Most of us are over scheduled and have way too much stress in our lives.  As a reaction to the pressure of the present we often find ourselves looking back and longing for a time when life was simpler and slower than it is today.

What we selectively seem to forget is that the past had its own set of problems and even though things may have been slower that does not mean they were better.  When we live in the past we also are blinded to the blessings of the present and are not able to enjoy what we have that is good in our lives.

In Richard Swenson’s book entitled Margin he deals with this romantic mentality of turning back the clock to a better time.  He writes, “The analogy of a clock is not helpful.  It is not the question of a clock, but a compass.  The issue is not chronology, but direction.”

It is impossible to create more time in any given day.  With that reality clearly in mind then we are only left with two options.  We must know what is important each and every day and make sure those are the things that get done.

What is not so clear is that this does not mean adding these important things to an already full calendar.  The ability to know what to say no to on a moment by moment basis is the only way we will have the emotional, spiritual and physical margin we need to live today without regrets.

Clocks can only tell you what time it is while your personal compass can tell you what to do with your time.  Big Difference!!!!!!!

There are many leadership qualities that must be present in the leader if people are going to trust them to the point of following.  It is very important to be committed, competent and inspiring but without credibility especially today people will see you as a fake and be totally turned off.

The bottom line is regardless of how visionary the message if they cannot believe in the messenger then trust is destroyed.  People may show up for work but their heart is not in it and although they seem positive in front of superiors they are constantly critical with their peers in private.

If leaders are to maintain credibility they have to walk the talk and personally practice what they preach.  When their actions are inconsistent with their words and they do not follow through on their promises then they are no longer seen as authentic.

When team members work on a project for a long time and produce great results only to see the leader take an inappropriate amount of the credit they feel burned.  They want to see leaders who give credit to others and assume personal responsibility when they make mistakes.

If the leader is seen as real when things are not going well people will give them the benefit of the doubt every time.  When leaders are hypocritical and things are even going well they will get polite support but in reality they have lost the confidence of their team and sadly don’t even know it.

If there has ever been a day when the demands of work and home have been greater I am not aware of it.  The sheer pace of life today leaves us emotionally and physically worn out and feeling empty at the end of most days.

Technology keeps us connected all the time and people in the workplace culture almost demand that we stay available 24-7.  Our families are all running on the same high speed treadmill that produces stress in every area of our lives.

There are several key principles that must be in place if you want to create margin for the people and priorities that you care about the most:

1.       Lead Yourself First—it is impossible to successfully help lead other people at work or in the home if you are not able to accomplish what is most important in your own life.  You should set specific goals in the areas of health, personal development and faith with the necessary time allotment to make sure they get done.

2.      Prioritize Your Family Next—at the end of your life it will not matter how much professional success you have had if you consistently neglected your role as a spouse and parent.  There are no guarantees that time alone will produce a great marriage and character driven children but without it there is a high probability that both areas could fail.

3.      Choose Right Career—most organizations are looking for people who will perform and improve their bottom line.  However there is a growing awareness that if you want to attract and keep the best people you have to give some deference to work-life balance.  The key is you have to be outstanding at what you do and you have to be in a culture that will reward that effort by giving you more time off and not more projects to accomplish.

4.      Develop Life Plan—it never ceases to amaze me that some of the most effective leaders in the corporate arena do not practice any of the leadership disciplines that made them successful in their home and personal life.  The can lead multi-million dollar projects from start to finish at work but not take more than 30 minutes to plan the annual family vacation. 

When you develop a total life plan with goals and strategies for everything personal, private and public you just assumed the C.E.O.  leadership role for your whole life.   You will never have a more important job.

We have all been affected by the sudden death of Michael Jackson in different ways.  Some of us feel compassion for the children who are left behind to grow up in the huge shadow of their father.  Others are feeling regret for such a waste of a very talented person who lost so much of what really matters during his life.

Most of us will never have to deal with all of the things that Michael did that come with being a famous celebrity who earns millions of dollars in income.  However we all have to deal with the life issues that he faced:

1.       Resolve Past Hurts—if you do not deal with the pain from when people close to you have failed you when you were growing up then you will surely carry those open wounds into adulthood.  The tragedy for all of us is when the core issues that we are dealing with as adults are really problems that surfaced many years ago but were never appropriately resolved.

2.      Trust Right People—show me who your friends are and I can tell you a lot about your character.  The temptation for all of us is to surround ourselves with people who tell us all that we want to hear but they really don’t care enough to tell us the truth.  These people make us feel good for the moment but leave us eventually broken and empty when the fun runs out.

3.      Develop Core Values—there is no doubt in my mind that many times Michael wanted to do the right thing and really wanted to help people.  When you don’t have a solid foundation to build on you will consistently make very bad decisions that seem extremely inconsistent with whom you want to be as a person.

4.      Decide How Much Is Enough—driven people are never satisfied because they are trying to satisfy their deepest needs with things that can never bring real peace and fulfillment in life.  If you are not content with what you have now there is no reason to believe you will be in the future regardless of how much you get. 

Michael Jackson’s legacy will be a hotly debated subject for years to come.  Some only see the bad and others refuse to say anything was wrong at all.  Will the people closest to you be debating your legacy when you are gone or will they all agree it was a life well spent.

In the Christian life we are taught from the very beginning the importance that faith plays in our lives.  Without it we cannot know God on a personal relationship level and we cannot reach our potential in this life without putting it into practice every day.

Faith allows us to not only believe that God exists but that everything He has promised us in His word is true.  Beyond that the core issue is that God is able to do what He has said and there is nothing too hard for Him.

If faith answers the question Is God able then trust answers the question Is God good?  Trust goes beyond faith and believes that everything He has asked me to do is not only for His glory but also for my good.

When suffering comes faith will help you to believe that God is able to deliver you out of your trials but trust helps you to rest in the fact that if you are not delivered His grace will still be sufficient.

Most Christians are no longer afraid of what God is going to do to them because they have the complete assurance of their salvation.  However, the major problem is that we daily walk in the fear of  what God might do with us if we fully surrender our lives to Him.

There is no greater deception for the believer than to fear the One who loves you the most.  Yes God is able but far more than that He is also good.

This is the sixth in a series of ten posts on promises we should be willing to make to the people that matter the most in our lives.  A promise goes beyond a mere commitment to do something it carries the clear expectation that we are going to pay the price to do what we said we would do.

The first promise was I will sincerely listen to what you have to say.  Really listening to someone without a personal agenda communicates to them that they have value in your life and that you sincerely care.

The second promise was I will always tell you the truth.  Without this there can be no basis of trust, just ask Elizabeth Edwards how painful that can be.

The third promise is I will apologize when I am wrong.  When someone sincerely and genuinely apologizes we know two things.  They are willing to humble themselves and they want to restore their relationship with us because we still matter to them.

The forth promise is I will forgive you when you hurt me.  There can be no lasting peace in any relationship without the power of forgiveness.  This is even more critical when someone has come to us and sincerely apologized they are asking without saying it will you please forgive me.

The fifth promise is I will live with hope and believe the best.  Relationships are messy and there are always going to be times when people do or say things that upset us.  It is at that precise moment that we have a critical choice to make about how we process what we are hearing.  The bottom line is we will either choose to believe the best about the other person or we will assume the worst. 

The sixth promise is I will not manipulate change in you.  This deals with our core motivation when we interact with other people.  If our goal in sharing with this person is to only tell them what they are doing wrong and why they should be the one to change then we are manipulating. 

We must first assume personal responsibility for whatever percentage of the problem is our responsibility by admitting it and giving a sincere apology.  Then and only then are we ready to talk to the person about what they did in a way that will really try to help them to move forward as well.

It is very easy to see what other people are doing wrong and sometimes almost impossible to see the blind spots in our own lives.  When people first see our humility then they will be open to our advice. 

Lou Holtz the famous football coach once said, “Ability is what you’re capable of doing, motivation determines what you do and attitude determines how well you do it.” We have heard all our lives how important a role our attitude plays in everything we do every day.

In John Maxwell’s book The Winning Attitude he says that it is absolutely your key to personal success.  His list several key principles about how attitude impacts every part of our lives:

1.       Our attitude determines our approach to life

2.      Our attitude determines our relationships with people

3.      Often our attitude is the only difference between success and failure

4.      Our attitude at the beginning of a task will affect its outcome more than anything else

5.      Our attitude can turn our problems into blessings

6.      Our attitude can give us an uncommonly positive perspective

Maintaing the proper perspective is probably the most important one for me.  We are all going to encounter problems and setbacks in our lives.  It is very important to remember when you are going through difficult times not to focus on what you have lost but what you still have to be thankful for all around you.  When you choose to see the glass for the way it is more than half full it will give you the perspective you need to deal with all the other issues.

I found the following to be very helpful about What is an attitude?

It is the “advance man” of our true selves

Its roots are inward but its fruit is outward

It is our best friend or our worst enemy

It is more honest and more consistent that our words

It is an outward look based on past experiences

It is a thing which draws people to us or repels them away

It is never content until it is expressed

It is the librarian of our past

It is the speaker of our present

It is the prophet of our future

This is the fifth in a series of ten posts on promises we should be willing to make to the people that matter the most in our lives.  A promise goes beyond a mere commitment to do something it carries the clear expectation that we are going to pay the price to do what we said we would do.

The first promise was I will sincerely listen to what you have to say.  Really listening to someone without a personal agenda communicates to them that they have value in your life and that you sincerely care.

The second promise was I will always tell you the truth.  Without this there can be no basis of trust, just ask Elizabeth Edwards how painful that can be.

The third promise is I will apologize when I am wrong.  When someone sincerely and genuinely apologizes we know two things.  They are willing to humble themselves and they want to restore their relationship with us because we still matter to them.

The forth promise is I will forgive you when you hurt me.  There can be no lasting peace in any relationship without the power of forgiveness.  This is even more critical when someone has come to us and sincerely apologized they are asking without saying it will you please forgive me.

The fifth promise is I will live with hope and believe the best.  Relationships are messy and there are always going to be times when people do or say things that upset us.  It is at that precise moment that we have a critical choice to make about how we process what we are hearing.

The motive behind the message a person is communicating is extremely important.  Most of the time it will not be immediately apparent what their motive is but every time we bring our own presuppositions and expectations into each conversation. 

The bottom line is we will either choose to believe the best about the other person or we will assume the worst.  When we assume the worst we will walk away hurt or even bitter.  When we assume the best regardless of what they say and how upset they are we can give them a pass because we trust their heart.

There were many profound conclusions reached by Jim Collins research team that were documented in his bestselling book Good to Great.  The principle of rinsing your cottage cheese received a small amount of space in the book but may be one of the key principles that separate those organizations who merely survive in this economy and those who thrive.

This analogy comes from a disciplined world-class athlete named Dave Scott, who won the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon six times.  Even though he had a training schedule that would burn at least 5,000 calories per day he would still rinse his cottage cheese to get the extra fat off.

From a business planning model this represents the last 10 percent of work that most people are not willing to do or even know exists to make their project or program  the best it possibly could be.  Most people are willing to settle for 75-90% effort and feel that should really represent the best they can produce.

Sometimes the last 10% represents seemingly little things like a spot on the carpet or windows that have not been cleaned.  However that can be the very thing that a customer will notice and come to the conclusion that if you do not care about those areas what else are you not doing to be your best that they cannot see.

Collins writes, “Everyone would like to be the best, but most organizations lack the discipline to figure out with egoless clarity what they can be the best at and the will to do whatever it takes to turn that potential into reality.”  Bottom line they lack the character and the discipline to rinse their cottage cheese.

This is the forth in a series of ten posts on promises we should be willing to make to the people that matter the most in our lives.  A promise goes beyond a mere commitment to do something it carries the clear expectation that we are going to pay the price to do what we said we would do.

The first promise was I will sincerely listen to what you have to say.  Really listening to someone without a personal agenda communicates to them that they have value in your life and that you sincerely care.

The second promise was I will always tell you the truth.  Without this there can be no basis of trust, just ask Elizabeth Edwards how painful that can be.

The third promise is I will apologize when I am wrong.  When someone sincerely and genuinely apologizes we know two things.  They are willing to humble themselves and they want to restore their relationship with us because we still matter to them.

The forth promise is I will forgive you when you hurt me.  There can be no lasting peace in any relationship without the power of forgiveness.  This is even more critical when someone has come to us and sincerely apologized they are asking without saying it will you please forgive me?

Forgiveness does not mean that we have the ability to forget what has happened to us but it does mean that we no longer hold that offense against the other person.  This will allow us to learn from the past and not force us to continue to live in it will all its negative memories.

The key thing about giving someone else forgiveness is that you must first have received it yourself.  You may only see your percentage of the responsibility at twenty percent but you must assume responsibility to seek forgiveness for your part before you can move on and release the other person.

This is a promise worth making to the people you care about the most in your life.