It’s important to give yourself the same respect you need to be giving others. It’s also crucial that you remember that while you’re not perfect, your value comes in the fact that you will be the only you to ever exist. That alone makes you unique, filled with unlimited potential. Respect your boundaries, respect your goals, and respect your integrity.

Suffice it to say, to be a man is almost to endure a shame so great that it eclipses any feeling of achievement or accomplishment. The merit of the self is lost in a sea of collected ire towards a faceless patriarchy. With the blame allotted, there’s no need to take personal responsibility when you can blame the nearest man for your latest misfortune.

As you get older, you start being able to look back through time. Back in Texas, I had the chance to pass by our old house and places we remember very well. It’s amazing how much water has gone under the bridge.

Without making decisions and choices that actively support our pursuits and help further our achievements, we face the treadmill effect--where we can make efforts, but ultimately we get nowhere as we set ourselves back.

If you read something, read it again, and before you commit to memory as a fact, read it somewhere else. The difference between a Facebook post and propaganda is nothing, anymore. No matter what the story is, you’ll hear a different spin from any given news source. It’s hard enough to tell what the truth is.

There are two kinds of people in life, those who build you up and encourage you, and those who try to keep you grounded with their healthy dose of reality. They may tell you that “you can’t do _____,” out of fear of your failure rather than the desire to see you not succeed, but the effect is the same.

At the risk of sounding stupid, we withhold our questions and curiosities. As humans, we’ve created this idea that to be inquisitive and display our curiosity publicly, we are showing ourselves to be ignorant and foolish. In reality, this is counter to the truth. Ignorance is a state of being in which misinformation or the lack of knowledge becomes the defining feature of someone/something. By denying ourselves and others of the rewards of curiosity, we perpetuate the idea that it is better to be a closet ignoramus than a momentary one.

All your life you’ve heard that the only thing you can control in your life is your attitude. It makes sense, right? As unpleasant as a day can get, a little attitude can turn it around. Rod Olson wrote this book, “The Legacy Builder,” and in it he asserts that life takes two things, not just attitude. It thrilled me honestly, since one of my biggest beliefs is on hard work and a solid work ethic, to hear that “effort” is the second part of that equation

I genuinely make efforts to be a kind, considerate, and thoughtful person. In trying to be a nice person, I admit I’ve been stepped on and burned for my efforts to be nice, but by doing so I set myself apart from those who practice more unsavory methods. If you run your business with the mindset to treat your employees, partners, and customers with the same degree of kindness and integrity, you’ll create a reputation for yourself that will not go unnoticed.

When someone says that the grass is always greener, it’s usually said in a cautionary tale. When you drive past a farm and you see cows sticking their heads through the fence, eating the grass of the unfortunate fellow living on the other side, these cows don’t realize they’ve probably got their heads stuck. It’s a fun comparison to make, and it sheds light on how we as people are always anticipating the next best thing. We are happy, we are content, and then we are bored. In the context I’ll be speaking about today, I’m going to talk about work.

It wasn’t long before my dad told me it was time to get a real job. I got an interview with this lumber company, Stripling Blake. Finally got a job there, took about a month. My official first job with that company was called “yard dog.” I packed concrete, stacked wood. It took a strong back and a weak mind. I went from packing supplies to being the youngest outside salesman by the time I was 21. It’s okay to start at the bottom. What’s important is where you want to go and how hard you’re willing to work to get there. Look at where you are now, and then look at where you want to be. No matter how steep the climb, this journey doesn’t start with you lingering in bed. Shine your shoes, put on your try-hard pants, and get to work.

Ultimately, if you like firing people then you’ve got bigger issues. It’s an interesting thought process, we push longer than we should, letting the problems stack up and making it more difficult than it needs to be in the long run. We put it off, like going to the doctor, hoping that time alone will make it better when that rarely ends up being the case.

I’ve kept this saying going strong over the years. One, drinking enough water to rival the ocean and two, if you’ve been following along with my blogs or know me at all, you’ll realize work ethic is one of the most important things to me. As a society, we are constantly dehydrated; everyone could stand to drink more water. It’s self-explanatory.

Someone asked me what the hardest part of being in business is. I thought for a moment. There are plenty of challenging things such as: customers, banks, the occasional coworker, but I would have to say for me is honestly getting up in the morning. Waking up, dusting off your shoes and shining your shoes, and heading out into the beat down of life, it becomes a whole different game—one that isn’t easy to win.

Haste makes waste--something you learn quickly in the manufacturing world. If you underperform and overcommit, you’ll find yourself in a costly bind. If you have a poor set of plans or inaccurate details, you may find yourself rushing when you’re days, weeks behind. I have beaten this drum for years. Slow and right is better than fast and wrong.

You may find yourself in a meeting where someone will be constantly chomping at the bit to share facts and statistics, and with these facts and statistics comes the unfortunate realization that more often than not, these individuals are regurgitating information they’ve pulled from a pamphlet or an article somewhere. The legitimately intelligent people are listening, watching, and observing and making the effort to learn more. These people don’t need to show off or flex their intellect; they’ve been out there in the trenches of their respective fields. Talking to them always yields a great deal more information than the types to stand in a meeting and pontificate the day away with fact after fact.

Fear of failure serves a purpose that most don’t credit it with, and that is imbuing in the fearful a will to survive. In the turbulence of the economy around 2008 through 2012, I met with several bankruptcy attorneys and other local business owners who told me I was done. As I struggled with trying to figure out what on earth I needed to do, I came to the resounding conclusion that no matter what it took, what cost, I would soldier on. If I go bankrupt I go bankrupt, if garbage is spilling over the side, it all stinks.

Comfort is a sign of stagnation. If you aren’t uncomfortable, odds are you’re at a plateau. When you climb up a hill, you’re pushing yourself; you’re straining to achieve greater heights—heights you can’t achieve if you’re strolling across a plateau. When I went to my first Austin Builders Association meeting, there were about 500 people gathered there and I felt really uncomfortable and out of place.

God won’t ask you for your balance sheet when you get to heaven. Today may be a victory, but tomorrow may be a defeat. Your ego can be your worst enemy. There’s nothing stopping you from eventually becoming the butt of your own joke. Be careful, especially that the praise of those around you doesn’t exceed the worth of what you give to them. Humility is a currency worth far more than any boasting or hot air. So, spare yourself the censure and the ego, don’t read your press releases. Do the best job you can, be grateful for the victories and use the defeats as lessons on how to grow.

This story centers particularly on the events surrounding an issue I was having with a job site. One of the gentlemen working for me got on the phone with me and I just tore into him over some of the problems we were having. He was a nice, older man, and usually did a good job. He ended up being a long-term placement of mine, really a great guy, and he just took this abuse. I didn’t cuss at him, but I was entirely condescending. It wasn’t ten minutes later when he knocked at my door and asked if he could speak to me. He wasn’t nasty at all, just as calm and collected as can be. He says, “I don’t have a problem with you yelling at me, but don’t ever yell at me on the phone. If you have a problem with me, we can work it out face to face, but anyone can be a badass on the phone.” That always stuck with me, what a great life lesson that ended up being.