Your phone rarely rings because people want to tell you things are alright. Pick up the phone and tell someone things have gone right, visit with someone when you’re only there to drop off papers of packages, make the efforts to connect with the people you frequently run into. When you put forth the effort to touch the lives of others, it leaves a positive impression. You’ve heard the old adage that it’s lonely at the top, and that proves especially true for business leaders today.

We are all subject to the same seeds of worry that take root deep in our minds and hearts. At some point in our lives we have all had the pleasurable task of feeling the weight and discomfort of worry pushing down on us at our most vulnerable moments. We can best understand worry as a feeling of apprehension that arrests the entire conscious mind in waves of concern over anything and everything that can go wrong.

The barest definition of insanity is the doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. God has had to beat it into me that no matter how many times I try to do something my way, it’ll amount to nothing be it the first or the eighth time if it’s not something that lines up with His plan.

To be like that of a child, we have to understand that children look at everything with wonder and amazement. Everything to them is something new and worth exploring. The endless excitement and joy dies as we transition to adulthood, the innocence of our understanding fades in the wake of our own bitter acceptance of the status quo.

The act of withholding forgiveness suggests a few things. You might be holding on to whatever enmity or bitterness there because it’s all you have left of this person. You’re afraid to let go or move on because it’s admitting defeat. Maybe you’re so petty that all you have to give yourself meaning is the refusal to let go and forgive that person. It’s hard, I know, being a human isn’t easy.

It seems that with all of the distractions between our entertainment and our technology, it’s harder for us to appreciate and even understand the words “be still.” Such a powerful little phrase that many of us don’t have the ability to appreciate. Some of you might be thinking, “be still? You mean, waste time?” No, I don’t.

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.

What does it mean to be graceful? At a glance, the word appears to be a literal combination of grace and full—referring or someone or something that is full of grace. You’ve probably heard it refer to a dancer or the like, and that would be an apt description. Physical grace is certainly to be admired, but beyond that we have the kind of inner grace that demands respect and admiration.

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

Everybody loves the warm and fuzzies. It’s a currency so common that it’s almost lost all meaning. People become addicted to it, so when the time comes for them to receive in the slightest bit of help that comes in the form of some constructive criticism, they don’t take it too well. That’s just the thing. There are times when people need a solid stickley prickly. Most of us take it personally, and yes the truth can hurt, but without these burrs of truth, how will we possibly be able to grow?

It’s all too easy to look across the street and see your neighbor’s car and say, “I want that.” In doing so, you may think he has it good, he must make a ton of money, or maybe, with enough insight you can appreciate the amount of saving, patience, overtime, and effort put into getting it. He cashed in his fun chips after pouring years of work into chasing his dream.

Anywhere you go these days, tolerance seems to be the new buzzword. Most of us grew up hearing tolerance as something we used when a sibling or classmate was getting on our nerves. Simply put, tolerance is exercised when we put up or ignore something we don’t like. However, tolerance has grown to take on a new shape these days. In a world focused on group hugs and excessive virtue signaling, we find ourselves racing against our fellow man to open our arms to whatever else we can try and “tolerate.”

Don’t try to cut corners because you’ll only make it more difficult for yourself when it all comes out in the wash. If you’re scrimping just to make things go faster or easier, you’re making everything more complicated that it needs to be. If it only costs a little more to keep everything at IRC2015, you’ve made the lives of everyone involved in the project easier. Why, because consistency is an unspoken virtue. It’ll cost you hundreds of dollars to go back and fix it, if something isn’t correct.

There’s no Richter scale for sinning, for mistakes, or for wrongdoings. As humans, we tend to judge another based on our preconceptions of severity for errors and meaningful misdeeds. We may look at an alcoholic, drinking away his life savings as we pack in a few more mini hamburgers, and scold him in our heads. Are these both not examples of gluttony? Everyone, and their brother, has probably told you that people in glass houses should not throw stones. Imagine, there on your lofty hill, seeing someone lying or boasting in the valley below.

By including these kinds of people in your life, your potential and outlook will change drastically for the positive. If you hang around with the best, they bring out the best in you. Misery loves company, if you fill your hours with unsavory activities, you’ll get dragged into their cycle of negativity.

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.

If you live long enough, you’re bound to learn more and more, and it’s amazing how many of us become more religious as we begin to figure it out. When we’re young, we have this superman cape, and as we age, we become wiser and realize we aren’t invincible. We start to fear death; the unknown scares us because we don’t know what we don’t know.

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.