The Fire Within

We all know time is precious and it is the only resource we can't make more of. Yet we continue to waste it and continue to forget how precious our time is. In any activity there is the task, or what we want to get done. Around it are additional factors that determine the outcome of the task. There is quality, the tools we have, the money invested and the time it takes to get the task done.  Over the summer I built a retaining wall. It was one of the most time intensive projects I've ever done. It required more time to have a finished product I could be proud of. Taking the time to do it right ensured I won't have headaches later on of things shifting and becoming uneven. That would cause it to look terrible and possibly require me to redo it which would not be fun. I could have spent less time on it but it wouldn't have turned out as nice. I could have spent more money on it and hired a professional to build it for me.  In any project people will sacrifice something ba...

What people want to do is a question we start asking people very early. We ask kids from an early age what they want to be when they grow up. My first grader already answers very confidently that she wants to be a teacher when she grows up. I believe it comes from her admiration she has always had for her teachers. As kids get older we start asking what their plans are after high school, are they going to college, what do they plan on studying. When we talk with someone in college or a parent of a college student we ask what their major is. Sometimes in those conversations kids and young adults don't know. My dad joke response is usually, "That's okay, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up." I'm in my 40's and I think I am finally pretty clear about what I want to do in my life. Maybe it means I'm finally all grown up. I recently heard a stat the average millennial has had 7 different jobs in their life. The irony i...

As we get rolling on 2019 the goal setting is well under way, the resolutions are still in tact and the changes that you've promised to yourself many times are renewed telling yourself this time you're really going to do it. For some though, you might be feeling stuck, like you aren't really sure what your goals are for the year. The idea of goal setting and resolutions got me thinking about purpose. Often times we fail because we forget why the goal is important. Two quotes entered my mind around finding our purpose as we start 2019. We don't get burned out because of what we do. We get burned out because we forget why we do it. Purpose keeps you fresh! - Jon Gordon We are each created by God with a unique purpose to fulfill in this world. If it feels like you are just going through the motions and it is an unsettling feeling, that is because that is not who you were created to be. We aren't all going to be famous, manage companies, write a best seller or run...

My first ever blog post was in 2006 (I just reread that, can't believe it has been that long), I spent a year back then exploring this online writing forum craze that took off and trying to have a voice as I attempted to sell technology solutions. I think that helped show me that I didn't really like trying to market myself and wasn't really a salesman at heart. After a career change I realized that I still had a desire to write within me. For the next 10 years I was trying to figure out what I wanted to say, who my audience was, what my "voice" was. But I failed more times than I care to remember, never knowing how I was unique, or if what I wanted to say was any different than any number of writers who were far more talented. I told myself that it was pointless because nobody would want to read what I had to say. I don't know if I needed to struggle for 11 years to figure this out but one year ago a switch flipped. I became determined to set an interval of...

I have never in my life gone surfing or rock climbing. The real rock climbing that is, not the kind with the plastic walls and the harness with the person assigned to ensure you don't fall. I don't think I ever will either, too many other interests to do in my life. So I really had no draw to read Let My People Go Surfing ,  but for some reason a book I had won years ago was the one that I happened to pick up off my shelf and was very quickly drawn in by. It is the story of Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. It takes you through the history of the company and how it established its values. The second part of the book expounds on the philosophies that Yvon keeps as the focus of his life and what his business stands for. If you are in business there are obvious examples that you can take out for yourself, help to guide you on developing your own philosophies to guide you. But the really intriguing part for me is how it has made me rethink how I shop and how I'm going...

Open doors have been on my mind a lot this year. It started at church when our theme for 2017 is "Year of Open Doors". One of the things I put down for a declaration for 2017 was that God would open doors for me in my work. I have a good job but I still felt like it was not where I was meant to be. I had a picture in my head of where I thought things should go, what the right path was for me. But it felt like every time I thought there was an open door that I should head towards, the door was closed to me. When we find a door closed that we want to go through we often react in a way we shouldn't. We get mad, we ask why the world is against us. It seems like it is the right thing but the devil is trying to stop us. We try to attack the door, kick it in, storm it like a SWAT team. This is the door I'm meant to go through, it has to open! Maybe we need to stop and ask if we really need to be persistent in achieving our goal or do we need to realize that the door is bei...

A few years ago I went through an exercise to start a company, nothing too exciting, just needed an entity that if I did any independent work I would have an actual organization to send an invoice from. It was also a good learning experience, it is actually a fairly simple and inexpensive process to open a sole proprietorship. The hardest part was picking a name for my company. I've had the opportunity to be involved in naming new products before so I was aware how hard it was going to be. The challenge comes in making sure the name you select isn't taken already. You brainstorm names that try to resonate with your customers and what you want you business to stand for, then you start looking them up only to find that someone else beat you to it. Thanks to some experience looking at Greek in some of my Bible studies I got the idea that maybe I could find some Greek words that fit the essence of what I wanted a business of mine to stand for. I looked at Greek words that I liked...