Praising and Cursing

Praising and Cursing

I’ve been thinking and praying for several days about how to share my thoughts on what I’ve been witnessing on Facebook. I love it when God sends the perfect message to help me focus my thoughts and get things started. I received this today, found in James3:9-10.

“With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praising and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.” NIV (New International Version)

Unfortunately, what I’m seeing the most on Facebook these days is more cursing than praising. Many people are joining in what I’ll call the “virtual riot” of the moment about abusive police officers, racist white people, protesting black people, our president, republicans, democrats, Muslims, Christians, etc. People are commenting on and sharing things based on anger and hatred that are only meant to humiliate, denigrate, demean, or condemn another person, race, or religion.

These posts have nothing to do with actual solutions. They only add fuel to the fire and encourage others to join in the virtual riot. That place where anyone can sit safely behind a little screen and never actually participate in a real discussion with those that they are so bravely cursing at. And when others join in, it justifies their feelings and comments and makes them feel so right!

I’m a very proud American citizen! I believe in our right to free speech and I served in our military for 20 years to protect it. I’m not saying that we don’t have the right to speak what’s on our minds. I’m asking us all to make the choice to really think about what we say before we say it! Is what we have to say constructive or destructive? Would God want us to post and share these things?

I know in my heart that we can all do better on this!

In The Journey Training we believe EVERY person is a child of God who has value beyond measure and deserves to be loved as God loves them.

As Christians, we are called to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Jesus gives all Christians these words as part of the great commandment. He does not say “please do this”, or “please think about this”. He commands us to do this!

The easiest thing to do is to follow the crowd, join the anger and hatred, and go along with the rioting mob. The hardest thing to do is something different from the crowd – to choose to love someone, as a person created in the image of God – even if that person has done something that we think is wrong or hurtful.

Loving our neighbor doesn’t mean they get a free pass to do whatever they want. Loving our neighbor means that we are willing to help them see when they are not being who they were created to be and that there is another choice or choices they could make.

Loving them means we do this with honesty and grace, without humiliating them, condemning them, or crushing their spirit. It means we do the hard work to build them up to be the man or woman that God created them to be, not what the world has told them to be or told them that they are. Loving them means we do this with dignity and respect while we may disagree.

As we head into 2015, I challenge all of us to make the CHOICE to look at things from another PERSPECTIVE and do something DIFFERENT!

Stop doing the easy thing by participating in the virtual riots that are based in anger and hatred!

Make the harder choice. Have the courage to live your life from a foundation of LOVE. Look for ways to build people up to be the best they can be instead of tearing them down.

If you can’t imagine how to do this or you don’t think it’s possible, check out The Journey Training. Come join us in 2015!

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Create Memories that Last Forever

Create Memories that Last Forever

“Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God’s perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year.” ~ Joel Osteen

Memories that last forever are the ones where something significant happened. When I was growing up, many Christmases were the same; get up early, run into the other room, look for presents under the tree (on the years we had one) and rip into the presents! I also remember a bowl of nuts – not normal ones – but some that were weird looking. I recognized the peanuts, walnuts, and some weird shaped triangular ones that I always used the metal nutcracker we had to open them up. If you follow my blogs you know that I am a slow learner, so I ate them every year and thought, “Yuck, why are these out?” Still there they were, every year. In fact they may have been the same nuts over and over! Then at night Mom would get drunk and what had started as an amazing day usually ended with yelling and tears.

My incredible wife Noell and I decided to make new memories. One of the things we started doing that has since caught on is giving gifts. Not just presents, but gifts. These gifts are given more infrequently than most other gifts, but are free and unlimited! And they can literally change someone’s day and make a memory that will last forever.

You don’t have to be strong to do this; just a little brave. And you have to take off the mask you usually wear, which is something many first learn how to do in The Journey Training. 

Just sit down with someone you love, hold their hand and look them in the eyes, and tell them the gifts you see in them. For example, I would do this: I hold my wife’s hand, look her in the eyes, and tell her, “The gifts I see in you are an INCREDIBLE wife, one that knows when I hurt and won’t show it, one that gently nudges me to put the phone away and pay attention to the kids. You are the mother of my kids that I prayed for all my life. Your love for others is one that is unparalleled.” Then I hug her and tell her I love her.

Then I’ll move on to my kids; I do this individually with each of them in the same way. I would share with them how proud I am of their leadership (Connor), how their optimism and smile helps motivate me daily (Casey), how they amaze me with their musical talent (Chase), how their heart for giving and to help others makes me want to do more for others (Cameron), how I love watching them take care of others around them, and that I can’t last a single day without a hug from her (Savy), and how she has the gift of tenacity and pushes through until she gets what she wants (Sydney), and how it inspires me. I do this one by one; looking each of them in the eye and making sure each of them know how much I love them.

Sure, they can open a toy that they may forget about later, but they won’t forget when time stood still, and I as the man of the house I showed them my love, and at the same time I showed them how to love others.

Try it this Christmas. I know you (and they) won’t be disappointed. You’ll give a gift that will never grow old, be forgotten, or be something they didn’t want!

If you’ve ever wondered exactly what The Journey Training is all about, this pretty much sums it up. We just show God’s love in a new and different way.

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Managing You

Managing You

It’s been 5 years since winning The Biggest Loser. I’m not perfect, but I’m still 200 pounds down from my heaviest. To sustain a 200 pound weight loss for over 5 years hasn’t been easy; in fact, it’s been a lot harder than losing it in the first place! The true battle began once I stepped off the scale as the World Champion of Weight Loss back in December of 2009.

Life can hand you challenges, and those challenges can become distractions. I’ve been handed many in the last 5 years, and at times I have failed those challenges and backslid into some old, bad habits. In fact, 2 years ago I had to make some decisions to get the train back on the right track and begin to make progress again. Will Rogers once said, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” So how do you face those challenges and distractions, and keep yourself moving forward? It begins by managing you.

I have found that you spend the most time with one person: YOU. And that being the case, accountability begins with you! Managing yourself takes discipline and self-control, but simpler than that is it just takes a plan.

Make Some Deadlines, Create Some Expectations

For years, I managed Land Surveying crews. If I wanted something done, I’d give them a deadline. Without a deadline, we can tend to have the “there’s no rush” attitude. But when we have a deadline on something, things tend to get done! Deadlines in your life begin with goal setting. In The Journey Training, I teach goal setting by setting time specific goals. If you just set a goal without a deadline, there’s no urgency to get it done! So whatever you need to do in your life, whether it’s lose weight, find employment, sell things, or save for retirement, take the end result and break them up into smaller goals. Let’s use weight-loss as an example.

If I want to lose 50 pounds, the first thing I need to do is set a time frame. So my goal becomes lose 50 pounds in 6 months. Then I break that up into even smaller goals. My long term goal is 50 pounds in 6 months, and I now set a short term goal of losing 10 pounds in 1 month. And even further than that, I want to set a weekly goal of lose 3 pounds in 1 week. So now I have a deadline. Get on the scale in 7 days and be down 3 pounds. Without that deadline you can set for yourself, 50 pounds seems impossible. How big does 3 pounds sound? To me, it sounds do-able!

Just as you’d manage others, you’ve got to manage yourself. Set a deadline for yourself and put it out there. Tell others of your deadline. Ask them to check on you when it comes and see how you did. Do what a manager would do for his team – set a deadline and create an expectation.

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Risks and Rewards

Risks and Rewards

Everyone has heard the phrase “risks and rewards,” and most of the time people associate it with money and riches. Please don’t get me wrong, though; it does have its place with money and riches, but that is not always the case.

Every day we have to take risks to get rewards. Some of us think “I am not a risk taker,” but that is not really accurate. Think about what your average day looks like, how many risks do you take each day to get simple rewards.

Most of the time it does not stop us, is fact most of the time we don’t think about it.

  • Odds of getting hemorrhoids – 25 to 1… but we don’t stop using that part of our anatomy do we?
  • Odds of getting in an transportation accident – 69 to 1, but we don’t stop driving.
  • Odds of slipping in the shower – 1 in 2232, and please, PLEASE don’t stop showering.
  • Odds of having an accident using fireworks – 1 in 19,556, but it does not stop most of us from blowing stuff up.
  • Odds of getting hurt in an amusement park ride – 1 in 257,000, and we still do it.

Every time we step out of our house we have risk. But, we also have reward.

Everything in life has some kind of risk vs reward.

The question is, how many opportunities do we have in our lives that we choose not to step out a take a risk to achieve. Many of us live in fear, and we may not realize it, but we let it control us.

Here are 5 tips to moving forward despite risks:

  1. Stop and breathe. According to an article at www.livestrong.com “Why Does Deep Breathing Slow You Down?”
    Deep breathing relieves stress and anxiety due to its physiological effect on the nervous system. Breathing slowly and mindfully activates the hypothalamus, connected to the pituitary gland in the brain, to send out neurohormones that inhibit stress-producing hormones and trigger a relaxation response in the body. The hypothalamus links the nervous system to the endocrine system, which secretes the hormones that regulate all activities throughout the body.
  2. Look at the options. Weigh out all the risks. Much of the time when we slow down and look at the options, some of the risks really are not as scary as we think.
  3. Write it down. Look at the reason this is a concern. Even making a positive or negative list may work. Just sit down and write it.
    I once read a University of Chicago study that shows that writing down our negative thoughts or worries about an upcoming important event has a calming effect on us. The actual act of writing our thoughts down forces us to give coherence to stressful thoughts, which not only lessens the intensity of these thoughts but can even negate them. The study has shown that pressure-filled situations can deplete a part of our brain’s working memory and make us less effective to remain calm and think clearly.
  4. DON’T over analyze it. We can get very caught up in the “what ifs”, but if the “what ifs” take over, then you will never launch. That’s why the 1st three points are crucial. If you are over analyzing, go back and do one of 1, 2, or 3 again.
  5. Pull the trigger. If you have ever fired a gun, you know that when you have a gun all lined up, there is a point where you say “I’m pulling the trigger now,” and your brain releases chemicals that rush through us, and now you feel yourself pulling that trigger. This “rush” happens the second you make a solid decision to make a move.

What reward are you looking for today that you need to evaluate the risk on?

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What One Thing Can You Change?

What One Thing Can You Change?

Looking back at my life, I’ve have had so many “if” moments.

“If I would have just…” or “If only…”  Have you had any of those moments in your life?  Well, regrets are easy to hold on to, but when life seems to be repeating the same results, maybe it’s time to change the game.

When I was young, I seemed to get myself in the same situations over and over again.  I knew those situations were toxic and debilitating, but I kept finding myself in the same situation, always behind and trying to catch up.  One thing I learned in my training was that I often unknowingly make decisions that create my reality. It’s usually true that people find themselves in the same situations because they inherently don’t stop doing what creates that situation.  How do we change that? When it’s time for a change, what should we change?  And how do we know what we do will work?

During The Biggest Loser, I hit a plateau.  I worked out over 40 hours that week and lost only 1 pound.  It scared me, because I knew that the clock was ticking, and each day I didn’t lose weight was a day my competitors could be gaining ground!  So I said to myself, “What one thing can you change now that I haven’t done before?”  I called Jillian Michaels for help, and she said something powerful to me: “Change it up.”

But what do I change?

How do I know it will work?  Well, I would change 1 thing at a time and see if that makes a difference.  Why only 1 thing?  Because if I changed 10 things, how would I know which change worked?  And if nothing happened, how would I know 1 of those changes worked while another sabotaged my success?  So I would change up one thing at a time, and see what happens.  The first thing I did was rest.  Bob Harper always told me, “There’s no time for rest. You can rest after the finale!”  But I knew I was exhausted, and my body was tired, so on the advice of Jillian I took the weekend off and ate 2,500 calories per day to refuel.  Then, I changed up my diet by changing 1 thing and my exercise regime by changing 1 thing.  That week I lost 8 pounds.  IT WORKED!  Those small decisions worked!

Where in your life are you stalled?  Is it in a relationship?  Maybe it’s your finances or health journey?  I have a task for you.  Ask yourself, “What one thing can I do now that I haven’t done before?”  Like a row of dominos that have been lined up and tipped over, removing just 1 domino may stop the fall!  Maybe it’s one thing you need to add like a boundary, a healthy food, or a savings plan?  Maybe it’s one thing you need to take away such as a wall you’ve put up in your relationship, an unhealthy food you eat, or a monthly expenditure?  Just making one small change can affect your outcome greatly.  But you won’t know if you don’t try.  Begin to make small changes and stop looking at the length of the journey you have to go, and you just might travel leaps and bounds in the area you are stuck!  But it is up to you?  Are you willing to do one thing?

That one thing for many people is attending The Journey Training.  Countless people have testified that it has been the one decision that has made the most difference in their lives since attending.  The Journey Training isn’t like a normal seminar, which gives very little lasting change.  It is an experience that will give you tools and discoveries that you will walk with into every area of your life.  The choice is yours, and you do have the right to choose.  Choose YOU, Choose The Journey Training. Sign up today for the next Threshold class at www.thejourneytraining.com

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