Tag Archives: difficult

Dare To Be!

When a new day begins, dare to smile gratefully. When there is darkness, dare to be the first to shine a light. When there is injustice, dare to be the first to condemn it. When something seems difficult, dare to do it anyway. When life seems to beat you down, dare to fight back. When […]

Thank You For Your Service

November 11th is US holiday dedicated to honoring military veterans and celebrating their service. And I believe its also a day we should honor and celebrate the families of the veterans who are as much the heroes as those who serve. I am so grateful to veterans and their families for affording me a great nation of freedom […]

It’s not distance that keeps people apart; it’s a lack of communication

Communicating in relationships (whether at work, at home, or with friends) isn’t easy…in fact it takes a lot more effort to communicate with the other person then it does to avoid communicating, because communicating takes WO-ORK!  Yet what may have appeared easier (avoiding communicating) in the moment, will prove to have made your life far […]

The Head Doesn’t Hear Until The Heart Has Listened

“I have learned that the head does not hear anything until the heart has listened, and that what the heart knows today the head will understand tomorrow.” – Jones Stephens Communication. It sounds like such a simple word but the reality is that communication is one of the most complicated things we do in life. […]

We don’t know until we’ve tried

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Insist on yourself; never imitate. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as […]

Letting The Men In On A Secret About Women

Valentine’s Day is almost upon us and for those men out there with a significant other in your life this is your friendly reminder to do something special for that love in your life! Because you do NOT want to be that guy who finds himself at the drug store last minute picking from the […]

Remember when business travel sounded glamorous?

I still remember as a kid when I would see someone walking through an airport in their business clothes, obviously heading somewhere important, I would think to myself how someday I hoped I could have an important job like they did where I would be jet-setting off to important meetings. It just appeared to be […]

The more you recognize it, the more you will have of it

I love a great motivational speaker. Zig Ziglar has always been a personal favorite because he is always so amazingly positive, so when I came across this excerpt from the book “Attitude is Everything: 10 Rules For Staying Positive” by author Vicki Hitzges, which shares a story about Zig I had to share it with […]

Doing our part to be deserving of their sacrifice

November 11th we honor people who sacrificed of themselves so that a Nation could protect the sacred gift of freedom for its citizens. I stand in awe of the amazing Veterans who so selflessly served, as well as those who continue to serve, for such an important cause. These veterans willingly chose to leave their homes and […]

The only way to chase out darkness

The only way to chase out the darkness is to turn on the light. I am not a fan of evil or trashy books or shows. The reason for that is that they always seem to create a feeling of darkness that lingers in the house and I cannot stand that feeling. It leaves you […]

Try And Keep On Trying

“Try and keep on trying until that which seems difficult becomes possible and that which seems only possible becomes habit and a real part of you.” -Dieter F. Uchtdorf The first step to fixing anything is to TRY. We have to try to believe we can do it, try to learn how to do it, […]

“All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.”

“All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.”-Edmund Burke I have been thinking about that quote a lot as of late. I think we sometimes let ourselves think that if we aren’t doing anything bad, that we are therefore, good enough. But in this world where so many […]

Will That Help Me Get Better?

Today I had the opportunity to interview someone about their professional and personal journey as an entrepreneur. Having the chance to hear other people’s stories is such a blessing because you can learn from their life lessons without having to go through the actual experiences yourself. It happened that the entrepreneur I interviewed today has […]

Determination, Work, and A Whole Lot of Courage

As those of you who follow my blog know, I try to write each day about something I learned during each day I am writing. So being that it is Super Bowl Sunday, I decided to write a lesson that comes to mind as I am sitting watching the game with my family (okay let’s […]

To Succeed in Life, You Need Two Things: Ignorance and Confidence

“To succeed in life, you need two things:  Ignorance and Confidence.” – Mark Twain When I read this quote I couldn’t help but laugh because so much of my life I lived by those two things – ignorance in that I always underestimated just how hard I would have to work to pull off the […]

DARE TO BE!

Dare to Be When a new day begins, dare to smile gratefully. When there is darkness, dare to be the first to shine a light. When there is injustice, dare to be the first to condemn it. When something seems difficult, dare to do it anyway. When life seems to beat you down, dare to […]

Trading the Terrible Two’s for the Terrifying Twenties…

How could I have been so naïve? Here I have been thinking that the older our children get, the easier it is to parent them… FALSE! Sure when they were babies they kept you up all night and barfed on every nice outfit you owned, and then as toddlers they threw themselves on the ground […]

“He’s not only reading your story, He wrote it.”

“What you and I might rate as an absolute disaster, God may rate as a pimple-level problem that will pass. He views your life the way you view a movie after you’ve read the book. When something bad happens, you feel the air sucked out of the theater. Everyone else gasps at the crisis on […]

Learn To Be Comfortable Saying ‘No’ Or You Won’t Be Available To Say ‘Yes’ When It Really Matters (Forbes Article)

“It’s only by saying “no” that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.” – Steve Jobs Saying “No” can be awkward, uncomfortable, and downright difficult. After all, it is human nature to want to be liked, and what better way to be liked then to make people happy by saying “Yes” when […]

You Never Know How Strong You Are…

“You never know how strong you are…until being strong is the only choice you have.” Some days you come to the end of your day feeling like you have taken all you can take…you have given all you have to give…dealt with all you can possibly deal with…you literally feel like you are at the […]

Why Did This Have To Happen?!?!

I was working hard on preparing a Powerpoint presentation for a talk I will be giving at a University tomorrow evening when my computer crashed, and of course it crashed before I had saved my work. After hours of hard work I yelled out “Why did this have to happen?!?!”  Arggghhhh!!! So frustrating, right!?! At […]

Happiness is a CHOICE

“Happiness is a choice”. That is the saying that my daughter has on a sign on the dashboard of her car that she looks at every time she gets in her car to go anywhere.  When I asked her the other day if she had a favorite saying that was her motto of sorts in […]

Sometimes You Have to Choose

Sometimes in life you are faced with a choice between two things that both matter to you.  Today I had that experience.  I will give you some background that will help explain the situation:  My entire life since I was old enough to have a workers permit (which I think was 14 years old) I […]

The Most Beautiful People

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not […]

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence…

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always […]

“If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn`t call it genius.”

I love that quote by Michelangelo! It is so true that the great work of this world is not done by geniuses, but by ordinary men and women that are simply hard working and dedicated and who strive to achieve extraordinary things. We are in the final week of completing the construction of our new […]

Getting There is Half the Fun

Every summer when I was a kid, my family would make the long drive from Washington State where we lived at the time out to Utah to visit our grandparents who lived here.  That drive was a brutal 14 hour drive if you didn’t add on all the time for every potty stop we had […]

The Open Your Heart Experiment

A few years ago I was invited to hear a talk being given by author Virginia Hinckley Pearce. In her talk she shared with us an experiment that she did that led her to write her book called “A Heart Like His: Making Space for God`s Love in Your Life”. It was awesome. And as […]