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We might never actually boast, but we might live our life dominated by the boasting self - critical, judgmental, and quietly superior. In the boasting self, praise due to God turns in on ourselves.

Poet Maya Angelou once wrote, “I’ve learned rosy people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Make sure your children feel your love more than anything else.

Relinquish your children to God’s care. “God, I release my children to your loving care and tender mercies.”

Cs Lewis wrote, “hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.” Your child’s failures may well become the foundation for a whole new life. This is the power of redemption.

Whenever we experience loss, we need to grieve it. If we don’t grieve the relationship we once had with our children, we won’t be able to embrace the new relationship we want to have with them.

The best decision is always one that does not enable dependencies

Be your child’s biggest cheerleader

You must love them enough to let them go.
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Hard as it is, the role you play in your children’s love must diminish in order for them to transition from adolescence to responsible adulthood

No one seems to realize how much we are driven by FEAR, the essential component of human personality. Everything else - from ambition to love to despair - derives in some way from this single powerful emotion… Much to my disappointment, I have concluded there is no such thing as perfect control. I have come to understand, however that the illusion of perfect control can amount to the same thing.

Number two is always hungry because she never sleeps. A person needs a great deal of energy to stay awake all the time, and thus a great deal of food.

In the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work… you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions: knowing that your short time here on earth has been well spent. And that it mattered.

Non business example of a coach and building up the high school XC team.

The story of Walt Disney… he decided that Disney could build something much better perhaps even the best in the world… the whole idea is to bring a smile to a child’s face. 🥹

Those who turn good to great are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake. Those who build and perpetuate mediocrity, in contrast, are motivated more by the fear of being left behind.

Much of the answer to the question of “good to great” lies in the discipline to do whatever it takes to become the best within carefully selected arenas and then to seek continual improvement. from there… everyone would like to be the best, but organizations lack the discipline to figure out with egoless clarity… they lack disciple to rinse their cottage cheese

To let people languish in uncertainty for months or years, stealing precious time in their lives that tenth could use to move on to something else, when in the end they aren’t going to make it anyway - that would be ruthless. To deal with it right up front and let people get on with their lives - that is rigorous.

The best hiring decisions often came from people with no industry or business experience. In one case, he hired a manager who’d been captured twice during WWII and escaped both times. “I thought that anyone who could do that shouldn’t have trouble with business.”

Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well (and if they cannot find a specific person or event to give credit to, they credit good luck). At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly.

Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce results. They will sell the mills or fire their brother, if that’s what it takes to make the company great.

Darwin smith, CEO of Kimberly-Clark, when asked by a journalist how he described his management styles he said “eccentric.” He was a man who carried no airs of self-importance. He found his favorite companionship among plumbers and electricians and spent his vacations rumbling around his Wisconsin farm in the can of a backhoe digging holes and moving rocks. He was not meek or soft. He was Fierce.

As one of my favorite professors once said, “The best students those who never quite believe their professors.” He also said, “one ought not to reject the data merely because one does not like what the data implies.” I offer everything herein for your thoughtful consideration, not blind acceptance. You’re the judge and jury. Let the evidence speak.

“People are your most important asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The RIGHT people are.

Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.

Good is the enemy of great.

Sometimes you’ve just got to stop and remind yourself that there’s another way. Take a deep breath. Let the anger settle. It’s best not to act out of anger.

Sorry for the harsh words last night. I woke up this morning wishing we could end each battle with a hug. But we’re both stubborn and saying “I love you” no longer comes easily. I preach and punish when I should be telling you how proud you make me… the past often serves as a guide for the future… I pray you always know how deeply you were loved.

The part of you that you think is so unlovable, so ugly, so broken, that’s what people need to hear…”

If there’s a line between bravery and stupidity, no one knows where it is.