UGA

Monday, January 11, 2010

Be A People Person

John Maxwell's book, Be A People Person, has some good advise. As always Maxwell does a great job communicate some important principles. I trust you will enjoy the quotes below:

The lease important word:
I (gets the least amount done)
The most important word:
We (gets the most amount done)—relationships
The two most important words:
Thank you – appreciation
The three most important words:
All is forgiven – forgiveness
The four most important words:
What is your opinion? – listening
The five most important words:
You did a good job – encouragement
The six most important words:
I want to know you better – understanding p. 29
The measure of a leader is not the number of people who serve him but the number of people he serves. p. 75
A chip on the shoulder indicates wood higher up! p. 149
If you know your action or decision was right, hang in there. Time will prove you out. p. 152
Concentrate on your mission – change your mistakes. Most people do exactly the opposite – they change their mission and concentrate on their mistakes. p. 153
The only real mistakes in life are the mistakes from which we learn nothing. p. 153
The goal of confrontation should be to help, not to humiliate. p. 153
Instead of putting others in their place, put yourself in their place. p. 156
Sandwich the criticism between praise at the beginning and encouragement at the end. p. 157
We teach what we know, but we reproduce what we are. p. 161
The most valuable gift you can give your little ones is the example of a clear, consistent, disciplined approach to faith in God. p. 162
Encouragement has the effect of a gentle rain; it causes steady growth. p. 162
I’m just a plowhand from Arkansas, but I have learned how to hold a team together – how to lift some men up, how to calm down others, until finally they’ve got one heartbeat together, a team. There’s just three things I’d ever say: If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes real good, then you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games for you. – Coach Bear Bryant. p. 164 – 165
People are unreasonably, illogical, and self-centered – love them anyway! If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives – do good anyway! If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies – succeed anyway! The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow – do good anyway! Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable – be honest and frank anyway! p. 165
The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest minds – think big anyway!
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs – fight for some underdog anyway!
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight – build anyway!
Give the world the best you’ve got and you’ll get kicked in the teeth – give the world the best you’ve got anyway! p. 166
C. T. Studd made a great statement about risk-taking: “Are gamblers for gold so many and gamblers for God so few?” This is the same missionary who, when cautioned against returning to Africa because of the possibility of his martyrdom, replied, “Praise God, I’ve just been looking for a chance to die for Jesus.” How can a guy like that fail? He has everything to win and nothing to lose. p. 178

To order this book click here!

Sunday, January 10, 2010

The Housekeeper and the Professor

I do not think I would have ever picked up the book, The Housekeeper and the Professor to read. But a good friend loaned me a copy of Yoko Ogawa's book. What a wonderful read! Not only is the story a delight, but the way math is woven into the story is awesome. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a novel.

Just one quote from the book:

Math has proven the existence of God, because it is absolute and without contradiction; but the devil must exist as well, because we cannot prove it.

To order this book click here!

Be All You CAn Be

As usual John Maxwell's book, Be All You Can Be, is excellent. There is so much good, solid advise. I trust the following will be encouraging.

When you encourage others, you’ll find that they will encourage you. Attitudes are contagious. p. 14

You have probably seen the bumper sticker that asks, “Are we having fun yet?” Every time I see that bumper sticker; I want to write another one: “Are we doing right yet?” If we’re doing right, we’ll be having fun. p. 14

All giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on His power and His presence to be with them. p. 16

The only one who can stop you from becoming the person God intends you to be is you. p. 26

Adversity is not our greatest enemy. The human spirit is capable of great resiliency and resourcefulness in the face of hardship. It’s not problems that mess us up. Someone said, “Cripple [a man] and you have Sir Walter Scott. Lock him in prison and you have John Bunyan. Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge and you have George Washington. Raise him in poverty and you have Abraham Lincoln. Strike him down with infantile paralysis and he becomes Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Burn him so severely that doctors say he will never walk again and you have Glen Cunningham, who set the world’s record in 1934 for the outdoor mile. Deafen him and you’ll have Ludwig van Beethoven. Call him a slow learner, retarded, and write him off as uneducatable and you have Albert Einstein.” p. 36

Any problem is a problem when there is no purpose. But no problem is a problem when there is a purpose. When you really have a dream, you aren’t a problem conscious person. When you see a problem, you also see a dream, and the dream that takes you through the problem. p. 60

Average doesn’t look so good when you realize it’s the worst of the best and the best of the worst. p. 63

Think of the great men and women who continued to pursue their dreams into old age. Think of people like Moses, who at eighty years of age led 3.5 million people out of captivity. Or Caleb, who at eighty-five years of age said, “Give me that mountain.” Or Colonel Sanders, who at seventy years of age discovered “finger lickin’ good chicken. Or Ray Kroc, who after age seventy introduced Big Mac to the world. Then there’s Casey Stengel, who at seventy-five became the manager of the Yankees baseball team. And there’s Picasso, still painting at eighty-eight, and George Washington Carver, who at eighty-one became head of the Agriculture Department. There’s Thomas Edison, who at eighty-five invented the mimeograph machine and John Wesley, who was still traveling on horseback and preaching at age eighty-eight. Don’t ever be content with having reached a goal; don’t rest on your laurels. History is filled with examples of people who, though they had accomplished great things, lost sight of their vision. When Alexander the great had a vision, he conquered countries when he lost it, we couldn’t conquer a liquor bottle. When David had a vision, he conquered Goliath; and when he lost his vision, he couldn’t conquer his own lust. When Samson had a vision, he won many battles; when he lost his vision, he couldn’t win a battle with Delilah. When Solomon had a vision he was the wisest man in the world; when he lost the dream God had given him, he couldn’t control his own evil passion for foreign women. When Saul had a vision, he could conquer kings; when he lost his vision, he couldn’t conquer his own jealousy. When Noah had a vision, he could build an ark and help keep the human race on track; when he lost his vision, he got drunk. When Elijah had a vision, he could pray down fire from heaven and chop off the heads of false prophets; when he lost the dream, he ran from Jezebel. It’s the dream that keeps us young; it’s the vision that keeps us going. pp. 64-65

People want a cause—they need a goal. If you’re not dead, you must be still alive; you want something to live for, whether you’re eighteen or eighty-one. p. 65

Little minds have wishes, and great minds have causes. p. 71

I’ve found that before any great accomplishment is achieved in reality, it’s believed in the heart. If we need to hear the applause of the crowd before our Goliath is down, we will never slay him. We have to begin our attack in the face of criticism, believing that the applause will come later. p.74

John Wesley was one who understood that leadership means dissatisfaction. He averaged three sermons a day for fifty-four years, preaching more than forty-four thousand times altogether. To do this, he traveled by horseback and carriage more than two hundred thousand miles, or about five thousand miles a year. He was greatly devoted to pastoral work. During a later period in his life, he was responsible for all the churches in England. To get his work done, he rose at four every morning and worked solidly until ten at night, allowing brief periods for meals. At age eighty-three he was upset to discover that he could not write more than fifteen hours a day without hurting his eyes. At age eighty-six he was ashamed to admit that he could not preach more than twice a day and he was angry that he would sleep until 5:00 a.m. Charles Spurgeon was known as the prince of preachers. Like Wesley, he was not satisfied with just being a great orator; he had a passion for the work of God, and he was never satisfied with the number of souls that he had won. At the age of thirty he preached to five thousand people at Metropolitan Tabernacle, and he still wasn’t satisfied. He was once invited to lecture at a university where all of his expenses, his wife’s expenses, and his personal secretary’s expenses would be covered, and in addition he would receive $1,000 pr lecture over fifty-day period. Spurgeon, however, turned down this offer, suggesting that, instead of taking their $50,000, he would stay in London and attempt to win fifty souls for Jesus Christ. pp. 118-119

We have been talking a lot about the apostle Paul, a man who was not satisfied and was not about to quit as he pressed toward that high mark. But there are other men and women in the Bible who were driven to greatness by dissatisfaction with their present conditions. Nehemiah was fairly well off as the cupbearer for the king in the royal court. He was surrounded by luxury, but he was willing to leave all of that to go back and help rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. Or consider Esther, the queen who chose to risk death in order to rescue her people from suffering. Joshua and Caleb could have settled for the wilderness with all of the other people, but they were unwilling to settle for second best. Why live in the wilderness when you can live in the land that flows with milk and honey? Moses could have stayed in Pharaoh’s court and enjoyed all the pleasures and the riches of Egypt, but he chose to lead his people out. pp. 119-120

To order this book click here!

The Family

The Family
Braves Game 2012