“INTEGRITY—Did I do my best? EXPECTATION—Did I please my sponsor? RELEVANCE—Did I understand and relate to the audience? VALUE—Did I add value to the people? APPLICATION—Did I give people a game plan? CHANGE—Did I make a difference?”

“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like and do what you'd rather not.”

“to put it as philosopher-poet Ralph Waldo Emerson did, “To be simple is to be great.”

“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an invasion of ideas.”

“The Influence Factor—Do they influence others? The Capacity Factor—Do they have the potential to grow and develop? The Attitude Factor—Do they desire to grow and develop themselves? The Chemistry Factor—Do we like each other? The Passion Factor—Are they self-motivated? The Character Factor—Are they grounded? The Values Factor—Are our values compatible? The Teamwork Factor—Do they work well with others? The Support Factor—Do they add value to me? The Creative Factor—Can they find possibilities in impossibilities? The Option Factor—Can their contribution give me options? The 10 Percent Factor—Are they in the top 10 percent of those on our team?”

“Leaders see everything with a leadership bias. Their focus is on mobilizing people and leveraging resources to achieve their goals rather than on using their own individual efforts. Leaders who want to succeed maximize every asset and resource they have for the benefit of their organization. For that reason, they are continually aware of what they have at their disposal.”

“I strongly encourage you to find a place to think and to discipline yourself to pause and use it, because it has the potential to change your life. It can help you to figure out what’s really important and what isn’t. As writer and Catholic priest Henri J. M. Nouwen observed, “When you are able to create a lonely place in the middle of your actions and concerns, your successes and failures slowly can lose some of their power over you.”

“My friend Nancy Dornan says, “The longest distance between two points is a shortcut.” That’s really true. For everything of value in life, you pay a price. As you desire to grow in a particular area, figure out what it will really take, including the price, and then determine to pay it.”

“Successful people do daily what unsuccessful people do occasionally. They practice daily disciplines. They implement systems for their personal growth. They make it a habit to maintain a positive attitude

“Think, Act, Talk, and Conduct Yourself Like the Person You Want to Become”

“You just need to be positive, believe in yourself, and focus on others.” 

“1. Cop-outs. People who have no goals and do not commit. 2. Holdouts. People who don’t know if they can reach their goals, so they’re afraid to commit. 3. Dropouts. People who start toward a goal but quit when the going gets tough. 4. All-outs. People who set goals, commit to them, and pay the price to reach”

“Several years ago Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s book, Psycho-Cybernetics, was one of the most popular books on the market. Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who often took disfigured faces and made them more attractive. He observed that in every case, the patient’s self-image rose with his and her physical improvement. In addition to being a successful surgeon, Dr. Maltz was a great psychologist who understood human nature. A wealthy woman was greatly concerned about her son, and she came to Dr. Maltz for advice. She had hoped that the son would assume the family business following her husband’s death, but when the son came of age, he refused to assume that responsibility and chose to enter an entirely different field. She thought Dr. Maltz could help convince the boy that he was making a grave error. The doctor agreed to see him, and he probed into the reasons for the young man’s decision. The son explained, “I would have loved to take over the family business, but you don’t understand the relationship I had with my father. He was a driven man who came up the hard way. His objective was to teach me self-reliance, but he made a drastic mistake. He tried to teach me that principle in a negative way. He thought the best way to teach me self-reliance was to never encourage or praise me. He wanted me to be tough and independent. Every day we played catch in the yard. The object was for me to catch the ball ten straight times. I would catch that ball eight or nine times, but always on that tenth throw he would do everything possible to make me miss it. He would throw it on the ground or over my head but always so I had no chance of catching it.” The young man paused for a moment and then said, “He never let me catch the tenth ball—never! And I guess that’s why I have to get away from his business; I want to catch that tenth ball!”

“Eleanor Roosevelt said, “One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”

“In my first leadership position, I mistakenly thought that being named the leader meant that I was the leader. Back then I defined leading as a noun—as the position I was appointed to—not a verb—as what I was doing. Though I had been hired as the senior pastor, I quickly discovered the real leader of the church was a down-to-earth farmer named Claude, who had been earning his leadership influence through many positive actions over many years. He later explained it to me, saying, “John, all the letters”