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Confidence By Design

March 4, 2012 in God, Life with 0 Comments

Over time, I have come to gain an in-depth understanding of how I’m wired. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know ALL there is as I still struggle to grasp my reactions to certain stimuli. What understanding I do have has come from a myriad of sources from formal assessments (recommendations at the end of this post) to just good ole time on the planet. And what’s amazing is that with greater understand comes greater confidence.

My friends over at dictionary.com define confidence as: full trust; belief in the powers, trustworthiness, or reliability of a person or thing.

Confidence to me is being able to walk into a given situation and believe you will succeed ahead of time. Confidence puts a swagger in your step and it allows you to hold your head up high. It also helps to calm nerves and allows for clearer thought and action.

Tukey Hunt II

December 7, 2011 in Fun, Life, Web Design with 2 Comments

Turkey Hunt II
I thought it might be a good idea to document the second annual Turkey Hunt – a scavenger hunt meets Geo-caching meets family fun activity I developed last year and decided to continue again this year. I knew that I had to at least maintain the level of complexity to fun ratio that we all had last year, but I was really trying to do better. I’ll let you be the judge…

The participants were my brother and his family and my family – not even my wife was privy to the workings of the Hunt, which meant she could play right along. We also had to do this on Friday night after the Arkansas vs. LSU game (we won’t go into detail on this subject) because Saturday was supposed to be rainy all day. Luckily, I planned for rain.

This year started with three anonymous texts to my wife, brother and his wife. Each with one word each that when you put them together kicked off the Hunt officially. The words were UNDER, WELCOME, MAT. There they found an envelope with a letter stating the Hunt was now underway should they want to play.

Two Truths

May 20, 2011 in God, Life, Love, Philosophy with 0 Comments

My friend Matt and I, from time to time, engage in friendly chatter regarding the core truths of the Christian faith. I love it because he is very grounded in his faith and seems to be able to filter out the noise pretty well. Also, he’s pretty much the only one who will actively comment on anything I say online, which wins him an extra cookie in my book.

The last go around was between two topics and it was a very short serve and volley:

THE SERVE [Matt]
Justification = just as if we never sinned & just as if we had always obeyed

Read it again because you might miss the profundity in the brevity. Now read it one more time. Isn’t that wonderful and so absolutely true!

Whenever I see the term “Justification,” I immediately hear the word “Sanctification” in my mind. It’s like when I hear the name “Marsha”, I hear, “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha…” from the Brady Bunch. So, I replied with:

THE VOLLEY [Me]
Sanctification = Proof positive that there’s always room for improvement

Now I sometimes say things to gauge the reaction of someone – especially in church circles these days, but this isn’t one of them. I truly believe that our justified lives are one big work in progress that has no ending point this side of heaven.

The point is that everyone around you is some sort of work in progress. And your Christian friends are being worked by the Creator of the Universe, who can be trusted to finish that work. May the Grace and Love of Jesus abound in how we engage those around us.

The Great Turkey Hunt

November 29, 2010 in Fun, Life with 2 Comments

I LOVE puzzles and this year, I decided to spice up the Thanksgiving holiday by creating a modern-day treasure hunt. Everyone was coming to our house and it was all coming together quite nicely.

It all started with a delivery by my neighbor that had a box with a letter and a bag of items inside. He relayed a story of how he came into possession of the box (great job BTW) that was very Indiana Jones/Men in Black-ish. The kids were in awe and as soon as the door was closed, they were in the box.

The letter outlined the game and had one hint on it that led to a map where 12 plastic bottles were hidden. On the back, it had what looked like notes from someone who had been tracking the treasure for some time (ala Myst). Included were GPS coordinates to the bottles and the plan was to walk the neighborhood and find these bottles, but the weather had a different idea as it rained the entire day. So, we loaded up the van and a follow car and headed out.

It was quite a sight to see – me and three little boys running around in the rain looking for little plastic bottles with only the GPS unit guiding the way. After crossing back and forth over the one square mile that made up the playing field, we finally had all 12 bottles in hand. Now it was back home to find out what they contained.

Inside each bottle was a multiple-choice Thanksgiving trivia question and each was marked with a roman numeral from 1 to 12.

I had the best time designing the game and the treasure was worth the effort and we now have a memory that will last a lifetime, which is the point of holidays I have to say. Good luck and post a comment on how you did.

‘Change your Heart, Change your Life’ by Gary Smalley

October 18, 2010 in Books, God, Life with 1 Comment

I was turned onto this book by a dear friend who happens to be a psychologist. Our conversation that night was around why people do what they do. I was fresh off some training with some Franklin Covey guys where they used an illustration (Fig. 1) that shows our behaviors are shaped by our beliefs and those behaviors produces results that either reinforce or challenge our beliefs. Belief Behavior ResultsThe point is that if you want to see change in your life, just changing what you “do” won’t produce any sustainable results unless we also change what we believe.

That’s when my friend said I should read Gary Smalley’s book, Change your Heart, Change your Life. He went on to tell me that it was a book about just what the Franklin Covey guys illustrated and was, in part, a personal testimony of this life-change technique in Smalley’s life.

So, I picked up the eBook for my iPhone and started reading it, but I didn’t read it alone. I invited a friend to read it with me (HINT: accountability technique was just disclosed). In the very first chapter, I was hooked. If the rest of the book delivered on just half of what Smalley claimed to do, I would be a better man for it.

In essence, the book walks you through how to both identify the beliefs that shape negative behavior and how to replace them with Scriptural Truth and in essence transform your life into one that is described as “abundant” by Jesus.

In just a few short weeks, I was indeed thinking and believing things differently as was my reading buddy. We both saw how those new beliefs had an internal and external impact on our lives. I highly recommend this great little book that can help unlock the potential for the life God desires for us all.

In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that this book contains the techniques and principles needed to kick that nagging behavior that is stealing life from you over and over. It is a must for men and certainly won’t be a waste of time for women.

Forced Diversification – Beneficial?

September 28, 2010 in Business, Leadership, Life with 0 Comments

I saw a post advertising an entire web portal to making sure diversity is achieved in business. I had to stop and think for a second. Is forced diversity really that beneficial? Don’t get me wrong, I think racial profiling in business is not only wrong, it is egregious.

As the head of a multi-racial family, I hope our culture advances beyond even noticing skin color, but for now, it seems, this is still something at the top of mind for some. But I have to wonder just how much headway is gained when you force a business to be diverse in it’s makeup.

From the businesses standpoint, there is extra cost in the form of compliance adherence and that can lead to resentment. For the hired, I wonder how it feels to be hired in large part because of your race and not solely on your ability to do the job better than anyone else. That’s got to produce some doubt and maybe some frustration as well.

Finally – this seems to keep the issue of race near the top of the list in our culture, which I think is counterproductive…but I’m a white male in my thirties…what do I know?

I’m more interested in what you know…am I way off base on this? I’m serious about learning something here.

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