'm just not the type who likes to exercise", or "I don't want someone to see me out trying to walk, run or ride my bike looking like this."

All of these things and many other excuses that we give ourselves and willingly accept from ourselves are literally fears or are based on things that we are choosing to say are more important to us than our desires or dreams.

We are literally sacrificing some of these these deepest desires at the altar that we have built to our fears.

We are giving those fears so much power in our lives that we allow them to become more important and powerful to us than the things which  are our hearts deepest desires. We are literally giving more honor or value to the obstacle than to our desired outcomes.

I challenge each of us to look around our lives right now and ask ourselves, "What are the things that are holding me back from accomplishing something great in my life?" "What fears or obstacles in my life have I given more honor to than what I am giving to my deepest dreams, goals and desires?" "Am I bowing at the feet of a fear or obstacle in my life rather than standing up and smacking it in the teeth and taking control of my destiny?"

Why do I ask these crazy questions? Because I am facing them just like you and every other human being is too. Our world today has truly unlimited potential and yet our society has taught us to cower before fear instead of standing up and confronting it head on until it gives up and goes away!

Smash the idol of your fear and the pedestal that it rests on! Stop honoring the unimportant things in your life and begin to give honor and allegiance to the dreams, desires and purposes that were placed within your heart by the Divine Hand that created you! Live your life the way you were designed to and never stop believing in your Divine Destiny!

LIVE A GREAT LIFE!

WHAT IS YOUR FAMILY'S LEGACY?

Within the last year I have attended the funerals of two of my Dad's brothers. Both of these have been wonderful men who, with their wives, have raised great families. Because we have lived several states away for nearly 30 years, our contact with the family has been rather sporadic. However, every time I get the opportunity to be with my cousins, (there are 24 of us) I am deeply impressed with the caliber of people who God has sent to this family!

All of us can trace our roots back to Edmund and Lucille Tapp and their ranch out north of Boise City, Oklahoma. Our memories of those times spent together as kids getting to know each other and forming lifelong friendships almost always go back to "The Ranch".  It is such a powerful memory that it seems like anytime we gather in Boise City, it almost always involves a trip back out to the ranch. It's like a time machine for us.

Why?

 Many of us, especially the older ones can remember many Christmases, Thanksgivings and summers spent there with Grandad, Grandma and each other. We rode horses, hiked the hills, and went on "cattle inspection" tours with Grandad in his trusty Scout to see the sights on this wonderful corner of our little world.

What was it about our experiences there that had such a lasting impact on so many of us?

While Grandad and Grandma might have had a few minor flaws, they were special people who did everything they could to create the foundations of something wonderful, and I believe potentially, very powerful there. They raised a family of 8 sons who have each turned out to be truly amazing men in their own rights. They also inspired in their 24 grandchildren a love for the land we live in and a driving sense of character that has created some truly amazing people as a personal legacy.

 Over the years, as I have visited with these cousins at various family functions, I never leave without feeling a deep sense of connection with them. In the last several years, this has grown within me to the point that I frequently ask myself the question, what amazing things could this family accomplish if we could all come together in a common purpose? The more I ponder that question, the more incredible that potential becomes!

That thinking process has inspired me to try to lead my own family in such a way so that we might build upon the foundation of the legacy that was handed to us and create something even greater with our generation. I have heard it described as having been born on third base and all that is left for us to do is to run home to accomplish something great!

All too often I see people who place no value on the legacy that they have been given. They live their lives without any real sense of purpose and when their lives are done they have either camped out on third base or even slipped backwards to second, first or even all the way back to the dugout!  They ultimately waste the legacy that was passed to them.

One of the driving, fundamental motivations in my life is to take this foundation that I have been given and to build upon it. I want to get better myself, to raise a great generation of offspring who are prepared to take this legacy to an even higher level, and to influence other people to begin to do the same with themselves and their families. I want to leave this world a better place for my having been here.

Almost our entire world seems to be so caught up in the struggle of just existing, that by far the largest percentage of us, end up settling for mediocrity in most areas of our lives, when, if we could just see it, excellence is actually available to us.

Over the last year I have begun having this discussion with some of my extended family and I am finding that I am not the only one sensing this. I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that I believe that God put our family together here on this earth, at this time, for a purpose! He has laid a foundation through our ancestors that would raise up a generation of people with the character and faith to go out and have such a positive impact on this world that this legacy will resonate throughout the next several hundred years!

Alone, I see each of us impacting the lives of some of those around us in significant ways. That is why I believe that together, the compounded effects of our efforts could be exponentially greater.

What could be the Tapp Family Legacy of this generation? Could we, together, have an even more profound effect on this world around us? Could we become a powerful force for good by combining our talents, gifts and efforts in a common cause?

 Too often when we try to find companions for our causes we have to go out searching among the community and the world around us. Why not start with this group of people who already share a common foundational bond?

I would like to have this discussion with more members of my family. I believe that we have a mission here. If we would band together around the right principles, and gather the ability to influence more and more people around us, then the power of who we are and what we stand for could begin to radiate out from this core group to influence hundreds and even thousands of people in this world. I believe that we could ultimately reach literally millions! This world could be a much better place with the right influences. Why not us?

Every time I stand on that lonely, windswept hillside in northwestern Oklahoma at the Garrett Cemetery looking out at the amazing group of people gathered there to celebrate another great life, and I ponder the paths of those already laid to rest there, I can't help but ask myself the question...What If...? What could We Together accomplish?

Anybody up for a challenge?

I put that challenge out there to my own family, but what about yours? What legacy have you been given? Are you consciously looking to improve upon it? Maybe the legacy you have been handed is not one that you are proud of. Who's going to break the cycle and start something new and wonderful? Why not you?

Tell me what you think!

LEAD WHERE YOU ARE AT!

On Saturday I had the privilege to attend one of the most powerful leadership seminars I've ever been to! So often you come away from something like this inspired, but Dan Hawkins really shared a vision about why leadership is so important in every area of our lives and how you and I have the power to begin implementing positive change where it matters. I am sharing my notes here in the hopes that they will be a useful starting point for anyone who believes that their results in some area of their life could be much better.

Hope you find this as valuable as I did.

Are you Leading Where You Are At?


Notes: DAN HAWKINS Seminar

LIFE Leadership Talk:

Is there anything more obvious than the lack of leadership throughout our society today?

All you have to do is look at our score board in many different areas to see that principle-based leadership is sorely lacking.

We are seeing too much of a management mindset (trying to manage everything from the top down) instead of a true leadership mindset everywhere.

Empower individuals to lead right where they are at today. (Empowering individuals brings infinitely greater results to the entire organization than just relying on one individual to lead.)

A Leadership mindset is not just working on the top guys in the organization (that's a management mindset), true leadership permeates all the way through the organization to teach every single member of the team to be able to lead right where they are at.

I love the term which best illustrates this concept: Replacement Driven Leadership!

5 Key Steps to build Leadership with in your organization:

1) Build Competence - ("I don't know what to do" becomes a non-issue)
     Teach principles
     Learning requires humility - If you are not hungry to learn...It's because you are too full of yourself!
     True leadership means building leaders in your organization who may be more competent than you.
          That's how your organization can begin to function without you - leaving you free to do other things.

2) Encourage your people to take ownership
     Teach them to think and make decisions based on what you have taught them.
     Allow them the leeway to fail and learn from it.
     Seek feedback and ideas.

3) Inspire confidence
     Put your people into environments and opportunities to learn and grow.
     Create an environment where failure is ok - after all it is the pathway to success if you learn from it.
     Don't repeat the same failure over and over - If you are not learning from it, then you are not on the  path  to success, you are only on the path to more failure.
     Overcoming problems builds confidence and ability.

4) Create a climate and culture of learning -
     Your only competitive advantage is your (entire) organization's ability to out learn the competition.
     Don't pay me $30k to come speak to you for only a small blip on your radar screen - instead, create a     culture of learning within your organization. It will be much more effective and much less expensive.
     How? - Read and listen to the same material and share with your team 3 things you learned. Then share 3 things you can apply it to today
     This creates a culture of discussion, brain storming and positive competition among groups.
     You can't just buy training materials from someone like us and give them to your people. You have to lead out in creating the culture of using them and discussing ways to apply them for the betterment of the organization.

5) Foster mutual responsibility - Everybody acting like a leader within their own stewardship.

Ways To Implement This Culture:

A) Stop Making All The Decisions From The Top
     Avoid a "Chain Of Command" mentality where every decision has to be made or ratified from the top.
     Give your people leeway to make decisions, fail and make mistakes.
     Teach them to act to solve problems - That is what makes them the most valuable to your organization!
     Who is more likely to come up with the right solution to a problem? The guy at the top who is somewhat  removed from the scene of the action or the person who is right there in the middle of it every day?
     In politics, bring the decision making down to the local level where the problems actually exist.

B) Stop talking at staff meetings (if you're the boss).
     If you are talking, you can't be listening.
     Would you rather have 100% of your own abilities running the organization or a smaller percentage of all of your people's abilities running your organization?

C) Set up coaching opportunities - Opportunities to perform and then be mentored (not criticized)
     Opportunities to teach PDCA (Plan Do Check Adjust)
 
D) Invite your people to assume responsibility -
     If you are "The Guy" you severely limit your potential!

E) Give every person a customer to serve - Or someone to lead

F) Share the Big Picture - Make your actions match your vision statement
     Share it and Live it

G) Use modeling to teach these competencies - Set the example in every area.

Think of your organization's effectiveness and even profits in terms of a score board.

Let's say you are leading an organization of 100 people; yourself, 4 "managers", and 95 other employees. If you naturally produce let's say 50 points yourself, your managers naturally produce 25 points, and your employees naturally produce 10 points.Your total score would be...1100 points.

If you could maximize yourself and your leadership abilities, giving it everything you've got, let's give you a score of 100 points. That means that you raised your total score to 1150 points. But you were working your fanny off! How long can you maintain that pace and what happens when you back off a little?

Now lets say that you work really hard with your 4 managers and get them to double their effectiveness along with your full effort. So you at 100, them at 50 points average. How does that look? Total score... 1250!

Third scenerio: Let's say you work at implementing the principles Dan was teaching above. You develop a culture of learning and growth and teach everyone of your employees how to lead where they are at. Let's say that you help every individual in your organization including yourself and your managers to only improve themselves an average of 10 points. Now what happens? Total score... 2200 points! You doubled your original score!

Plus you are developing a natural culture of leadership and growth that doesn't require your constant attention and oversight. Your organization becomes a well spring of ideas, innovation and progress.

Then what happens if 10 of your people actually catch the vision and add another 30 points to their own performance? That's another 300 points.

Do you see how this culture of teaching people to lead where they are at can produce far better results than just trying to maximize the effectiveness of a very few people in the organization?

WHAT IF WE TAKE ONE MILLION PEOPLE AND GET THEM TO START LEADING RIGHT WHERE THEY ARE AT RIGHT NOW?

COULD THAT BEGIN TO CHANGE OUR COUNTRY?



Obviously these are just my notes, but if the general gist of what he was teaching resonates with you, contact me so I can get you more of the details.

Have an awesome week!

THE INSTITUTE FOR FAMILY LEADERSHIP

DO I NEED TO BE A LEADER IN MY FAMILY?

Most of us have invested a large portion of our lives and a considerable amount of money in learning how to be effective in a career or business.

Many of us have also spent thousands of dollars and untold hours on our children for sports programs, music training, dance, riding lessons, etc.

But, how much have we invested in learning the tried and proven principles that build successful marriages and family relationships? Are we hungry to learn what makes a great relationship work or are we just living by the seat of our pants?

Did you know that there are specific principles that you can apply that will make any relationship work more smoothly? It doesn't matter whether it is already good or bordering on disastrous, learning what makes each other tick and acting accordingly can change everything!

Remember the familiar saying; No other success can compensate for failure in the home.

Here is a timeless formula that governs every aspect of our lives:

Information -> Thinking -> Actions -> Results

Look at any area of your life.  Are you satisfied? If not the answer lies in working backwards through this formula and finding which piece is missing! Most of the time the answer is correct information.

Shouldn’t leadership in our families involve making sure that we learn, practice and pass on to our posterity a legacy of the solid principles required to have a great marriage and lead a family of their own?

Why does our society not do this? The answer is that while the principles are out there and have been for ages, very few people have taken the time to learn them and teach them to others.

We believe that just teaching correct principles could literally cut the divorce rate in half in our country as well as greatly improve most parent's  ability to interact with their children effectively. We do not have to find ourselves stuck in dysfunctional family situations. 

We were not meant to fail! But just like in a career or any other endeavor, we cannot succeed in ignorance! We need to know the rules of the game!

I invite you to come learn and apply the timeless principles that will build the foundation for a strong and successful family that you can pass on to generations yet to come.

 These principles are like having the correct set of tools to work on a project. 

Wrong Tools - Poor Results! Right Tools - Successful Outcome!

Invest in that which matters most in life, the people closest to you, your family!

Need some direction? Just ask!

The Power of a Self Directed Education

Whether in the business world, leading a family or serving in a great cause, if you don't commit yourself to an ongoing program of personal education, you are leaving a giant gaping hole in the fabric of your potential!

When I am speaking of a self directed education, I'm not talking about continuing on towards another college degree. While that is admirable and sometimes even of great value, it is also very costly and time intensive.

No, I am talking about the power of developing the habit of reading from a great book for a certain amount of time each day and looking for other sources of relevant teaching such as audio recordings to incorporate into your daily routine.

Why?

Because if we are not having a constant input of new ideas and principles into our minds, how can we expect to ever have an improvement in our level of creativity, problem solving, or results of any sort?

Leadership Guru Orrin Woodward puts it this way, When you have worked for thirty years, will you have 30 years of accumulated experience and expertise or will you have one years experience repeated 30 times?

Sobering thought?

Einstein said (paraphrasing), That we can not solve the significant problems in our lives at the same level of thinking with which we created them! Meaning that if we don't actively pursue more and more new knowledge, we will constantly be stuck trying to solve problems with the same limited knowledge base for our entire lives!

Why would we want to willingly limit ourselves that way?

Way too many people get locked into the flawed mindset that when they finished their formal education, there would never be a need to do any more reading, studying or learning. How sad when you realize that we are living in a world today with
an inexhaustible supply of knowledge to be had by simply applying some effort.

Some of us are prone to be the deep-thinking types. But are we stuck with utilizing only the limited supply of knowledge that was input into our brains during our school years like floating around in our tiny glass bubble surrounded by a literal untapped ocean of new knowledge? Or are we instead, constantly sending our feelers out into that vast ocean looking for the next valuable piece of information that could change our limited paradigm forever?

I love the principle of "The Slight Edge"as taught in the book of that same name by author Jeff Olson. It is that there are so many important and valuable things in our lives that are actually easy to do. The flip side of the coin is that they are also very easy not to do! Are we going to discipline ourselves to do them so that we can gain the prize we seek?

Also, that the cumulative difference that can be made by doing one simple little action repeatedly day after day, may not seem like much in the short term. But multiplied out over 5 or 10 years will be enormous! Not because of the simple multiplication of the small act but because of the compounding effect it has combined with other positive actions in our lives!

So what is important to you right now? More profit, a better paying job, a more successful company or organization, a successful family, a stronger more productive relationship? All of these things can be greatly enhanced by seeking for new knowledge and principles to apply.

Interestingly, very often multiple problems in different areas of our lives can actually be solved by learning one new principle! All too often one missing piece of information is causing us problems in several different areas of our lives at the same time!

So what do we do? Get hungry!

Discipline yourself to develop the habit of reading from a book recommended by someone you trust for 15 - 30 minutes a day. If you do that simple little thing, you will end up averaging 1 - 2 books a month and put yourself in the upper echelons of our society!

Don't think you can find the time? Start using your "Cracks of Time". Keep a book in your purse or brief case, your desk, the car, the bathroom, etc. There's nothing wrong with having several different ones going at the same time, one in each of these places. In fact, if you do, you are more likely to have a thought in one book stir a deeper understanding of what you are reading in another!

Not sure where to start? Contact me for some of my favorite recommendations!

Have an awesome day everyone!

Personality Styles - A Foundational Principle

As I read and listen to people teach about how to learn the skills of dealing with people in an optimum manner, I always end up coming back around to how foundational it is to understand that there are different personality styles.

Why is that so important?

Because no matter what other principle you are teaching or attempting to apply, if you don't understand that different personality styles react differently to different inputs, then you are constantly stuck in the mode of trying to fit round pegs into square holes!

Your new principle works great sometimes. At other times it seems to work fairly well, and at yet other times it doesn't seem to work at all. Why? I thought principles worked all of the time.

They do! But often the application of the principle requires a tweak here and there to apply it properly to the individual's personality.

I have a situation going on in my life right now where I am working on a project with a friend who doesn't understand this concept. I know his heart is in the right place and that he is a great person, but there is a lot of friction going on because this principle is being violated each time we sit down to work together.

If we want to get optimum results in anything that involves dealing with other people, we absolutely must understand that there are core, fundamental differences in the ways people think, act and perceive the world around them.

As I speak with many different people about this concept of personality styles, I find that probably 75% of them have been exposed to the idea in one form or another. However, the more I learn about it and watch people try to apply it in their interactions, the more I become aware how important it is to delve into it more deeply.

Probably the most common mistake that I see is that we tend to view all of the other personalities from the perspective of our own style instead of trying to understand them from a more neutral perspective. That might sound complicated, but it is really at the core of applying this principle.

So where do we start? I always begin by recommending the book, "Personality Plus" by Florence Littauer. However this is such a deep subject that I believe it is important to dig into 2 or 3 other books to be able to learn more from different perspectives. Robert Rohm has another great one called "Positive Personality Profiles" that I really like.

Another great way to learn about it is to listen to as many audio recordings of people teaching about it as you can. They allow you to learn from yet another perspective of someone who is trying to apply the principle in their everyday life.

Dig into this concept and you will begin to see your interactions with other people in your life make a lot more sense!

Good luck and have an awesome day!

Book Recommendation: Confidence and Power...

I just finished re-reading a truly great book. It was so timely to me that I decided that I would go through it again this week even one more time!

What is amazing to me is that, often with a really good book, even though you may have read it multiple times, it all seems like fresh material again. I know that I have read this one at least twice before within the last several years, and yet so many things that he was teaching really struck me as though they were completely new this time around!

The book is titled: How To Have Confidence And Power In Dealing With People by Les Giblin.

When you have a group of widely read multi-millionaires like the Policy Council at TEAM/LIFE who recommend a book like this as one of their Top 5 books of all time for you to read and reread, I think that speaks volumes for the caliber of what it contains! That's how I came to be curious about it several years ago.

In my opinion, this is probably one of the most comprehensive books on how develop human relationships that I have ever read! It only lacks one key principle as far as I'm concerned. That is that I believe that a serious study of Personality Styles is a critical prerequisite to anyone who wants to learn how to be more effective with people.

Other than that concept you could literally spend a whole year in a serious study of the concepts in this book. Each chapter addresses a specific topic and is broken down into several different ideas and illustrations of how to apply it.

One of the key things that makes a truly great book is its readability. This one has it over the top! He has a simple writing style. He avoids using big, hard to understand words and illustrates his principles with stories and anecdotes instead of facts and figures.

One of the key principles that stood out to me this time was the concept of Accept, Approve, Appreciate. Learning to give away these gifts to other people is one of the most powerful and empowering skills that you can learn in your lifetime!

Go pick up a copy at your local bookstore, Amazon or contact me!

Have an awesome day!

Knowledge and Wisdom

Knowledge and insight that leads to wisdom accumulates over time!

We do not learn anything of value "all at once" but rather one piece at a time, a little bit here and another nugget there. Till after time we find that all of our accumulated learning and experiences begins to add up to wisdom in our lives.

A mentor of mine once told me that if I wasn't reading in the quest for new insights on a daily basis, that after a week or two, I wouldn't have anything of real value to contribute to a conversation.

That really caused me to think!

Hmmm... But what about all that stuff that I learned before?

The problem with not seeking new understanding daily is that we begin to rely on ourselves as our ultimate source of wisdom. The weakness in that approach is that we can never see above the level that we're at without someone else lifting us up to where we have a better "view".

Without the constant input from other sources not only can we not see any higher up the mountain, but we can't help but slide backwards. When we are not seeking wisdom and truth all the time, we begin to make judgements based on our emotions which are a very flimsy foundation to build on.

I believe that one of the reasons that so many screwy things come out of politics is that our politicians have stopped seeking wisdom and truth and are making their decisions based on the emotions of the moment.

If we're not constantly seeking wisdom and truth we just naturally fall victim to "Chicken Little Syndrome"!

The sky is always falling and we have to do something drastic about it now or something catastrophic will surely happen!

Look up! The sky is where it has always been!

What are the principles and truths that govern that constantness? Let's learn to live by them!

There is wisdom within you just waiting to be exposed to the great ideas of the ages! Start letting it in!

Have a great day!

Do All of the Steps

I've been thinking, why is it human nature to want to know how to become like someone we admire, but then belittle or ignore their advice when they offer it?

When someone has or is something that I aspire to gain or become, and they offer to teach me, why do I look at what they tell me to do and in my infinitely greater wisdom, pick and choose which parts of their gameplan, I want to follow?

If I'm so smart, wouldn't I already have the object of my aspirations? But the reason that I don't is obviously because I am missing some pieces of the puzzle! 

In my experience, often the pieces that I have been missing, have been relatively small seeming things that I might have either thought were foolish or too difficult or insignificant.

It took my submitting myself to someone else's greater experience or wisdom and following it to a "T" to obtain what I sought!

All of my greatest accomplishments in life have come from finding someone who had the fruit on the tree that I was looking for and doing exactly what they told me to do to obtain it! Too often that fruit came from following advice that, because I was lacking in proper perspective, I judged to be weird or even stupid!


Seek for correct knowledge and apply it even if you don't clearly understand it! Sometimes you have to step out into the darkness or the fog before you can even see the next step!

Ridiculing others and their choice of actions usually, ultimately ends up backfiring on you and leaving you the one looking foolish instead!

Often wisdom and solutions come from the most unexpected places! Don't make the mistake of closing your mind based on your current knowledge!

When a mentor speaks, I have learned to listen carefully and seek to understand!

Here's to a lifetime of learning and growing for each of us!

Have a great day!

Ideas

I was reminded of an idea yesterday that I need to keep at the front of my mind. Might help you too.

"Small people talk about other people.

 Average people talk about things.

Leaders (which is what I want to be) talk about ideas!!!"

I think most of us realize this in the back of our minds, but if you're like me, you need to be reminded every so often.

Where do the greatest ideas come from?

They are a combination of the books we read, the people we associate with and the inspiration that comes from pondering on the previous two!

The other piece of the equation is that we need to speak positively about ideas instead of always talking negatively about them.

Interestingly enough, whose ideas do we usually speak negatively about, other peoples ideas right? When was the last time you were negative and critical about your own great idea?

I'll bet that this is related to the "small people talking about other people" idea!

We can only change the part of the world that we have influence over by talking about positive ideas instead of criticizing someone else's idea!

I'll never forget something Mother Teresa said when asked to join an anti-abortion group, (paraphrasing) I'm not interested in being "anti-" anything, only in being "Pro-" something".

What's your great idea?

Have an awesome day!

Keep Learning

Combining a couple of old posts here.

How many of us quit educating ourselves when we got out of school?

 "I haven't read a book since I graduated from..."

That's one of the saddest things that I hear, all too often, when talking with older people. I think it stems from a lot of the stuff that they make us read in school. We get so much totally uninteresting junk thrown at us, that we seem to develop the idea that all reading is a waste of time.

What many of us don't realize is that there is a literal wealth of knowledge out there just waiting for us to find it!

It has been called, "joining the great conversation of the ages!"

Where else can you figuratively rub shoulders with the greatest minds from all of history?



Where else can you find all of the wisdom that someone else has accumulated in their lifetime crammed into a format where you can absorb it in 2-3 hours? Is that a bargain or what?

Remember, one of the few things you can take with you when you leave this life is what you learn while you're here!

Don't like to read but are hungry to learn and grow? Ask somebody who has similar interests to recommend their favorite book. Borrow it and sit down and make yourself work through it. Pick a favorite subject that you're interested in and start expanding your mind. You will soon find yourself drawn into "The Great Conversation!"


NEXT POST

Ahhh! Awesome weekend!

Did you ever hear the phrase "Endure to the end"?

I think all too often we misunderstand what that really means. Just enduring for the rest of my life, especially if you plan to live to be 125 like me, can sure sound like drudgery.

After all you can't just endure at the same level for the rest of your life!

You can never just stop and stay at the same level. You will automatically begin to slide backwards! Life is like walking up a "Down" escalator! You have to keep moving and progressing or you lose ground!

I believe "Enduring to the end" means to never stop learning and trying to better yourself!

If you ever think you have "Arrived", pick up a book and read a little while! If you're reading the right kinds of books, you'll always find something new that you didn't know before to begin working on! Or you might just see more clearly a place where you were slipping up but hadn't realized it!

Remember, we don't know what we don't know!



Put yourself on a constant, never ending quest to become the very best person you can! You will never run out of things to do! Even a totally bedridden invalid can improve their mind!

So I challenge you to develop the endurance of an ultra-marathon runner in climbing up life's down escalator! Become a life long learner!

Have an awesome day! Not because we deserve it but because we can make it happen!

Self Discipline

I was asked to teach a lesson in church this next Sunday. As I started to study and prepare for it this week, I realized it was something that I really needed to ponder on myself, which probably means there are some others out there who it could help too.

If we could narrow down to one character trait that marks the true transition from youth to adulthood, what would it be?

How about Self Discipline?

If you're like me, you tend to exercise only about as much self discipline as is absolutely necessary!

At a some point in our lives the world begins to require a certain amount of discipline of us. If we choose not to comply, we end up unhappy, hurt, broke, in jail, etc...

We either learn to discipline ourselves or someone else will do it for us and we will probably not enjoy it very much!

The whole point of the story of Peter Pan and his Never-Never Land was the complete and total freedom from self discipline that represents childhood. To do all of the fun things in life without doing any of the more mundane things that really make life go around.

So the real measurement of adulthood is when you realize that you have to discipline yourself to do the important things that allow you to have those times when it is OK to let go and have some Peter Pan fun once in a while!

When we really realize that true happiness comes not from having as much fun as we can cram into our lives, but in choosing to do and become what is important, then we are firmly on the path to becoming true adults.

Character and integrity bring us dignity and peace and they come from disciplining ourselves to choose to do what is right in our lives! All of these things are a choice that is completely up to us, not to the whims of fate or some accident!

I'm thinking that I have a lot to learn here. How about you?

The Price of Success

How many of us are looking for more success in some area of our lives?

We usually think that means money and that may be it in your case or it may be in some other area.

What is it for you? Do you really want it? Are you willing to pay a price for it?

Do you realize that you can't determine that price? If you try to bargain with the price of success, you will end up with an inferior product!

The trick is, to find out the price required for the full reward you are seeking and pay it! ASAP!


I've heard a lot of teaching on this topic over the years but only very recently have I learned what all of it really means!

It's very easy to talk in broad generalities about success. I've always known that I need to change myself or learn how to think differently. But change into what or think what?

I'll attempt to share an insight I've gained recently. Maybe it will help you gain some more clarity too!

You can succeed at whatever you choose!

 Absolutely! But step #1...and you can't bargain with this one, is that you must be willing and even eager to change!

What we have done in the past has brought us to where we are today! It absolutely requires us to learn new ways of thinking that will change our actions!

We can't keep doing the same things and expecting life to turn out differently!

That's Crazy!!! In fact Albert Einstein called it "the definition of insanity!"

Try It, You'll Like It!

I am always amazed at the way that God can teach us the most incredible lessons from some of the most unlikely situations in our lives!

This past weekend Penny and I took a road trip to Arizona to participate in an "All School Reunion" at my Alma mater SSHS and to visit some relatives. As I was thinking about all of the interesting conversations that we had  experienced over the weekend and what I could learn from them, this thought came clearly and strongly into my mind:

THE RESULTS THAT WE HAVE IN EVERY AREA OF OUR LIVES ARE A DIRECT INDICATION OF THE LIMITS OF OUR KNOWLEDGE IN THAT AREA!

Please take time to ponder that thought and consider it's ramifications in your life! It is the clearest description of the lessons I have learned over my lifetime that I can come up with!

Why is this so pertinent to my mission with this blog, to help people Live A Great Life?

How did this "revelation" come about? Both of these questions are very closely related actually.

My mission here is to help people learn the truths of life that will enable them to overcome whatever their obstacles are to finding fulfillment in every area of their lives. The most important thing I can do in that endeavor is to lead them to the most significant sources of truths that I can find.

I have been talking about and promoting this 90 Day Mental Fitness Challenge recently on this blog because I love what it is teaching and how it is enabling so many people to change their lives for the better.

Since I knew we were going to have about 17 hours each way of CD listening time, I loaded all 16 of the MFC CDs onto my Ipod so we could listen to and ponder on them on the way.

WOW! Even with the thousands of talks that I have listened to over the years, there have never been any as powerful as the combination of those 16 together...period!

Sound like I'm giving you a sales pitch? Well I am! I'm trying to sell you on one of the most valuable things I've ever seen, no matter what your chosen direction in life is!

If you paid the $220 for the MFC and threw away everything but those 16 CDs (which would be ridiculous), you would find that by repeatedly listening to them and studying the principles that they are teaching, that you would almost immediately begin moving forward in areas of your life where you have been stalemated, maybe even for years!

Remember my previous statement? The results that we have in every area of our lives are a direct indication of the limits of our knowledge in that area. Start changing the limits of your knowledge right now with this Mental Fitness Challenge!

What was so impressive to me was that as I listened to those CDs as a group, I realized that I would gladly have paid $2200 for what I was learning! In fact, I can see how that over the rest of my lifetime, if you can put a dollar figure on the benefits of a better life in every area that they teach about, that they will ultimately be worth several hundred thousand if not even millions of dollars to me and my family!

I honestly don't think I can overstate the impact that they are already having in our family!

Now, why was this point driven home so deeply on this trip?

Because right as I had finished listening to this information that was impacting my life so deeply, I was getting reacquainted with family and friends who I had not seen for several years. In every case, as we visited, I noticed that each one of them had experienced some successes in some areas of their lives, but every single one also talked about some particular trial they were dealing with.

Like I said before, our trials are a wake-up call for us to realize that "Hey, here is an area where my existing knowledge is limiting my ability to progress in my life!"

So what can we do about it? We can either just keep dealing with whatever our trials are and knuckle under to them (because they aren't just going to go away), or we can acknowledge that we need more wisdom in that area and begin the search for it!

One of my favorite sayings is that "The lesson continues until the lesson is learned!"

God is trying to shape us and mold us into our highest potential and he does it by giving us trials and challenges to show us where our weaknesses are so that we can work on improving ourselves with his help. It all starts with learning new information and then applying it in our lives!

So no matter whether you feel wildly successful in your life or like an utter failure, the information in the 90 Day Mental Fitness Challenge will give you the tools to take your life to a whole new level! Try it! I challenge you! I am!

The link for it is right under our picture on the right hand side. Also be sure to read at least the next three blog posts here. They are all closely related!

Have a great day!

Ideas Have Consequences!

Ideas Do Have Consequences!

In every area of our lives, our relationships, our families, jobs, businesses, communities, and nation, etc, those consequences show up!

This has been driven home to me with great force over the last several years. Everything that we are and have become in our lives up to this point is a direct outcome of the ideas in our heads and how we chose to operate accordingly!

Our success or failure in every area of our lives is a direct result of the ideas that we have allowed to be put into our minds.

As an example, we are mentoring a couple of dear friends right now who are struggling in their marriage. They are two great people with good hearts, but as we work through the challenges they have, they all stem from having some incorrect ideas about how a relationship should function. Those ideas have produced a set of very undesirable consequences in their marriage.

Think about the economic mess that our country finds itself in right now. It can be traced directly back to the application of some faulty ideas of both personal and national economics.

Every painful mistake, trial or challenge in our lives is a result of a faulty idea applied somewhere along the line in our thinking process.

Conversely, every victory, success, or positive experience in our lives comes as a result of stringing together a succession of correct ideas and acting upon them.

We cannot get positive, pleasing results by trying to build upon faulty ideas. It's just not possible.

One of the greatest problems in our society today is our unwillingness to accept that there are basic truths or principles that are unchangeable. They always have been and always will be. If we either willingly or unknowingly attempt to obtain a desired result in violation of those principles, it cannot happen.

A human being cannot jump off a cliff unaided by some flying device and think that they are going to arrive safely and without injury at the bottom. It cannot happen. It will never be able to happen because it is a direct attempt to operate while ignoring the principle of gravity. We cannot change that, no matter how much we want to ignore it unless we employ another idea like the laws of aerodynamics and create some type of device to allow us to harness those laws so that they also work in harmony with the law of gravity.

It's a lengthy discussion I know, but this point is critical to our happiness and growth in this world!

All ideas do have consequences, either good or bad!

In 1764 there were 4 young men in the American colonies:
     Thomas Jefferson was a young college student just suffering through a broken heart from being dumped by his girlfriend.
     John Adams was a young teacher, happy to be teaching and leading a nice comfortable life doing what he loved.
     James Madison was just a 12 year old kid, showing promise in his studies but extremely shy.
     George Washington was a young man trying to establish himself as a businessman and farmer.

A decade later, these four were leading a group of others to write and sign the Declaration of Independence!

A decade after that, after being victorious in their revolution, they were penning and signing their names to what has been called, the single most significant document in the history of the world, The Constitution of the United States of America!

Why? What changed a simple group of ordinary young men just like you and me into some of the "Founding Fathers?"

It was ideas! The discovery of, discussion about, then choosing to act upon correct ideas led to the creation of something monumental!

What about you and I? What is our destiny? Is there a mission out there that awaits us? Were we sent here for a purpose? How will we find out? Will we just wander through life and see what happens? Or will we set out to discover the true ideas that may lead us to do our part in this world?

Maybe it will just take one great idea to fix some significant problem in your life.

Maybe you have a company or family to lead.

Maybe you were called to do something important in this life and you haven't even glimpsed it yet.

What ever your destiny, remember, Ideas Have Consequences!

Come join our "Challenge Group" where we discover and talk about relevant ideas because reaching for our potential requires us to learn and grow!

Learn how to come face to face with the greatest minds in history in a quest for the truths that govern every area of life. Learn how they accomplished excellence in their lives through the pursuit of personal resolutions.

Sacrifice is the production of sacred things! True excellence comes from the sacrifice required to learn and grow!

Come join what has been called "The Great Discussion" throughout history, the discovery of and discussion about great ideas!

Try out the 90 Day Mental Fitness Challenge by clicking on the icon beneath our picture in the right hand column. You will be amazed!

Remember, All Ideas Have Consequences!

Come join us!

Have a Great Day!

The 90 Day Mental Fitness Challenge!

After years of studying leadership and personal development, I've come to the conclusion that it really boils down to being in constant pursuit of PERSONAL EXCELLENCE!

To some people that might sound stressful but it really isn't! It's simply a matter of developing a few new habits, like reading and listening to some positive input on a consistent basis.

If you do nothing more than those two things consistently, you will automatically begin to grow and change simply because what your mind takes in begins to affect your thought processes and thereby begins to produce better, more positive results!

It can be just that simple or become a much more involved process of study, discovery and implementation.

Either way the end result is progress!

So how do you know where to start, how to keep yourself motivated to continue the process and where do you find the best materials?

That's where I have to introduce you to The 90 Day Mental Fitness Challenge!

Top 15 Leadership Gurus, Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady, have finally created a program that's really designed for the way that we adults actually learn and retain info the best!

I highly encourage you to click on the RED CHECK MARK link under our photo on the right side of this page and watch their video intro to the Mental Fitness Challenge! 

No matter where you already are in your personal development journey, take this challenge with me and I promise you that your life will never be the same...in a very good way!

Live A Great Life!
Eldon

Life Lessons From My "Career" In Sports!

This recent focus of mine to run 1000 miles in a year has had me thinking a lot about my "career" in sports!

I've often pondered some of the great life lessons that I've learned from all of my years of playing sports competitively and for fun.

I thought it would be fun to share a series of posts here on some of my personal victories and defeats and some of the principles that they have driven home to me over the years!

It could sound like a lot of boasting (and honestly there is probably a little bit of that) but I hope you will listen for the lessons I've learned and forgive an old guy a few trips down memory lane for the sake of a teaching moment!

First of all, I'm well aware that I'm no Michael Jordan or Jerry Rice etc! I was probably only a little above average as a high school kid and I never did make the college sports scene.

I grew up loving football and in elementary school I was introduced to track and field and did pretty well at it. I never was any good at baseball and eventually found that basketball neatly filled the empty time in the winter between my other two favorites.

I was good enough to letter in 3 sports for 3 or 4 years in high school and to start on the football and basketball teams 3 of those years but that's about it. There were lots of personal victories and defeats along the way and those are what I want to share with you and see if I can convey what they have taught me.

I'll start with what I have always considered my greatest personal victory in sports.
Interestingly, it came in a team event in what is normally a sport dedicated to individual performances.

I've won many ribbons, medals and awards over the years including a medal at the state track meet, but the one that has always stood out to me happened in 8th grade in a tiny little town called Bowie, Az. Why, because I learned more about myself in one minute there than maybe at any other time in my life!

It was towards the end of my first year in a new school. We had a track meet at our neighboring rivals with 5 or 6 different schools there. I actually had a good day there, I think I won 4 blue ribbons in all now that I think about it. But I don't have any memories of the other events.

One of those blue ribbons though still occupies an honored place in my office even today.

One of the last events of the day was the 4 X 440 yd relay. It's a race where a team of 4 guys each runs a full lap around the 1/4 mile track before handing off the baton to the next teammate. First team to complete 4 laps wins!

I think I was the only one of the four on our team who had much experience running this race. The other guys were more accustomed to the shorter sprints or other events. So I was the one whose job it was to run the final, or anchor leg.

Normally, in high school, the 440 is almost an all-out sprint for the entire lap and is strategically a very difficult race. However in junior high it requires an even more disciplined approach. You have to figure out how to run as hard as you can but still have enough energy left to finish at a full sprint. Finding that balance is the real challenge!

I had the opportunity to run a lot of relays through the years with some really talented athletes. But this one taught me a personal lesson about "how bad do you want it"!

My teammates performed admirably, but when my turn came to take the baton for the final lap, there was one team that had pulled ahead of us by some 10-15 yards.

Now that doesn't seem like a lot until you realize that you only have one lap to make it up in and you are trying to do it against the other school's best runner who has his heart set on maintaining that lead for his team.

On top of that it just happened to be our arch rivals who we had to catch!

As my teammate was racing towards me, I realized that I had a split second decision to make. I could either run my normal race strategy and hope for the best at the end, which would probably result in a second place finish or I had to think of something quickly!

With a lead like they had, nobody was going to be angry at me if I couldn't overcome it. But it's at times like that when you need to learn to ask yourself one of life's defining questions...

What If?

Are you willing to "leave it all on the field" for the chance at a victory? Or will you allow yourself to be content with second place?

I knew second place was in the bag, but...What If...I could catch him???

The chances of having enough gas left to overtake him at the finish line were slim and risky at best.

So I made the decision that if we had any chance at all at winning, I had to catch him right now and hope to out-last him to the finish line.

With a successful hand-off from my teammates who had given it their all to put us in a position to have any chance at all...I took off at a dead sprint as hard as I could go!

I actually caught him at about the 100 yard mark and in my young junior high mind, I thought I had him beat! I thought that when he saw me catch him so fast, it would be so demoralizing that he would just give up and I'd breeze right on by to a victory!

But I had forgotten to count on his own intense competitive spirit! There was no give in this guy! He wanted to win as badly as I did!

So rather than settle into a nice easy reserved pace until the final 100 yard sprint for the finish, he took my challenge! It immediately escalated into an all-out sprint with over 300 yards still to go!

This was the part that I hadn't counted on! I had not prepared myself for this obstacle! I had thought that my initial sprint from a fresh start would assure me a victory.

Isn't that how life usually works? We sprint off after a new victory, thinking that we will get it done in the initial rush of effort, only to find that almost anything worth while requires real time, effort and perseverance!

Back to the race. I now found myself locked in one of the defining battles of my life!

We were both good sprinters so nobody could gain any significant advantage for the next 250+ yards. It really settled down to a contest of who could hold on to this killing pace for the longest.

You're running all-out, lungs screaming for air, legs beginning to turn to rubber, brain telling you to STOP torturing yourself, it's only a stupid junior high track meet for heaven's sake! Can I keep going longer than him? Is he going to give up first or am I?

But something deep down in the human spirit is programmed to win! To become the best we possibly can! To give our all to something we deem worthy of our efforts! Can we endure to the end? Can we win at what's important to us no matter what the naysayers and competition may throw at us?

On that day I learned that if I could hold on long enough, if I wanted it bad enough, if I could keep going even when it seemed impossible, I could win at what was important to me!

We came into the final 100 yard straight-a-way neck and neck, then somewhere about the 50 yard mark, I saw him begin to fade. Somehow I had been blessed with a little bit more stamina or a little bit more adrenalin that allowed me to keep going just a little bit longer than my challenger!

I don't know how much we won by that day because that was not what was important. The victory was what was important for our team. I don't know if any of my teammates or my opponents even remember that day because in the grand scheme of things it was really almost irrelevant.

It was an obscure little junior high track meet at an out-of-the-way little school somewhere in the Arizona desert. But for me it was a day that will probably live forever in my memory, not necessarily for the victory in the race, but definitely for the lessons that I'm reminded of every time I see that little blue ribbon on the wall in my office!

I can win! I can persevere even when it's extremely difficult! You have to keep going UNTIL IT'S DONE! If it's worthy of your time, never, never, never give up!

Double Standards

I was pondering the other day why some people have such interesting belief systems in place in their lives.

I end up in discussions frequently with people who hold some really strong opinions about some thing or another only to find out that, if they really thought about what they were saying, that idea is not consistent with everything else that they say they believe.

It's interesting how easy it is to hold different subjects to different standards in our lives.

It's the old "Double Standard" idea. Or maybe "Riding the Fence".

I guess what it really boils down to is a saying that I love from a guy I listen to alot named Tim Marks, "I'm not going to try to tell you what to believe, I'm just saying to make sure you know WHY you believe WHAT you do believe!"

Sometimes when we really get down and think about what our beliefs are on any given subject, we should ask ourselves why we believe that way?

For instance, if we think that doing a certain thing is right or wrong, let's stop and look at the logic behind what we're saying and see if it's consistent with everything else we believe in life? Or are we just following a crowd of some sort?

Think about alot of our hot political topics today. Much of our conflict arises because some of us want to apply a certain standard of reasoning in this situation and that one but not in the rest of our lives.

It's okay to do this or that but if we dress the situation in different clothes we'd never agree to it!

Often it's OK for one segment of the people to verbally attack another, but if the second group responds in a like manner, they are accused of bigotry, hatred or fear-mongering, etc.

So let's make sure we are applying the same standards to all of our beliefs.

Seeking for truth is a much more healthy way to live than to have our poor subconcious mind trying to figure out our double standards and keep them straight!

Think about the why behind your beliefs and always seek for truth. Your life will go much smoother!

Have an awesome day!

The Power of Educating Yourself

In case you guys haven't figured out, I'm big on continually educating yourself!

I read one of the greatest paragraphs this morning describing why I feel that way. Thought I'd share it with you.


It's from Og Mandino's book, "The Greatest Miracle In The World". Here it is.


"For countless centuries man compared his mind to a garden. Seneca said that soil, no matter how rich, could not be productive without cultivation and neither could our minds. Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote that our mind was only barren soil, soon exhausted and unproductive unless it was continually fertilized with new ideas. And James Allen, in his monumental classic, 'As A Man Thinketh', wrote that a man's mind was like a garden which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild, but whether cultivated or neglected, it would produce. If no useful seeds were planted, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds would fall into the land, and the results would be wrong, useless, harmful and impure plants. In other words, whatever we allow to enter our minds will always bear fruit.


"Now (today) man is comparing his mind to a computer but his conclusions are the same as Seneca's and the others. The computer people have a phrase, actually an acronym, 'GIGO'...Garbage In, Garbage Out.' If one puts faulty information into a computer, out will come faulty answers."


Wow! Kind of hard to say it any better than that!


How often do we run into people who are spouting off "Faulty Information" and seem to be totally unaware of it? Could it be that they have allowed some "Useless Weed Seeds" to aimlessly fall into their minds and sprout and multiply into faulty conclusions?


The worst thing is that people like that don't even recognize that it is happening to them. They are content to go around embarrassing themselves unwittingly.


There is tremendous power in continually seeking for truth and filling your garden with the wisdom of the ages!


Have an awesome day!