Mindset Matters

Perseverance isn’t the focusing on the big breakthroughs and seeking “ah ha moments.” It isn’t about the big payoff at the end, it’s committing to the process throughout. And although it requires consistent action, it also isn’t aimlessly wandering in an attempt to just keep moving. Perseverance is far more intentional than that. Perseverance is having the patience to slowly consume an elephant a single bite at a time. It’s having the vision to perceive the unseen beyond a barrier and tearing down that wall a single stone at a time. It’s having the determination to build a tower and the discipline to carefully lay one brick at a time, placing it with care and precision. Consistently winning the small, even the mundane battles, is what leads to the greatest victories. That is perseverance.

Agreements are a powerful and important part of life, but most people overlook the most critical agreements of all. If you order pizza and they promise delivery in 30 minutes or less, what do you do if the delivery takes 35 minutes? You demand a free pizza! If your package from Amazon was supposed to arrive on Tuesday but it doesn’t get delivered until Thursday, rest assured someone is going to hear about it. And we are all about the money back guarantee. Whether it’s a job agreement, a phone contract, a vehicle warranty or a marriage, our lives are structured by agreements and when others break those arrangements with us, we are quick to call it to their attention and demand retribution or a refund. However, how quick are you to call yourself out when you break agreements with yourself? We don’t hesitate to let others know when a contract is broken or when they have let us down, but we are far too lenient with ourselves in the same position. Whether it’s a commitment to exerci...

Last night I received a call from my dad, asking me if I could join him today for a meeting with his cardiologist to discuss surgery options. It was not a call I was expecting to get. My dad climbs at least 3-4 mountains a week and is in better shape today, at 68, than he was at 38. He appeared to be in perfect health. As we talked, my dad explained to me that he recently had a checkup and they did an EKG, testing his heart function. After seeing some abnormalities, his doctor referred him to the cardiologist, who ordered further testing. As they progressed through the battery of tests, the angiogram showed nearly complete blockage in two arteries. My dad, one of the healthiest people I know, is now potentially facing double bypass surgery. This has all been a reminder of how quickly life can change as well the preciousness of each moment. Not one of us is promised another day. King David wrote, “As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishe...

Our society lacks a healthy view of vulnerability. Some might see it as weakness while others view it as a free pass to vomit their life story on a hapless audience. True vulnerability is proactive, even somewhat calculated, and always courageous. Like plants need sunshine, genuine personal growth and development requires healthy vulnerability. Between my early teens and early twenties, I thought being vulnerable was a weakness. I thought by compartmentalizing emotions and learning to disconnect my feelings from circumstances I was being strong. I didn’t realize I was instead being a coward. The walls I put up to keep out pain and discomfort were the very walls that kept out connection and blessing. For over a decade, I forfeited a lot of growth and opportunities to build value for others by holding this incorrect view. The walls held my weaknesses in while they kept my strengths from reaching others. But healthy vulnerability is not indiscriminately exposing yourself imp...

The human mind is like a garden, filled with rich and fertile soil. Just like a garden, it must be nurtured and cared for continuously. Whether carefully cultivated or ignored, something will grow regardless.   In either case, the garden of your mind will not stay empty for long. If good seeds are not proactively planted and watered, the weeds will come in and take over. But it is not just the neglected garden that doesn’t produce good fruit. The Apostle Paul said, “A man reaps what he sows.” Another way to say this is, “the fruit you bear is directly related to the seeds you plant.” This is just common sense when it comes to a garden. If you plan tomato seeds, you expect to grow tomatoes. Pumpkin seeds should produce pumpkins. However, when it comes to the garden of our minds, we lose sight of that simple fact. People sow seeds of doubt and bitterness and fear in their thoughts and wonder why their lives are full of frustration, anger and anxiety. If you harness bitterness...

Throughout the journey of life, we all face many barriers and battle obstacles. Unfortunately, for many of us, the biggest battle we fight is against ourselves and our own human nature. In fact, there is an African Proverb that says, “If there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do you no harm.” Why do we hold ourselves back? Human being, you are hardwired to seek survival, not significance. Your DNA is designed for you to survive and not thrive. The brain is set up to give you the best chance possible to pass along your genes to the next generation. Impacting the world in which you currently live and leaving a behind a legacy beyond your DNA contribution isn’t a natural, primary goal. Your brain naturally wants whatever is comfortable in the moment rather than what is best for you and the people you love in the long-run. If you lived back in the cave man days, your brain was too worried about finding food for today and avoiding becoming food for a saber tooth tiger...

A lot of people can identify changes they would like to make in their own life. Whether it’s beginning an exercise program, switching jobs, starting a family or getting on a budget, change – especially true progress – is almost never a convenient undertaking. We understand making the adjustments won’t be easy, so many sit and wait for an ideal or opportune time to begin the journey. Unfortunately, convenient and ideal circumstances for making positive changes are like unicorn-riding leprechaun sightings: they are pretty rare events. If you are waiting for the optimal time to develop and grow, you will likely remain in your current state forever. Big or small, many or few, the obstacles will always be there. Don’t wait for the barriers to be removed, find a way to overcome them.   True commitment is blind to circumstances. Commitment is choosing to do what you can, when you can, regardless of the current scenario or mood of the moment. Ready or not, it’s deciding to ac...

We live increasingly busy lives and are constantly bombarded with headlines and deadlines as well as commitments like our kids’ soccer games and social events. Even if we get a quiet moment – a temporary reprieve – so many of us end up filling that space with the self-imposed obligation to check on recent updates, posts and tweets. This hectic pace creates “noise” in our life that can block out what we really need to hear. Fear and Doubt will scream at you and make sure their voices will be heard. They will yell louder than the chaos in your life and overcome the clamor of your busyness. However, Passion and Purpose whisper. They are more reserved and won’t demand your attention as do Fear and Doubt. If you aren’t careful, their call will be drowned out by the commotion in your life and the only voices you will hear will be those belonging to Doubt and Fear. This is one of the reasons so many live in confusion and uncertainty: they haven’t allowed themselves to hear the app...

Webster defines resilience as an “ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” It is a wonderful concept but can be difficult to capture. This morning, coincidentally, while warming up for a brutal workout, I heard the essence of resilience captured: “resilience happens when you realize there’s nothing left to do but to fight.” When you move past all your excuses, when you are sick and tired of coming up with reasons to not act or to take more convenient action, when the pain of where you are and who you are is finally greater than the pain of change, that is when resilience is birthed. Resilience happens when a choice is made to act intentionally out of necessity and determination instead of reacting emotionally out of fear, doubt or anxiety. And it isn’t that resilience replaces fear and doubt, but it is the choice to fight through it – not an emotion that overcomes you, but a decision you make.  Each one of us battles The Resistance. It looks di...

In 1997, Garth Brooks released the hit, I Don’t Have to Wonder . If you are not familiar, you can listen to it HERE . The song paints the picture of a broken man, waiting outside the church where a woman he once loved is marrying someone else, haunted the by the thoughts of what could have been. You can feel the torment of the “what ifs” he’s feeling throughout the verses while his pain builds throughout the song. As the song nears the end, there’s a climax in the tension, the man pulls the ring out of his pocket – the ring he never gave the girl inside the church – and hurls it into a river. Moments later, he follows the ring, concluding the only way he can drown out the thunderous voices of Regret is to drown himself. It’s a tragic ending to a tragic song. You may not be a fan of Garth or country music as a whole, but please don’t miss the take away: The pain of regret surpasses the sting of failure and the agony of loss. Now, I don’t know what happened between the young ma...

Are you living under obligation or in opportunity? You could be doing the exact same task, but how you approach and experience it can change dramatically with that difference in perspective. When you live under obligation, it’s easier to do the bare minimum, follow the pack and risk little. This is also a fantastic recipe for mediocre results and minimal, if any, reward. But if you are looking at a scenario through the lens of opportunity, you will likely have more energy, better ideas and more joy doing the exact same work as Mr. Mediocre. People talk about how they “have” to go to work. Now, that may be true in the sense that work is required to earn enough money to eat and pay bills, but too many act as if “work” is a necessary evil that must be endured instead of an opportunity to embrace. There are literally millions of people (maybe billions) who would love to have your job, and every new day that you go to work, you have the chance to introduce the world to a slightly be...

Watching college football today, I noticed how players will get an extra spike of energy and determination as they near the goal line. Often times, as a running back or a receiver approaches the end zone, it’s as if they are able to find another gear and produce a new level of effort. Although they are hit and wrapped up by defenders, their legs keep grinding, forcing them forward even if it’s only inch by inch. You will sometimes see a ball carrier dragging three or four defenders with him across the goal line. The proximity to the end zone – to the goal, to the prize – allows him to dig deeper. In life, unlike football, we often times can’t see the end zone. There are no goal posts or brightly colored grass marking the desired destination. Life is missing hash marks along the field, showing our progress. No first down markers give us definitive victories along the way. The oftentimes lack of measurable progress and unknown proximity of payoff can cause us to lose our edge, ou...

Just as some pumps need to be primed to work effectively, our lives need to be “primed” to flow efficiently. Good mornings and productive days don’t happen by accident, and by “priming” your day, you can set yourself up for better results. Does it mean you won’t have bad days? Of course not, but it’s making your day happen instead of just waiting for what happens. Once again, it’s a choice of being proactive rather than reactive. You will still have challenges and difficulties, but how you face those hurdles and respond to the struggles will be different with a primed mindset. I am sure there are many ways to prime your day and set the tone for the hours ahead, and what works for one won’t necessarily work for all. However, the process of creating a plan or a model of how things should unfold is a great place for anyone to start. Also, as I have mentioned before, how you actually start the morning is critical - the battle with the alarm clock is your first chance at victory for...

Last night I took my kids hiking up a fairly short but steep mountain here in Anchorage. As we progressed up the trail we encountered varying terrain, levels of difficulty and even trail coverage. Trail conditions also were quite different along the way. Some spots were steep. Some areas muddy. The trail was wide in some areas and well cleared, other portions were narrow and crawling with heavy roots. Some places were open while other lengths of the trail were so heavily treed the sun was blocked out. With kids ranging from four to ten years old, there was also quite a disparity in endurance and physical capability in our adventure party. Despite all the variation in our trek, my encouragement to the band of intrepid explorers was the same – one step at a time, one foot in front of the other. I was reminded our little climb had many parallels to the journey of life, especially during the difficult moments. Some areas of life are steep and strenuous, with every step challe...

When you consider mental toughness or psychological strength, forgiveness probably isn’t the first thing that pops into your head. And it may not be that being a forgiving person makes you mentally tough, but the lack of it certainly erodes any mental fortitude. Failing to forgive corrupts a proper mindset. A lack of forgiveness is often marked by bitterness and resentment. Bitterness and resentment steal joy, add stress, cloud judgement and destroy optimism. These emotions quickly wear down emotional and psychological resolve while hindering your ability to pursue opportunities ahead because you are still chained to the past. It has been said forgiveness is giving up your right for revenge. It is also exercising your right to heal and move on. It’s exhausting and debilitating to drag the past with you. When you forgive, you don’t just free the person who hurt you, you also free yourself from the bondage of that experience. On the other hand, a lack of forgiveness shackles ...