​I am a promise.

I am a possibility

I am a promise with a capital P

I am great big bundle of potentiality

And I am learning to heard God’s voice

And I am trying to make the right choice

I am a promise to be anything God wants me to be.

Annie and her fellow preschool graduates sang this song last night at her graduation.

Graduation season is such a great time of year.

This season I have had the great fortune of handing out scholarships for Heartland at a couple of high school’s senior award nights.

These ceremonies all have reminded me of just how much potential is out there.

Each of us has potential to do things we can barely dream of.

And then when you add them all together and work together as a team, anything is possible.

That is what is so exciting about Mavidea.

We have pooled together the potential of a bunch of great people. When I look at all that potential, I can’t help but get excited for the future.

This is why we spend so much time on things like culture, values, purpose, trust and teamwork. Only by working together do we get to realize all that we could be.

Take an inventory today of all the potential around you. Take a moment to be thankful. Then get started using it and leveraging it for others.

You will be amazed at the results.

Make it a great day.

Jake

If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap.

If you want happiness for a day, go fishing.

If you want happiness for a month, get married.

If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune.

If you want happiness for a lifetime, serve others.

Someone recently sent me this little bit of wisdom about happiness and service.

It’s tempting to find short term and short lived paths to happiness.

And there isn’t anything wrong with most of these activities, but we can’t be surprised when the effects wear off.

Long term happiness comes from service to others.

I’m sure you have heard this before and if you haven’t, you probably have already gotten to this conclusion intuitively.

The question becomes, what do you do about it?

Keep it simple.

Find an opportunity to serve, every day.

Do the dishes.

Hold the door for a stranger.

Go the extra mile for the customer.

Stay after at work for a few minutes to help a co-worker.

Serve. Every day.

Make it a great day of service.

Jake ​

Garbage in. Garbage out.

This famous programming saying has many applications to the rest of our lives as well.

It probably most obviously applies to what we read, watch and listen to.

But what if we looked at ourselves as the program?

We are programmed to respond in a certain way. Going beyond the way you are programmed requires reprogramming.

Your daily habits can be thought of as a sort of program that produces certain results.

If you want to change the results, you have to change the daily habits.

If you want to lose weight, you have to change your diet.

If you want to get more done, you have to change what you do.

If you want to spend more time with loved ones, you have to change your schedule.

What change(s) do you need to make?

Make it a great day.

Jake ​

Children aren’t very good at listening to their elders, but they never fail at imitating them. – James Ballwin

I heard this quote recently and with three little kids at home it immediately stuck with me.

The quote wasn’t for parents though, it was for leaders.

And in some sense, we are all leaders. We all have someone following us in some respect.

That’s why this quote matters so much.

When influencing those around us to be and do their best, it is our actions that will drive the biggest impact.

And when we see less than desirable results, we must first look in the mirror.

If you saw someone imitating your behaviors would you be proud or embarrassed?

If you saw someone else following your diet plan would you be encouraged or discouraged?

If you saw someone else following your money plan would you be hopeful or dismayed?

If you saw someone else talk to their spouse the way you talk to yours would you be happy for them or worried for them?

This is why personal development and improvement is such an important force. Not only do you get the benefits, but so do those around you.

Make it a great day.

Jake

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JD – The jerk store called, they are running out of you.

EB* – What’s the difference, you’re their all-time best seller.

MS – Politics is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think. – Patrick Lencioni

BAD – It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. – Henry David Thoreau

JW – If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you will never get it done. – The Master – Bruce Lee

The quotes above from Thoreau and Bruce Lee remind me of one of the great balancing acts of life.

We must balance between lunging from desperate action to desperate action while making sure we don’t spend too much time thinking about a thing while nothing gets done.

We must act, with wisdom and thoughtfulness.

We must think and ponder, with action as the result.

Is there an area of your life where you are out of balance?

Too many impulsive decisions at the grocery store that ruin your diet and budget?

Too much planning and thinking about the perfect workout plan while your pants size grows?

Thinking really hard about the right thing to say to mend that broken heart/relationship while it slowly withers away?

Saying “yes” to every request for your time while missing the deadlines/objectives you have already set?

Life is a balance between thinking and acting. Look closely to see if you need more balance. And then take action to get it straightened out.

Make it a great weekend.

Jake

http://youtu.be/xHRkHFxD-xY

These lines really stuck out to me:

I got my city right behind me, if I fall, they got me.

Learn from that failure, gain humility, and then we keep marching.

Reminded me of Mavidea. We all have Mavidea right behind us, every day. And they have our back.

When we fail, we gain the humility of realizing we don’t know everything and there is more to learn.

And then we keep marching. We never quit.

As we face uncertain times, the first step is looking adversity in the eye and deciding not to quit.

Every step after is a step towards victory.

Make it a great day.

Jake ​

Andy Stanley – empty my cup

My job is not to fill other people’s cups, it is to empty mine.

It will never be enough to fill theirs, but it allows all the good stuff to get put back into yours.

At last week’s LeaderCast, Andy Stanley shared an interesting analogy that I thought was really important for us to understand.

My paraphrase for what he said: My job is not to fill other people’s cups, it is to empty mine. It will never be enough to fill theirs, but it allows all the good stuff to get put back into yours.

He was speaking specifically about leadership, but I think it might just be true for all relationships.

Our job is fill our cup with positive thoughts, emotions, feelings and activities.

Then pour those out on others.

Not because we are filling their cup, but because we want to add to the happiness of those we care about.

Our happiness does not depend on others around us, it depends on the level to which we do our best to serve and love them.

We must do our best out of service and love, that is the only part we control.

Is there a relationship in your life where the other person’s happiness (or lack thereof) control’s too much of yours?

Make it a great day.

Jake ​

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages. – Henry Ford

In honor of Small Business Week, I thought I would write something unique to small businesses. As I was thinking about what is positive and special about small businesses, I thought of this quote from Henry Ford.

Part of the magic of small business is that there are less steps between the customer who pays the wages and those who earn those wages.

The smaller the organization, the smaller the gap.

And the more closely tied are the wages and the work, the more those doing the work want and strive to deliver value.

When you put good people in a position to succeed, the results are always amazing.

Make it a great day.

Jake ​

You can’t selectively numb emotions. – Brene Brown

After hearing about Brene Brown in the training we received a few weeks ago, I went out and found and listened to her TED Talks.

I think this quote came from her talk on vulnerability: https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.

The idea that we can’t selectively numb emotions really struck with me. I couldn’t shake the idea that the reason so many spend their lives in mediocrity might be that they have chosen to numb themselves as a result of some bad experience.

Whether we numb ourselves with a serious dependency like drugs or with something seemingly innocent like cupcakes (hey, what’s he got against cupcakes?), the result is the same: we also can’t feel as much joy and happiness in the good moments.

And maybe when we can’t feel as much joy in the moments of our highest triumphs, we don’t work so hard for them, or maybe their just not worth it.

Then we settle.

We settle for less joy because it means less pain.

We settle for less money because it means less risk.

We settle for less relationship because it means less heartbreak.

We settle for less life because we might lose ours.

Hopefully this TED talk can serve as a wake up call for you (if you needed one, or a good reminder if you needed one of those). Are you not allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough to really reach your potential?

Make it a great day.

Jake

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The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children. – Jessica Lange

What a great quote about motherhood.

I’ve never been a mother, but it seems to me that there is a magical moment (it happened with our three the moment they were born) where a mother stops being a regular person and starts being a mom.

A moment when a woman makes a decision to always put their little ones needs before their own, or at the very least realizes that that’s how it should be.

In this way, motherhood serves as an example of what human beings are capable of.

By placing the needs of their children first, mothers are capable of amazing things.

Getting very little sleep.

Always eating last.

Eyes in the back of their head.

Holding down two jobs.

Monumental acts of strength while protecting their children.

Mothers serve as proof of how great each of us can be when we live and love selflessly.

Make it a great day.

Jake ​