Help

It is sometimes very difficult for me to ask for help. I know I am not alone in this issue. There are lots of reasons someone might be reluctant to ask for help. They might not think someone could do it as well as they can. They might be too prideful to admit they can't handle something. They may not realize that they actually need help in the first place. They may think no one would be willing to help. For me, it is two issues simultaneously: 1) I don't want to be a burden on someone and 2) I tend to think that taking the time to explain something will take more time than just doing it myself.

I have to get better at this. I took a big step in the past few weeks. I brought on a business partner. Her name is Taylore Massa. She is new to Weichert and is energetic and eager to learn. Also, Cindy was able to get her license back and now there are 3 of us. It's pretty cool to have two reliable people ready to help. I just have to get better at getting them stuff to do!

For those of you that have people working for you, how do you choose what to delegate? How do you train people to do it the way you want? Share some stories of good experiences and bad experiences with assistants/employees.

For those of you that are directly under someone else in your job (i.e. you are a secretary/administrative assistant/personal assistant), how do you help your boss be better at delegating? How did you learn to be effective for the person above you? What are some techniques you can share to be more of a mind reader?

Why I Love My Children

Going in a COMPLETELY different direction today because I feel like writing something that will make me feel good.

I have two kids. Jonas is 6 and Maggie is 17 months old. You may not be aware of this but my kids are the smartest kids on the planet. Sorry if you thought yours are, you are wrong. How do I know this? Because they are my kids, of course.

Jonas is a reading machine. He is in Kindergarten and is reading Magic Treehouse chapter books. He loves it. He is also so insightful. He recognizes when people are sad, angry, etc. by their body language--they don't even have to speak. I can't do that half the time!

Maggie is a spitfire. She is into everything. She is also talking in two word sentences and understands WAY more than I think she should. She has even used the potty a time or two. Told you, smartest kids ever.

That is not why I love them so much. I am proud of them for that kind of stuff but I don't love them because of it. I love them because they are my kids. I love them because God placed me in a position of responsibility for their EVERYTHING right now. I am responsible for their physical well being, emotional well being, spiritual well being and mental well being. I am responsible for their growth as individuals, as members of the church and as members of our society. I am responsible for teaching them about giving--both of time and money. I am responsible for showing both of them how to have a healthy marriage. I am responsible for demonstrating to them God's love for his church, for people and for them as his children. That's a lot of responsibility! I cannot adequately put into words how that responsibility translates to love, but it does--and it's pretty cool.

The responsibility seems overwhelming but it is not without reward. My kids return that love 10000 fold. They love me no matter what. When I pick them up from daycare, they both come running and grab onto me like they haven't seen me in weeks. When they hurt--no matter how "independent" they want to be, they come to me or Cindy. They trust us unconditionally. I cannot do wrong in their eyes. I am my son's hero right now. He tells me how awesome I am. I tell him how awesome he is. It's pretty awesome.

I write all this as an encouragement. Fathers, love your kids. Acknowledge them, value them, build them up. The rewards for taking care of your responsibility here are boundless. Show them how to be the best possible version of themselves by striving to be the best possible version of yourself. They learn the MOST by observing and mimicking you. Make it count.

Smoke Screen

I have been thinking about this topic for a while now. I've been debating on whether or not I want to put this out there. I decided (obviously) that it is a worthwhile topic and one to discuss. Government and media alike love to create catastrophes. They both love to sensationalize issues to the point of "crisis levels". Both institutions will latch onto the most compelling "evidence" for their pet issue and ram that down our throats, conveniently leaving out the rebuttal evidence or even the most accurate or up to date evidence. This is nothing new and it is definitely not partisan--they ALL do it--every single one of them. Lately I've been thinking about the real purpose behind it and here is my theory, and no, I'm not a doomsday prepper, nor do I have some secret website exposing all the government conspiracies out there, this is just a theory.

If you polled 100 average people and asked the question, "What is the biggest problem facing our country/society right now?", I would expect at least 20-30 different answers. Think about that, how can the "biggest" problem be 20-30 different things? Obviously words like biggest and worst and most dangerous ask for opinion, not necessarily fact so it stands to reason people would have different opinions. I just think the number of differing opinions would be staggering. How can people living in the same society have so many opinions of what the biggest problems are? I would suspect answers to include the following plus more--Obamacare, gun control (both sides), debt, moral decline, religious zealots, terrorism, illegal immigrants, marijuana, medicare cutting, conservatives, liberals, military spending, entitlements, the Federal Reserve, abortion, high taxes, low taxes, death taxes, Social Security, government spending, unfair advantages for the rich, discrimination against a race/religion/sexual orientation, etc. Here are my thoughts on all these problems.

I think all of these issues warrant discussion and have potential to be big problems but I do not think ANY of these are the "biggest" problem we face. I think the biggest problem America faces right now is an unwillingness and perhaps inability to focus. As a society, we cannot prioritize issues as the relate to the continuation of the country. We cannot even agree to agree on which problem to work on first. The media might spend a little time on the national debt today and then tomorrow devote a whole segment to gun control and then the next day devote a large chunk of time to terrorism. We are schizophrenic and ADD all at the same time.

I think it is on purpose. Now I cross into the realm of conspiracy theorist. Now you might think I am crazy. I think the government leaders and the media does this so that they can hide their own pet issues and keep us "informed" about everything so we focus on NOTHING. I think the only way this country will save itself and will move forward with anything resembling meaningful reform is if we as a society table discussions on most things and focus on 2-3 major issues that shore up our foundation. Honestly, the discussion about abortion and discrimination against homosexuals will not matter if the country is bankrupt. Not saying those issues aren't important, just saying there are things we need to do as a country to survive,  before we can worry about making it a better society.

Hope I ruffled a few feathers out there. Hope you can read this objectively and hope you can weed through the ADD media and see the things that matter most. Hope we can come together as a country and fix the ship before we worry about placating the passengers.

One other note, I am switching to writing on Thursdays instead of Wednesday. Schedule will be a bit more accommodating. Love to read your comments.

Time is the Ultimate Currency

I used to teach Economics in high school. One of the central ideas I wanted the kids to get is that you control your own lot in life. We started down this path with the idea of resources and trade offs. When you have a job, you trade the resource of your time for the resource of their money. You then take the money and trade it for various other things--goods, services, etc. If your job pays $9/hour and you think you are worth $12/hour, you should quit and find someone that agrees with your assessment of your value. They didn't always like this because it puts the responsibility for their pay back on them. That means it is much harder to complain about your job!

Today I was thinking about stuff while driving and something occurred to me that I never said to those high school seniors (mostly). If time is ultimately your currency, then everyone starts out equally as wealthy. We all have 24 hours to spend each day. What separates us and makes some more monetarily wealthy than others is how we spend our resource of time. Do we spend it learning and studying and honing our skills? Do we spend it thinking of and perfecting ways to get more out of each hour, i.e. process improvement, ways to be more efficient? Do we spend it complaining about how bad things are? Do we spend our time working for someone else and not giving ourselves enough credit? Do we spend our time worrying about how we are spending our time? Do we spend it partying and not really working toward anything?

Time is, by far, the most valuable and finite resource we have. You can never, ever recover it and the effects of how we spend it pretty much last the rest of our lives--good and bad. Next time the jealousy bug creeps in and you wonder how that guy or gal got so much more wealth or success than you, evaluate how he or she spends their time and how you spend your time. Perhaps the trade off they chose to make in order to get to that point is not one you are willing to make. Perhaps they had a flash of brilliance that changed their lives. Who knows. My point is this, before you get jealous or resentful, think about what YOU could accomplish with better trades for your time.

Courtesy and Common Decency

So my wife got this new dress. It is quite a pretty dress and she looks very good in it. Problem is that it doesn't fit perfectly in the top area. She didn't realize this fact until she was already at work yesterday. Movement was difficult as she tried to retain her modesty. Not that it was inappropriate or somehow trashy, she's just fairly conservative and it showed a bit more than she wanted to show. A little alteration work on it and it will be fine--very flattering. Oh yeah and she works as a banker. So, while working yesterday she had not one but 4 different guys make at least somewhat inappropriate comments to her about the dress!! One even went so far as to peer over the desk to try to get a better look. That same guy called today to follow up on a bank issue and asked her what she was wearing today!!! If it were a coworker, it would have absolutely crossed into the sexual harassment arena.

My question is this, what in the world would make a guy think it is ok to make comments like that in a professional environment? Does the guy think he is going to get her number by creeping her out? Is it because he is a customer and not a coworker that he thinks he can get away with it?

Guys, show some class. Even if you are looking, keep your comments to yourself. Don't help speed the decay of the moral fabric of our country--and quit hitting on my wife!

Covers

What do Mike Tyson, Willie Nelson, Michael Jackson, Donald Trump, Dave Ramsey, Burt Reynolds, MC Hammer, Tammy Wynette and Abraham Lincoln all have in common? They were all broke after being wealthy. According to Sports Illustrated, 78% of former NFL players are bankrupt within 2 years after retirement. This goes to show you that those people who "should" have money often do not have money. Appearances are not everything. If I were to ask you what a rich person looked like you probably have a preconceived notion in your head that you would default to. Pretty much everyone does. A rich person has... or wears ... or drives... or lives... . The reality is that you can't judge the proverbial book by its cover. Plenty of rich people drive the same thing they drove years ago. They wear Walmart specials and clip coupons. They do these things because these things helped make them rich. These habits got them there--hard work, frugality, staying out of debt. I see it very often in my job. The smelly guy walks in to the office and wants to sell a $500,000 house that is debt free and pay cash for a different $500,000 property. Or maybe it is on a smaller scale. They want to sell the debt free $150,000 house and travel in the paid for $100,000 RV for 8 months out of the year. My point is this, in our modern world it is a tremendous mistake to judge someone's "value" based on their appearance--maybe even more so than it used to be. Instead, treat everyone as "million dollar clients."

It is rewarding to you to know that everyone got great service and everyone was treated well. No one can say you favored one other the other because everyone was served well. Plus, that kind of attention will only get you raving fans. The other thing I would encourage you to do is to take an honest look at yourself. Do you pre-judge people? Chances are, you do. It is human nature, part of our defense mechanisms to look for potential threats. In the future, try to analyze your prejudices and determine if they are founded or just part of the culture you grew up in. Becoming good at this will change your life.

Don't Hold Back

Last week I wrote about a near death experience and how that made me pause to think about a lot of stuff. How do I treat those closest to me? Do I spend "enough" time with them? Is there ever "enough" time? Does my wife know I love her? Do my kids know that I love them no matter what? Do my friends know I love them? All very good questions for us to visit every so often. Hopefully it won't take a near death experience for you to think about these things. Hopefully, my near death experience is sufficient fodder for you to pause and reflect on life questions. That said, I want to share with you some of the thoughts I've had since then...

• I want my daughter to marry someone that writes her love letters AFTER they are married. I stole this idea from Jon Acuff. He is writing love letters to his wife this year as a sort of "love dare" type project.
• I want my son to marry someone that is worthy of him writing love letters to after they are married. I want both of my kids to be patient, insightful, wise, faithful and trusting in God's plan when they choose their marriage covenant partner. I want them to understand what a covenant is and that it is not a temporary arrangement.
• I never, ever, ever want my kids to wonder if I still love them. I don't even want this to be a possibility for them to think this. I want it to be obvious when I am nice to them, when I am stern with them, when I discipline them, when I am proud of them, when I am disappointed in them. I want all of those scenarios to still reflect my love for them. I know it is possible. My parents did a pretty good job of it and I don't know that they did it on purpose. If I do it on purpose, I should be able to do a great job.
• I want my model of manhood to be worthy of my son's imitation. Kids look to their parents for everything. They look at them to learn how to treat spouses, siblings, strangers. They look to their parents for ideas on politics, social life, drinking, religion and adulthood. Often times they mimic what they see. Sometimes it is consciously, sometimes not (remember Cats in the Cradle--ooohhooohh, still gives me goose bumps thinking about that song). Sometimes you don't even realize they have mimicked you until YEARS later. I want my example, the things Jonas picks up on early in life and the things that don't show up for years and years, to be one I can be proud to pass on.
• I don't want to leave things unsaid or with doubt. I see my kids and wife every day. I have lots of opportunities to tell them and show them I love them. I don't see any one of my friends every day. I don't have/make tons of opportunities for them to know how I feel about them. I don't need to waste a single one. Go ahead and say it. You might not get another chance. It's ok if they think you are sentimental or sappy. They will appreciate it whenever the last time does officially happen.
• You really can't take it with you and you really don't know when you are going to go. I was inches away from dying. If I had over-corrected just a bit more, I would have flipped or run into an embankment. If I hadn't swerved quite as hard or if the drunk hadn't gone on into the ditch, I would be dead. Why horde things? Give freely. Give often. Give unexpectedly. Give lots. Don't worry if they are "taking advantage of you"--that's "their" problem, not yours. You might not get to give it to them later. Christians, 10% is a guideline--it is not a "rate". Don't limit yourself or God's ability and willingness to provide when you provide for others.

I hope these provide some food for thought. Thinking about these things will lead to you DOING something. Doing some of this stuff on PURPOSE will help you make other people have extraordinary lives. Helping other people have extraordinary lives will be rewarding beyond measure.

What are some other ideas that can lead to an action that helps someone else live an extraordinary life?