Simple Advice For Life

"The principles of living greatly include the capacity to face trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness, and trial with humility."
- Thomas S. Monson

A book written by Billy Graham, titled The Journey came out in 2007, some eight years ago. In this book, the now 97 year old Billy Graham offers a few principles for living.

Billy is now battling the effects of old age and declining health but for the majority of his life he has been an evangelist having served as a spiritual adviser to many presidents and corporate leaders since before the 1950s.

He has also been a guiding light for millions of people around the world. A respected and admired man who helped to change the minds and hearts of many. There are many who agree and disagree with his views, including myself.

Yet I do believe he offers sound advice.

What he offers are six principles for living and I find them to be very good words to think about. To understand each one better, I would encourage you to read his book even if you do not necessarily agree with his religious beliefs for there are some very good common sense ideas.

Six principles of living as offered by Rev. Graham.

1. Make it your goal to live at peace with others.
2. Treat others as you'd want them to treat you.
3. Guard your tongue. Use it for good instead of evil.
4. Never repay evil with evil.
5. Avoid revenge. Don't be a captive of the past.
6. Practice the power of forgiveness.

Six easy but life changing ideas for living a better life.

On the surface they are simple but can be difficult to apply in your daily life. But if you take a moment each day, maybe seven minutes, to reflect and think about how these words fit into your life, you might start seeing a change for the better.

Make a decision to start today and change your life.

Stay inspired my friends!

Kindness Wins

"I don't accept the idea that there are two sides to any issue. I think that the middle ground is to be found within most of us." - Krista Tippett

The following story comes from a very special woman who is raising her grandson named Michael, referred to as M in the story below.

Michael has what is referred to as minimal social (and emotional) responses to others as well as difficulty understanding and reacting to social cues which often appears to others as a lack of empathy or adequate social skills.

Yet he has an amazing heart where all of those skills reside, hiding, waiting to come out at the most opportunistic times. As this story will tell you, he offers an example that many of us can learn.

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Tonight after a Parent-Teacher meeting at M's school, I went to a couple of stores to purchase small gifts for our Family Giving Program at work. After helping me make selections for three kids we will never meet; M asked if he could make a purchase of his own.

He used his birthday money to purchase a small stuffed animal toy for a girl in his class at school. She was thrilled to have the gift. Please note that this is a girl he absolutely could not tolerate when she began attending his same school room.

A girl he could not stand because she is SO much like him.

He now takes a similar small animal toy each day to school and the two of them pretend the animals get married. The note above is my absolute most favorite thing.

Please note his stick people are smiling. Smiling people because he found common ground over silly bug eyed beanie boos!

I will be buying the heck outta them for the foreseeable future because common ground is an amazing place to begin a friendship.

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In each of our daily lives, we are simply going to have a first impression of people. Their beliefs, there mannerism, the way they look may simply not be to our liking. But there is always an opportunity for the common ground between us.

Kindness could be where the middle ground is found.

Find the place where agreement can be found and maybe it all starts with having a bit more kindness in our lives. Just maybe it starts with us.

Stay inspired my friends.

Enjoying Your Job

"Desire! That’s the one secret of every man’s career. Not education. Not being born with hidden talents. Desire."
 – Bobby Unser

I have previously written about a concept in which your life is a wheel with six spokes. There spokes essentially six areas of our lives we must focus on in order to first get our life in order, second to get our life moving in a positive direction and lastly to achieve our greatest potential in life.

One of these is referred to as the Financial and Career spoke of life. The career aspect of our life has a large influence upon our finances and other areas of life. It may seem like an obvious statement to make, but many people simply don't get it.

I have been blessed for nearly 30 years with a job I both enjoy and have been successful in. It is a job I enjoy getting up early in the morning for and one in which I'm happy enough to put in long hours for. The people, the work and the pay make it a very rewarding experience.

It was not that way in the beginning.

My career began at a small family owned office equipment dealer in Lincoln, Nebraska. To say I am thankful to them for giving me the opportunity is a grand understatement. When I was young and needed work, they took a risk and hired me. I learned quite a bit regarding both my trade and work ethics.

But I never liked the job and for six years my dissatisfaction grew.

So there it was, I did not like the job, the pay was low and all I could do was complain about my situation. One thing I had going for me was a great mentor. An older co-worker named Paul Meyer was a shining example of a mentor who encouraged me to change. He kept telling me that to sit and complain was probably the most unproductive thing a person could do.

Doing nothing meant the issue apparently wasn't very important.

Change is what needed to occur and I began a journey which would lead me to opportunity. I began learning about the computer industry. Remember this happened before the internet took hold so it required research in the library. And do not forget that libraries still exist today. So even if you do not have the internet, a library is open to all and has much of the same information.

Information is a powerful thing in your life.

I also talked with people about the industry and what was needed to get into it. I watched and observed people in the industry. How they dressed, how they conducted themselves and what they did on a daily basis.

I started to position myself for change.

It did not come easy. I sent twenty-five resumes to large companies and received twenty-five "thank you for your interest" responses. Discouragement nearly took hold, but you keep after it and keep telling yourself it will happen. As my wife Laura says, "an awful lot of 'self-talk' with encouraging statements is something everyone needs to learn more of."

Then one day, out of the blue I received a phone call from a large computer company looking to hire. They asked "would you be interested?" Of course I was interested and ultimately there were decisions which had to be made regarding acceptance of a job.

But I had positioned myself to be ready when opportunity crossed my path.

If you are not happy in your job, the chances of succeeding financially in it are slim. Even if the money is great but you are miserable, all other aspects of your life are diminished. To not enjoy your work and complain about it daily hurts you and those around you.

If so, then it is time to get your career life spoke back in balance.

There are many sources of information to get you started. There are various articles available at Publications.US.Gov which give pointers on doing just that. Even many of the job search engines on the internet will provide helpful advice. Again, information is key to successfully transitioning to a new job and if considering a career change.

For those who enjoy your jobs, you already have one of the keys to a better life.

My advice is to enjoy what you do for a living as it will consume nearly 40 years of your life. Perform your job well and enjoy it. It was Martin Luther King Jr. who wrote, “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

Even the street sweeper will have a great life if he enjoys that which he does.

Enjoy your work and strive to do it well.

Your life will be better for it.

Stay inspired my friends!

What Is The Right Thing

"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing." - Theodore Roosevelt

In the late 1930s, Jewish refugees were fleeing a country where persecution and death was almost certain. And during that time, many countries including the United States wanted to deny these people access to a safe place.

Even in the latter half of 1941, as yet to be confirmed news of mass murdering being inflicted by the Nazis, the US Department of State placed even stricter limits on immigration based on national security concerns.

Now many will argue there were no terrorists in the waves of Jewish peoples wanting to escape the horrors being perpetrated upon them. If so, then why deny entry of those persecuted on grounds of national security ... at that point in time.

Fast forward through years of other smaller yet similar mass immigration from the Bosnian conflict to the many de-stabilized African countries. There are political, economic, and religious reasons for many of these conflicts of cause. And now we have a current exodus of Middle Eastern peoples of all faiths who are being persecuted in their journey.

So what is the right thing to do?

Well the gray permeates on both sides of the issue. In fact most debates are never black and white as Facebook posts, Twitter comments and the multitude of blogs (including this one) would have you believe. Social media has taken this into a dimension of absolutes on both sides with very little middle ground.

So the idea of doing what is right remains debated.

Whether it be in daily decisions we make or the big debates of our time, we should all try to do what is right. The absolutes of either side when brought together in the gray mix will yield what is right. There will be plenty of time to sort out the dysfunction which inevitably comes from doing the right thing.

Doing what is right should always be the first thing we do.

Stay inspired my friends!