personal growth
Why You Need to Set Personal Goals This Year
One mark of high-achievers is goal-setting. Most of the successful people I know make it a priority to place targets at various points in the coming year and shoot for them. You might already be working on your list of goals now. It could be increasing your income, launching a product, or starting a new…
Read MoreKeeping Between the Ditches
Have you ever driven a car with terrible alignment? Even on a perfectly straight highway, the vehicle will drift into a ditch unless the driver constantly compensates for its misalignment. As part of normal driving, the springs in a car’s suspension system gradually stretch out, and the vehicle’s highly calibrated internal components get knocked off-kilter.…
Read MoreGiving Intentional Thanks
This Monday at The John Maxwell Company we had our annual “work family” Thanksgiving dinner. It was enjoyable, incredible, and phenomenal to say the least. What made it even more special were the people we had there. Although, the thought did cross my mind as I saw the turkey and dressing continue to diminish what…
Read MoreAvoiding Dead Air Time
Connecting is the leadership ability to identify with and relate to people in such a way that it increases your influence with them. Connecting demands constant attention on the part of the leader so that people stay tuned in to the vision, values, and priorities of the organization. The trick is to keep the connection…
Read MoreOVERCOMING RESISTANCE INSTEAD OF BEING OVERWHELMED BY IT
Parents of toddlers and teenagers understand a simple truth about being a leader: sooner or later you encounter fierce resistance. Leadership feels a lot like peddling uphill, swimming upstream, or running into a stiff headwind. The challenge is to overcome the resistance instead of being overwhelmed by it. 1) Be Aware that Motion Creates Friction…
Read MoreHow to Think Straight and Concentrate
We train our brain by the things we do. For example, experienced taxicab drivers have an abnormally large hippocampus, the portion of the brain responsible for navigation. Veteran violinists or keyboardists have an expanded motor cortex, the area of the brain associated with fine motor skills. Our brain is literally shaped by what we repeatedly…
Read MoreThe Not So Secret Path to Greatness
The young girl skipped onto the stage of the dilapidated, half-filled theater hall, her thin voice competing with the noise of an unruly audience. Midway through the first verse of her first song, a beer bottle smashed onto the floor just a yard or so in front of her. The child’s voice quaked momentarily, but…
Read MoreCharacter: who we are on the inside
I believe it is a normal human desire to be concerned about how we look on the outside. There’s nothing wrong with that. What can get us in trouble is worrying more about how we look on the outside than about how we really are on the inside. Our reputation comes from what others believe…
Read MoreTraits of a Successful Failure
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”- Thomas A. Edison Nobody likes to fail. But if we’re honest, we understand that failure is a part of life. There is no success without some amount of failure. Great inventors like Thomas Edison experience a lot of failures on the way to…
Read MoreOn cultivating curiosity
I love curious people and enjoy spending time with them, conversing with them. Their excitement for knowledge and learning is contagious. I often wonder why more people aren’t curious. So many people seem to be indifferent. Why don’t they ask why? Are some people simply born without the desire to learn? Are some people just…
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