In Pursuit of Excellence!

 I'm so grateful for Mondays!

 Am I crazy?

 If I didn't have Mondays my life would be 1/7 less fulfilling! That's unacceptable! After a great weekend of charging my batteries I can hit the ground running! Yeah I probably am crazy but that's a personal problem.

No need for you to get involved!!!

Had a great thought on Saturday!

EXCELLENCE!

What do you want to be great at?

I didn't say greater than anyone else. I just said what do YOU want to be great at?

Happiness comes in the pursuit of excellence!

You don't have to be excellent at everything. (In fact you can't) But find your talents and magnify and expand on them! It's even more effective if you can serve someone else in the process.

Pursuing excellence in serving others with your God given talents is living your purpose. There is nothing more exhilarating than that!

It's like that feeling of standing at the top of a mountain that you have just climbed with the wind in your face taking in an incredible vista that can be seen from nowhere else!

Whew, was that philosophical or what???

Learn to hold the bar high on yourself!

That thought just keeps bouncing around in my head since I read it this morning!

It's something that I want to remind myself of constantly! It's way too easy to slip back into the rut of just doing what it takes to get by. Become a person who pursues excellence in everything that is important to you!

Raise the bar on yourself and when you reach that level, bump it up another notch! Never become content with what you have achieved in the past.

Be pleased with your successes but use them as building blocks towards the next level of accomplishment! We will never be perfect at everything here, but why not pick something that matters and strive for excellence at it?

Thanks to those around me who set the example of excellence in their lives!

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!"

The Easy Way Out

I actually read two different thoughts this morning that really struck me! The first one was a quote that said, "Easy is the comrade of the timid!"

The second thought is that we are who we are, where we are and what we are today because of only two things, our thoughts and our choices!

It's too "easy" to blame all of those things on circumstances, other people, discrimination, our parents, the president, the list goes on and on. But the reality is that we are where we are today because of a series of thought patterns and choices that we have made that brought us here.

If we see our opportunities as limited, we need to look within ourselves for the solution rather than blame the world!
I read the story this morning of twin brothers whose father was an alcoholic. One became a drunk, the other became a highly successful businessman.

When asked why, each gave exactly the same answer, "Because my father was a drunk!"

What was the difference? Each one had a very different set of thoughts and choices towards exactly the same set of circumstances! Their thought patterns governed the ultimate outcomes in their lives based upon how they chose to view their circumstances.

One said, "See my heritage... I have no choice here."

The others response was, "Now I know exactly what I don't want to be like!"


I'll wrap up with this thought. If we always strive to take the easy path, our life will get more and more difficult over the years! But should we choose the more difficult path now with all of it's obstacles and challenges, our life will get easier and more rewarding as the years go by! Not that the nature of things will change, but that our ability to master the situations will increase dramatically!

Success in any endeavor always has a price that cannot be bargained! Happiness comes from finding out what that price is and willingly paying it ASAP!

Have an awesome day!

Nature or Nuture

One of my friends asked the question this morning if I thought we are who we are by nature or by nurture? Decided I'd share my thoughts for what they're worth!

Funny you should ask the question about nature or nurture because I've actually done a lot of study and observation along those lines. Here's what I believe.

I'm absolutely convinced that most of who we are comes from our environment; family, friends, surroundings, teachers, neighbors, TV, etc...

Did you ever watch a little kid who has a really bad attitude just like his dad for no apparent reason? You just look at him and shake your head because it's a total nonsensical reaction to a situation. Then you realize, that this is exactly how his dad reacts in a similar situation...and it usually doesn't make any sense when he does it either.

I've watched my own kids experience a new situation and make a judgement call on a person that really had no basis in fact. But I could see an immediate connection to a comment or action they had just recently witnessed from an influential person in their life. (not me of course, being practically perfect in every way!)

However with all that being said, all of our "nurturing" gets superimposed over our innate inborn personality style. There are 4 different types of personalities and dozens of combinations. So it's like watching the same movie on 4 different colors of screens!

I'm not sure that our personality has anything to do with genetics (having 8 kids, I think I can speak with a bit of authority here!) But I believe it it a character trait we brought with us from heaven!

Well, that's the short version of my answer, the rest of it would probably require a lengthy phone call at minimum!

Have a great day my friends!

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

The Search For Truth!

Finishing up the single best book I have ever read! (outside of the scriptures) It's called L.I.F.E. Living Intentionally For Excellence by Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady.

It is designed to make you think and man is it ever working! I've been reading it for several weeks now and literally every day, it gets me looking at my life from another direction and asking myself some significant questions.

Today it's got me thinking about how adverse we are sometimes to wanting to know and learn to apply truth in our lives!

I don't think that's even what I was specifically reading about but you know how one thought leads to another...

Why is it that we are so unwilling to listen to truth at times?

Usually because it upsets our carefully constructed little "comfort zone". Or as Orrin and Chris say, it's not really a "comfort" zone as much as it is a "familiar" zone because it usually isn't really all that comfortable, just familiar!

It really has more to do with our innate resistance to the principle of change than almost anything else!

That, for most people is probably the need to feel "right" about what we think in our own little inner sphere of who we are.

We are attacked so often from the outside world telling us that we are making mistakes or beating us down for one reason or another that we feel compelled to jealously guard our own little inner self image of who we are. That image is largely created out of our beliefs about ourselves and the world around us.

After all, how many of us just naturally think that everything we believe is wrong? Naahh...I don't think so!

So how does that play into the search for truth? Why can't we just operate from our current perception of things and be just fine?

The glaringly simple answer to that is...because there is truth in this world in all it's many different facets.

Isn't this obsession we have with "victim-hood" (and complaining about everything under the sun) in our world today a classic example of being unwilling to accept truth and adjust our actions to deal with it properly?

How many of us are looking around us and listening to the news and deploring the current state of affairs but are doing nothing but talking about it?

Isn't that exactly the same thing as any other form of "victim-hood" that we see in the world today?

Another example; here in Idaho (and many other places too) one of our favorite pastimes is complaining about the weather! Isn't that another form of "victim-hood"?

If we would really embrace a full picture of the truth...Don't like the weather? Then quit being a victim and...move to somewhere you do like it!!!

I know, I'm as guilty as the next person! I think I'll work on that one!

Let's explore another example. Suppose I was born with the genes to become 7'10" tall. Remember that the standard door height all across America is 6'8". So all of my life I would be required to duck my head every time I walked through a door or walk around with a permanent bruise on it!

At this point I can either accept the truth and learn to use it to propel myself forward and upward with my unique gift or I can continually proclaim my "victim-hood" and spend the rest of my life complaining about the unfairness and mistreatment I am required to endure because millions of thoughtless people refuse to change their doorways to accommodate me.

I can become a martyr to my cause by refusing to accept the truth of the situation around me . I can proudly refuse to duck my head when attempting to negotiate conventional doorways. I can proclaim my bruised forehead as a symbol of the injustices of the rest of the human race against me. I can seek to legally make the entire rest of the world conform to my particular set of circumstances.

OR...

I can accept truth! I was blessed with my own unique set of talents, abilities and circumstances from which to build my life. I can use my uniqueness to bless the rest of the world by my contributions to it. I can build on the truths I've been given and make my life a continual search for more and more truth to build upon!

When we learn to build with building blocks of truth, our walls will never crumble because of the cracks of imperfections in them.

The quality of our lives has a direct correlation to our willingness to seek out, recognize and act upon complete truths in the world around us.

Our lives and the world around us are full of partial truths that hamper our ability to excel in every important area of our lives.

Many of our problems arise from partial truths or even outright untruths in our view of the world around us.

Many of those mistaken ideas come from some of the most seemingly benign places. Our peers, our education, our family or ethnic or cultural traditions, our political or even our religious backgrounds can all be sources of some partial truths that are maybe even almost right...but not quite.

If you build an entire castle of belief and action on a foundation that has an occasional faulty block in it, can you begin to see how the integrity of the entire structure can be at risk of failure?

I challenge each of us to become avid seekers after real truth.

Learn to apply the same standard across the board to all of your beliefs. Often we hold different beliefs about different subjects that if we were to stack them up side by side we would find that we were applying an entirely different and sometimes even opposite set of standards to come to our conclusions!

Those are the hidden places that cause us problems in our lives!

You've got a left foot and a right foot that are similar yet different. It's like trying to run a marathon with a nice comfortable running shoe (truth) on the one foot and a fancy, 4 inch, spiked heeled, formal, dress shoe (partial truth, it's still a shoe) on the other!

It's going to cause you a lot of pain and discomfort because of the lack of wisdom in applying complete truth in both cases!

So here's the reality! Until we begin pulling the weeds of untruth out of our own lives and begin banding together as a community of people all dedicated to the pursuit of truth and right, we will never be able to fix our society today!

As long as the forces of untruth can keep us divided and grumbling among ourselves while they shout their untruths in organized unison long enough, they will win. It's that simple.

We need to be united in our pursuit of personal excellence based on truth.

Striving for excellence in every area of our lives is what allows us to begin avoiding the pain that comes from taking action on a faulty assumption.

Excellence in ourselves builds excellence in our families, which builds excellence in our communities, which builds excellence in our states, which leads to excellence in our country, which...I think you get the picture!

Learn more about the LIFE book by Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady on our Products page!

Have an awesome day!

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!

Final Update - 1000 Miles!!! & Life Lessons

It's June 1, 2011 and one of the biggest physical goals of my life is in the bag!

I ended my running year yesterday with a nice easy 5 miles to finish off the past year with a grand total of 1016 miles! Mission accomplished!

The real crowning victory came on Monday May 16,2011 when I put myself over the 1000 mile mark with my 2nd ever full marathon! It was pretty pathetic as marathons go because I hadn't done a full training program to prepare for it. But I got it done and even beat my previous time by over 7 minutes!

The feeling of passing that 1000 mile mark at mile #21 was exhilarating! I've known for a couple of weeks that I was going to make it. But still, you never know what might come up that could stop you. So actually being able to cross that finish line left me with a huge sense of accomplishment!

Be sure to read the series of posts immediately following this one for the full story.

As I've mentioned elsewhere the most important thing about this personal victory is not even the physical accomplishment itself, but the incredible life lessons that I have learned in the process!

I have to add one more important piece of the puzzle that I learned just this last week! That is, that one important piece of the goal setting process is that you MUST give yourself the reward that you promised yourself at the end.

Lest you think that this is my own personal wisdom, relax, it's not! I learned this important principle from a gentleman named Dan Hawkins.

If you set a goal and attached a reward to it for when you actually achieve it, absolutely do not deny yourself that reward for any reason.

Even if it sounds honorable, (i.e. we really can't afford to do that right now and besides the goal got done anyway...etc) the reality is that ultimately, you will have lied to yourself!

More importantly, you will have lied to your subconscious self.

The problem is that your subconscious will have gone out of it's way to help you achieve the goal only to ultimately find out that you tricked it.

The next time you go to set another big goal, a big part of you will be reluctant to get involved and push for it because, after all we really don't like being lied to, right!

Sounds crazy, but this is a powerful point! Build your own inner honor and integrity so that all parts of you will be in harmony and willing to give 100% to whatever it is that you deem worthy of your efforts!

For me it was a brand new pair of nice running shoes! That ended up being the perfect exclamation point to a great personal achievement!

It has left me now looking forward to the next big life changing personal goal!

After all, I've heard it said over and over that the real glory of reaching a goal is not what you accomplish so much as it is who you become along the way! Amen to that!

Running 1000 miles, while it has been good for me, is not nearly so important as the life lessons that I have learned along the way and that will impact everything that I do for the rest of my life!

What's on your "Bucket List"? What great life lessons can you learn from the pursuit of your dreams?

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