Purpose Clarified Through Adaptability

Accepting a position with a new organization after spending nearly my entire adult life with one company was a tremendous shift. The tasks I was responsible for on a daily basis were indeed similar to what I had been doing for years, but the industry and the team members I was serving were wildly di...

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Definiteness of Plans Emerges in Uncertainty

Years ago, I heard a story of a traveler stopping at a farmhouse along a country road to ask for directors. As the traveler spoke with the old man sitting on the front porch, he noticed that the dog laying beside him was constantly moaning, albeit quietly. The traveler asked the old man if there was...

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Mining Professional Setbacks for Justice & Responsibility Seeds

Here’s a quick reminder: I’m not sharing any of this for sympathy. Hell, I don’t want it! I’m also not reliving any of this to shine a negative light on anyone. If that were the case, I’d be listing their names and tagging them on social media - and some of them absolutely deserve that and far more....

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Isolation Tests Purpose

The cost of ostracism was real, financially and emotionally. In addition to all the private conversations painting us as the bad guys for taking a moral stand, the individual who actually told those ladies that he wouldn’t help them unless they slept with him got down right nasty about us in front o...

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The Sting of Being Undervalued

In our initial conversation about the position, the one with global responsibility for our corporate-wide behavior-based safety initiative supporting around 80 facilities, Tim shared that the salary range was initially listed as $63K to $75k. He followed that statement by immediately saying he felt ...

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Finding Purpose in the Grind

Having to choose between surrender and survival forced me to channel all the self-control I could muster and engross myself into the details of a definite plan for climbing out of the hole we found ourselves in after that near-foreclosure experience. I mentioned receiving a whopping $16 check as par...

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Definiteness of Plans and Self-Control Emerge

That registered letter detailing the impending foreclosure wasn’t just another financial kick in the gut, it hit my self-image every bit as hard. To everyone else, things still looked great. We both had more career advancement opportunities than many of our peers and our MLM business was getting all...

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Rock Bottom and the Moment of Truth

From late 2005 to late 2007, Cindy and I dedicated nearly every waking hour that we weren’t working in our day jobs and invested every spare dime we could scrape up into the MLM business that had provided us with a glimmer of hope that we could someday climb out the ridiculous scarcity we had been b...

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The Long Grind

After what felt like beating my head against the same spot on a wall over and over and over again, for a couple of years, mastery of detail finally began to sink in. Disciplining myself to dig into those details, which is never a small order for someone with a highly DRIVEN behavioral style like min...

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Mastery of Detail Grows in Trenches of Scarcity

When the ripple effects of scarcity spill into every waking moment, there’s little choice but to begin sifting through every possible detail in identifying each contributing factor and the primary root cause behind it. Today, Cindy and I include components of the DISC Model of Human Behavior in near...

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The Ripple Effects of Scarcity

Earlier I mentioned some of the changes I made to avoid being around booze for the first few years after making the decision to stop drinking. In complete transparency, some of those changes weren’t all that difficult since buying beer and going to concerts both require money. Our financial resource...

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The First Major Breakdown

I previously mentioned receiving a call from Cindy while I was in Cozad, Nebraska, telling me about yet another car issue. I can’t remember what the problem was that time, but I don’t remember it being significant - at least not mechanically. At that point, though, even the most minor issue created ...

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