Category Archives: Self-Improvement

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What’s Your Dream?

My wife and I recently attended an event held by the Muskegon Area Rental Association (MARA). Ratan Khatri was speaking at the event. We’d connected on Facebook, and when I saw this opportunity, I asked my wife to go. We had been interested in investing in real estate, and we saw this as the perfect opportunity to dip our feet into the waters.

At the MARA event, we heard from a long-time real estate investor. He’s invested in multiple real estate deals and knew his stuff. His presentation was geared toward the beginner investor, which was the perfect event for us!

But one thing stood out to me. A question Ratan asked:

What’s your dream for your real estate investments? 

What’s Your Dream?

Ratan’s question got me thinking… I need to ask this question in all areas of my life. What’s my dream for:  Read more...

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That’s Not Nice

Recently, I listened to Martha Stout’s book The Sociopath Next Door. It discusses how we can recognize the traits of sociopaths in our lives. Once we identify them, we can begin to act appropriately toward them.

Stout discusses the situation of a young girl on a bus. She sees one of her classmates picking on another student. This student is differently abled. 

The young girl could have kept silent. She didn’t. She spoke up, told the bully he’s not being nice, and changed the course of the bullied child’s day.

It took a lot of courage for the young girl to speak up. She was putting herself in harm’s way yet she acted to help the other student. She was willing to be the voice of the voiceless. She was willing to call out the un-nice behavior.   Read more...

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Relentless Forward Motion

What does it take to be a great leader? It’s something that I’ve thought a lot about lately, with more and more leaders failing and a seeming dirth of new leaders to take their place.

Then it hit me…

It’s what it takes to be great in any endeavor we take on. We have to have relentless forward motion.

Relentless Forward Motion

What do you bring to mind when you think about relentless forward motion? I want you to consider what each word in this simple phrase means:

RELENTLESS: oppressively constant; incessant

FORWARD: onward so as to make progress; toward a successful conclusion

MOTION: the action or process of being moved

Let’s put those definitions together to make it relatable as a leader. Relentless forward motion in leadership is:

The constant, incessant movement and progress toward a goal.  Read more...

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Developing The Ability To Endure Leadership Stress

Leading requires endurance. You have to have the ability to continue through the pain, heartache, and frustrations to get yourself through to the other side. The side of milk and honey. The side of feeling accomplished.

But you can’t do that if you don’t have endurance.

I think I know a thing or two about endurance. Having run multiple half and full marathons along with a handful of 25Ks, I’ve had to push my body and mind to the breaking point to cross the finish line.

Just like we have to do as leaders. 

We have to push ourselves beyond what we think is possible. However, too many times, we do this with little to no preparation. We think it’s okay to hop into something new without building up our minds or bodies. Then, we feel like failures when we cannot accomplish what we set out to do.  Read more...

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4 Ways To Unplug And Recharge

Being in the IT world, I know a thing about unplugging (or shutting down) systems and restarting them. It’s one of the first things I ask users: Have you restarted your computer? It’s a line they hate, but the step also frequently works.

Author Anne Lamont once wrote:

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

When I read that, I think of rebooting workstations or servers. It’s a brief unplugging and coming back up. But…

Lamont recognized that we need to unplug for a period of time. It is hard to unplug in this high-tech world of always on, always connected. 

Yet unplugging is vital to our health and relationships. We must be willing to disconnect from the world before we crash, burn out, or destroy our physical or mental health.  Read more...