The Power Of A Compliment

Reading this morning about the power of a sincere compliment!

That's a lesson that has been driven home to me very forcefully over the years.

Somewhere our society has developed this totally screwed up idea that saying something nice to someone else is this personal weakness called "brown-nosing". Also that becoming the King or Queen of the "put-down" is something to aspire to.

Why are we so gullible and foolish?

What I learned the hard way, is that every time I laid a great put-down on someone thinking to impress the others around me, not only did I not impress anyone, but I did immeasurable damage! Not only to the one whom I attacked but also to my own reputation!

Everyone around me was wondering what I said about them when their back was turned or when I might think it was socially to my advantage.

Stupid-stupid-stupid!!!

Do you think people will respect you more if they always have to wonder if they will be your next victim, or if they know their name is sacred with you?

People trust those who they feel like "have their back"!

So take every opportunity you get today to give someone a sincere compliment! Watch how it affects them and ask yourself if that doesn't make you feel good or what?

Think 10 years down the road. Will you have more influence in your world if you have made it a practice passing out compliments every day or put-downs?

So have a great day today and help someone else do the same!!!

The Power Of Association

One of the most powerful principles I've ever learned is called the "power of association" It says you become like those you most associate with!

Are the people we spend the most time with the types who are always encouraging us to excel at whatever we are trying to accomplish? Or do we spend our time with "friends" who are constantly telling us that we can't accomplish something because we are "this"... or we are "that"?

Whatever it is that you want to accomplish, find someone who already has it or something like it and will be your cheerleader or mentor and spend as much time around them as possible!

Things will begin to change when you put yourself in an "Atmosphere of Achievement"!

You can do anything you set your mind to! If you are surrounded by people who try to tell you otherwise...RUN!

Common Denominators

Ran into an old friend the other day and they spent the entire 15 minute conversation telling me how they had "told off" this person and that person and some other person.

What a sad way to live.

Kind of hard to have many friends when they always feel like they have to cuddle up to a porcupine to be around you!

If your life seems like a never ending series of rotten experiences, maybe it's time to wake up and look at the common denominator in all of the problems....you?

I'm not ragging on anybody here, just saying that life is a whole lot happier when you have a great attitude!

Realize that people make innocent mistakes, cut everyone a little slack, greet the world with a smile on your face.

Learn how to say, that's OK, and no problem, and I'm sorry, I didn't understand.

You'll actually be stronger for it rather than weaker!

Look for the good in other people and praise them for it!

If you think the whole world is out to get you, it's time for a reality check! News flash...the whole world is so busy dealing with their own problems that they don't have time to plan to make your life miserable!!!

So go out and have an awesome day! Whether the rest of the world wants you to or not!

Please and Thank You

All right everybody! Back to kindergarten! Or maybe back to Barney! Yeah the purple dinosaur!

Incidentally that's not back for me it's forward...and yes, I realize that makes me older than a dinosaur!

Please and Thank You ARE the magic words!

I was reading this morning about the power of sincerely using the words Thank You daily as often as possible! Seems to me that this is getting to be more and more of a lost art. My kids mumble it like it tastes bad and I see so many of us adults forget to say it on a daily basis that it amazes me!

This goes along so well with the idea of praising people that we talked about yesterday! Think about how it makes you feel when someone sincerely tells you thanks, sometimes even when you didn't totally deserve it!

When someone gives you credit for a great idea and thanks you for it, doesn't that just make you want to perform a little bit better next time! I know it does me!

I think that saying Please goes a long way towards changing our orders into requests too! Especially with our spouse and kids!

Big weakness there for this Dad! How about you?

Seems to me like for some reason we have really gotten away from these simple little common courtesies.

Please, Thank You, Good Job! All are great motivators and definitely build people up which is always a good thing!

Common courtesy, it's a good old fashioned value we need to build back up!

By the way, a big THANK YOU to all of you for your positive feed back and compliments on my posts! It's tremendously rewarding to interact with all of you!

Have an awesome day!

The Power of Praise

Reading in a book called, "How to Have Power and Confidence in Dealing With People!" There is a whole chapter just on the power of praising others.

Interestingly, he quoted scientific studies that showed that words of praise actually imparted a measurable increase of energy to the person receiving them!

I think we all kind of know that. But do we work hard to practice it everyday? I want to, but I know that I fall way short of being effective at it all the time. It is way too easy to find something to criticize and it just seems to flow out of our mouths without any effort.

Ha! Maybe that's the answer right there?

Anything worthwhile requires effort!

Hmmm...have to think on that one for a little bit!

Isn't our natural reaction to changing a bad habit like that, something like, aw...that's just too hard. It's not worth the trouble to change.

Well, I'm sure my kids and Penny think that it's worth the trouble for me to get better at praising them!

I know that, not only do I like a person better who constantly seems to be praising and sincerely complimenting me, but I'll also bend over backwards to do something for them if they need me too! Sound familiar?

Why don't we become that person who gives the gift of praise to others?

It's good for our marriages and our family relationships! It's good for our businesses and our church responsibilities! It's good for our jobs, our friends, our dog, and even perfect strangers!

That probably means it's good for us too!

The book said that studies are actually showing that praising anything, even an inanimate object like a plant causes it to perform better! There just seems to be some unexplainable actual power in words of praise!

It's probably another one of those eternal laws of the universe that God has been trying to teach us all along!

So have a great day!

Eldon Tapp thinks you are awesome and thanks you for being a great friend! I know you are capable of doing anything you set your mind to!

Family and Priorities

Pondering what to share this morning and the saying, No other success can compensate for failure in the home keeps coming to mind! Maybe someone needs to hear about this today!

Don't feel condemned if you haven't exactly gotten an "A" in this class so far! You can always retake the class with some extra wisdom under your belt!

Most of us would say that our priorities stack up something like this; God, Family, Country, Work, etc...right? But if we graphed out the way we spend our time everyday on a pie chart, I'll bet it wouldn't match up with what we just said our priorities were would it? Especially when we throw in things like electronic entertainment and sports right!

So here are a couple of hints that have blessed our lives! Your relationship with your spouse is the single most important relationship in your life. It's way too easy to let our kids take priority over our spouse.

Here are 3 books (besides mine!) that have had a major positive impact on Penny and my relationship: Personality Plus by Florence Littauer, 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman, Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs. Highly, highly, highly recommended reading for every married couple in the world as well as those wanting to learn to deal with people better!

With the kids, this principle from the bible has helped us weather many storms: Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it!

In our society today, it seems like the standard is to send them to school and involve them in as many extracurricular activities as possible. While neither of those things is bad in and of themselves, I believe what we miss way too often is taking time to teach our kids the true principles that this world operates under.

When they understand truth, they tend to choose truth as a lifestyle. But when their perceived truth comes from a source that either ignorantly or purposefully teaches false ideas as truth they end up living a messed up life! They never seem to figure out that you can not live a truly successful life based on false principles, no matter how much you want to believe them!

If we say our family is a priority in our lives, then lets let our actions prove it!

Have a great day!!!

Urgent vs. Important

I've been thinking today about what's important vs what's urgent!

I talk to people all the time who are just too busy doing this or that to do something that might be really important in their lives.

Ever feel frenzied, frazzled, or realize that you're just busy being busy? Join the crowd!

I have a few suggestions.

First; Stop and smell the roses! Even dandelions will work! Just stop and smell something (beautiful of course)! Taking time out to ponder and wonder at this amazing world we live in is a great way to help us see our priorities more clearly! Busyness is really just a distraction.

In fact a mentor of mine told me recently that he considered Busyness and Laziness as two different symptoms of the same disease, Lack of Focus!

Second; Take some time out to examine your priorities. Figure out what is really important in your life and what is just urgent.

If you graphed out how you spend your time each day on a pie chart, would it reflect your priorities or someone elses?

Most of the urgent things will pass without any significant consequences.

Third: Spend your time (Your most valuable gift) only on things that really matter to your priorities and your life will begin to fill up with value and meaning!

Nobody on this earth is unimportant except as they allow themselves to be! No matter who you are, your life has meaning and it's up to you to find it and open the door!

Your life really is important in the grand scheme of things! If it doesn't feel that way, start looking at what you're spending your time on! Find out what your purpose is and pursue it with a passion!

Have an awesome day my friends!

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!

Over-Reacting!

Penny and I were discussing a book we've been reading this morning. As we talked, I realized that anther idea was coming into focus! I was doing some research yesterday on marriage and divorce and came across something again that just seems to keep popping up.

It's this idea that when we encounter something we perceive as wrong, our natural human tendency is to over-react and go way too far in the opposite direction! What we should really be doing is searching for the truth and what is right.

We will never solve the problem by over-reacting to it, only by finding truth and applying the right answer!

I'll give you come potentially controversial examples because they clearly illustrate the point. Which is again, that aligning ourselves with truth is the only solution that ever completely solves the problem.

So let's look at three different situations that clearly illustrate what I'm talking about, that we are all familiar with.

First, a typical sibling clash at home. Second, the proper relationship of a husband and a wife in a marriage. Third, slavery and discrimination. Or almost any other social issue that we routinely argue about today!

In almost all of these issues, you will find the majority of people completely polarized on one side of the issue or the other, rather than seeking the truth, which normally lies somewhere in between!

Let's look at the typical fight or argument between our kids at home and then see if we have actually "grown up" as we examine the other two!

Typically, at my house, when I hear an argument start to escalate or someone start to cry, it goes something like this:

Waaah, he hit me! (a wrong action) Why? I don't know. I didn't do ANYTHING! (not quite the whole truth)

To the other sibling: Why did you hit him? He hit me first! I did not! It was an accident! Yes you did! He hit me on purpose! I did not! You did too! You were trying to hurt me! (still following me or do you already have this memorized?)

What really happened (the truth): "A" accidentally bumps into "B" maybe causing some pain or other problem. (original wrong action) "B" reacts with anger and revenge and hits back (usually harder) causing a downward spiraling fight or argument (over-reaction). Where was the truth? Who cares? As long as I get satisfied.

The reality is that the truth and the solution that would have made all parties happy was somewhere in the middle!

What about the proper relationship between husbands and wives in a marriage?

For centuries and maybe even millenia, misguided men and even entire cultures have treated women as second class citizens and even worse sometimes. (definitely a wrong action) Today we have morphed right through the push to get women equal rights and fair treatment into many women trying to treat men as second class citizens and neanderthals (over-reaction).

The real truth and the solution that brings real happiness and successful marriages is somewhere in the middle.

How about slavery and discrimination? Touchy subject? It doesn't have to be if we seek for truth and what is right here too.

Many of us, whether black, brown, red, yellow, or white, have ancestors who were slaves at one time or another in history. (an absolute wrong) What happens all too often in our world today is that we way over-react and although we all enjoy political freedom, we tend to divide ourselves up in groups and look down our noses at each other still. (another over-reaction)

The truth and the right solution lies somewhere in the middle again!

When are we all going to grow up and stop acting like little children and start looking for and acting on true principles that will lead all of us to happiness and success as a country?

The only way for us to overcome these problems is for us to understand that true happiness only comes when we put ourselves in harmony with the true principles that govern this universe! The funny thing is you can even enjoy the happiness that comes from this harmony without consciously aligning yourself with a principle! A principle yields results when followed simply because it exists! Interesting!

Put yourself on a lifelong quest for truth and act accordingly and your life will be constantly moving in an upward direction! But choose to try to fight against the truth and life will be a constant downward spiral!

Have a great day!

Divorce Statistics Translation!

We regularly hear that according to current statistics the divorce rate in our country is somewhere around the 50% mark.

That in and of itself is quite a sad commentary on the state of the value we place on marriage in our culture. But I believe it actually only tells part of the story.

Here are some other related factors to consider:

Out of that 50% who have divorced, how many of them went into marriage with an attitude of "We'll just see if this works out. If not, no big deal. We'll just go our separate ways"?

Then again, how many thought it was a joke or a whim in the first place? Zero sense of commitment or responsibility?

Then, how many went in with truly high hopes of a happy future of wedded bliss for the rest of their lives? Only to decide down the road somewhere that they were just totally "incompatible" or something similar?

Now on the flip side, let's look at the 50% who are staying married.

How many of those would honestly say that they have a truly great and fulfilling marriage? And how many of them are just tolerating each other to one degree or another for the "sake of the kids" or the commitment they've made?

Let's think of this in terms of a pie chart with some admittedly made up statistics here for the sake of an illustration.

Visualize a circle for your pie chart. If 50% of the marriages end in divorce, then we'll split it right down the center to form 2 halves, married on the right, divorced on the left.

Now let's divide up the divorced side.

Let's say that maybe 10% of those started out with zero sense of commitment to the concept of marriage in the first place. It was just something that sounded fun to do for a little while, but when we hit any bumps in the road at all, "we're outa here."

I'm going to put another 15% into the category of "yeah I like this person and it would be nice if it works out, so let's try it for awhile and see."

That leaves (and I'd bet this is fairly accurate) somewhere around 25% of divorcees who really wanted their marriage to work and intended that it should, but for whatever reason, they just couldn't figure out the correct dynamics. (Remember this group)

Next let's split up the married side:

I'd guess that there are maybe 10% of marriages that, if asked for a serious evaluation, would honestly say that they have a truly great and totally fulfilling marriage.

There will be another 15% or so who would describe their marriage as good, with some bumps here and there, but nothing real serious.

That leaves another 25% that are "tolerating" each other to a lesser or greater degree.

Maybe it's just an acceptable situation that may not be too bad, but it's not fun, enjoyable, rewarding or fulfilling anymore. But hey, we made a commitment and we intend to keep it come heck or high water!

It ranges from that all the way down to "we can't stand each other anymore but we're staying together for the kid's sake."

What this whole exercise in statistics tells me is, (First, about 85% of all statistics are made up on the spot to support your conclusion!!!) actually that we may be focusing on a smoke screen when we're looking at the divorce stats!

I believe that there are a huge percentage of marriages that we could save and repair and take to a whole new level of fulfillment if we could just teach them the unchanging principles that govern and lead to great marital relationships!

Will we save them all? I'm not that naive! But when you have 2 people of goodwill who just aren't getting along but really wish that they could, there is a huge reservoir of hope, if we could just teach them a few basic principles that most people never learn or are never even exposed to!

Here at the Marriage Mentors Workshops we teach 5 different core principles that govern success in any relationship you have but especially in your marriage!

So where ever you may find yourself on our "Pie Chart", if you are a person of goodwill, we invite you to come mentor with us!

Learn from someone who has been able to take our marriage to a whole new level of fulfillment because we learned some new principles and began to apply them in our marriage and family!

Come visit our Marriage Mentors Workshops blog for more info @

http://marriage-mentor.blogspot.com/

Great road trip!

30 hrs each way to Columbus, OH and back for a Leadership Conference with 3 friends!

Just for fun, I thought I'd share some of the highlights of what I learned. Some of my favorite thoughts.

When most people think of conventions, they think of a lot of rah-rah and hoopla. The reality is that there are some people out there who are combining some real, useful and practical wisdom with their fun too! Check out some of these neat thoughts!

First of all, why does studying leadership appeal to me so much? Well here's a definition that I really like that is really why I choose to pursue it myself.

"True leadership is the search for and application of truth in every area of your life. It's learning to live a principle driven life and influencing others to do the same."

I want to learn to be the most effective that I can at doing that. I still have a long way to go but hey that's what this life allows me to do.

Favorite thoughts:

Our cause is to lead people to truth!

Dreams come a size too big so that there's room to grow into them!

Change your label!

The fruits of the current starvation of our souls and minds from spiritual and mental nourishment are the social problems we are dealing with today!

All of the pundit's solutions we're hearing today are merely hacking at the leaves of the problem instead of digging out the roots!

God will put the right people in your path, but if you're not on the path yourself, you'll never run into them!

Until now there has not been an education system that teaches people how to recognize problems and solve them effectively. new ideas equip you to solve the problems in your life and help others to also!

This team will take responsibility for solving the problems of the world rather than passsing the buck to someone else!

Issues don't solve themselves, leaders do!

The more I read, the more I realized how messed up my thinking was. It was liberating!

The ability to fail and not quit is what creates lasting success!

I would rather be a player on a winning team, than the quarterback of a losing one!

An improved you is our product!

We're in a media war!

You're a champion the minute you leave it all on the field!

Let go of the "good" and grab the "great"!

Leadership is about standing in the gap!

A leader goes into battle when he knows a principle is in danger!

"Not on our watch!"

If you think your marriage is "OK", be sure to ask yourself if it's possible that Satan is blinding you to the whole truth!

How can we expect our wife to feel like a queen if we are treating her like a serf?

If our kids think they are the center of the universe, we're setting them up for massive failure later in life!

Guys, you are the quarterback in your homes. You are responsible , win or lose! You call the plays!

You can't correct your spouse to a successful marriage!

Marriage is something that you DO instead of something that you HAVE!

I'm grateful to be part of an organization dedicated to helping us get better in every area of our lives!

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!