PRODUCTIVITY

In light of where our nation and culture is today, I believe it is important to remember how we got here. 

First, God has been gracious and blessed us greatly. Secondly, historically we have been a people of hard work which has led to great PRODUCTIVITY.  Work that has achieved great things and helped many people.  So, thinking through this I am reminding myself of the necessity to be responsible for what I have been given and not to expect to be given everything in life and stand against a government promoting welfare instead of independence.

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not." - Thomas Jefferson

You can always find some exception to the rule but this is why it is important to remember the reason for work because there is no evidence of consistent high-level performance without experience or practice. 

The conclusion: it is not probable to achieve greatness without work....hard work....and lots of it.

It is also important to note that we are not hostage to some naturally granted level of talent either. We can make ourselves better...we can rise above the average. This truth about hard work is not easy or popular. People dream of waking up one morning with everything they have ever wanted and believe they can coast to fame and riches or someone will discover that they are brilliant and they won't have to put in the work.  But that view is tragically constraining, because when someone hits life's inevitable bumps in the road (and I am sorry to be the one to tell you but you are going to have troubles and problems), they then conclude that they just aren't gifted enough or decide it is just too hard and give up.  

When you get to this moment, (and you will),  REMEMBER: this is where you pray and ask God to help you and then call someone who will tell you DON'T GIVE UP!  DON'T QUIT!  KEEP TRYING! I AM WITH YOU!

I can guarantee you it won't be easy, it will be demanding and you may have to start over again and again but the alternative is worse....a complete waste of your talents and guaranteed failure. 

Proverbs 14:23 says this:  All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. 

Let's continue to encourage ourselves and our government to take action, work, and move our country toward PRODUCTIVITY not just "mere talk" which leads to poverty physically and mentally.

A CLUE about Quick Response

When you were growing up did you ever want to be Sherlock Holmes?  I was intrigued by the secret clues and codes, the cryptic vocabulary and stealthy ways of passing secret messages. When I was in elementary school I did a lot of reading about secret code languages and even attempted to develop one of my own that I could share with friends.....of course you have heard of it....the Thomason code.  Ok so it didn't catch on but at the time I thought it was very clever :-)

Perhaps that explains some of my new found fascination with QR codes, which have been all the rage over the last year. QR stands for Quick Response Codes, they are those little black and white squares that resemble patterns of tetris game. QR codes were invented in Japan in the 1980s and have been popular in Asia for a while. They can be scanned by a QR code reader on your mobile phone and linked to a Web page, text, phone numbers or special offers. When I first was introduced to the idea by my friend Amy, I wondered if people would "get it" and actually use them.  Now, you see them everywhere....an easy way to connect and a much more interactive way to receive information.

The best feature of QR codes is that they act as a bridge between the online and offline world. Also for you secret detective types, what's cool about QR codes they can be made out of anything. In the past year, I’ve seen some pretty crazy examples of QR codes made out of sand, carved into pumpkins, and even designed into hair styles!!  (ok that may be going to far...even for a sherlock holmes story!)

 

All you have to do to decipher the QR is to download an app on your smart phone and start scanning away when you see one!  There are many of these apps out there so give it a try and become that detective you have always wanted to be!

Here is one of our new customized QR....get a clue and give it a try!

I have a CHOICE

Why is it so much easier to have a negative attitude than a positive one?

If you want to live a longer, healthier life then you need to develop and maintain a positive attitude – it's now a fact thanks to a study from the two  Universities. Researchers followed and studied 1500 people for 7-years. All 1500 were in good health when the study started. Researchers followed how they aged.  What exactly did they discover? They found that people who maintained a positive attitude were significantly less likely to show signs of aging, they were less likely to become frail and were more likely to be stronger and healthier than those that had a negative attitude. If you have a doom and gloom attitude you're actually killing yourself and at the very least – you're negative attitude is just making you weaker.

The Bible proven to be true again:

 As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. [Proverbs 23:7]  

A positive attitude and choosing to be positive of course is not magic and is not a "EASY" button fixing everything in our life but it does have power in helping us overcome challenges and obstacles in our lives. 

This story is a great example:
 
Jerry is the kind of guy who is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!" He worked in the restaurant industry and was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant.

The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee the positive side of the situation.

If you ask Jerry about  his style of life he will reply, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.  I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life." 

One day as Jerry was working in his restaurant, he left the back door open and was held up at gun point by three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital.

About 6 months after the surgery a friend asked Jerry how he was doing, he replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins. Wanna see my scars?" The friend        declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place. “The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door," Jerry replied. "Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or I could choose to die. I chose to live."

"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" the friend asked. Jerry continued, "...the paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read 'he's a dead man.'

I knew I needed to take action." "There was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me," said Jerry. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes,' I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Bullets!' Over their laughter, I told them, 'I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.'"

Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. Every day we have the choice to live fully.

“For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else” -Winston Churchill

Today, my goal is that my attitude remains positive regardless of challenges I face.

WHEN YOU COME TO A FORK IN THE ROAD....

WHEN YOU COME TO A FORK IN THE ROAD.....TAKE IT - YOGI BERRA

After reading a blog post by Derek Sivers (sivers.org) I was inspired to brainstorm MORE options on a decision I am trying to make. I was exactly at this place a fork in the road and thinking I only had two options....but after reading this I realized there were more ways to think about the solution.  I hope it inspires you to look at options and be creative about your decision making process as well.

Blessings on all you are doing!  Chris

THERE ARE ALWAYS MORE THAN TWO OPTIONS! - by Derek Sivers

Lately I've been helping a lot of friends with decisions.  The common theme I've found is that they thought they had only two options.


That's not a decision. That's a self-created dilemma!  The way out is to realize there are always more than two options!


Backing up: When someone says they only have one option, they're really saying, “I have no choice,” and you know that's wrong. (At very least, add “do nothing” and “go insane” as choices.)


When they say they only have two options, beware.  It means they got stuck.  Once people get two options, they start comparing the pros and cons of those two, and forget to think of more options.


But remember those silly creative brainstorming exercises we did as kids?  As adults, people let the “real world” wear them down so much, they forgot that those lessons were not just for kids.


As an example, a friend was trying to decide between:


   1. sticking with his well-paying boring job

   2. or quitting to start his own company


I suggested some other options:


    * Fully delegate your new company. Just fund it and direct it. Hire a manager that understands your vision, and spend only an hour a day overseeing it.

    * Bring your new company idea to your boss, and propose it as a division of their company, so you can stay on salary.

    * Go into work 2 hours early, but spend the first 2 hours just setting up your new company. Use lunch breaks and downtime as well. Do this until the income from the new company is 50% of your salary, then quit.

    * Rent out your house for a year and be a house-sitter, to reduce your living expenses to almost-nothing, and take a year-long sabbatical, reading and learning as much as possible about this new industry you want to go into, so you can attack it with more confidence in a year when you return.

    * Decide this new business is a hobby, not a business. But you hate your existing job anyway, so find a new job that would allow you the flexibility to spend a good part of each day or week on this new hobby that makes you happy.

    * Go work for the leader in the field of your new company. Learn even more about that industry so when you're ready to launch your new company, you're doing it with full strategic advantage and connections.

    * Be the worst employee ever, and show up to your boring job every day but refuse to do any work.  Pretend to be super-busy all the time, but really just be working on your own company, on their dime. Use every sick-day and vacation day until scolded. Do this until fired.

    * Do neither, and move to New Zealand's South Island to be a tour guide on the hiking trails.

    * etc.


Some of those are intentionally silly, but made him say, “You made me realize I need a vacation before making a decision. I'm just feeling really stressed because of this new manager at work, and I was wanting a quick exit, but I think I need to confront this manager about our bad communication. It wasn't the new business that was inspiring me so much, but just needing to fix my current situation.”


Anyway - to my other friends out there who haven't come to me with decisions yet: Great insight only comes from opening your mind to many options. Brainstorm them all, from the hybrids to the ridiculous.


It takes under an hour, but has always helped my friends feel less stressed, think clearly, and honestly - get excited about a decision that used to feel like a dilemma.