No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.

Charles Dickens

Last night I started listening to Zig Ziglar’s seminar entitled "Born to Win" and he referenced the quote above.

It really struck me, especially in reference to Zig’s train of thought at the time. Zig was talking about how each of us is valuable and how we should never talk down about ourselves.

And the simple framework offered by Charles Dickens in this quote clarified this thought for me.

No one is useless who serves someone else in this world.

Think about yourself and your life.

I guarantee that each of us serves someone else every day.

At the very least, we work at Mavidea, a business built around service.

What an opportunity! We have the opportunity to be useful every day, and we get paid for it.

Make it a point today to find someone to be of service to. Look for those opportunities to be useful in your life and you will be amazed at what you find.

You will find a son or daughter needing their father or mother.

You will find a husband or wife that needs your love.

You will find friends and family whose burdens could be lightened.

You will find customers and coworkers that need to see a servant heart in another.

You will find strangers seeking for others to show them that this world isn’t quite as cold and heartless as they supposed.

You will find yourself, serving and becoming something bigger and better every time you seize an opportunity to serve.

Make it a great day full of service to others.

Jake

"Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."

CS Lewis

Zachary Dale Warmbir was born yesterday to Jamie and Charlotte.

As I thought of them yesterday I was reminded of the daily attitude email I had written previously when Erik and Bridget had Rowen.

I thought I would send it out again as all I could think about yesterday was the miracle that is a new life coming into this world.

Congrats again to Jamie and Charlotte.

Jake

Control.

It seems to me that one of the odd paradoxes of life is our ability to control nothing and everything at the same time.

We have no control over all the external things in our lives, yet we have complete control over ourselves and our attitude and this attitude is what attracts and brings about the external environment we desire.

I suppose that life is a balancing act between mastery of our own mind and letting the rest of life happen.

Below is a list of “to let go’s” that I found when searching for a topic for today. Maybe one of them will inspire you to let go of something that is holding you back.

Make it a great week.

Jake

To let go does not mean to stop caring, it means I can’t do it for someone else.

To let go is not to cut myself off, it’s the realization that I can’t control another.

To let go is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.

To let go is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.

To let go is not to try to change or blame another, it’s to make the most of myself.

To let go is not to care for, but to care about.

To let go is not to fix, but to be supportive.

To let go is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.

To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their own destinies.

To let go is not to be protective, it’s to permit another to face reality.

To let go is not to criticize, or regulate anyone, but to try to become what I dream I can do.

To let go is to fear less, and to love more.

I have recently been listening to Good to Great by Jim Collins.

I wanted to share one of his concepts from the book about taking personal responsibility.

He called it the window vs. the mirror.

He explains that great leaders look out the window when seeking to apportion praise and adulations for things accomplished. Even to the extent of crediting "luck" when not finding something specific out that window to give the credit to.

This is in contrast to those less successful leaders that looked out the window when seeking to apportion blame or to understand how and why things didn’t go there way. Again, these people blamed "luck" (the bad kind in this case) when they couldn’t find a specific cause, person or issue to affix the blame to.

When poor leaders looked for the place to apportion credit or offer the proverbial high-five, they looked in the mirror. They looked to their own egos and accomplishments when looking back at how their company performed.

In stark contrast, the successful leaders looked in the mirror to apportion blame. When asked why something went awry, they blamed themselves and took personal responsibility for those things that didn’t pan out according to plans.

I don’t think you have to be a management guru or notable author to figure out that these principles apply whether you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or if you are a homeless beggar on the street.

Next time you have some blame or reward to dole out, just picture a mirror and a window in your mind’s eye before you do so.

Jake

Mowing the yard is not on my list of favorite things to do. But, while mowing the yard the other day, I got a pleasant surprise.

I was mowing along and then happened to look up at our front porch. I saw two little girls and their mom cheering me along as mowed.

If you know our two little ones, you know that they can get excited over virtually anything, so this isn’t an email to explain how praiseworthy my mowing skills are.

The point of today’s email is that we all need a cheerleader sometimes. Sometimes you just need a little pick me up from someone in your life cheering you on towards your goals.

Having my own cheerleading crew certainly lifted my spirits.

Think today about whose spirits you can lift.

Who in your life needs a cheerleader?

Who needs someone jumping up and down in excitement for them?

Find that someone in your life and cheer them on.

Speaking of cheerleaders, I couldn’t resist sending out this clip:

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/Cheerleaders-Cold-Opening/1355399

Jake

“A poor sailor blames the wind.”

I heard this quote the other day and it stuck in my head.

Kind of self-explanatory, so I won’t write much about it.

Today is a more of a reminder.

If you want to be the best you can be, you must not blame the circumstances of your life, you must learn to turn them into positives.

You can’t blame the wind.

Jake

Today is officially tax day for this year in the United States.

I am going to suggest that we all work toward becoming happy taxpayers.

We must learn to gladly pay the prices for living in this great nation of ours.

Think of all the good things paid for with your tax dollars:

· Sidewalks

· Streets

· Firemen

· Policemen

· Armed forces

I think we should learn to take it as a point of pride to help pay for those things that make our nation so great. Being able to participate in such a system (with all its imperfections) is a blessing.

Make it a great day.

Jake