How’s Your Heart Today?

It’s a question I posed to a dear friend recently, for a different reason, who has been going through a difficult time. However, it’s a great question and one we should ask ourselves to start each day.

Why?

Because we’re headed in a direction that will ultimately lead to dark consequences for America and for mankind. Unless we change our thinking, make major societal changes, and fix our heart problem.

Today our country suffers from a heart problem. At an early age we learned to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, and love from hate. We were taught to love one another, despite our differences. But is this how we operate in our daily lives?

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Is Today Your ‘When’ Day?

When will you begin writing that first book you keep talking about? Make a firm offer on the dream home you have wanted? Take that dream vacation? Move your career in a bold new direction? Start the exercise program you have been putting off? If not now … When?

Is today your ‘When’ day … the day your life really takes off?

Stop dreaming and take action. Let’s face it, we are all procrastinators to some degree. It is part of our nature, a part of our DNA. However, if we are going to live the life we’ve always dreamed about, then at some point in time we have to put a stake in the ground and take responsibility for making it happen.

As a child, I was a BIG dreamer and had a long wish list of things I didn’t have. My dear sweet mother had a great way of bringing me down to earth. When my ‘Wish List’ got to be too much for her she would say, “Wish in one hand and poop in the other, and see which one fills up the fastest.”

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We Are Not Lost

Oilman Eddie Chiles had a campaign in the early 1980s with the slogan “I’m Mad, Too, Eddie!” His classic trademark sign-on, “I’m Eddie Chiles, and I’m mad as hell,” created an incredible demand for bumper stickers that read “I’m mad too, Eddie!”

Well guess what? It may be time to bring those bumper stickers back. Because there are a lot of folks around these days who can relate. We are not lost. We are just on the wrong path. And we are mad as hell about it.

Mad at our government and politicians, mad at the news media, mad at the police, mad at the COVID-19 pandemic, mad at the economy, mad at the bar closings, etc. Oh, and let’s not forget the special interests group attempting to rewrite history. We are mad as hell at them too! The list goes on and on.


“A season of darkness will not change until you choose to become the light.” – Jim Gardner

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Do Your Best …

Do your best … that’s all you can do! This is my youngest son’s mantra and it has served him well in his early adult life. However, what if it isn’t enough?

What happens when your best just isn’t good enough?

Throughout our lives we’re encouraged to do our best, try harder, keep pushing, don’t give up, etc. However, most of us already have or will encounter obstacles or challenges seemingly too difficult to overcome, despite our best efforts. So what’s the right course of action when your best is not enough?

If we assume failure is not an acceptable outcome, then we have created an irresistible force paradox. The classic paradox formulated as “What happens when an unstoppable force (you) meets an immovable object (obstacle or challenge)?” This paradox arises because it rests on two premises—there exists such things as irresistible forces and immovable objects—which cannot both be true at once.

“If you lean in the direction of success, you will make progress even when you fall.” – Grant M. Bright

The hardest thing for most of us to accept is failure. We have been conditioned to believe that failure is a catastrophic, ‘end of days’ type event, rather than a life lesson. However, in this world we are a part of, there are no such things as irresistible forces or immovable objects. Something must be changed. How can we strive to do our best against all odds knowing the end result in some situations will not be favorable?

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How to Overcome an 8-8 Mindset

No, this is not another fan rant about the Dallas Cowboys lackluster performance on the football field this year. Although there are some similarities we’ll draw upon here. Rather, the article is about you. If you’re a business leader who seems to be stuck in neutral and unable to find the ‘winning formula’ to move to the next level.

None of us grew up with the notion of being average, just being good enough.

Whether it’s in sports, music, grades, business, etc. We have all been ingrained with the notion of being the best in our chosen pursuits. Does this seem realistic? There is nothing wrong with the quest for excellence. However, not everyone can ascend to the top of the pyramid and stay there. Real life just doesn’t work that way. And that’s OK!

Are your expectations aligned with reality?

Let’s talk for a moment about the ‘BIG LIE’. The big lie is what we tell ourselves when we have a bad day, or when things are not going our way. “Things will get better”. They won’t. Things are not going to get better until what? Until we do. In order to consistently achieve success at any level we must take risks, make changes and sacrifice to get there.

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Life Lessons From Holiday Cooking

Ten years ago, my son Daniel and I decided we’d take on the task of doing most of the Christmas holiday cooking. It was our way of giving my wife Laura and daughter Melanie a break to just relax and enjoy the holidays. My wild, crazy idea!

NOTE: The photo above includes some of the sweets and “treats” made as part of the holiday cooking marathon.

We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we started. But after eleven recipes and 12+ hours of meal prep, cooking and clean-up, let’s just say we learned a lot from the experience.

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Growth Through Subtraction

The old adage that “you don’t get bigger by getting smaller” does not always apply in the modern world. In order to thrive in today’s fast-paced global marketplace you must think differently about what is essential to growth, and where and how to invest your time and limited resources.

Big corporations have gotten it wrong for decades. To artificially “pump up” stock prices and appease shareholders and the board of directors, they have historically downsized and reorganized during the fourth quarter to improve short-term financials. However, if you do not make fundamental changes to improve operational performance, this is a slowly bleed to death strategy that more often leads to failure.

“When you remove just the right things in just the right way, something very good happens.”—Matthew E. May Continue reading…

What Have We Learned?

If you believe Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her Green Deal supporters, the world will end in (8 years) if we don’t start right now to address climate change aggressively.

Ironically, it was 50+ years ago that U Thant, then the Secretary-General of the United Nations, made a similar declaration about the future of mankind. He stated that the “Members of the United Nations have perhaps ten years left to solve the challenges ahead of us, or they will be beyond our control”.

U Thant’s more detailed comments can be found in the Introduction to the book, The Limits to Growth. It was the first edition of this book back in 1972 that began to reshape my thinking about the world around us, and the fate of mankind. In 2012, 40 years later, I released my first book, GLOBALIZATION: America’s Leadership Challenge Ahead that addressed many of these and other global concerns.

Back in April, I discussed one of the major issues from Chapter 5 of my book, Education Revitalized, in a blog article. Now, I want to broaden the conversation. So let’s go back a little farther to see what has changed during the past 51 years since the initial release of The Limits to Growth. Continue reading…

Play Above the Rim …

Don’t lower your expectations … lower the rim!

Yes, there is a story behind the message. I grew up in a basketball crazy area of Kansas City, Kansas and attended Wyandotte High School. During the glory days Wyandotte was State Champions in basketball ten out of fourteen years. And I had the real pleasure of playing on the school grounds with many outstanding players including Lucius Allen and Pierre Russell, who went on to have great college and professional basketball careers.

Although I didn’t play in high school, I absolutely loved the sport and always dreamed of growing up to be 6’2” or taller so I could dunk a basketball. Well, I didn’t quite get there. I’m barely 5’8” in shoes, on a good day, with a mediocre vertical leap no less. However, I have dunked a basketball roughly 100-150 times in my lifetime.

How was I able to overcome these physical limitations and achieve my goal of dunking a basketball? Continue reading…

8 Ways to Rise Above the Noise

I don’t know about you, but I have grown weary and resentful of all the negative news I read and hear these days. The steady drone of articles about the Clinton’s, President Trump and his campaign advisers, the Russian dossier, Uranium One scandal, the NFL player protests, and so forth. It’s exhausting!

What’s the solution? We can turn-off the TV, cancel our subscription to the newspaper, or our social media accounts, boycott the NFL, etc. However, being an isolationist is not a solution, its creative avoidance. The very real challenges we must overcome to ‘Make America Great Again’ are still present and unabated.

How can we rise above the noise and turn our attention to solving real-world problems? Continue reading…