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Category: life lessons

Two surprising obstacles to success

Two surprising obstacles to success

Recently, I read a couple of articles that revealed a couple of surprising obstacles to reaching goals. See if they are as surprising to you as they were to me. Everyone struggles to reach those goals at one time or another. I know I’ve gone through stretches in my life when it seemed I was going nowhere in my efforts to reach my goals. The first surprising obstacle was perfectionism. I think this is in part because we’ve always be…

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What I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me At My High School Graduation

What I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me At My High School Graduation

The Things I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me When I Graduated from High School (NOTE: I had the wonderful honor of speaking at my son’s high school graduation Sunday. Here’s a written version of my remarks.) Memorial Baptist Church, Buies Creek, N.C. June 5, 2016 By Steve DeVane Good morning. Let’s read the scripture for today. I’ll be reading Mark 10:35-45 from The Message. 35 James and John, Zebedee’s sons, came up to him. “Teacher, we have something we want…

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Look up for a new, better perspective

Look up for a new, better perspective

I love to run. This is a rather recent feeling. In my younger days, I thought people who ran were crazy. Why would anyone just go running? Then a few years ago, I promised my daughter that I would run in a 5K race with her. I’m not sure what made me make the commitment. It was just after she had completed a Thanksgiving Day race near our house. For some reason, I told her after she finished that I…

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The best five years? The next five years

The best five years? The next five years

A few years ago I was talking with someone close to me. He was lamenting the fact that he had spent what he saw as his “best five years” working for a guy who used him up and spit him out. Without thinking I said, “Those weren’t your best five years. Your best five years are your next five years.” I’ve tried to remember that insightful moment since then. Way too often we waste time thinking about what might have been….

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Four Things Marketers Should Be Able To Say

Four Things Marketers Should Be Able To Say

A post on Benjamin Fitts’ blog called “12 Things We Should Be Able To Say” is worth reading for anyone who wants to get ahead in life, but is particularly applicable to network marketers. Fitts said he copied the information from Jay McHugh’s newsletter, but I did not see it on McHugh’s site. I heard about Fitts’ post through John Milton Fogg’s Facebook page. Fogg is author of the networking classic, “The Greatest Networker in the World,” which every networker…

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How To Make Life Better Without Lifting A Finger

How To Make Life Better Without Lifting A Finger

Don’t you want to know how to make life better? Doesn’t everyone? Most people, sooner or later, start asking what I like to call “ultimate questions.” They tend to ask them in a number of ways, but nearly all of them focus on the quest for a better life. Unfortunately, many people don’t give those questions much attention. They’ve got too many messages in their outbox to consider issues with no deadline, no matter how important they seem. I’m not…

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Have confidence in music and in life

Have confidence in music and in life

The other day, I learned a valuable lesson about the need to have confidence in music and in life. The band I play  in had just went through a tough rehearsal. We were supposed to play the next day, and to say we were struggling would be kind. We’d tried to learn a few new songs, and all but one were bad. Real bad. We finally replaced a few of the harder songs with easier tunes, but our music was…

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Persistence, Patience and Power

Persistence, Patience and Power

I’m constantly amazed at the places that potential learning opportunities pop-up. I often drive down a country road near a Civil War battlefield. I usually find the rural scenery relatively relaxing. One day, I happened to notice something that I had somehow missed on all my previous trips by the fields along the road. Right in the middle of one of the fields stood a tree. It was only about 25 or 30 feet tall, but I was nevertheless taken…

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