My Riffs

Give and you’re receive. Let it go and you’ll get something more. 

Plan to win. Don’t plan to fail. Plan b’s and c’s are good. But plan to win. You don’t end up winning by accident. You win by being deliberate. 

We all have good strengths and weakness. Our weaknesses need work, there's very little upside with them. However our strengths are things we should take pride in, develop and use to our advantage. The thing about every strength is they can become a bad quality when taken to their extremes. Patience can become procrastination. Easy going can become pushover. Hard working can become workaholic. And on and on the list goes. Know your strengths and use them with wisdom. Strength used with wisdom is true strength. Strengths used without wisdom become weakness.

Your surroundings matter. Very much. What you surround yourself with in your house matters. Your environmental surroundings matter much. But what may matter the most is your relational surroundings. Who you surround yourself with matters more to your development than anything else. 

Life is what you make it. Everyone deals with ups, downs, losses and gains, but some are able to still soar. Many times the difference is in attitude, those who want to make their life great do just that.

Going through life always trying to give the minimums will reap feeble results. Constant cutting corners and aiming for the lowest will result in the lowest. Aim and shoot high, it takes more effort but is it ever worth it. 

If you don't ask for something, you're not gonna get it. So get out there and ask for it.

Speaking usually conveys to others what we're feeling or thinking or what we want people to think. Silence also conveys something. Any foolish person can speak, but it takes a wise person to be quiet. If someone can control their tongue, they've mastered one of the hardest things a human will deal with. Someone with loose lips is not to be trusted. There's an art to being silent. Because there's a time to speak and a time to refrain from speaking, but knowing that difference is the art.

 Believe in people. Will they let you down? Possibly, maybe even likely. But keep believing in them. This is especially true in your children. Believe in them, let them know it. They need their parents belief in them or they likely won't succeed as adults.

Don't wait to be happy! Don't wait to be content! Don't wait to be kind!

If it's not done in love, it doesn't mean anything. That means the motive behind what we do is equally important to the action itself.

This phrase was very popular a few years back. It was apparently a World War 2 slogan in England. But it's great advice for 2022. So many things pull on us to feel enraged about. Most times, it's best to keep calm and carry on. Don't be dragged into every social drama and cause. You have limited resources and energy. Preserve them for things that really matter.

Some people get trapped into living for approval from others. While it's very important to have people who are close and care for you be happy with your life, it's another thing to live for peoples approval. You can't make everyone happy, it's an unattainable goal. You can likely make a few close people happy with your life and decisions but you cannot make everyone happy. Seek approval of the few who matter the most.

Somebody needs you. Somebody needs the best you. That person is you, yes. But there's also other people who need you. Push to be the best version of yourself. Everything is connected and your betterment means the better of much more than just yourself.

You have to simultaneously look one step in front of you, yet keep your eye on the goals in the future. Neglecting the immediate will be quick ruin. But neglecting the long term means you’re gonna end up nowhere, quickly. 

Kids need correction. Adults need correction.  But here is something I’ve learned: people need correction less than they need encouragement. You can often accomplish the same thing using encouragement instead of correction.  Most people, most of the time, don’t need to be told they’re wrong. They intuitively already know. They need to be encouraged to do the right thing. 

We tend to blame people and circumstances for our problems and where we are. However, the enemy isn’t them. The enemy is us. How we handle situations is what makes or breaks us. We can become our own enemy by choosing to get bitter rather than better. We become our own enemy when we choose to not deal with our hurts, pains and brokenness. When we take responsibility for our own selves, we become our best friend. When we don’t, we become our own enemy. 

You’re only as strong as your weakest link. Find your areas of weakness and strengthen them. Your weak areas is where you will be overcome. So find those areas and strengthen them before something comes and finds them weak. 

The easy way is exactly that, the easiest way to get somewhere or something. It’s interesting though, the easy way very often isn’t the best way. Easy effort usually gets poor results. Hard effort usually gets good results. Mix hard effort with smart effort and you get excellent results. 

It's absolutely, fundamentally true that honesty is the best policy. When we think of honesty, we instinctively think about what we say to others. But we forget about what we say to ourselves. We also forget one of the most important, are we living honestly? Are we acting out the beliefs we hold to be true?Those are the deeper areas of honesty.

Through is usually the way. Avoidance rarely pays.

If I don’t like what I see, I’m either looking at the wrong thing or I’m looking at it wrong.

Yesterday we had something like a 20 hour cell phone outage. Today we are having a couple hour power outage. These are things we take for granted on a daily basis. Losing them temporarily is a reminder how fortunate we really are and how spoiled we are. It's been frustrating yes, but also been a great reminder of how good we have it and to not take all our luxuries for granted.

The loudest voice is your own. What you tell yourself you will end up believing. What's even more is your body will respond to what your mind tells it. People have made themselves physically sick by simply believing they are. People have recovered from sickness simply by finding things to be grateful for. Auditing the things we tell ourselves and cutting off the negative thoughts can alter our life and health more than any external thing.

Have a good memory for the good things that have happened. Have a bad memory for the bad things that have occurred. Remember their good traits. Forget about their wrongs. Memorize joy until it becomes part of who you are. Forget all the negative things that have tried to cling to you. 

The smaller your world is, the more self centred you get and the bigger every issue seems to become. When we expand our world, our view, our horizon the little irritations around us seem to get smaller.

You'll believe anything you tell yourself long enough. Don't feed yourself lies, because you'll believe them. This is how people end up believing some absolutely crazy things about themselves and the world around them. You can literally convince yourself of anything. So be careful what you start telling yourself, you will eventually believe it.

Beware of giving to takers because they don't have any limits to their taking. Give to people in need, but beware those who are takers are unwilling to work. Their taking has no limits.

If you haven't read the story of the Endurance you're missing a great story of courage and endurance. The moral of the story is to never give up. Hero's are people who don't quit. Races aren't always won by the fastest, but they're won by the ones who endure. The wise words in the Book of James in the Bible says this "when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing."

Yesterday was about letting go. And there’s a second part to why that’s so important. You won’t have room for better things if you hang onto the old baggage.