I want to do great things and make a positive impact on other people’s lives.
I want to be one of those people that other people look at and ask how on earth does he get all that done… and still write his wife love songs?

This post is going to be a post I look back to each week to make sure that I’m making progress in the direction I want to go.

Take Care of Yourself First!
Like the safety warning you receive when flying (to put the air mask on yourself first and your children second), you have to take care of yourself first. This means physically and mentally. This is not easy if you have children, a job, or any other responsibility! But it’s critical that you do. If you’re married, getting your wife or husband on board with this makes it a lot easier. Encourage each other to workout and eat healthy.

Unless you can help yourself no one will expect, or trust, you to help them.
You can’t really imagine the disheveled drunk from the street corner walking into the Whitehouse and telling the President and Congress how to solve the debt problem (although he could do a better job than the current fiasco administration I’m sure)… You can’t help anyone else until you can help yourself.

11 Reasons We Fail
God has given us everything we need to succeed… I’m not kidding, it’s really true.
If we’re struggling then we’re have one, or more, of the following issues… at times I think I suffer from all 11!

1. We don’t believe that we can – I call this the Eeyore syndrome.
2. We are filled with fear (related to #1). The thing about fear is that it usually does not appear as fear. It’s usually masked behind well thought-out and polished sets of reasons and excuses. This also shows up as “we don’t believe we deserve it”.
3. We have underlying problems that are eating away at us. Financial, relationship, health, you name it. If we’re not facing or dealing with it, then it’s festering and fermenting and souring our subconscious. This undermines anything and everything we’re trying to do. We may not be able to solve the problems, but the minute we start facing them we start making progress.
4. We don’t see the resources and raw materials that we have available to us. This can be physical as well as thoughts and ideas (creativity).
5. We see the resources and raw materials we have, but don’t see the path to use them.
6. We ignore God’s plan in favor of our own: we want to be a ballerina and we weigh 350lbs and have bad knees (see paragraph about taking care of yourself!). If we’re constantly feeling like a salmon swimming upstream then we’re probably not doing what we’re supposed to be doing with our life.
7. We are slaves to bad, detrimental, or time-wasting habits.
8. We are selfish.
9. We ignore or don’t ask for help and guidance.
10. We listen to the wrong people. Satan succeeds by confusion and division… and he’s very, very good at it. What? You don’t think Satan is involved. Wrong. Evil is real: it does not want you to succeed and create anything good for yourself or the world – lest of all help other people succeed and create something good for the world.
11. We care about what people think or who gets the credit.

Until next time,
Fred