"Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love." – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Found this quote and really liked it.

Everybody can be of great service. What a powerful thought.

Guess what comes with service. Happiness.

By serving others we find our own happiness. We were built to serve each other and when we do we are happy.

Since everybody can serve….everybody can be happy. And yes, that includes you.

What a great message to start your day. You can be happy because you can serve others.

Find someone to serve today and begin the process of adding happiness to your life.

Jake

“Two prisoners looked out from behind their bars, one saw mud and the other saw stars.”

I was listening to Dale Carnegie’s “How to Stop Worrying” and caught the line above and loved it.

What a great reminder that no matter our circumstances, we can choose to look at the beauty and goodness of life or we can choose to look at the mud.

Are there times when you are focusing on the mud instead of the stars?

Next time you are looking at the mud, remember the line above and choose instead to look up at the stars.

Make it a great day.

Jake

Blatant sales pitch: I would highly recommend both “How to Stop Worrying” and “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. Both of these are in my top 10 list of books.

I recently heard someone tell the story of how when they were a teenager, their mother told them that their actual birthday was in August instead of in October like they had been told their whole life.

The funny part was that her reaction.  She wondered how it was possible that her astrological sign could be different.  After all, her current sign was so totally her.

After a while, she realized that her new sign was so totally her as well and adjusted quite nicely.

This shows just how powerful the mind is.  Whatever our sign, if we read and believe it to be accurate, we will make our reality match up with our horoscope.

And if what we put into our mind has an effect on how our day turns out, we better be careful on what we put in there.

This got me thinking.  What if you could write your own horoscope?  What would you write for yourself?

Here is mine for today:

Today is going to be a great day.  Everything will seem to be falling into place.  Remember to treat others as you would like to be treated.  And take a minute to smell the roses today, great days like today only come once.

Take a minute and write one for yourself.

Make it a great day.

Jake

I am reading a book about the simple rules for living that John Wesley. He was a pastor and went around starting churches.

He laid down a few simple rules in order to keep those that were converted from becoming “more of a child of the devil” after their conversion than they were beforehand.

He realized that no matter how profound a conversion they had made when becoming a Christian, there was more to make real change in someone’s life than a single moment, no matter how profound.

He realized that change required discipline. So much discipline in fact that his movement became known as Methodism because of how methodical he was in everything he did.

And the same hold true for you and whatever goals you have set for yourself.

Ever felt like you were completely on fire about something and then you didn’t follow through?

Ever sign up for a diet with complete zeal and gusto, only to fall back to your old ways all too quickly?

Ever make great plans for writing that book or even just reading one of the ones on the shelf at the office only to flip on the TV instead?

Most real change in life requires discipline. Real discipline.

Just getting started on the book, let’s hope it inspires me to have enough discipline to at least finish.

Make it a great day.

Jake

I recently listened to a TED talk by Simon Sinek entitled "How Great Leaders Inspire Action".

His central premise is that others don’t care about the what or the how of how you do things until they find out and care about the why.

His examples and stories center around company vision and marketing messages. While I think those lessons are important for Mavidea and would love for everyone to discuss and watch, I will leave that to the Culture Club.

Instead, I wanted to focus on finding your own personal "why" as you set your goals.

I personally struggle the most with the goals that I don’t have a very good "why" for.

Think about the goals in your life that you are struggling with. Are you stuck on finding a big enough why?

If you are, I would suggest talking to someone close and ask them to help you find a why.

Then use this new why to inspire action within yourself.

Here is a link to the video for the TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

Make it a great day.

Jake

I received the email below and thought I would share.

I apologize ahead of time to all you out there who aren’t dog lovers.

Jake

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where
they went. -Will Rogers

Why we love our dogs so much

When people hear that I spent more than a year wandering the aisles of America’s dog shows while working on a book about the culture, the first question they inevitably ask is: Why? Why do otherwise normal humans with decent jobs and sound minds spend all of their free time and much of their disposable income on what seems like such a frivolous pursuit—primping and preparing their dogs to be judged in the show ring?

It’s really quite simple: because people really, really love dogs—almost as much as they love their children. Sometimes, even more.

That said, there are probably plenty of you who own dogs who still don’t see how that explains the motivation to put them in dog shows. So let me put it to you this way: Do you adore your dog to the degree that you sometimes call yourself “Mommy” or “Daddy”? Do think he or she is the most beautiful and special creature there is and ever has been? Do you often brag about him or her to friends and family? Do you post adorable photos on Facebook? Well, this is exactly what we do with our children.

And it’s why people show dogs. Because while dog showing is ostensibly about breeding — it’s the way the best and healthiest stock is identified — it’s also about validation.

Just as parents want teachers to tell them their kid is the smartest and politest in class, dog owners want to hear people lauding their dog’s beauty and obedience, and there’s no better place to hear that than in the show ring. Which isn’t to say that dog show participants need a ribbon to prove what they already know. If there are 3,000 dogs entered in a particular event, you’ll find 3,000 humans who’d argue for hours about why their dog is best.

It’s almost impossible not to feel that way. Because the bond between humans and dogs is more intense than our bond with any other species, and there’s not even a close second.

Dogs were the first domesticated animals, the ones that made domestication of all others possible. Scientists can’t seem to agree whether it was 10,000 or 15,000 or 100,000 years ago, but it’s inarguable that dogs evolved from wolves because of us. They were selected and honed to be our companions — to help us hunt, to guard our homes, to look after our livestock and even our children and, over time, to do so many useful and wonderful things that it boggles the mind.

For all the talk about wheels and metal and gunpowder, we often overlook one very important tool that helped lead us out of the caves and into societies: our dogs.

We have dogs that serve in combat (famously assisting in the capture of Osama Bin Laden); dogs that detect bed bugs; dogs that defend sheep from wolves (and cattle from cheetahs), in the process protecting the wild animals too by keeping ranchers from shooting them; dog lifeguards; dogs that guide the blind and allow the disabled to live better lives; dogs that sniff out cancer and drugs and invasive species. And dogs that simply provide companionship, making millions of lives around the globe much, much happier.

There seems to be no job dogs were asked to do that they didn’t figure out how to do capably, and if only they had thumbs we’d probably have taught them to drive us around by now.

Every day our scientific knowledge about these amazing animals increases, enabling us to better understand the very special voodoo that dogs have over us. What exactly makes canines so malleable is not yet fully understood but the fact that the species was literally born at our side explains why they seem to understand us at a level that’s sometimes spooky (but always nice).

Recent research shows they can read our facial expressions and pick up subtle cues that even toddlers can’t, and any dog owner has experienced moments where it seems like there’s an almost extrasensory frequency by which our two species communicate. What owner hasn’t come home on a bad day to find his dog immediately understanding, and offering a little extra love as a result?

And the best part of this relationship is how simple it is. While we often ask so much of them, they require almost nothing in return. You can ask your dog to chase a Frisbee, take a nap on the couch, herd some sheep, or run around a show ring and he’ll do it, happily, for hours on end. He only wants to be fed, and told he’s good, and most of all loved. If a dog has love, he really needs nothing else.

Unlike your kids, who will bug you for money until the day you die.

Josh Dean is the author of "Show Dog: The Charmed Life and Trying Times of a Near-Perfect

I was recently listening to a TED talk by Rick Warren and he mentioned something I would like to share.

He was talking about the idea that he believes that we as human beings have some obligation to leave this planet better than we left it. He mentioned having a conversation with someone once and asking them if they believe that we have this obligation.

The person responded with something like "no more obligation than a duck or any other animal".

Rick’s response really stuck with me.

He said "You are not a duck".

Think about that for a second. If you believe that human beings are not ducks, but that we are something different and unique then we have the obligation of stewardship that Rick talks about.

We are all given something to be stewards over during our lives. At the very least, we are stewards of our own time and lives.

And since we are not ducks, we must use them wisely. How we spend our days and our lives does matter.

Make today count.

Jake