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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.

Here was the magic of mothers- the simple reminder that the same road a child travels to unknown lands can also be used to return.

The heart finds a thousand ways to break when someone dies.

This was the whole point of my time with Reb and Henry: not the conclusion, but the search, the study, the journey to belief. You can’t fit the Lord in a box. But you can gather stories, traditions, wisdom, and in time, you needn’t lower the shelf; God is already nearer to thee.

Nothing haunts us like the things we don’t say.

But you can touch everything and be connected to nothing.

I know what I believe. It’s only soul. But I constantly tell our people: you should be convinced of the authenticity of what you have, but you must also be humble enough to say that we don’t know everything. And since we don’t know everything, we must accept that another person may believe something else.

Would you want the whole world to look alike? No. The genius of life is its variety… it’s like being a musician. If you found THE note, and you kept hitting that note all the time, you would go nuts. It’s the blending of the different notes that makes the music.

I think people expect too much from marriage today. They expect perfection. Buy that is not the human experience. Like Sarah says, 20 good minutes here, 40 good minutes there, it adds up to something beautiful. The trick is when things aren’t so great, you don’t junk the whole thing. It’s ok to have any argument. It’s ok that the other one nudges you, bothers you. It’s part of being close to someone.

Remember the only difference between “marital” and “martial” is here you put the “I.” He also, on passion, told the joke about a man who complains to his doctor that his wife, when angry, gets historical. You mean hysterical, the doctor says. No, historical, she lists the history of every wrong thing I’ve ever done!

When we spoke a few weeks ago, I asked you what you thought about your parents…
You said they weren’t perfect but…
But they don’t need improvement.
This is very insightful because it means you are willing to accept people as they are. Nobody is perfect. Not even mom and dad. That’s ok.

No two recollections of the event are alike because facts never tell the whole story.

Leadership is not a license to do less; it is a responsibility to do more. Leadership takes work. It takes time and energy. Leadership is always a commitment to human beings.

Feeling a shared burden is one of the things that brings us together. Less hardship means less of a need to cooperate, which means less oxytocin. Few of us volunteer to help people in need before the natural disaster - only after it… abundance destroys value. It is not when things come easily that we appreciate them, but when we have to work hard for them.. it is the struggle that helps give that thing value.

There is no getting away from the truth: there is simply nothing that can replace real, face-to-face human interaction… not only are virtual relationships a poor substitute for real ones, but social media can actually make us feel lonelier.

Addiction, in any form, undermines relationships. The desire for isn’t at gratification allows no time for relationships to develop. Digital communication can stand in the way of depending our relationships. And social media can deny us the chance to create real relationships to begin with. Perhaps, even worse, it can be devastating to our own sense of self-worth.

This economy is bad. We should be figuring out how to give the employees more, not less. The difference between Costco and companies like Welch GE is that Costco used layoffs as a last resort, whereas GEs of the world use them as routine strategy… customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.

Feeling uncertain and insecure, our ability to create relationships and trust in any scalable or meaningful way is near impossible. And when they happens, our work suffers, the culture suffers and the whole organization suffers…

That’s why God blessed humanity with the gift of grand parenthood. It’s supposed to be our chance to enjoy the things we were too tired, too anxious to enjoy the first go-round. Our chance to correct the mistakes we made.

Leadership is not a rank worn on a collar. It is a responsibility that hinges almost entirely on character. Leadership is about integrity, honesty, and accountability. All components of trust. Leadership comes from not telling us what we want to hear, but rather what we need to hear. To be a true leader, to engender deep trust and loyalty, starts with telling the truth.

In physics, power is the transfer of energy. We measure the power of a lightbulb in watts. The higher the wattage, the more electricity is transferred into light and heat and the more powerful the bulb. Organizations and their leaders operate exactly the same way. The more energy is transferred from the top of the org to those doing the job, the more powerful the org and the leader.

The goal of a leader is to give no orders. Leaders are to provide direction and intent and allow others to figure out what to do and how to get there. The challenge most organizations face is that they train people to comply, not think. If people only comply, we can’t expect people to take responsibility for their actions. Responsibility is doing what is right. Obedience is doing as we are told.

And that’s what the best leaders do. They share what they know, ask knowledgeable people for help performing their duties and make introductions to create new relationships within their networks. Poor leaders hoard these things, falsely believing it is their intelligence, rank or relationships that make them valuable.

If he was going to succeed, he would have to learn to trust his bottom-ranked crew more than he trusted himself… he couldn’t have his crew blindly follow his orders… now he needed everyone to think, not just do.

Just as money can’t buy love, the internet can’t buy deep, trusting relationships.

“The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic.” Joseph Stalin

It’s not how smart the people in the organization are; it’s how well they work together that is the true indicator of future success or the ability to manage through struggle. Trust & commitment are feelings that we get from… deep in limbic brain… we can’t just tell someone to trust us. There are all sorts of things we need to do first before someone will feel any sense of loyalty or devotion.

“My expertise in sadness is hard earned. But I realize more and more that it is a gift. Living with sadness, accepting it, is easier than trying to pretend it isn’t there. It is another of life’s greatest mysteries that sadness and joy can coexist so compatibly with one another. In fact, I wonder if, on this side of heaven, either one can be complete without the other.”

“Whether the art is sculpture, farming, teaching, lawmaking, medicine, music, or raising a child, if love is not in it - the the very heart of it - it might be skillful, marketable, or popular but I doubt it is truly good. Nothing is what it’s supposed to be if love is not at the core.” pg. 119