Right now we are nearing the full swing of summer. Trees are lush, flowers are in full bloom, and stores and farmer's markets are starting to burst with fresh produce. The tendency may be to focus on the product of summer, the fruit. But summer is a time of growth. If you garden, then you know that there's a lot that goes into growing vegetables and fruits such as tomatoes and raspberries. First comes the soil prep, then the planting of seeds or root stock, and then the continual watering, weeding, and pruning and not to mention the challenges like hailstorms and buggy pests. Plus, don't forget the waiting. Plants take time to grow and produce fruit. Tomatoes might not be ready to pick until late summer or early fall. And raspberries? Patience. Most likely that won't happen until next year. Isn't it often the same for the endeavors we undertake? We begin with a picture in our minds about how the realization of our goal is going to look, and maybe that's all we see. It's not until we actually begin tilling and fertilizing the soil, planting the seeds, and all the other gritty details involved, that we realize how much hard work harvesting our dreams is going to take. When we realize what we're in for, the temptation may be to let our quest shrivel up and die on the vine, especially when we experience challenges and failures we didn't see coming. Because we live in a society of instant food, movies on demand and high speed communication, we may expect instant gratification when it comes to our goals, too. How can we avoid giving up? First, be aware of the process involved in reaching goals. The journey, the soil prep, planting, watering, weeding and patience, is as important as the fruit that will come in the end. In fact, it makes the enjoyment of the fruit that much sweeter. When you aren't living only for the fruit at the end of the season, you can enjoy the process, especially when it's connected to your passion and purpose. Secondly, you are more apt to stick it out for the long haul if you have a beginner's mind. Brian Klemmer talks about this extensively in chapter 10 of his book, The Compassionate Samurai. Your willingness to approach your subject continually with new eyes will insure growth and progress toward your goal. Thirdly, learn that there's nothing wrong with failure. In fact, compassionate samurai don't resist their failures; but use them to draw closer to their purpose. It takes practice and persistence to master a subject and especially at first, the learning curve is bound to be great. Failure is there to refine how you go about achieving your goals. It is there to redirect you and strengthen your character. For added inspiration, do an Internet search on famous failures. You might be surprised to find out you're in great company. The process of growth is natural to anyone who has a burning desire to achieve something. No matter what your goal, remember that if you want something instant, you can make pudding. What you want is greater than that.

Commitment is freedom. Most people see commitment as the opposite. Thus the reason many people are afraid of marriage, a steady relationship, or even giving the company they work for all they have to offer. People with this mindset are always looking for something better and searching for more while they settle forwhat they have. They see commitment as giving up what might be or could have been. They view commitment as a thing to avoid because it is best to "keep their options open." What they are doing when they do this is giving up the joy of life. They are giving up the freedom and the creativity that comes from commitment. When you commit you allow your mind the freedom to not worry or think about that aspect of your life. You increase the amount of your mind that can be used for creativity and moving your life forward. As the law of space and time displacement states, you can not have two things happening in the same place and time. When you think, "I will settle for this but not fully commit just in case something better comes up" that part of your mind and thinking is always searching for that next best thing and, by physical law, can not think about anything else. When you fully commit, to your career for example, you become focus minded. You remove the doubt within your mind focused on if you made the correct career choice. You focus on becoming better at your career. Your mindset switches and you begin to get more done in less time and to be promoted more quickly as a result. Why? Because you committed. Because you chose to free your mind and allow it to focus on something. You start to see ways of doing things that improve productivity, increase value for the customers, and you see the value in being a member of the company. No longer will you be of the mindset, employee against management but you as part of a team working toward a common goal. Commitment is where this new mindset begins. It is the same with your life. Many people go through life not committing to themselves. They let the world "happen to them" and they do not commit to improving yet settle with living each day hoping and wishing. They search for something better and dream that something resembling the life they say they want will just appear. It never will. Until you commit to improving your life you are committed to double mindedness and confusion. You are committed to being in the search for a better life and that is exactly where you will remain. Searching. Everyone is already fully committed. Every person on the planet is 100% committed to something. That is how they arrived at the life they have. That is how you achieved what you have achieved. The question is, how is that serving you? How is the level of commitment and what you are committed to serving you? Is it moving you toward the life you say you want or is it creating double mindedness and stagnation in your life? Look at your life with pure honesty and focus only on the results of the commitments you have. Then ask, "Is this the result I want?" If the answer is no, look at your commitments and decide where they need to be adjusted. Jim Rohn said, "Philosophy drive attitude." I go one step beyond that and state, Commitments drive philosophy. At the root of your philosophy lies your commitments and what you are committed to shapes your life and the lives of those around you. Thus, if you don't like your lifestyle look at your results. If you don't like your results look at your actions. If you don't like your actions look at your attitude. If you don't like your attitude look at your philosophy and if you don't like your philosophy look at your commitments. What is your philosophy of life because there in lies your true commitments? Is it improvement and betterment for you and your fellow man or is it one of complacency, lack, and victim? Are you committed to a career or settling for a job? Are you committed to being financially secure or to living check to check with a penny and a prayer? Change your commitments and you change your life.

The media and the Internet bombard us with dire predictions countless times each day. It sometimes seems everyone we encounter is preaching gloom and doom, so every once in a while, it’s good to bring a little sanity into our lives by introducing perspective from the past. In 1955, our parents or grandparents would have heard the following statements from the media or people they encountered. Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging 7 cents just to mail a letter? If they raise the minimum wage to $1.00, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store. When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would someday cost 25 cents a gallon? Guess we’d be better off leaving the car in the garage. Did you see where some baseball player just signed a contract for $50,000 a year just to play ball? It wouldn’t surprise me if someday they’ll be making more than the president. It’s too bad things are so tough nowadays. I see where a few married women are having to work to make ends meet. It won’t be long before young couples are going to have to hire someone to watch their kids so they can both work. I’m afraid the Volkswagen car is going to open the door to a whole lot of foreign business. Thank goodness I won’t live to see the day when the government takes half our income in taxes. I sometimes wonder if we are electing the best people to government. The fast food restaurant is convenient for a quick meal, but I seriously doubt they will ever catch on. There is no sense going on short trips any more for a weekend. It costs nearly $2.00 a night to stay in a hotel. No one can afford to be sick any more. At $15.00 a day in the hospital, it’s too rich for my blood. If they think I’ll pay 30 cents for a haircut, forget it. It’s important for us to remember that the pessimists are generally wrong, and the optimists are usually right. If you maintain a good attitude and share it with everyone around you, you will be proven right most of the time, and you will enjoy a far better life as you encounter the nay-sayers in the media or in person.We can never control the things around us, but we can always control our attitude. Ironically, whether you believe your future will be bright or you believe you are facing bad days ahead, you are inevitably right.As you go through your day today, remember the past and look forward to a bright future. Today’s the day!

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." - Abraham Lincoln What an incredible quote from Abraham Lincoln, so much wisdom in one line. I don't know about you, but when I read this for the first time, I completely agreed. Proper preparation sets you up to win in life. After I read this, I began to think, "How often do I actually execute this level of diligent preparation?" In our society today, we are running at such a fast pace that taking time to plan for a seamless execution could appear like someone is putting off until tomorrow what could be done today. What if we were willing to switch our perspective? What would it be like if we took the time today to sharpen our axes so that the next ten trees we chop down took less time and less effort? Take the time to ask yourself today, where in my life would execution of the task be easier if I took the time to prepare more diligently? What trees in your life are you committed to chopping down with more ease?

How do you take sixty to seventy high school guys with widely differing degrees of athletic ability and mold them into a winning football team? That's what Coach Doug Wilkins of Denville, New Jersey did for forty-four years, winning twenty-five consecutive seasons from 1985 through 2009, along with eight state championships. Coach Wilkins didn't start out that way, though. With a losing first season, he knew something needed to change. This is the first of three newsletters that reveal what Coach Wilkins discovered over the course of his career as a football coach, strategies for winning that can be applied to every area of our lives. To begin, Coach Wilkins realized he needed a vision. Did he want to build a winning team, or a lasting program? To Coach, a lasting program was permanent, while a winning team was merely temporary. He determined that he needed a plan to build a structure that would last, and so he set out to build the foundation for a program that would make, in his words, "the Brian Klemmers of this world." The foundation of Coach's program was commitment. While it would seem natural to look for talent, Coach took a different approach. It didn't matter how talented a player was, whether he was fast or slow, big or small, coordinated or not. Instead, what Wilkins looked for was how badly the student wanted to play. "Does he want it?" Coach Wilkins asked when he considered players. Wilkins set a 12 and 0 goal for each season, a standard so high that he knew he had to have kids who were willing to make the sacrifices necessary to be the best. They needed mental toughness combined with a relentless work ethic that applied not only to football, but their schoolwork, as well. When Coach raised the bar and the player was pushed beyond his comfort zone, he had to be able to reach inside and find the next gear. During games when Coach considered who he would play, he looked for kids whose attitudes and actions forced him to play them. This type of commitment wasn't for the short-term, either. Wilkins sold a four-year program to 9th graders. They had to be willing to work hard for four years as part of the team, even though it wasn't until they were seniors that they would be considered to start. Not only that, but each year, every player was reevaluated to see if he was still committed to a relentless work ethic. This is the kind of commitment that Coach Wilkins fondly remembers about Brian Klemmer. On one broiling September day, Brian showed up for practice in high-top shoes and developed severe blisters on his feet. Coach suggested that Brian take a couple of days off, but Brian surprised everyone the next day when he showed up wearing socks and no shoes. That is how Brian practiced until his feet healed. It's no wonder commitment is the 1st trait Brian discusses in his bestselling book, The Compassionate Samurai. As Coach Wilkins developed this football program, parents recognized that he presented life lessons that could reach far beyond their kids' high school years, into the rest of their lives, and they lined up to get their kids on his team. All of us can have winning lives, too. It doesn't begin with talent, but an attitude. Ask yourself how badly you want to achieve your goals, and consider commitment as the cornerstone for all you desire to achieve.

Picture a mason jar. If I fill it to the brim with rocks would you say it was full? Most people would say yes. Then I pour pebbles that slide in between the rocks. Is the jar full? Then I pour in sand and the sand fills in even more of the supposedly used space. Imagine your big dreams; the things that are attached to your purpose. Those things are your rocks. Your pebbles are the things in your life that are also significantly important but not the end all of everything like your rocks. Lastly is the sand. Things that need to get done, but might not hold the highest value in your heart. These are things like running errands. Most people fill up their jar with the sand first. Then they try to shove in some pebbles. Lastly, are the rocks that we are trying to wedge into somewhere where it feels like there is no room? How about we switch this pattern? Organize your life like in the prior example; rocks, pebbles and then sand. Do you ever feel like your days are consumed by errands? That you run around day after day accomplishing a ton of tasks but not getting any closer to your dreams and goals? Set aside time every day to focus on the rocks in your life. Then put in your pebbles. Lastly focus on your sand. This will switch your focus and change your productivity overall. Feeling attached to your purpose, and taking steps towards your dreams daily can create alignment between your conscious, your subconscious and the infinite.

Who is truly comfortable with receiving feedback? Do only things that make you comfortable move you forward? Get used to receiving feedback, and embrace it, so that you can use it as a tool in your life. Feedback helps us in making course corrections. Someone else's vantage point can enable us to see blind spots in our lives. Feedback can also foster relationships. Opening up lines of communication, through feedback, can allow those around you to feel more connected with you because of your openness to hear them. Unfortunately, we can be resistant to feedback because we tend to confuse feedback with the truth. Also, people can tend to take feedback personally versus seeing it as a view of the situation. If you take feedback personally, you are more likely to defend your current position. Feedback is a way to receive information so that you can make adjustments. Feedback is not an attack on who you are or what you are doing. If you receive feedback from a positive or a negative place, it clouds your vision on how to apply that feedback in your life. If you can truly view feedback from a neutral position you have the ability to use it to your advantage. Also, picture when you have given people in your life feedback. How did you feel when they responded with anger? How did you feel when they responded positively? How would it feel if they were neutral when they accepted your feedback? If your response to feedback is flat, it allows others the space to feel at ease when approaching you. This is a huge win because we want others to feel open to giving us feedback so that we can keep using it as a tool to course correct.

Have you ever had a moment where something happened, and you reacted sharply? Have you ever had a circumstance that started out slightly irritating and before you knew it you were fuming? I believe what fuels this fire is a cycle I like to call the “Justification Spiral.” Let me use an example. Say your manager requests that you turn in a project by a certain date. At first, you feel a time crunch. The date is inconvenient for you, but you think you can squeeze the project in. As the deadline gets closer you begin a downward spiral within your own self-talk. At first, the talk is fairly innocent and the spiral not very deep. “If I had been asked to give my own deadline, I could have scheduled this better.” As the deadline gets closer, and you are feeling more pressure, the spiral goes deeper. “They must not see how much I’m doing. I don’t even think they appreciate me.” This spiral continues until finally, when the project is due, whether or not you complete it on time, you have created a space for yourself to feel unvalued and unappreciated through this justification spiral. The justification spiral happens when you create one story, or do one thing, that feels out of alignment with who you know you truly are. You know you are a capable talented person, and could complete the project within the given timeline, whether or not it is inconvenient. Instead of owning your responsibility, or your choices, you attempt to shift the “blame” to someone or something else. In doing so you begin to create an elaborate story to justify why you were right about whatever you were initially feeling. Unfortunately, instead of this making you feel better, you end up feeling worse. This kind of self-talk could lead to you disliking a job you used to love, being resentful of your family, or so many other prices you really don’t want to pay. What if you broke the cycle? What if you owned your part? What if you had chosen to have an open, honest, responsible conversation with your manager? What if you made a request? What if you just plain kept your word, and did what you said you would do? Empower yourself today to break the cycle and stop the spiral!

There are two very different facets of leadership: doing the right thing and doing things right. What is the right thing? A right thing is something that is in alignment with a person's purpose. The difference between having a significant life and a successful life is knowing what your purpose is and how it fits into the greater scope of the world. Moreover, it's important to be clear about your purpose for the day. For example, if you receive a phone call it may be a nice call to take, but it may not be the right thing because it doesn't fit in with your purpose for that day. A lot of things can be good. But good things are not always the right things. Doing things right, on the other hand, means doing what fits in with the fundamental principles that you have decided to live your life by, such as the principles committed to in the Advanced Leadership training. If a decision or activity you have before you doesn't align with those, then it's not the right way. There's a quaint story about Lincoln that involves doing the right thing and doing things right. During the Civil War, the Confederates were banging at the door of Washington, D.C. At the same time, Colonel Scott, the senior officer in charge of defending Washington, was informed that his wife had died. Scott asked his commanding officer if he could leave to be with his family for the funeral, but the officer declined his request because of the Confederate attack. Colonel Scott took his case all the way up the chain of command to the secretary of war, a man named Stanton. Even Stanton declined to let Scott go. Desperate, Colonel Scott approached the president, Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln blew up. Couldn't Scott see that he, Lincoln, had bigger decisions to make than this? Why didn't Scott listen to his chain of command? But the next day Lincoln sought out Colonel Scott, apologized, and gave him permission to visit his family. There are differing viewpoints about how Lincoln should have handled this situation. One is that Lincoln did the right thing, but he did it the wrong way. And the second day, he did the wrong thing because of his guilt, but did it the right way. What do you think? How do you know what is right and what the right way is? Not only do you need to be clear about what your life purpose is, but you also need to know what your purpose is for tomorrow, for this week, for the year. And you need to be very clear about the principles that you want to live by so that when the need arises, you will be able to make right decisions based on those principles.

Who is still beating themselves up for finding yourself in the 3 R's? Or upset that you instantly made up a negative meaning to a situation? Maybe for you it is that you are still arguing to "Be Right" when you can see beyond that vantage point. That's great news! It means you are still human! It is not about whether or not you fall back into pairs of old sunglasses, but how quickly you can remove them. The shorter your rebound time is, the more efficient you will be. Don't beat yourself up; move yourself forward! This might sound simple but it is truly an art form. For tools to improve your rebound rate, we recommend revisiting the work as much as possible. Come back and staff. Read a book by Brian Klemmer. Find a way to keep yourself immersed in the process.

At the root of success is the ability to be "in relationship" with others. Unfortunately, we are bombarded on a regular basis with how to speak, or how not to speak. Rarely are we given skills on how to listen. In Personal Mastery, we cover three ways of listening. First is "agree with" listening. Agree with listening is listening to someone even though you have already decided they are right, or that you agree with them. The feeling behind an "agree with" listener is, "I know." Second is "disagree with" listening. Disagree with listening is listening from a place of, "It doesn't really matter what you say. I already know that I do not agree with you." Needless to say, this is not the kind of audience most people desire. Lastly, is "be with" listening. Be with listening allows you to actually listen to what another person is saying, rather than just hearing them. It is listening without any of your filters up. There are four ways to engage in "be with" listening. First, simply be present in the moment. This takes practice. Second, notice what your feelings are, that are simultaneously occurring, around what is being said. This allows you to recognize what is going on for you, and put it to the side to become fully present again. Third is something we like to call "clean sheet." Clean sheet is sweeping the judgment from your mind. Things are always going to come up for you while you are engaging with others. This practice of "be with" listening is just training yourself on coming back to the present with the person in front of you as often and quickly as you can. Lastly, play detective. Let your heart go on a hunt for why you are feeling the way you are feeling. This will also help you in discovering sunglasses attached to those feelings.

Have you ever had an experience where you felt burned by a relationship? Do you ever feel like you stick your neck out for people and it gets chopped off? Can you accept that people are human and are going to occasionally disappoint you? Your choice is where you go from there. How do you truly live your life as a Compassionate Samurai? Use three of the exercises from Personal Mastery to help you overcome your last heartache. Start by looking at the situation from a responsible place versus from a victim mentality. Responsible not meaning, "I am responsible, so you are not." Responsible also does not mean, "You are responsible, so I am not." Responsible is a viewpoint for everyone to take. So coming from a place of responsible you can look at the facts of the situation at hand, and the meanings you made up around those facts. Create a new meaning that serves you in moving through this situation. Lastly, recognize if you are in the 3R's. If you are there are 3 ways of moving yourself out of the 3R's that you might remember from personal mastery; giving, open honest responsible communication, and a fair fight. The pain from relationships is real. However how you choose to move through it makes you compassionate samurai. Sometimes I think back to before I went through this work and wonder to myself, "Wouldn't it be easier if I didn't know? I honestly feel like a victim in this situation!" One universal gift we were all given at birth is the gift of choice! That means we never have to be a victim.