Life | Leadership

What makes a person useful or useless? Is it wrong to judge people in such a way? Wouldn’t it be helpful to know if we are useful or useless? If we don’t know, who else can know? Anyone can say to us that we are useful or useless, but the question will be, are they right?

The reason this subject of being useful or useless came up was a quote from a minister who lived about 200 years ago. His words surprised me. Can you imagine a man of God saying a person is useless today? …

Life | Leadership

There are two essential areas of life in which everyone can choose to be either contented or discontented. Satisfied or dissatisfied. We can be content with “what we have,” and we can be content with “what we are.” Or not.

Let’s look at each side of these two areas to see if we can determine which is better for our lives.

How content are you with “what you have”?

The design of today’s world is to keep us unfulfilled, dissatisfied, and disoriented. Much of it wants to keep us off balance when it comes to what we own and what we have.

It is not just companies that…

Life | Leadership

What comes to mind when you hear the word faith? Most of us in America, at least in the south, usually think it refers to something religious. There are many types of faith in our lives, however. Let’s take a broader look at faith and why it is critical to living our lives.

No one can go through life without believing in something or someone. The simplest definition of faith is in fact, just that — to put our “complete trust or confidence in something or someone” (definition from The Oxford dictionary). …

Life | Leadership

Can you ever be too young or too old to succeed? Depending on how you define success, it depends. Let’s define success as coming up with the right idea or product that you can build a business on, from which you can make a great living.

We have all heard the stories of young people becoming billionaires. There seems to be no limit to success for younger people if they can create the right idea and product. But what about older people? Can you be too old to achieve success?

Whatever your age, young, middle-aged, or senior citizen, the only…

Life | Leadership

How well do you know yourself? This is a serious question everyone should ask sooner than later in life. One thing life has taught me over many years is there is always more to learn about myself. Always.

I have yet to meet a single person, regardless of age, who does not continue to discover things about themselves. And I am talking about people well into their 80s! If someone that age is still learning things about themselves, what makes us any different?

You can also ask this question about the world. How well do you know the world? If…

Life | Inspiration

Do you know what you ought to do in life? Do you think you oughta do that? What are the things we ought to do?

You may not like the word “ought,” but it has a nice sound to my southern ears. I believe it is used more in the south than in any other part of the USA. In fact, “oughta” (ought to) is part of our regular vocabulary.

While ought usage has dwindled considerably over the past two hundred years, oughta has increased slightly, according to the Google Ngram Viewer.

Many of us like “ought” because it sounds…

Leadership | Life

We can know a lot about life and living and have all the knowledge we will ever need, yet miss the meaning in it all. Understanding is more important than remembering information and data. Making meaning of that understanding is one of the most important things in life.

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” Albert Einstein

To know requires memory, but to understand requires more. To understand and make meaning of something involves judgment. Not the negative type of judging that condemns, but the kind of judging that is helpful, positive, and sound. …

Life | Leadership

You have heard it said all of your life, “knowledge is power.” Where did this saying originate? Emerson wrote:

“There is no knowledge that is not power.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

While Emerson lived in the 1800s, two centuries earlier, Taylor wrote:

“Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands, and there is no knowledge that is not power.” Jeremy Taylor

More than 2000 years before Taylor, Solomon, the wisest man to have ever lived, said:

“A wise man is strong, And a person of knowledge increases power.” Proverbs 24:5 NAS

These three witnesses date back to around 900 BC…