In the pursuit of the life we dream of, this journey we are on for successful living, the focus is usually on figuring out what it is exactly that we want and then setting ourselves on course for going and getting it. This is very important: Know what you want to get for your life and then pursue it.
But there is another aspect of achieving the life you dream of that seems on the surface to actually be counter-productive to getting the life you want, yet is imperative to the successful life. It is giving.
Giving – of yourself, your time, your money, your energy – is something that takes us from simply being successful people in the traditional sense of the term, to being people who lead successful lives.
Giving is what makes us fully human. It is the essence of what we are, people who are here on earth together, not simply people who hope to clamor to the top of the pile in the survival of the fittest. Yes, pursue your life and your success with wild abandon; be responsible for yourself and take ownership of your life, realizing that you cannot be responsible for others, but also allow yourself to become a giving person.
Giving is also what allows us to accomplish things far beyond ourselves; and that is part of what living the life of our dreams is all about, right? Accomplishing great things through ourselves – and others!
How do we do that? Here are some ideas:
Make your giving purposeful. Give to people and organizations that fulfill purposes that you believe in. This way, they feel good, you feel good, and the work you believe in gets done. Giving purposefully will give you the ability to know that your giving is doing something great.
Make your giving proactive. Take control of your giving. When we control our giving it becomes proactive rather than reactive. We know that we are doing what we want to do rather than what others may manipulate us to do. We can avoid a lot of the wondering about validity that comes when we give out of reaction. Giving proactively will give you a lot of peace of mind.
Make your giving methodical. Every month my wife and I write out our charity checks before any other checks. We do that on purpose to keep our hearts in the right place. Every month, month in and month out, year after year, we go about our giving. Our goal is to give away $1,000,000 by the end of our lives (and we may have to even readjust that goal as time goes by since we set it when we were only 24 years old and we are well on our way to that goal.) This isn’t done by giving big chunks from time to time. It is accomplished by checks each and every month, methodically. Giving methodically allows you to build up larger gifts over time.
Make your giving generous. Don’t be a tightwad! Loosen up the purse strings a bit. Think of your giving in regard to how you can be generous, not how you can cover your charitable bases. I have found that it isn’t the extra money given to charity that breaks people. It is usually mismanagement. And at the end of your life you will most likely not know the difference financially, though you will in your heart. Making your giving generous allows you to give even greater amounts over time.
Make your giving increasing. Don’t just give the same amount from year to year – increase your giving. I think there are two good times to readjust your giving: The first of the year and any time your income goes up. Bump your giving up then, if you can. This will keep you on pace with your giving goals and you will notice the increase less from your bottom line. Make your giving increasing and your giving will keep pace with your income.
Make your giving from the heart. Don’t just let your giving be a mind issue. Let it be a heart issue. This is what gives us our humanity. What causes make your eyes tear up? What causes really mean something to your heart when you are honest with yourself? Start giving to these causes! Let your checkbook be a reflection of your heart! Make your giving from the heart and you will allow your heart to grow.
(Sometimes) Make your giving spontaneous. Sometimes… Allow yourself to be spontaneous with your giving. Do allow yourself to react sometimes. Will you get taken advantage of? Yes, sometimes. But you will also be doing something within yourself that will keep you from becoming cynical. Sometimes, as life has been good to you and you find yourself blessed, let yourself be the blessing to someone else. Make your giving spontaneous (sometimes) and you will battle the disease of cynicism about charity that can creep in.
These are just a few ideas that you can implement right now to begin the art of giving in your life. The key is to decide that you will become a giver, and not merely a taker. You will choose to leave something behind in this world and not merely try to get something out of it.
And as we all commit to that, our world will be a better place and we can all live the lives that we dream of.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
START WITH THE BASICS
The other day I am at the club getting ready to go work out. I am standing in the row of lockers talking to another guy. I hear a couple of kids come in behind me, but don’t turn around. It is obvious from their conversation that they are about five and three years old and they are going to go swimming.
Suddenly the older boy says to the younger one in a scolding voice, “Joey, you have to take your shoes off before you take your pants off.” I turn around and there is this three year old sitting on the ground, trying to take his pants off over these huge waffle-stomper boots!
The guy I was talking to said, “That is good basic life instruction!”
I said, “I’m gonna use that for an article someday.”
Indeed: Always take your shoes off before you take your pants off.
It made me think about how we often try to get so sophisticated in our quest for success and personal growth but isn’t it really true that all success begins with the basics? In fact, perhaps the struggles we have are because we have gotten away from the basics. With that in mind I gave some thought this week to the basics in a few areas. Here they are.
Business
- Always produce a good product
- Be honest
- Under-promise and over-deliver
- Help people and money will come
- Pay your people well
Family
- Put them first as they will be with you last
- Treat your spouse like they are the most important person in the world – they are!
- Give your kids more time than even you think that you should
- Be sure to discipline your kids – they need boundaries
- Take the time to create family memories
- Travel as far and spend as much money as you need to to make it home for special occasions – in the long run you’ll be glad you did
Relationships
- Treat people the way you want to be treated
- Don’t speak ill of others
- Always help if you can when others are in need
- Find ways to make others feel special
- Always tell others what you like or appreciate about them
Health
- Significantly lower your intake of “junk”
- Exercise more, even if it is just a short daily walk
- Drop the bad habits, like alcohol and cigarettes
- Eat more fruits and vegetables
Finances
- Eliminate debt – be ruthless about this
- Take a look at where you are currently spending
- Tighten up on (or cut out) the loose stuff in your budget
- Save some money each month
- Give some money away to charity each month
Spirituality
- Pray regularly
- Trust God, even when it seems hard
- Live what you say you believe
- Get involved in a community of faith
Emotions
- Take an inventory of your emotional health
- Work to control extremes in any emotion (emotions are good when they help to feel what we are supposed to feel, but destructive when they get to extremes)
- Allow yourself to feel emotions you have suppressed.
Suddenly the older boy says to the younger one in a scolding voice, “Joey, you have to take your shoes off before you take your pants off.” I turn around and there is this three year old sitting on the ground, trying to take his pants off over these huge waffle-stomper boots!
The guy I was talking to said, “That is good basic life instruction!”
I said, “I’m gonna use that for an article someday.”
Indeed: Always take your shoes off before you take your pants off.
It made me think about how we often try to get so sophisticated in our quest for success and personal growth but isn’t it really true that all success begins with the basics? In fact, perhaps the struggles we have are because we have gotten away from the basics. With that in mind I gave some thought this week to the basics in a few areas. Here they are.
Business
- Always produce a good product
- Be honest
- Under-promise and over-deliver
- Help people and money will come
- Pay your people well
Family
- Put them first as they will be with you last
- Treat your spouse like they are the most important person in the world – they are!
- Give your kids more time than even you think that you should
- Be sure to discipline your kids – they need boundaries
- Take the time to create family memories
- Travel as far and spend as much money as you need to to make it home for special occasions – in the long run you’ll be glad you did
Relationships
- Treat people the way you want to be treated
- Don’t speak ill of others
- Always help if you can when others are in need
- Find ways to make others feel special
- Always tell others what you like or appreciate about them
Health
- Significantly lower your intake of “junk”
- Exercise more, even if it is just a short daily walk
- Drop the bad habits, like alcohol and cigarettes
- Eat more fruits and vegetables
Finances
- Eliminate debt – be ruthless about this
- Take a look at where you are currently spending
- Tighten up on (or cut out) the loose stuff in your budget
- Save some money each month
- Give some money away to charity each month
Spirituality
- Pray regularly
- Trust God, even when it seems hard
- Live what you say you believe
- Get involved in a community of faith
Emotions
- Take an inventory of your emotional health
- Work to control extremes in any emotion (emotions are good when they help to feel what we are supposed to feel, but destructive when they get to extremes)
- Allow yourself to feel emotions you have suppressed.
Friday, July 4, 2008
SLAYING YOUR OWN GIANTS
I read an old story the other day. It is one that almost everyone is familiar with, and as I read it, I realized that it is filled with a strategy for successfully defeating giants. Yes, giants. We all have them in our lives: Self-doubt, bad habits, financial difficulty, bad relationships etc, can all be giants in our lives.
The story? David and Goliath. Take a journey back in time with me and see if there isn’t a great deal of truth in this story that we can apply to our own lives today.
Here are the timeless principles I see in this story of the little guy beating the giant:
Expect giants to block the way to the Promised Land. Too many times we go for our dreams expecting that it will be like a cakewalk at the county fair. Not true! If you want to get to something as great as the promise land you imagine for your life, realize that the world isn’t just going to roll over and die. No, competitors will do anything they can to keep you out. Naysayers will stand before you and tell you it can’t be done. Giants will appear and you will have to go through them to get where you want to go. Don’t go into your journey with your eyes closed. Expect to battle a giant or two!
Attack your giant for a reason bigger than your own victory. For David, his reason was to defend the honor of God, since the giant was taunting God. Yes, he heard that he would get a wife out of the deal, but his biggest reason wasn’t personal. The same is true with us. Yes, we will gain a lot from our successes but I have found that personal gain is usually fleeting in regard to long-term joy and happiness. Those things that bring a deep sense of personal satisfaction come from accomplishing something positive for an altruistic reason, or for some cause that transcends us!
Recognize your own strengths. When asked if he thought if he could really defeat the giant, David reflected on his past successes. He thought about all those times that he was guarding his father’s sheep and had to ward off animal attackers. Surely if he had killed both a lion and a bear, this human – even if he was nine feet tall! – wouldn’t be much to do a way with. David knew his strengths. He knew what he could do, and he would do it again and again until he reached his goal.
Don’t use someone else’s armor. Okay, the king was convinced: David could go ahead, but first, the king put his armor on David. Like a 10 year old in his father’s suit, David walked around in the armor. “No thanks,” said David. He knew what he needed and it wasn’t what worked for someone else. Yes, we need to take advice, but what works for one doesn’t always work for everyone else. There is no cookie cutter path to success. There is more than one way to skin a cat (By the way, who came up with that disgusting analogy? But I digress…). “Dance with the one that brung ya,” they say. So on your way to success, stick with what works, not someone else’s plan or strategy. David knew a slingshot would work just fine thank you.
Take five weapons, though you may only need one. This was one of the really fascinating parts of the story. David obviously knew that he was good with a slingshot. Good enough to kill a giant, at least. So there was some assurance and self-confidence there. But he also knew that sometimes things go awry. He knew that sometimes it takes a few shots to kill the giants. So, even though eventually he only needed one smooth stone to do the job, he had four others for backup! What about you? Are you five deep in the resource pocket? If not, find a few more stones to do battle with your giant with.
Run toward the giant, not away from it. Here was another interesting point. The story is sure to mention that David ran toward the giant. Why? To get a good shot! So many of us run away from our giants, hoping that if we do we will be able to avoid giants all together. Not true. We will just have to do battle with another giant somewhere else, and all we have chosen to do is go the circuitous route rather than the direct one. Move in close to your giant, and let him have it!
Make sure it is dead after it falls. One shot and David’s giant took a tumble. Did David party? Nope, he went and made sure that Giant wouldn’t rise to haunt him another day. He went in close and with a big swipe of his sword, took the giant’s head off! Giants have way of coming back to life, so be sure that you have really conquered your giant before you move on!
Just like David, you CAN conquer your giants! You CAN move past them into your own promised land! Just stick with these age-old guidelines and you will be well on your way!
Here they are again!
1. Expect giants to block the way to the Promised Land.
2. Attack your giant for a reason bigger than your own victory.
3. Recognize your own strengths.
4. Don’t use someone else’s armor.
5. Take five weapons, though you may only need one.
6. Run toward the giant, not away from it.
7. Make sure it is dead after it falls.
Take up your slingshot and take a few throws at your giant today!
The story? David and Goliath. Take a journey back in time with me and see if there isn’t a great deal of truth in this story that we can apply to our own lives today.
Here are the timeless principles I see in this story of the little guy beating the giant:
Expect giants to block the way to the Promised Land. Too many times we go for our dreams expecting that it will be like a cakewalk at the county fair. Not true! If you want to get to something as great as the promise land you imagine for your life, realize that the world isn’t just going to roll over and die. No, competitors will do anything they can to keep you out. Naysayers will stand before you and tell you it can’t be done. Giants will appear and you will have to go through them to get where you want to go. Don’t go into your journey with your eyes closed. Expect to battle a giant or two!
Attack your giant for a reason bigger than your own victory. For David, his reason was to defend the honor of God, since the giant was taunting God. Yes, he heard that he would get a wife out of the deal, but his biggest reason wasn’t personal. The same is true with us. Yes, we will gain a lot from our successes but I have found that personal gain is usually fleeting in regard to long-term joy and happiness. Those things that bring a deep sense of personal satisfaction come from accomplishing something positive for an altruistic reason, or for some cause that transcends us!
Recognize your own strengths. When asked if he thought if he could really defeat the giant, David reflected on his past successes. He thought about all those times that he was guarding his father’s sheep and had to ward off animal attackers. Surely if he had killed both a lion and a bear, this human – even if he was nine feet tall! – wouldn’t be much to do a way with. David knew his strengths. He knew what he could do, and he would do it again and again until he reached his goal.
Don’t use someone else’s armor. Okay, the king was convinced: David could go ahead, but first, the king put his armor on David. Like a 10 year old in his father’s suit, David walked around in the armor. “No thanks,” said David. He knew what he needed and it wasn’t what worked for someone else. Yes, we need to take advice, but what works for one doesn’t always work for everyone else. There is no cookie cutter path to success. There is more than one way to skin a cat (By the way, who came up with that disgusting analogy? But I digress…). “Dance with the one that brung ya,” they say. So on your way to success, stick with what works, not someone else’s plan or strategy. David knew a slingshot would work just fine thank you.
Take five weapons, though you may only need one. This was one of the really fascinating parts of the story. David obviously knew that he was good with a slingshot. Good enough to kill a giant, at least. So there was some assurance and self-confidence there. But he also knew that sometimes things go awry. He knew that sometimes it takes a few shots to kill the giants. So, even though eventually he only needed one smooth stone to do the job, he had four others for backup! What about you? Are you five deep in the resource pocket? If not, find a few more stones to do battle with your giant with.
Run toward the giant, not away from it. Here was another interesting point. The story is sure to mention that David ran toward the giant. Why? To get a good shot! So many of us run away from our giants, hoping that if we do we will be able to avoid giants all together. Not true. We will just have to do battle with another giant somewhere else, and all we have chosen to do is go the circuitous route rather than the direct one. Move in close to your giant, and let him have it!
Make sure it is dead after it falls. One shot and David’s giant took a tumble. Did David party? Nope, he went and made sure that Giant wouldn’t rise to haunt him another day. He went in close and with a big swipe of his sword, took the giant’s head off! Giants have way of coming back to life, so be sure that you have really conquered your giant before you move on!
Just like David, you CAN conquer your giants! You CAN move past them into your own promised land! Just stick with these age-old guidelines and you will be well on your way!
Here they are again!
1. Expect giants to block the way to the Promised Land.
2. Attack your giant for a reason bigger than your own victory.
3. Recognize your own strengths.
4. Don’t use someone else’s armor.
5. Take five weapons, though you may only need one.
6. Run toward the giant, not away from it.
7. Make sure it is dead after it falls.
Take up your slingshot and take a few throws at your giant today!
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
SEVEN CHARACTER TRAITS OF SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE
1. They are hard working. There is no such thing as easy money. Success takes hard work and people who are willing to do it.
2. They are honest. Those who are successful long-term are the honest ones. Dishonest people may get the first sale, but honest people will get all the rest!
3. They persevere. How many success stories will go untold because they never happened? And all because someone quit. Successful people outlast everybody else.
4. They are friendly. Have you noticed that most successful people are friendly and people oriented? This endears them to others and enables them to lead others to accomplish the task.
5. They are lifelong learners. Successful people are people who stretch themselves and grow continually, learning from all areas of life, including from their mistakes.
6. They over-deliver.The old statement of under-promise and over-deliver became famous because it made a lot of people successful, including the richest man in the world - Bill Gates
7. They seek solutions in the face of problems. Problems are opportunities to do the impossible, not just complain. Successful people are the ones who find solutions.
2. They are honest. Those who are successful long-term are the honest ones. Dishonest people may get the first sale, but honest people will get all the rest!
3. They persevere. How many success stories will go untold because they never happened? And all because someone quit. Successful people outlast everybody else.
4. They are friendly. Have you noticed that most successful people are friendly and people oriented? This endears them to others and enables them to lead others to accomplish the task.
5. They are lifelong learners. Successful people are people who stretch themselves and grow continually, learning from all areas of life, including from their mistakes.
6. They over-deliver.The old statement of under-promise and over-deliver became famous because it made a lot of people successful, including the richest man in the world - Bill Gates
7. They seek solutions in the face of problems. Problems are opportunities to do the impossible, not just complain. Successful people are the ones who find solutions.
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