When I worked at a newspaper about 15 years ago, I interviewed a group of ROTC cadets who were going through Advance Camp at Fort Bragg. The cadets’ performance during camp could help determine whether their Army careers started well or not. The cadets were in between their junior and senior years of college. After graduation, they would get their commissions. One of the cadets had been in the Army before as an enlisted man. He’d come out of college…
Recently, I went on a mission trip to Belize with 33 other folks from my church. We worked hard and had a great week. After we finished our work, we had the option to go snorkeling on the last day we were there. When they told us about it, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to go. I tried to snorkel one other time when I was a kid. It wasn’t pleasant. And to be honest, I was tired….
My daughter played in a softball tournament for the state championship this weekend. Her team played well, finishing second. I was proud of my daughter and her team. And, as I’m beginning to discover about almost everything, I learned a valuable lesson along the way. Her coach asked me to keep the scorebook for the team during the tournament. I was glad to do it. It made me feel like I was contributing to the effort. As in most tournaments…
Lately, I’ve been trying to take a long look at life. Seeking to step back and get a wide-angle shot of what I’m doing and where I’m going. This thinking brought to mind a saying one of my college professors had. He taught a course on how nations related to each other. Every once in a while he’d point out that a country’s leaders had focused too much on details and failed to see the big picture. “They couldn’t see…
About a week ago I was looking for a book on a shelf when I saw something jammed between two of the larger books. I pulled it out, and recognized it as booklet given to me by a good friend years ago. It has excerpts from “The Treasury of Quotes by Jim Rohn.” I opened it up and saw the note my friend wrote to me. I immediately remembered thinking that it was a great gift when I had received…
The teachings of Jim Rohn have popped into my life recently on two separate occasions. One way is a little book I found squeezed between two bigger volumes on my bookshelf. It’s called “The Treasury of Quotes by Jim Rohn.” A friend gave it to me years ago. I’ll share some of the quotes in a future blog. The other instance is this video sent to me by another friend. It’s based on Rohn’s new book, “Lessons on Life.” The…
Shortly after I wrote a post about a presentation by one of the author’s of The Go-Giver, I spotted a video blog that provides a good example. Jim Kukral posted a blog called “The Power of Free! A Case Study.” It talks about his experience in four weeks after he launched a web site that gives away information on how to make web videos without having to spend a lot of money on equipment. Kukral said four things happened in…
I recently heard a presentation by Bob Burg, who wrote “The Go-Giver” with John David Mann. Burg said pointed out that the opposite of a go-giver is not a go-getter, but a go-taker. Being a go-getter is good as long as you have the heart of a go-giver, he said. The key, Burg said, is to shift one’s focus from getting to giving. You do this by constantly adding value to people’s lives. This is not only nice but a…
The other day, I was off work and had a little time to catch up on some things that I had been putting off. One of those things was a small leak behind our toilet. My wife had noticed it a month or so ago, and I had promised to take a look at it. The leak wasn’t bad, just a drip every once in a while, but it needed to be fixed. So I crawled down where I could…
Has anyone ever described you as gentle? Did you take it as a compliment? I admit, I’ve always had a negative feeling about the word. Who would want to be gentle? Then this morning, my pastor talked about the passage in the Bible where Jesus describes himself as gentle and humble. Humble, I was OK with. Gentle, not so much. Then my pastor defined gentleness as “strength under control.” The example he gave was wild horses that are tamed. They…