365to: Round Two!

Photo Credit: Tyler Neinhouse

Today I kickoff my next round of blogging. I took a little time off after I hit my 50th birthday to reflect and just focus on things that needed my attention. I am now focused on my next year-long journey, leading up to my 51st birthday in September of 2014! I’ve discovered that so much can get done in the span of a year when I live intentionally. 

This year I have four goals that I am focused on.

1. Finish my novel “The Family Tree” and begin my second book.

2. Continuing to work on getting healthy by losing weight and eating better.

3. Having a year where I purposefully focus on choosing my words wisely.

4. Reading 12 new books I haven’t read before. I will provide reviews on this blog.

5. Having set times of silence and solitude so that I can deepen my ability to reflect and hear God’s voice better.

I plan on sharing more about these five things, and what I learn as I focus on how to actually accomplish these goals over the next year. I encourage you to follow along, and tell me about your goals, dreams, and you how are accomplishing them as well!

What landmarks or milestones are you trying to live intentionally for? Tell me below!

 

 

 

 

0to50: What I Learned From the This Past Year!

Today, as I awake to the reality that I am now 50 years old, I am reflecting on what I have really learned this last year. It was over a year ago, as I was getting ready to turn 49 years old, that I decided to have a year fully directed at changing my life in three areas.

The first area was to lose weight. I was almost 300 lbs when I turned 49. Today I am a very healthy 248!

The second goal was to write my first book. Last year I started with an undeveloped idea in my head. Today I have a book in the making as I have defined the characters, the timeline and most of the plot lines. My book idea is alive and growing every day!

The third and last area was to deepen my relationship with God. No doubt about it, this past year has brought me closer to God. While you can’t measure being close to God like you can losing weight or writing a book, there are key signs like hunger and dependency. I am more hungry for and dependant on God than ever before.

I am so thankful for the progress that I have made this last year in not just those three areas but other areas of my life. While I learned a lot from this last year, I think the main thing I learned was the power of living life on purpose. Here are some of those insights.

1. Living life on purpose brings lifelong change. I have lived life on purpose, and I have also let life happen to me “as it may”, and now I see the difference between the two. I started last year with three goals in mind. Defining and setting those goals helped me to direct every decision that I made this last year. In essence, my life now has a road map, a compass, and a vehicle for movement. I have changed because I had a plan to change.
2. Living life on purpose brings wisdom and understanding. I can look back and see that during this past year, I learned more about life and myself than any other year. Living on purpose brought that. Psalm 90:12 says it best: “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” I numbered 365 of them and it caused me to gain wisdom and understanding.
3. Living life on purpose brings more purpose.  Living life on purpose last year has filled me with more purpose for this upcoming year. I don’t know exactly why getting control of your life fills you with more vision, but it does. I have a greater vision for my life today then I did when I started this 365 days ago. Purpose begets more purpose!

This is not the end of 365to50 but really the beginning. Next week I will post my new goals for the New Year! A very good friend of mine shared with me that today is Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of a new year according to God’s calendar. He called this “the year of open doors to new opportunities.” I believe that and I am ready to define and set my course for my next 365 days until! I encourage you to do the same and watch what happens when you live life on purpose. Meet me back here next week, and let’s do it together!

The Resume of My 40’s

As I approach my 50th birthday, just one week from today, I am reflecting on the wonderful things that occurred during the decade of my forties. A lot of life happened during this decade. In fact, I would say that I experienced some of the most important events of my life during my time from 39 through 49 years old.

Here are a few things that happened from 39 to 49!

• Left Florida for the first time in my life as Tracee, Hunter and myself moved across country to Texas to be part of a new church.
• Moved back to Florida 2 years later to plant a new church in Winter Springs called Crown Pointe.
• Traveled to more places, both internationally and nationally, than all the places I had ever visited in all of the first 30 years of my life.
• Watched my children graduate from high school and two of the three graduate from college. My youngest is getting closer to his degree every day!
• Walked my daughter Ashlee down the aisle as she was married to Lee Kasten. The memory still warms my heart!
• Experienced the birth of our first granddaughter, Paislee Kasten. There is nothing like having a grandchild!
• Had one of my deepest spiritual experiences of my entire life in Wales when I was 39. Had another one, just as significant in Wales again when I was 41. Nothing compares to an encounter with God!
• I Finally finished college for myself, earning a Bachelor of Theology degree.
• Coached high school football at Winter Springs High School and loved every single minute of it.
• Went to work at Chase Card Services and became one of their top national sales representatives two years in a row. By God’s grace, I literally went from worst to first.
• Took a brand new career path in sales and publishing at Xulon Press, where I eventually became the Sales Manager.
• Competed in my first triathlon! A year later, I would actually place second in my age group.
• Proudly watched as my wife Tracee published her first book, The Adventures of Akeem.
• Started working on my first book, a novel called The Family Tree.
• Finally went to my first Garth Brooks concert in Kansas City (when he came out of retirement just for me!).
• Traced my family history all the way back to England and actually visited the historic church that my 7th great-grandfather founded in 1771.
• Made over 100 new friends that I know by name.
• Laughed almost every day!
• By the Grace of God, I matured more in this decade than any other. I feel like it was my forties that caused me to grow into a man that fully loves God, his family and his friends. I thought I knew how to be a man in my twenties and thirties, but I am now sure that it takes years to make a man and decades to make a man of God.

These are just the main highlights. While I can’t fully describe everything, I can tell you that this decade has been the most significant one so far in my entire life—both in the great things that occurred and the deep testings that we went through, this decade is like a lifetime of its own.

Are you getting ready to turn 40? If you are, don’t dread it, look forward to it! If your journey is like mine, you will experience some of the greatest things that life has to offer during the next decade. A lot of life is getting ready to happen! Make sure you take it all in and that you take a few pictures along the way. You’re going to want to remember it one day! It makes me look forward to next decade of my life. What will I do in my fifties that I have never done before?

Next week I will post my 50th post of this blog on my 50th birthday. I will share what I have learned on this incredible 365-day journey to my 50th birthday!

The Book That My Wife Dared to Write!

I have an amazing wife who I am very proud of. When I first met her over 30 years ago, it was her faith that really challenged mine and caused me to deepen my belief and relationship with God. It has been an amazing adventure with Tracee and I am very blessed to call her my partner and my best friend.

Several years ago Tracee felt a desire to write her first book. The story was about a little boy who lived in Africa named Akeem. A fictional adventure, The Adventures of Akeem is the exciting story of a young boy growing up in the bush country of Africa who learns about God and discovers to hear God’s voice for himself. The first of three books, it begins a story that ends with Akeem becoming not only a man, but being used by God in a very special way.

The Adventures of Akeem. (Click here to purchase on Amazon!)

Tracee would get up early every morning as she worked to create the story, and also to seek God’s voice as He directed her to write. I still remember her getting up as early as she could to work as long as possible before her day began. Once she finished writing Akeem, she then had to travel down the path of getting it edited and into the hands a few publishers. Like many new authors, she met the same disappointment that many find when they try to introduce their book to be published. It was complimented and even praised, but they were not going to publish it.

Have you ever felt like all of your work and all of your effort ends with failure? That even though you have given your best and everything you know to do, in the end it just doesn’t work out like you would have hoped it would have?

Tracee knew that she was supposed to write this book and that it was destined to help young people find God and learn how to hear His voice and discover their destiny. But it’s hard when others don’t see the same thing that you see.

What do you do when you feel like your dream is real but it’s not given any doors to go through? What do you do when you feel like your dream is trapped in a cocoon that won’t open, so that your dream can become a living reality.

Sadly, many people let their dreams die and—even sadder—they choose to never dream again. Tracee could have let that dream die and taken those first rejections as a sign of permanent rejection. The truth is that one or two or even a hundred rejections are never the sign of total rejection. The secret of success is simply: those who never quit, who never give up, usually in almost every case end up succeeding in one way or another.

Tracee never gave up and eventually, over 13 years later, her book was published by the company that I work for, Xulon Press. She never let the lack of belief by others stop her personal belief. Her dream came to life last year as she worked with a group of editors to present the final manuscript. Now, a year later, she got her first royalty check from sales that occurred last quarter. I could not be more proud or excited for her, her dream of publishing her first book, and receiving her first royalty check.

Rejected in the beginning by publishers but accepted and desired by readers in the end. That is success! Don’t let your beginning determine your end! Don’t let the publishers of life decide if your dream is worthy or not to be read.  In the end, they are not the final judge of whether your dream is real. Never give up on the dreams that God has given you. For even if they die for a season, even if they are delayed, if those dreams are from Him, He will resurrect them and bring them to life. No publisher can stop Him from publishing your dream!

Tracee’s book, The Adventures of Akeem can be purchased on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and directly from Xulon Press. It also can be purchased in eBook format.

21 Days and Counting

In just over 21 days I will finally be a grown-up, as I will turn 50 years old on September 5th. Wow! It has been an amazing year and I have learned some incredible things about life and myself. I am so glad that I did this 365to50 project, and I am planning to do it again next year as I set my annual goals to achieve before I turn 51 next September.

My goals for this year were:

• Lose weight and get into better physical condition
• Write my first book
• Grow closer to God

I am so happy to report that I have made steady progress in all three of those areas. I have lost weight, and now I am in good enough shape to compete in triathlons. I have the story line for my book “The Family Tree”, and I have had breakthroughs with God that I so desperately needed and wanted. All in all, its been an awesome journey!

I am so glad that I didn’t let momentary failure keep me from moving on. I shudder at the thought of what it would have been like to face 50 while extremely overweight, with no book idea at all, and no closer to God than when I turned 49. That would have been a wasted year, and I have had my share of wasted years. You see, it’s not that I had to get everything right and hit every goal along the way, I just had to move from where I was at. To have stayed in the exact same place without moving forward would have been failure and another wasted year. While I have not entered the promised land of being a 205 lb author who knows God like Moses did, I am miles away from being a 299lb man with just a dream and ideas that were on hold. I tell you, there is no feeling like being miles away from where you never really wanted to be.

So, what do you want to leave? To leave the place that you don’t want to be in, you need to do these three things:

• Love the Dream! Do more than just hate where you are at: you have to love where you are going. While it’s true that sometimes you will move when your misery factory gets bigger than your fear factor, misery alone will not make you move. You have to have a dream and desire that you love
• You have to be willing to risk failure. So many people, including me, fail to move because they don’t want to fail. Every successful person’s path to the dream they desire is built by the bricks of failure. I have failed over and over this past year, but here is my secret. I fall forward. Yes, I fall down, but I fall toward my goal. Thats why, despite failure, I am miles away from where I started from.
• You have to move! You have to take one step! My goal for every triathlon was to “Compete and Complete” every race I entered in. I never let the fact that I was far from winning keep me from entering the race. I may actually win a race one day, but I have to compete in and complete a lot of races on the way to achieving that goal. What are you failing to compete in or complete because you feel like you can’t win? Movement is winning! Just ask Lazarus!

I am now focused on a 21 day challenge to really hit the boosters as I hit 50 and start my next goals for 51. Follow me over the next few weeks as I really begin to reveal what I have learned from this journey.

What place are you trying to leave today? Leave me comments with your story below! Don’t forget, you can also follow me on Twitter here.

Taking Life In! Finding balance between living and growing.

As I get closer to the end of my 365to50 journey, I have learned so many life lessons. One of the biggest is that even when you are working on a great goal, you have to stop and take life in. The hardest thing hasn’t been the 40 mile bike rides or 6 a.m. swimming sessions, it has been finding that delicate balance between working for the future and living in the present. How do I share time between my goals of being in shape and becoming an author with family dinners? If we stop growing, we give up the person we are supposed to become, but we must be people who achieve their goals without losing what’s important.

Last week my wife Tracee and I joined our best friends, Jeff and Linda Welker, in Chicago for the wedding of their youngest daughter Kaleigh to her fiancee Bill. One thing that stood out to me as I watched the wedding was how each moment counted. Each individual moment in that evening would never happen again; they were, in a sense, eternal. The procession, the presenting of the bride, the vows, the toast, the special dance Jeff had with his daughter and the tossing of the bouquet. All these moments were once-in-a-lifetime. That’s why we pay photographers thousands of dollars to capture them—because we know they’ll never happen again.

So how do I find the balance between achieving my goals of losing weight and writing a book, and still making the most of every moment? Here is what I believe helps me keep my priorities while still becoming a skinny author who loves God.

1. Have long-term goals. When you are in such a hurry to get somewhere, you feel the pressure to cut out everything else except for that which takes you to your goal. I set my goals almost a year ago. This allowed me time to live regular life while making small steps toward my goals. Small steps really do matter! I didn’t have to exclude my family from my life so that I could go after my goals. I had long-term goals, and small steps allowed me to keep the balance between being a husband and father, while becoming a triathlete and an author. What are your long-term goals, and what are your small steps?

2. Be Present for the Eternal Moments of Life. What are the eternal moments of life? These are moments you would choose above achieving your goals if you only had one month to live. I would choose to laugh with my wife and family during dinner instead of writing a best-selling novel if I had 30 days to live, but I wouldn’t choose surfing facebook over writing my first book if I had only 30 days. Yesterday I came home from a hard day at work to find my family having a cannonball splash contest in the pool. Everyone wanted me to join. I had a lot to do and a bike ride planned, but I was in my swimsuit within 3 minutes and made the biggest and best cannonball splash of the evening. My granddaughter laughed at me as I became a kid again, jumping into a carefree pool full of water and eternal moments. Do you recognize eternal moments when they pop up?

3. Cut Out the Stuff That Does Not Matter. What are you giving your time to that doesn’t 1) produce eternal moments, or 2) lead to achieving the goals that God has for you? Come on, don’t hold back! Have you been on any extended lunches with other people who you wouldn’t spend the last 30 days of your life with? There’s nothing wrong with having lunch with friends, but what would happen if you only did that 2 days a week and spent the other 3 eating at your desk and working on your goals? Maybe you need to trade some of your television for reading, studying, writing, whatever. Are you willing to cut out or limit things you wouldn’t do if you only had 30 days to live?

You will only get one chance to live your life and achieve your goals. I love the picture above of Jeff dancing with his daughter Kaleigh. He got both things right. He had a goal that he had to achieve as a father and a provider, but he was also present and living in the moment.

The good news is that you, too, can have both! You can achieve your goals and grow into the person you are supposed to become. Leave me a comment below and let me know how you plan to do that this week!

Follow me on Twitter and the 365to50 Facebook page.

Write Your Own Story!

As I continue working toward my goal of changing my life in three areas before I turn 50, I’ve found that I have to challenge myself constantly or time will just slip by and I will stay the same. Honestly. It is just so easy to just wake up and find that I have not progressed any further—or even worse, that I have slipped backwards. This is a reality that I face every week and every month.

Now I find that I need challenges. I need to challenge myself in ways that cause me to go further and cause me to dig deeper. I think that is what 365to50 is all about for me, a way to challenge myself and a way to stop losing valuable time to things that really don’t matter. Yesterday, I challenged myself again by signing up for my next triathlon, which will be held in July. It’s my next step in ensuring that my time is serving me, rather than me serving my time! I plan on doing at least two triathlons this summer and the challenge of training has already kicked in. Once I paid the money and committed myself to another triathlon experience in the Atlantic Ocean, I actively chose which way my life would head, at least for the next few months. It’s so easy to just let life happen to us, instead of us happing to life!

Since I work in publishing and my job is to help writers become published authors, I would like to use this illustration: our life is like a book or a novel that is currently being written; written by the circumstances, influences and choices that we make on a daily basis. Without our own individual and deliberate input to direct the story in the way we would like for it to go, it is easy to just let life and circumstances become the author of our story. Do you know what people really want?  They want the story of their life to be so meaningful and impactful that even they themselves can’t wait to read the book! The good news is that we can all end up with a wonderful story.

 

 

Here’s five keys to having a great story.: 

 

 

1. You must realize that you didn’t write the introduction or beginning to your story.

   There are a lot of people in the world who do not necessarily like the beginning of their own story. It is so important to realize that everyone’s novel has already started before they actually enter the picture. There have been many wonderful and exciting novels that began with a tragedy or a set of unfavorable circumstances. Everyone from Winston Churchill to Michael Jordan, started with a novel that they didn’t begin, but was already started for them. Key: Don’t let the beginning of you novel determine the value or the ending of your story. Remember it’s just the beginning!

 

2. You must understand that your story is unique and unlike any other story that will ever be written.

There will never be another story written just like yours. It is special and will never be repeated again. The world is waiting for your story to come forth because it is an original.  Key: Don’t try to make your story be a copy of someone else’s story. You are too special to try and be a copy. Go ahead and be an original, be your own first edition! 

 

3. You must know that in every great epic story, there is always more going on than meets the eye. Things are not always what they seem to be.

I am sure that like my own story that I am living, that each of you have things that don’t always make sense. How many times have we seen a detour or even a delay end up being for our best? But in “chapter 3” it didn’t make any sense at all. It wasn’t until chapter 7 that it all made sense. Key: Don’t allow what you see determine what you believe. Things are not always as they seem! Write your story despite what you see and in time it will either make sense or won’t even matter.

4. You need to learn that almost every great novel has at least three disasters in it.

If you look at the wonderful stories that you love to read and the movies you love to see, you will find several common denominators. One is that every great story has at least three disasters or challenges in it. Take any story and you will see the pattern. Key: Disasters, disappointments and setbacks are all part of great stories. If you’ve faced these, realize your story is a candidate to become a best seller.

 

5. You must believe that it is still possible to end your story with the line “and they lived happily ever after.”

There have been all kinds of stories with more twists and turns than you can count, which have ended well. It may have only happened in the very last sentence of the very last chapter, but they ended with a happy ending in the end. Your story, your novel, can end happy but you must believe in happy endings. You can’t let the tragedy that entered into chapter 7 keep you from writing chapter 8 and 9. If you will believe and not quit in the middle of writing or finishing your story, you can finish it with an ending that is happy Key: You’re not in control of how your story may have begun, but you are able to influence how it will end. The key is to keep writing your story every day with your happy ending in mind.

 

Trooper Tales-(One of the best decisions I ever made!)

While I plan on sharing a lot of funny things that happened to me during my time a State Trooper, I also want to share some of the other things that happened. There were a lot of things that happened during my time on the Patrol that were very impact-full, both to me and to others. Here is one of my favorite stories involving what I consider to be one of the best decisions that I ever made while serving as a State Trooper.

I was working an accident one day that involved two vehicles, one being driven by an older man and the other driven by a young woman who had a small child with her. This was an easy investigation, he ran a stop sign and hit her. I should be done with my paperwork and on my way in less than an half hour. Sometimes we overlook the easy or simple things as those that will either have the greatest difficulty or the greatest impact. This one had one of the greatest impacts I think I ever experienced as a State Trooper.

As I was collecting the necessary information, drivers licenses and registrations, I found that the young lady with the small boy did not have a license with her. When I ran her information to confirm that she a had a valid license, I found that instead it had been suspended for failure to pay a fine. The last suspension was simply for driving while it had been suspended. After I got the information, I went back to the investigation and completed the report. The man who ran the stop sign was cited and he was released to go with his copy of the report.

I then went over to the young woman and told her the results of the investigation and that the other driver was obviously at fault. She seemed like someone who had had a tough time in life, but at the same time she was really a very nice person. I looked at her and I said “Did you know that your license was suspended?” She quickly acknowledged that she knew that it was and she knew that she shouldn’t have driven to the store. Then as she tried to talk, she struggled as her eyes began to water.

In the many years that I was a State Trooper, I saw a lot of people cry. Men and women, it didn’t matter whether it was an act or real, I had seen a lot of tears. Her tears were different, they had a sincere humility and respect within them. When I asked her what happened, why did she not pay the original ticket when she first received it. Her story wasn’t unusual, she was a single mother who was getting no help from her ex-husband and she was broke and living on someones couch just trying to get her life back together again.The whole time that she was telling me her story, I could tell that she wasn’t trying to get out of going to jail or getting a summons for a court appearance. She wanted something more than just a quick way out, she wanted a changed life and I could see it in her eyes.

Standard procedure would have been to set at least a court appearance, for driving with a suspended license was a criminal offense. While we tend to like everything black and white and laid out for us, life needs discernment and judgement not based only on rules and regulations. I am glad that God created a way to get us out of the mess that we created for ourselves. He could have kept the old rules in play and we were destined for judgement, but he created another law, another rule and sometimes people need another rule, another chance.

I looked at the young lady and I said to her “You know what I could do?” “I could send you to jail or to court and it would cost you another $250 or even $500, but here is what I am going today.” “I am going to let you go and give you the chance to spend that $250 on getting your license back.” I can still see her face as she grabbed my hand and thanked me not with words, but with her smile and tears. I told her, “Here is your next chance to get it right, don’t blow it.” She said she wouldn’t! She had her sister come and pick her and her son up, and then she left. I went back to work and as I did I prayed that God would help her.

It was almost a year later. I was eating lunch with a bunch of my buddies after we had worked a detail checking drivers licenses. As usual we were laughing and just having a good time recalling some of the funny things we had just seen earlier at the checkpoint. All of sudden I saw the guys across from me look up at something just over my shoulder. As I turned around I saw that same young woman holding her son, looking 100 times better. In one move she held out her new license with her new “My new life has begun” picture on it. She didn’t go into a lot of detail but she very warmly and genuinely said “Thank you officer! “I didn’t waste the chance you gave me, Thank you!” I think I got teary eyed myself as I said to her “That’s awesome! I’m proud of you.” She left and of course everyone wanted to know what that was about. I can still remember saying “That was about one of the best things I have ever made while wearing this uniform.”

Today, as you look around your world, who’s life can you help change for the better. I know we all get tired of the people who never get it and who keep doing it again and again,but there are others who are ready for another chance to change. Today, there are others who will not waste the chance that you give or reject that opportunity provided to turn it around. Just remember that everything is not always black or white. Thankfully we don’t live in a black and white world or none of us would have a chance of every making a turn for good. I am so glad that I serve a God and Savior who loves me enough to give me a second chance. When I look into the heart of God and the decision that He made for all of us, in giving his son Jesus for our sins. I smile as I think He also believes that it was one of the best decisions that He ever made. Today, if you haven’t already, take that chance and make the most! Your “My new life has begun” picture is waiting to be taken!

Where Do You Want to be When Your Storm is Over?

This past week I wanted to go for a bike ride so bad! It poured down rain all week and I was unable to ride. Truthfully, not just because of the weather, but also because my work schedule was crammed too full to give me time. By the time the weekend rolled around, I was done with work and finally ready for a long Saturday morning ride.

I got up expecting the skies to be clear (according to the weather report); I discovered instead that the rain was still coming down. I stood at my front door, looking at the wind and the rain, and thought, “surely it has to be clearing up. I mean, it stormed all week long!” As I watched the deluge, I was caught in that place of horrible indecision. I wanted to go, but I also wanted to see if it would quit. The tension of not being able to decide was more effort and pain than just going for it. I couldn’t stand it anymore so I grabbed my bike, loaded it up in my truck and drove over to the trail to start my workout.

The whole way I kept thinking to myself, “I bet it will be all cleared up when I get to the trail.” As luck with have it, it was raining just as hard. I sat in my truck, experiencing more of that same indecision I had just overcome at my house. I kept thinking to myself, “Should I wait, go back home or just go for it, storm or no storm?” As I asked myself that question over and over, I heard this question rise up within my heart: “Where do you want to be when this storm is over?”

 

As I pondered that question, knowing that God was trying to teach me something, it was clear the storm would eventually pass. The question was not if it would pass but where I wanted to be when it finally did. I told myself that if I started immediately, I might be wet but I would also be a few miles into my ride when it cleared. I kept thinking of how bad I had wanted to ride, and how I would feel later if I just went home. I could imagine pulling into my neighborhood and all of the sudden the skies turning bright blue. I didn’t want to be home wishing I was still riding when the storm finally had stopped. No, I wanted to be 10 miles into my 20 mile ride when the sky turned that brilliant blue and the sun shined through. With that I made up my mind. Despite the wet and the cold, I went for it.

For the first 8 miles, I pedaled through the mess. I was getting mud and sand all over me! I keep thinking, “Don, you have to be careful,” and “Don’t do something stupid and hurt yourself.” After 8 miles, the rain temporarily stopped and started up again. I kept thinking of Forrest Gump and the scene of him running through all kinds of weather. Im not going to lie, I wanted to quit several times. I kept struggling with the thought that I should just wait one more day, and the weather would be perfect. But God was in the middle of teaching me something. All I could hear is “Where do you want to be when this storm is over?”

I kept going. Mile after mile, pedals spinning around and around. Finally at around 15 miles the sun finally came out. Here I was, an hour later, and it was like everything had come back to life! Birds started singing and people—previously nowhere to be found—came back out to walk the trail. I can’t describe the rush that I felt; it was like everyone else on that trail was just getting started and I had a 15 mile advantage over all of them.

You know, the real person that I had the 15 mile advantage over wasn’t the new people appearing on the trail; it was me. I was not at home, sitting on the couch when the storm ended. No, I was 15 miles ahead of myself and it was an incredible feeling. So incredible that I actually motivated myself to go another 26 miles to complete a 41 mile bike ride, the longest ride I have ever taken before.

Sometimes in life we encounter storms that seem to have no end in sight. Let’s face it, it’s hard to get going and even harder when you’re surrounded by a storm. Ask yourself, “Where do I want to be when this storm is over?” Because eventually your storm will pass and the sun and all its light will break through. It’s like the story that I heard a few years back of a single mother who wanted to get her college degree. She was surrounded by every imaginable storm you could think of. She had every reason to quit and wait until things got better. But she kept pedaling through her storm, working all kinds of hours and doing everything she could to overcome her obstacles. Eventually many of the issues she was dealing with were either solved or just went away. Instead of starting school when her storms had ceased, she was pursuing a new and wonderful career with a Masters Degree. You see, she didn’t want to be starting school when the storm was over; she wanted to be ending school and beginning her new career.

In a storm, ask yourself “Where do I want to be when this storm is over?” and then go for it!

What are you going to go for? Leave me a comment below! Don’t forget to “Like” the 365to50 Facebook page, and follow me on Twitter!

Quitters Can be Winners!

We’ve all heard the adage “winners never quit and quitters never win.” No doubt, this is one of the truest statements ever been forged by man. If you’ve played sports or been part of a team, at one time or another you’ve had the urge to drop out. Just like sports, the temptation to quit in life hits all of us at some point or another. Believe it or not, there are times that even champions do give up and quit.

When you quit something that you really wanted to finish, you can feel defeated or even heartbroken. Sadly, it can even haunt you for years to come. This week as I was praying I felt impressed that some of the community that reads this blog may just be struggling with the temptation to quit something that’s really important to them. I also felt that some of you might be still struggling with the disappointment of something you quit years ago.

As I approach my 50th birthday and work toward my three goals of losing weight, writing my first book and growing closer to God, I have been tempted to quit several times. I know what it is like to face the temptation to quit, and I know the pain and disappointment of quitting something that really mattered. Today, I am going to spin some random thoughts on the idea that sometimes “Quitters Can Become Winners”:

Quitting Point #1

“Once a quitter always a quitter?” While I understand the point and the lesson this can teach, could also probably cause more damage than good. The truth is that not everyone who quits in life will be a quitter for the rest of their life. If that were true than the Apostle Peter, who quit on Jesus 3 different times, would have also quit on him in Rome! If this was true, every great businessman who ever declared bankruptcy would have never been successful in business again. The key is to remember that some of the greatest people in the world have quit at one time or another. They just eventually made the decision to quit quitting on the things that matter.

 

Quitting Point #2

“Quitters can make great comebacks.” In life, the most inspiring stories are not the stories of the perfect kid who never fails and always wins. We are most moved and inspired by the stories of those who have failed and yes, even quit, to eventually overcome and win in the end. Why is that? I believe its because everyone struggles with failure and quitting, and we find hope for our own lives through the stories of those who have overcome it. Feel like a quitter or a failure? You’re just positioned for an incredible comeback!

Quitting Point #3

“It’s all in how you view quitting—and what it actually is that you are quitting.” I bet you have never have thought of champions as quitters. How can that be, you ask? Personally, for me to reach my 3 goals by my 50^th birthday in September, I am having to quit a lot of things. I have to quit the habit of eating late at night. Now, for my natural man, eating when I want to eat is a daily “goal.” After all, it makes me feel good, and my brain strives to do things that make it happy. However, I have to become a quitter in this regard if I am ever going to become a winner. I also have to quit procrastinating when it comes to writing. I have gotten really good at procrastination but now I have to learn how to be good at quitting it. Yes, this is a play on words, but being a quitter can actually be a powerful thing. It’s all in what you are choosing to quit!

Today I want all of us to realize three things:

“Once a quitter, not always a quitter.”

“Quitters can make inspiring comebacks.”

“Quitters can be winners, it’s all in controlling what you choose to quit.”

What shouldn’t you (or should you) quit today? Leave me a comment below!

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