Coach Bear Bryant Speaks…

6 Minutes, 50 Years

Here is legendary Coach Bear Bryant’s speech to his Alabama football team before a 1974 game:  “Most of you will live another fifty years or more. I hope it’s seventy, but if it’s fifty that’s still a good life, and what happens today you’ll have to live with the rest of the way. You can’t get it back if you don’t win. It’s sixty minutes and over. The losers are the ones who say, ‘Oh I wish I could play it again.’ You can’t play it again.

Well, you’re not really going to have to play sixty minutes. None of you. The longest play in a game is six and a half seconds. The shortest play is less than two seconds. That’s barely a wink of the eye. You’ll average five seconds a play. Five seconds of total effort, going all out, giving a hundred percent. You oughta be able to hold your hand in a fire that long…”

Great Leadership Quotes

“There have been meetings of only a moment which have left impressions for life, for eternity. No one can understand that mysterious thing we call influence…yet …everyone of us continually exerts influence, either to heal, to bless, to leave marks of beauty; or to wound, to hurt, to poison, to stain other lives.”
- J.R. Miller

“Leadership is getting people to work for you when they are not obligated.”
- Fred Smith

“We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everywhere.”
- Author Unknown

“Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means.”
- Albert Einstein

“The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.”

40 Great Principles

1. Access isn’t presence. You can still “be there” and offer value to your clients if you’re across the country.

2. Activity isn’t results. Beware of mistaking one for the other.

3. Advising isn’t listening. Especially if the person didn’t ASK you for advice.

4. Being alone isn’t loneliness. It’s just a healthy form of solitude that all humans need.

5. Art isn’t linear. So, beware of imposing too many rules.

6. Attention isn’t infinite. Make sure your message is quick, simple and digestible.

7. Biography isn’t destiny. Because you ALWAYS have a choice.

8. Change isn’t weakness. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

9. Complaining isn’t attractive. Like farting, complaining relieves you but annoys others.

10. Create without responsibility. And just make art for the sake of making art.

11. Creativity isn’t enough. Nope. You need talent, discipline and passion.

12. Difficult isn’t impossible. Keep plugging away.

13. Duplicity isn’t advantageous. Don’t allow your mind to split.

14. Education isn’t knowing. No matter how many books you read.

15. Evidence isn’t proof. It only suggests the possibility of proof.

16. Excellence isn’t optional. It’s the price of admission.

17. Facelessness isn’t accidental. People are monoliths because they choose to be.

18. Faith isn’t fact. You don’t “know,” you simply “believe.”

19. Fit isn’t thin. Magazines are liars.

20. Growth isn’t automatic. It’s a choice. It’s a daily duty.

21. Humility isn’t weakness. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

22. Information isn’t communication. Make your emails shorter.

23. Information isn’t wisdom. Because we learn not from our experiences, but from intelligent reflection upon them.

24. Knowing isn’t understanding. You have to LIVE it first.

25. Listening isn’t agreeing. It’s OK to say, “I respectfully disagree.”

26. Motion isn’t progress. Is what you’re doing RIGHT NOW consistent with your #1 goal?

27. Obvious isn’t easy. Be careful what you dismiss.

28. Passion isn’t unrealistic. It only seems that way to people who are too afraid to express their passion.

29. Pressuring isn’t listening. It’s just awkward.

30. Quitting isn’t failing. Not if you do it at the right time.

31. Reading isn’t believing. Doing, living, being – now THAT’S believing!

32. Respect isn’t weakness. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

33. Retreat isn’t defeat. Walking away is smart.

34. Satisfaction isn’t retention. The real question is, “How many of their friends did they tell about you?”

35. School isn’t education. Where’s your classroom?

36. Success isn’t bestsellers. It’s contribution, significance and validation.

37. Success isn’t perfection. How often do you screw up?

38. Sunday isn’t enough. Your spiritual practice is daily.

39. Suspending isn’t losing. Don’t be such a control freak.

40. Technique isn’t enough. Nope. Your heart and soul must be there too. Or else the audience will KNOW.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What misconceptions might be hurting YOUR life?

Why Leave a Lasting Legacy?

Legacy…on what does that word mean to you? Leaving a positive and compelling legacy or heritage is what life is really about. ..

What is the key to success?

What really matters?

What footprint are you leaving on life and others?

Do you want to impress or influence?

What is the stuff of a real legacy?

In a word—relationships.

The quality of your legacy will be measured by the quality of your relationships through life. Leaving a heritage and legacy is not rocket science. Success, real success, comes from intentionality and achievement of goals and planned outcomes around relationships with others. These key relationships define your values and determined the heritage or legacy you leave behind.

This is a form of immortality in that you leave a piece of your life behind with those whom you’ve loved and had relationship with. As you pour your heart and life and gifts and to others,you truly begin to define your life message as you invest in other people. These friends and loved ones and family members cannot help but be touched by your real-life example, model and witness.

We all leave footprints when we walk on the beach of life and the same is true for our walk through life. We are all leaving behind something. For some us it’s a mixed bag. For some of us it’s extremely negative and for others it’s a positive life legacy. These are the relationship based people who prepare for a real inheritance of true riches by transferring their passion and love over to others. This love is more often caught than taught. These are the people who model a positive life two is solid and sane walk through life that leaves each of us changed, sometimes in the most subtle way.

Transferring your passion to other people through intentional awareness and focused planning of who you are and who you want to be is a core practice of a life well lived. Much of this is on the subconscious level, and is not animated, overtly planned, or conscious. These are the people who touched our lives, and didn’t even know it. These are the ones who profoundly changed us with how they lived and conducted their lives in love, faith, hope, kindness and gentleness. They are genuine people who live transparent lives and leave real riches behind that have nothing to do with stuff. They are relationship based from beginning to end. They are relationship people, not stuff or object people. Possessions and material goods mean little or nothing to these relationship based individuals,

How do we then go through life being aware, focused and intentional in developing and fostering quality relationships, which result in a positive legacy? What are the keys, core values, outcomes and questions, which can unlock this life well lived? What are the principles? What are the rules? What of the protocols? Where do we get started? Who are the examples? How do we know when we are on track or not?

Parental legacy—

What is the bottom line of what you want to leave behind as a parent? Is it…

· Money?

· Portfolios?

· Real estate?

· Stuff?

· Values?

· Faith?

· Ethics? or something much more?

What does a genuine positive legacy look like? What are the elements, characteristics, and hallmarks of a positive legacy and heritage? What is the essence—the bottom line here?

The answer lies in nurturing relationships. Relationships are all we leave behind. To be more effective parents, who leave a positive heritage and legacy we need to be able to equip and nurture our children and it starts in the context of relationship. This is to set the foundation of best practices as a family leader or parent and involves…

1. Time to foster nurturer relationship with their kids.

2. A foundation of best practices, systems and protocols regarding family.

3. To incrementally introduce and practice the habits, attributes, and tools to parent with purpose driven intentionality.

4. To correctly grow our families to fulfill their best and highest potentials.

5. To listen and express oneself — being an active participant and honest communication

6. Being an actively engaged family member

7. To willingly and purposely pass on our love, humanity, and positive values to our loved ones

What is the essence and bottom line? These are just some aspects of the positive parent total legacy…

1. Foundation of faith

2. Contentment and satisfaction

3. Knowing who you are—strengths and weaknesses, gifts and more

4. Hopes, dreams and visions

5. Lessons learned and experiences gained

6. Knowledge and wisdom and understanding

7. Values and ethics

8. A thankful spirit

9. Love for God

10. Love for people

11. Love of nature and creation

12. Love of themselves

Is critical and crucial that we pass along a positive legacy because it pleases God, blesses the community, and identifies personal quality so lacking in our world. People of genuine quality are a rare and precious phenomenon today. By loving our children unconditionally and making them our priority of focus and care, we can add to what’s lacking in our civilization.

3 New Year Resolutions–Less is the New More

Less is more…

1. Spend more time with God…Pursue making time to simply be with Him in prayer, meditation, and quietly waiting on Him.
2. Loving my Wife Consistently…Making the time to grow in our relationship in dates, time, and having opportunities to grow in our relationship with God and each other. Loving my kids; Intentionally making them part of my day: everyday via play, talking and listening, and incorporating them into my life/schedule.
3. Self Discipline…Just executing reasonable discipline and time management in finances, cell time, web time, sleep,  healthy eating, exercising, driving safely, and eliminating absorption with over-achievement, fear, worry, and angst. Actually doing less ; which is the new More…

The Mini Bucket List

The bucket list—

What one thing would you rather be doing right now?

Anything in the world? …

If you could go there and do it right now, what would that one thing be?

Talk of the bucket list has to do with the need for fun, risk, pleasure, midlife crisis and to do what right now is not doable… the concept of the bucket list assumes plenty of resources and time and money and the ability to execute them and implement one’s bucket list.

Not so fast…. Most of us don’t have the time or money or resources to go around the globe and to see the Kilimanjaro in Africa or to go check out the Pyramids of Egypt. Most of us are lucky to get a vacation once a year and perhaps go camping or stay at a Holiday Inn.

Hawaii might be a possibility for some of us, a very few, but for most of us were a bit stuck.

This being stuck is far more than just a lack of resources— it’s a lack of imagination and thinking out of the box. When you really take the time to think about what is possible and doable within your resources and means some really cool example start to emerge…. I call this the mini bucket list.

There are several Mini Bucket List things that we can get done on a local or regional basis. We still have the physical ability to set do some. The idea of something fun and risky and pleasurable before we die is a good idea. The physical decay of our bodies preclude us from doing many of the things that we’d really like to do that are very real radical…. But it still leaves us with many things that become extremely doable.

Here are some of the aspects of a many bucket list….

1. Affordability

2. Realistic

3. Pleasurable

4. Satisfying

5. Risk/perceived risk

6. Exhilarating

7. Local or regional

8. Ability to execute and implement

9. Legal moral and ethical

10. Out-of-the-box…

If you take the time and sit and think you can come up with at least 10 things you like to do before you pass, which are local and affordable and doable. Some of these might include:

1. Lunch or dinner out at the best place in town

2. A golf weekend, the best place available

3. Afternoon movies

4. Hike & picnic

5. River rafting

6. Two hour massage

7. Full Spa makeover

8. Kayaking

9. Fly to Vegas on a deal

10. Rent a cabin in the woods…. Much, much more.

The idea becomes obvious and the execution becomes painfully necessary for those of us who’ve created and lived in routines for years. The Mini Bucket List becomes therapeutic, in that it gives you some empowerment still have a little fun and a conservative and realistic way and still break the bonds of routine and rut. This becomes therapeutic in that it is risk-taking, and yet the perceived versus actual risk is actually pretty safe.

It fills the need for fun, risk and enjoyment.

Write your list.

Book the trip.

Surprise your spouse.

And get out of here!

Really, Get out of here!

3 Mistakes Parents Need to Avoid

Living priorities is a daily, hourly, and moment by moment choice we all must make.

Have you ever failed as a parent?

Have you ever said or done something, either habitually, or on a one-time-only basis, that resulted in an irreversible parental mistake?

What could you have done differently to avoid that mistake?

How could you identify them before they happened?

Are you currently and habitually making mistakes right now in your parenting style and family culture?

What are the three top relationship killers, pitfalls, traps the best parents fall into, and how can we avoid them?

1. Busyness– how did life get so complicated?  Time, scheduling, stress, moods, attitude have created  a busy and crazy lifestyle for most every parent in our culture. Burned-out parents seem to be the norm.  Moods flare, words are exchanged, attitudes run rampant, and the whole thing seems way over the top on a regular basis.  Where do we find relief in peace and tranquility and surrender in such a crazy society and culture?  I believe some of the answers lie in the following:

• Learn to stop… work, projects, our minds, our thoughts, our busyness, and our lifestyle.
• Learn the transition to home… leave work at work.  Leave anything outside the home… outside the home. Come home and be here now. Be present. Be in the moment. Be available. Be you.
• Learn to say no to many other things… even the good stuff. You cannot do it all… even though you may want to.

2. Distraction–Being self-centered and self obsessed– The sick habit of over-introspection and self-indulgence in an ongoing examination of self and how everything affects me. Being self-centered and self obsessed, could include an exhausting examination of everything that affects me in my life and the second-guessing of everything happening around me. Trying to figure out all of life is a fallacy and learning to surrender and let go and move on is the only sane and safe way to live. Breaking the self habit includes:

• Letting go–surrender, relaxing, moving on, and really focusing on trusting God for all your needs
• Make it about other people– always keep in mind you’re on earth to serve others.  And don’t always make it about you.  The universe does not rotate around you.  It’s really not about you.
• Learn to communicate– learn to listen effectively. Really try to hear what people are telling you through their body language, tone and of course, their words.  Learn to express yourself in cogent and concise ways as well.
• Focus on what’s really important– family, spouse, kids, friends, brothers and sisters, parents, community and society. At the end of the day it’s all about relationships. This requires being focused on others.

3. Value Confusion–not prioritizing our relationships–are you an object person or a relationship person? Do you devote too much project time and not enough relationship time with those around you? Failing to stop and decide who you are and who you want to be results in dissonance in living your value system. We must decide individually what’s important to us and live accordingly.  It’s a mistake to not devote a great deal of our lives to relationships. After all, you can’t take anything with you when you go. You never see the U-Haul behind the hearse at the funeral.  The mistake here is letting life drive you versus you driving life in your own priorities. You are in charge of you. You are accountable for you. The blame game will not work when you’re not living out your own values and priorities.  It’s your own darn fault…some possible solutions include:

• having a written plan–goal setting, a personal life and vision statement in writing.
• Getting organized– managing your time, having a day planner, writing down and living your priorities.
• Getting rid of the extra and non-priority–just say no. You’ll never get to some stuff in life.  There is not enough time, energy or resources.
• Setting up systems for relationship development– have dates with your kids, wife, and friends. Put them in your day timer. Schedule them up as the priorities they really are.

Living our priorities is a daily, hourly, and moment by moment choice we all must make each day. How we decide the small stuff defines us. What will we do with the resources given to us?  Each of us gets just 24 hours each day, and only a certain number of days per lifetime. How well will you use your life units? That is certainly up to you.

What will it be for you?

Are you going to let stress and busyness, distraction and self-centeredness, and value confusion throw you off your plan?

Will you be proactive and take the time, and sharpen your saw, and figure out what’s key for you in life, and then go and just do it?

At the end of the day, it really may be about you, in that you must decide for you.  How you live, love and relate to those around you in your life.

We have but one life to live, and logic and love dictate we live it effectively in relationships.

The 10 Rules for Being Human

Ten Rules for Being Human

1.	You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.
2.	You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.”
3.	There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”
4.	Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5.	Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6.	“There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”
7.	Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8.	What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9.	Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10.	You will forget all this.

THE 10 RULES OF HIGHLY UNSUCCESSFUL PEOPLE

You asked for the list of how to fail from the book “How To Become a Total
Failure: The Ten Rules of Highly Unsuccessful People,” by Bill Guillory and
Phil Davis, 2008.

Here you go.  I added one at the end so you get eleven.

1.      Resist learning anything new.
2.      Don’t share what you know with others.
3.      Be a jerk.  Knowledge is power.  Don’t give away your power.
4.      Always look out for number one.
5.      It’s all about the money.
6.      Promise things you have no intention of doing.
7.      It’s always someone else’s fault.
8.      Truth is in the eye of the beholder.
9.      Do the least that’s necessary for success.
10.     The customer is someone you must tolerate.
11.     Spend time on things that don’t matter much.

Leaving a Living Legacy:Relationships

What will your best friends say at your funeral?

I came home from a road trip and my wife sat me down at the foot of our bed and said, “Your friend Dan Gunderson is dead”.

I couldn’t believe my ears, hoping it was a joke.

It was no joke.

This death caused me to think…

1. What is a life well lived?
2. What is greatness
3. What does a legacy look like?

I have three questions for you and myself…

1. Who has invested their time, life, and gifts in you?
2. What would your best friends say about you?
3. Who are you now investing your life skills and gifts in?

Someone who invested in me was my dad Bob… he was a real SOB (Sweet Old Bob).

He modeled and lived a life built on relationships.

You could pack all that he owned into his Chevrolet, but he left us incredible riches…

a great love and relationship with people, God, and nature.

1. People.

My father built relationships with everyone, whether in Alcoholics Anonymous, church, family, or just on the street. He built and fostered relationships with everyone he met.

I brought him into my sales office to share his sales genius.

We were all prepared with notepad and pen in hand…

All he said was, “If you’re in this for the money, you’re only about half paid”

That was it! I was a little annoyed and disappointed that he didn’t have more and refused to speak more on the sales craft.

It’s taken me 30 years, but now I realize the genius of my father’s statement… which is build relationships with people and you’ll be paid in incredible riches.

2. God.

My father was a World War II P 51 Mustang fighter pilot.

He killed many people in the South Pacific theater during the war.

Through sobriety that AA afforded him, he forgive himself and others, and connected to a relationship with God.

The Alcoholics Anonymous’ “higher power” had a name, face, and a real love, which my father translated to all he met.

He gave a grace and mercy and forgiveness to both himself and all those he knew.

3. Nature.

My dad loved his flowers, and he had a tremendous appreciation for nature, creation, and all things that grew.

He would stop us in a park or a golf course and say,” Scott come and smell this flower, check out this plant!”

I would dutifully give the cursory sniff, only to find that he was right.

There was beauty all around us if we were only willing to stop and smell the flowers.

He taught me the best things in life are not things at all… they are a love for people, for God, for nature.

How do we leave a legacy?

Are we object-oriented people or relationship-oriented people?

An object-oriented person treasures and values that which is temporal.

Examples would be possessions, travel, experience, wealth, pleasure, etc.

A relationship-oriented person, on the other hand, values that which is more eternal and immortal.

Examples would be… being compassionate, a good listener, showing kindness, saying I love you, being a hugger, and generally valuing all people.

Your three more questions for you…

1. What is most important to you?
2. If you could change anything about your life what would it be?
3. Why aren’t you doing that right now?

For me the answer is to invest in relationships and leave a piece of myself behind.

By investing in relationships, you will leave a richness in others, make a difference, and you will be changed.

One person who made a change in me was my deceased friend Dan Gunderson.

At his memorial, which was awesome and compelling and showed a life well lived, a little girl came forward to say a few words.

She bounced up front, happy and joyful, and began to speak of Dan’s love for her…then broke down and choked out, “Dan was my next-door daddy!!”

She wept openly as only a child can do.

Dan had taken the time to build a relationship with someone who was not core family, business, church, or other venue.

She was a little girl next door, and he reached out to her and made a difference.

My question to you, going forward, is just this…

To whom will you be a “next-door daddy“?

To whom will you reach out and make a difference in their lives …just because?

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