The Know-It-All

What's your reaction when you run into a "Know-It-All" or a so-called "Intellectual"?

I would hope that it's a mixture of amusement and pity rather than anger or something like that. I am amused and somewhat saddened when I run into someone who is such an "expert" in some field that they think it makes them an authority on everything!

The learned who THINK they are wise or who are ever learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the TRUTH present an interesting oxymoron of sorts.

One of the ancient Greek philosophers, I think it was Socrates, when asked if he was really the wisest man in all of Greece, gave an interesting reply. (paraphrasing)

"The more I learn, the more I realize how little I actually know!"

The more we seek for and find true knowledge, the more we see how much more is really out there for us to learn!

For instance, how often do we see someone reject religious truth on the grounds of some scientific theory or discovery? If God really did create this world, then every bit of scientific fact that we find has to fit in somewhere! If we don't see how it does, does that make God wrong? Or does it really reveal how little we really understand about absolute truth?

If your "Line of reasoning" leads you to a faulty conclusion, what happened? Somewhere back along that line, one of the "facts" or premises that it was built upon will prove to be faulty on closer examination.

Hopefully we are all wise enough to remain hungry students in pursuit of knowledge that will lead us to more wisdom. Then when our eyes are opened to a wonderful newpiece of knowledge that we will use it as a more powerful telescope to see even further out into the realm of possibilities!

I don't know about you, but the more I learn, instead of feeling like an expert, I am humbled by how much broader the truth is than what I would have ever imagined!

Love and Respect Whirlpool

Doing some prep work for our Marriage Mentoring seminar this weekend.

Rereading an absolutely great book called "Love and Respect".

I'm reminded that some of the most critical principles to success are some of the hardest for some of us to accept.

Loving your wife or showing respect to your husband at times when you feel like they may not deserve it, is one of the most difficult concepts to understand.

Yet it is one of the most powerful principles we can exercise if we hope to recieve the love or respect that we desire of our spouse!

But if they don't deserve it, I'm going to have a really difficult time giving it!

Fine, but it will drive a wedge between you that will be very difficult to overcome.

Do you ever feel like you're fighting a downward spiral in your relationship! This principle is most likely at the very core of what you are experiencing! Riding this roller coaster soon becomes more like riding a whirlpool down, down, down.

On the positive side, if your marriage is experiencing "technical difficulties" right now, one of the single greatest healing actions you can take is to put your own feelings to the side for a little longer and work at giving your spouse unconditional love or unconditional respect for an extended period of time.

Crazy as it sounds, men have a need to feel respected just like women feel a deep seated need to feel loved!

When either of us feels this need being filled, we tend to reciprocate automatically what our spouse needs!

Hope everyone,healthy marriage or disater, will take time to learn about this principle!

It's good for what ails you!!!

Building on Principles

Thanks for all the great feedback on my post yesterday!

When it comes to having a great marriage, it's pretty obvious that there are a lot of facets to deal with! But rule #1 is that it's not just going to happen with no effort!

One of the biggest lessons we've learned over the years is to try to learn the underlying principles that govern building a great relationship rather than to try to follow someone elses strategies.

There are some relatively simple things you can do that go a long way, but what I've learned is that if you don't understand the underlying principle, your "simple solution" may completely backfire!

If you want to have a truly great marriage, become an eager student! Be careful where you get your information though! Make sure you are learning from someone with "fruit on the tree" rather than from a marriage "expert" who has been divorced 8 times!

Don't be afraid to ask people who you believe have great marriages, what their secrets are and what they have read and are using in their lives!

I think most of us realize that we are all quite different from each other, but I don't think we very often find out why and what determines or defines the differences.

We need to understand that there are personality differences, differences between man and women, differences in the ways we express and feel loved, blueprints or paradigms from our past, and other factors that play into great relationships!

For instance, if we already have a great marriage, is it possible that it could even be a lot better?

Or what about the person who thinks they have a great marriage, then "all of a sudden" finds their spouse leaving them?

Did they really have a great marriage? Or was it that they were feeling totally fulfilled but their spouse wasn't? Hmmmm...think about it!

It happens often actually that one spouse may be feeling totally loved and fulfilled in a relationship while the other may be feeling completely ignored and empty.

Here's the secret. One spouse may have very real feelings of love towards the other and think they are showing it often and abundantly, but the other may not feel anything of the sort because it's not being shown in their "Love Language"! They just flat don't recognize it as love!

My encouragement is to never get complacent about the most important human relationship in your life! Keep asking yourself and your spouse if all of their emotional needs for love are being met.

You might feel you are bending over backwards to keep them happy, but from their perspective, they may not feel like you're doing anything important.

Remember, love is a gift we give to each other!

Avoid the trap of thinking that what love means is that we just end up having to tolerate each other for the rest of our lives.

Tolerance and forgiveness are vastly important but they should be tools in our toolbox used to fix the occasional problem. If they are our everyday uniform, then we need to step up and fix the problem, whatever it is, starting with us!

When it comes to a great marriage - If it is to be, it's up to me! ...To begin searching for some true answers and some sincere communication!

Being in Love!

Here's a great marriage principle that gets more and more clear as I get older.

How many of us have based our entire married future on the feelings we had when "falling in love" with our spouse?

Get this...scientific research is showing those initial euphoric "being in love" feelings are a physiological emotion that is designed to bring us together and get us started down the path of building a family.

But scientifically it's proven that that feeling just naturally dissipates within about 2 years on average! No wonder that so many people who build their entire relationship around just "being in love" find their relationships meaningless after a very short while!

The reality is that this time period of being madly in love happens to give us time to discover what real love is really all about, that is, serving each other in a way that is meaningful to our spouse!

Some few couples luck out and just naturally fall into that pattern. Others get along well and some just stay together out of a sense of commitment but the closest they come to experiencing real love is more like a sense of tolerance and drudgery.

How sad, when really the only problem is that they never were exposed to the true principles about how personalities and relationships work.

It's not rocket science!

It's actually fairly simple to comprehend. I won't say it's easy!

I'll be teaching these principles that Penny and I have learned over the last several years. It's a great way to strengthen an already good marriage or to totally revitalize one that is slowly coming apart at the seams or even already virtually lifeless!

Living a Great Today!

Don't let your yesterdays screw up your todays! Here's a great quote from a book I'm reading -

"I am amazed by how many individuals mess up every new day with yesterday. They insist on bringing into today the failures of yesterday and in so doing, they pollute a potentially wonderful day...The best thing we can do with the failures of the past is to let them be history...We can choose to live today free from the failures of yesterday."

From - "The 5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman

How often do we let our yesterdays rule our todays and even our tomorrows? We need to learn the true power of forgiveness.

When we forgive others and even ourselves it gives us the freedom to start each new day at zero or in the positive instead of the negative. It frees us from the burden of having to drag around our bag of misfortunes, hurt, injuries and failures with us from day to day.

Talk about getting a monkey off your back!!! Why don't we drop that bag like it was radioactive waste and get away from it instead of cuddling up to it like we can't live without it?

Unburden, clean house, start fresh, forgive, learn the necessary lessons and move on!

Think about how much better our marriages, our jobs and businesses, our families and so many other things in our lives could be if we would just practice this principle!

Have a great new day!

Are You Leading Yourself?

Here's a great thought that I heard recently. Guys, it applies particularly to us!

"Normally when a wife doesn't follow her husband, it's because she doesn't see him leading himself."

Ouch! Anybody else feel slapped upside the head by that one? OK so what does it mean to lead yourself?

The way I see it we have to be continually growing, progressing and going somewhere. It's way too easy to get settled into our rut of just living for the weekend. Why not be chasing a vision of something big in our lives?

All we have to do is look at the world around to realize that there is no such thing as staying where we are at. We are either growing or declining. Those are our only two choices. Declining and going backwards is not an option for me! What about you?

I'm learning more and more the value of living life with a purpose and a goal. There's always something worthwhile out there to pursue.

I've heard the idea before that it's not so much what you achieve in the pursuit of a goal as it is what you become in the pursuit of that goal!

Until recently my response was always yeah, yeah that sounds nice but I want the goal. I finally realized what they meant when they told me that.

If I focus on becoming the kind of person that it takes to accomplish my goal, then I will have taken myself to a whole new level where, if I had to, I could accomplish the same thing again much more easily!

It's called "Becoming".

Living your life on purpose. Growing!

So no more living for the weekend guys! Lets start leading ourselves and see who gets into line behind us!

If what we're doing all week isn't rewarding enough, hmmm...maybe it's time to give ourselves a checkup!

Learners Inherit the Future!

Heard a quote that has great application today!

Wish I knew who originally said it. "In a time of drastic change, it's the learners who inherit the future!"

I think today would qualify as a time of drastic change! How many of us are being impacted by things that we feel like are out of our control?
I believe that whoever said this has a pretty good grip on the solution for us individually! How many of us are making learning a priority in our lives?

I'm not talking about just going back to school. All of the greatest wisdom of the ages is written down somewhere in books. Some of it can be tremendously dull and boring but there is a huge amount of interesting knowledge out there for the person who wants to better themselves!

All too often we look at economic change out there that threatens our current livelyhood as a real negative thing. I've learned that most of the time it is a great opportunity in disguise!

The only problem is that we have to be willing to learn new things and embrace change! With the incredible rate of technological advance that we have today, there are huge opportunities open to us that didn't exist even 6 months ago let alone when we got our original training!

Come along and join me in becoming one of those learners he was talking about!
Life is a great gift! Don't waste a minute of it!

Secret to Happiness

I've been reading a book lately on people skills, something I think we can all use some help with!

It's called, "How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing With People" by Les Giblin.

I found one of the most profound statements I've ever read! It was so simple that I almost passed right over it, but the more I thought about it the more I understood what it said.

It's from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"The measure of mental health is the disposition to find a good everywhere!"

The book calls it a "simple formula" for happiness!

"This deliberate looking for the good things in others has a miraculous effect upon ourselves. It takes our minds off ourselves. Makes us less self-conscious. Less self-righteous. More tolerant and understanding."

He Quotes a doctor who says, "That this simple technique has literally worked miracles in curing his readers of all sorts of worry, fears, and the depression."

"Several years ago a number of psychologists got together to see whether they could come up with some one simple rule that would help people live happier lives, with more peace of mind. They came up with a formula called SFF, which seemed to work miracles.

The letters stand for Stop Finding Fault."

"One of the sure earmarks of virtually all neurotic, unhappy people, they found, was that they were overly critical.

They deliberately looked for things to find fault with.

Yet, when they changed their attitude, and began looking for good things in people around them and in their circumstances, their own happiness greatly increased."

I thought that the author said this so clearly that I'd better just quote him. It's from the book; "How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing With People" by Les Giblin. This book definitely makes my "Recommended Reading List!"

Hope you have a great day! Remember to look for the good in it and your day will be great!

The Power of Self Respect

I've been doing some thinking about self-respect this morning.

In my opinion, there is way too much emphasis on self-esteem these days. Self-esteem ought to be a natural out-growth of self-respect instead of a cheap substitute for it. Self respect is far more valuble than self esteem.

Self esteem is artificial. It is the idea that you should feel confidence in yourself regardless of your behavior. It says you are special simply because you exist. It's a "don't judge me" concept.

Studies have shown that many of the criminals in our prison system have a very high level of self esteem. It's easy to have a high opinion of yourself if you don't see that your actions and level of responsibility are important.

Self-respect is like a fortress you build around your inner self, one block at a time! That fortress gives you strength and protection when the world throws challenges your way!

The building blocks of your fortress come from proving to yourself that you are a person worthy of your own respect!

That only comes from proving to yourself that you can make wise choices and take responsible action.

For instance, there is no way that you can respect yourself for choosing to do something that you know is wrong.

On the other hand, standing up and defending what is right and good even when it's unpopular takes strength and adds more blocks to your fortress quickly!

Your fortress doesn't have to be perfect to have value to you. All of us have weak spots in our character, they are just there to show us what more we need to work on!

Even if your fortress of self-respect is a shambles today, you can start rebuilding it right now one block at a time by starting to make one good decision at a time!

Self-respect comes from hundreds of little good decisions and acts of character and self-discipline all added together!

Have you ever had a hole blown in your fortress wall? I have! When you make a mistake of character in your life, what do you do?

Instead of walking away from your damaged fortress and giving up on it, start building again and focus on making your self-respect even stronger by fixing the problems that created the original weakness.

Think of the power that comes from being able to say, I had the courage to overcome a major obstacle in my life!

If you don't feel much respect for yourself, start today!

Go do something good, preferably for someone else, and lay the first block in your fortress of self-respect.

Figure out how to put another block in that wall every day!

You will find that other people can't take your self-respect from you if you have built it on the right principles.

That's far more valuable than the perceived picture of yourself that is self-esteem. This is real!

So do something today that adds value to the world!

Go make it an awesome day!

Knight in Shining Tinfoil!

Hey friends! While I'm learning the how-to part of this blogging thing, I thought I'd repost one of my old favorites for a practice run!

Sometimes......Yeeaaahh...Sometimes you've just gotta do it!

Instead of being too serious, somebody's thought will get my mind to rolling in a totally off the wall direction!

Today it was this quote stolen from my friend Mike! Are you ready? C'mon now this is serious! Here we go!

"Sometimes your Knight in Shining Armor....Is really just a Retard in Tinfoil!"

Baaa Haaa Ha! I almost fell off my chair laughing! Had to share that one with Penny!

Funny, she didn't laugh quite so hard as I did...Hmmm? Just Kidding!

Could this be what goes through some of our ladies heads on Father's Day?

Sorry ladies!

All too often, our horsey runs off and we find that our beautiful shining armor of bullet-proof stainless steel, actually turns out to be...well, Tinfoil! (or for some of us rednecks...Camo!)

Please...just be grateful it's not PINK!

We're working on it! The problem is, most of us are not Master Metalsmiths and when Ole Nellie bucks us off, we get dents in our armor, wrinkles in our tinfoil, and rips in our camo!

Please...just keep remembering, It's not Pink...or Mauve!!!!

Since most of us aren't master metalsmiths we're either out in the garage trying to beat it back into some semblance of shape, or we're down in the second hand store or army surplus trying to find a replacement!

The problem is that second hand steel shorts don't always fit as well as the nice custom made stuff!

Ever get a steel wedgie? Or even a tinfoil one for that matter?

Please keep remembering, we're working on it...and it's not PINK!

The neat thing is, that if our princesses are patient with us, and will build us up instead of putting us down, mankind has a remarkable faculty for getting better with age!

For some unknown reason, maturity just takes longer with us males!

(But I'm sure you already know that!)

So finally at some distant point you will be able to look out your window and see your Knight in Shining Armor come riding up to your Castle, gallant and fully polished!

We've finally found a Master Metalsmith who could mold us into the kind of man you've been dreaming of all these years! (And believing that we could be)

Please remember, we're working on it, it doesn't come easy, it's not PINK, and the cool thing about Shining Armor...It's great for hiding bald heads, wrinkles, bi-focals, sagging pecs, 6-paks full of jelly, skinny legs, fallen arches, ingrown toenails, Depends, iron wedgies, all of the stuffing required to fill out that shining armor and...the training wheels on Ole Nellie!!!

At least it's not PINK...or Camo...or even Tinfoil anymore!!!

We love our Princesses, just the way you are!

Sorry for the digression! I just had to do that! I thought it was funny!

At least the tinfoil and the iron wedgies part!

Have an awesome day my friends!