“These are the times that try men’s souls.” Thomas Paine, The Crisis.

What's inspirational about Paine’s opening line was that it came in one of the darkest hours in American’s struggle for Independence. That pamphlet and other works like it were used by many early American’s as motivation during a crucial point in history.  It gives me chills now just thinking about it, you can almost picture General Washington having that pamphlet read by candle light to his war weary soldiers. Many Americans were questioning the "cause" yet through all their struggles they held strong to their dream of independance!

It is remarkable what literature meant to early Americans, and now fast-forward to the 21^st century with the rise of the Information Age, we have almost come full circle back to that raw media. We have everyday authors on social networks or on their blogs, if I do so boldly say circulating their own pamphlets, which in most cases is inspiring American today just like in the early foundation of the Country.

I have been fortunate to meet up with great business leaders, and partner with one of my best friends Jason Sweezer.  We are involved in a continuing education program called LIFE, which I would highly recommend everyone check out. The goal of our organization is to work tirelessly to change people’s minds by changing their thinking.  It all is derived around a self-directed education, one that the LIFE program has put together.

I bring this up along with the obvious fact that we live in some very hard times.  One in which I think many people who are in the work force or those who have lost their job have experienced. Many are looking for something different, and they are considering their next moves. 

If you’re in this situation, I leave you with this short exercise to get your mind thinking outside the box, to get you dreaming again.  I want you to imagine that tomorrow morning you wake up and time and money aren’t a concern, what would you be doing?

IF you can’t answer, exactly what you’re doing now! Then something needs to change, maybe not right away, but you need to be preparing yourself to make that jump.  Investing in your own education may be the only thing that seperates you from everyone else!

 I had a couple great mentors in the LIFE organization ask that same question to me. It made me look deep into what I was doing, and inspired me to actually create a plan for my future, utilizing my talents and looking down the road where I wanted to be five, ten years in the future.  We all need specific goals of what we want to accomplish.  So I ask you, besides that first question..If you’re not planning your future, than who will be planning it for you?  If you can’t recognize the seeds of greatness in you, then who can?  If you aren’t prepared to fulfill your God given purpose Now, then when?  All great questions one needs to address to accomplish along the road to accomplishing their goals and dreams!

Association

I had an old geometry teacher in high school named Mr. Gerard that we as a class asked to speak at one of our school's end of the year award seminars.

He was a great teacher full of wisdom, always told great stories during class. I especially remember him telling stories about his son Noah who later we learned might have done work for the CIA.

At that Seminar he congratulated us on being one of his best classes to teach, how he loved teaching knowing that he might be a witness to some of the future leaders of our town, State or possible Country.

Before he concluded, he said one thing that hit home with me. He said, “If you take anything away from my talk, remember this: If you put a teaspoon of sewage water in a town’s drinking water no matter what you do, you still in the end are drinking sewage water.”  He clarified what he meant. “Every year great students come and go but in the end move away from their goals due to hanging out with people going down the wrong path.”  

In simple terms, What he was telling that packed auditorium of young minds.“You are who you associate with”! Last weekend, I was fortunate to attend LIFE’s summer Leadership Convention in Milwaukee WI. One thing I love about the LIFE leadership materials and the Mental Fitness Challenge is that one of the main highlights of LIFE’s leadership system is the value it places on associating with individuals who are out chasing their goals and dreams.

One of the many lessons that I’ve learned working with the LIFE leadership organization is that if you add up the average income of the 5 closest people you associate with, you can accurately depict that your income will fall somewhere within that range. That is why I firmly believe that success is contagious. If you want to grow financially or in your leadership skills you need to be surrounding yourself and associating with people that are going in the direction you want to go. As the bible says, “iron sharpens iron.”

In Orrin Woodward’s Book Resolved: 13 Resolutions for Life.  He writes in several different chapters about the importance and the power of association. In Chapter six, Resolved: To Keep Score in the Game of Life, and also in Chapter 11 Resolved: To develop System thinking. Orrin talks extensively about the importance of leaders surrounding themselves with individuals who will push them towards success, and developing a system to utilize this game plan of association to develop systems to help the individual accomplish their goals.

We all are called upon to be leaders at some point in our lives. The questions that we need to be asking ourselves is: 1. Are our associations helping or hurting us on our leadership, business, or career journey? 2. Are we making sure we don’t accidentally add that teaspoon of sewage water to our water that we need to sustain us on our journey in living the life we've always wanted?  3. What are we doing to improve our associations?  Look forward to hearing peoples responses!

Resolutions

Resolutions, I know I’ve made several in my day. I’m going to lose weight. I’m going to exercise more. I’m going to read the bible, and these are just some of the resolutions I’ve made over the past year! The list could get long for some of us.

I wanted to touch on resolutions because it’s one of the main components behind the Mental Fitness Challenge.  In his book Resolved 13 Resolutions for LIFE, Orrin Woodward 2011 Independent Association of Business award winner sets the stage in the introduction to his book on how some of the Founding Fathers of our Country, (Washington, Franklin and Edwards) used what we would call today resolutions, as a guide for how they intended to live their lives.

For instance, I’ve been fortunate to read Ben Franklin’s (auto)biography, and I would highly recommend its reading to anyone who wants to get a clear glimpse of Franklin’s life. It used to be a free download on Amazon, but I’m not sure if it still is or not. To his credit, Orrin Woodward throughout Resolved and subsequent information in the Mental Fitness Challenge shows how Franklin by his 13 Virtues was able focus on certain aspects of his life, and by this deliberate focus was able to smooth over some of the rough edges of his personality which epitomizes the Franklin we so admire today.

I don’t want to spoil the entire book, but it’s a must read for anyone wanting to jump start themselves on a journey to finding direction in their life. Orrin in the book shows how the same type of focus on resolutions by great minds of the past can be applied in our lives today, and gives both past and present day examples of  people following what Orrin’s considers his 13 Resolutions for LIFE.

Below are some of the different themes/resolutions that are touched upon in Orrin’s book. I would highly encourage anyone to pick up the book as a great guide to writing their own resolutions towards living the life they’ve always wanted.

Purpose

Character

Attitude

Programming the Elephant

Game Plan and Do

Keeping Score

Friendship

Financial Management

Leadership Resolution

Conflict Resolution

Systems Thinking

Adversity Quotient

Legacy

Over the past several months, I have been privileged to be involved with an innovative leadership business development group called TEAM.  My choice to get involved with a leadership development group, I’m sure is not unlike most others in the business professional world, or even those involved in life coaching/mentoring: you wanted to get better at what you do currently.

I quite frankly wanted to be better in several key areas that I knew I was lacking. 1. Purpose  2. Planning 3. My People Skills

I started noticing several years back that I was working extremely hard at my job, but I was feeling frustrated and was running around like a crazy person.  I wanted to stand out; change what I had unintentionally branded myself. To give you a picture, imagine a somewhat brash energetic mid-20’s young professional, working hard, but lacking focus.  

I was involved in networking organizations and work related training, but nothing seemed to really give me the power to take control, and actually work on improving areas where I was lacking.  I would start something for awhile do really well then fall back into old habits.  So last year I was happy when my friend invited me to check out the LIFE leadership development program and the TEAM organization.

There are so many different products that the LIFE organization offers, from personal and leadership development, along with life coaching, and Christian based spiritual development. For the purpose of starting this blog, I wanted to start off by talking about the Mental Fitness Challenge©. This is one of the LIFE organization's flagship products. It has inspired me to follow through on my idea of starting a blog, which I started and didn’t follow through with last year.

I have always enjoyed learning, and I was blessed with a love for reading. So, after coming to the realization that I needed a program to help me with my areas of weakness, I started the Mental Fitness Challenge© as a way to develop habits in those areas where I was lacking.

I’m almost done with my 90 days into the challenge, and all I have to say is WOW. What I love about this product is it mirrors some of the stuff my company does already. What makes it unique is that it personalizes to help individuals develop self resolutions. This is something I had never participated in before in a leadership development program.  It is something though that some of the great minds in the past have always done, so I was excited to try it.

The program also helps by giving you 360 feedback from peers on what they think are your strengths and weaknesses. I was shocked at some of the feedback, which goes to show sometimes we don’t know where we have issues.

I would encourage everyone to take the 90 day mental fitness challenge and let me know how it has affected your life!