Our world is full of temptations. Last week we described what can be called the greatest temptation we will face, the temptation to compare ourselves to others. In our own silent world of comparing ourselves to others, we lose our own identity.  Over time, we struggle to find direction and we often miss our true purpose and passion to reach our full potential.

As we continue on our journey to be our best for those we care about most, we want to share Part 2 of this message around comparing ourselves to others. The other area of comparison that can be the foundation for unproductive stress and conflict in the home, at work and in the community is in our concern about everyone doing their “fair share” of the effort.

When we make the choice to serve a cause bigger than ourselves, we should be prepared to do more than our fair share to make a positive impact. Whatever statistical analogy we wish to reference…whether it is the Bell-shaped Curve on effort and performance or the Pareto Principle calling out the 20% that drives 80% of the result etc., the truth we all need to accept is that if we want to make an impact in the important areas of our lives, we need to be prepared to do more than a “fair share.”

As we get our minds off of ourselves and fix our energy on serving a cause bigger than ourselves, whether that is on the home front, at work, or in the community, we should be prepared to do more than our fair share and minimize the harmful temptation to compare our efforts to others perhaps not pulling their weight…it is not about us or them, it is about the cause we are serving.

When we spend energy on comparing everyone’s “fair share” of effort, we have a tendency to go to the negative and think someone is just selfish, vindictive, foolish etc. if they are not putting in the effort, time, or commitment. The fact is they might be those things, but most often they are likely just under-resourced, feeling inadequate about their ability to contribute, or just a bit anxious and overwhelmed about where or how to jump in and help. However, when we get stuck in comparing a “fair share” of the effort, we typically get a negative story going in our minds and waste energy in an unproductive manner.

The pursuit to be our best for those we care about most at home, work, and in the community is not easy or fast, but it matters. When we expend our limited amount of energy on the harmful temptation of comparing our fair share of the effort, we hinder our ability to fully support the cause we serve. As we continue to exercise the discipline to focus on the cause we serve and not everyone’s fair share of the effort, we build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity for us to reach our full potential and have the positive impact we desire.

How can I help you today? My mobile is 269-370-9275 and my email is david@harvesttimepartners.com  

Please download some FREE resources at www.harvesttimepartners.com  I hope you will find them helpful in your journey to be your best for those you care about most.

Our world is full of temptations. The temptations of fame, fortune, and friends with benefits are all around us. There is a world of temptations to relieve the pain of physical ailments, the emotional trauma of difficult relationships, and the anxiety developed out of today’s hyper-stressed pursuit to “have it all.” Many of these temptations and the individuals who get overwhelmed by them are well documented in the media or in kitchen table conversations in our homes.

However, the most harmful temptation is the one we keep to ourselves. The temptation that is the genesis of so much heartache, pain, and personal struggle is the temptation to compare ourselves to others. In our own silent world of comparing ourselves to others, we lose our own identity. Over time, we struggle to find direction and we often miss our true purpose and passion to reach our full potential.

As we continue on our journey to be our best for those we care about most at home, work and in the community, it is important that we address what can be called the greatest temptation we will face, the temptation to compare ourselves to others.

Despite how many billions of people inhabit the earth, there is none like you or me. Whether we believe in the scientific rationale, a faith in an all-mighty God, or both, there is no denying the fact that we are uniquely created. There are no two people in this world that are the same.

It is not just physical differences, but our experiences and how we see the world as a result of those experiences, which makes us unique as individuals. A practical example is to look at individuals growing up in the same household who experienced many of the same things. There are often some major differences in the points of view between the first born, a middle child, and the youngest.

There is no value in making a judgment of better or worse about these experiences and points of view. There is tremendous value in acknowledging and valuing our own individual differences and the differences of those around us. When we give in to the temptation of comparing ourselves to others, we begin to diminish the strength of our uniqueness.

1. When we silently judge our self-worth based on a relative scale of those around us, we diminish the strength of our uniqueness.

2. When we silently rate our home-life based on what we see in the homes of others (or on their social media posts), we diminish the strength our unique family environment.

3. When we silently assess our career based on others, we diminish the strength our unique learning journey.

One of our biggest risks in this world is that we fall short of our potential. Becoming overwhelmed with the temptation to compare ourselves to others is the gateway to a life that falls short of our potential.

When we give in to the temptation to compare ourselves to others, we chase a moving target as opposed to remaining fixed on reaching our own unique potential. We would be much more effective in setting a bar high based on our own individual goals and then working hard to achieve them. As we continue to exercise the discipline to “be me and not you,” we build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity for us to reach our full potential.

How can I help you today? My mobile is 269-370-9275 and my email is david@harvesttimepartners.com

Please download some FREE resources at www.harvesttimepartners.com I hope you will find them helpful in your journey to be your best for those you care about most.

Do you remember hearing your parents cheering for you from the bleachers when you were a kid playing a game, a band concert or some other major event?

Encouragement has always been a source of energy to continue fighting the good fight in any endeavor.  As kids, it always gave us a helpful boost to our efforts.

Even though we are not kids anymore, encouragement still has the same effect on our efforts to keep moving forward on the important things in life as adults.

As we continue on our journey to be our best for those we care about most, one simple step we can hard-wire into our daily routine is to send some “cheering from the bleachers” just like the good old days to those we care about most who are playing today on a different field or a different stage. Encouragement helps in a few critical ways:

1. Research in this area would say we experience a great deal more negativity and apathy than encouragement from interactions throughout our daily routines. The large proportion of negativity and apathy can have a significant impact on our overall well-being. As we become more intentional about providing some encouragement, we can be the catalyst to help change someone’s outlook…and they may need that today.
2. When we reach out with an encouraging word, touch, or connection, we tell someone they matter to us which is one of the most heart-warming acknowledgments that we all seek. Someone close to us may need to know that today.   
3. Sharing some positive energy in the form of encouragement has been shown to actually transform our own outlook as well. We all could use a boost to help pull ourselves out of our own valley that we will occasionally find ourselves journeying through. We may need that boost today.

We play an important role in helping others to keep moving forward in pursuit of their hopes and dreams. As we send some “cheering from the bleachers” we will build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity to have a positive impact on those around us and reach our own full potential.

How can I help you today? My mobile is 269-370-9275 and my email is david@harvesttimepartners.com  

Please download some FREE resources at www.harvesttimepartners.com  I hope you will find them helpful in your journey to be your best for those you care about most.

I am sure we can all relate to the strategy of cramming to study for that big end of semester exam. We kind of paid attention throughout the semester, but in the end, we believed an all-night session of studying will be an effective option to make up for a semester in which we did not give our full attention.

More often than not, we probably found that despite all the warnings of how ineffective the cramming strategy was to learning, we experienced that cramming for an exam seemed to result in the outcome we needed for the moment in that we passed the test and the course. 

We set ourselves up for some life-long problems when we continually employ the cramming strategy we learned in school to solve many of life’s pressing challenges. We cram in a great deal of catching up on relationships with that much needed date night and family vacation to shore up those critical, close relationships in the home. We provide the all-encompassing life-skills speech as we prepare children to leave the home for summer camp, college, or to move out on their own. We have that upcoming reunion, wedding, or annual health check-up and we figure we can starve our way into losing that much needed weight in the last few weeks before the event.  

As we continue on our journey to be our best for those we care about most, it is important that we face the reality that we run the risk of falling well short of our full potential if we deploy the cramming strategy to the really important things in life.

• Building and sustaining a healthy relationship is not built on that one weekend get-away to rekindle love and caring.
• Preparing children for life outside of “home sweet home” is not accomplished in a 15-minute send-off speech prior to that all too sudden good-bye.
• Maintaining optimal health is not accomplished with the occasional crash diet and two-week exercise routine.
• Achieving financial freedom is not established through that one great idea for a get rich quick scheme.

The really important things in life will always be judged by one of the most important guiding principles of life, the Law of the Harvest. Simply, we reap what we sow.  

The law of the harvest, in the natural world, is as true as the law of gravity. If we want to reap an abundant harvest of corn or soybeans, there is only one pathway to follow: The Law of the Harvest. If we asked any farmer 2,000 years ago or one today in the fields of Nebraska, we would get the same general response. There are no shortcuts to an abundant harvest. 

We cannot vacation in the spring and summer and then deploy our cramming strategy for an entire growing season into September. The natural law of the harvest will always be our judge. Just like the law of gravity governs our eventual return to the ground no matter how high we jump, the law of the harvest not only governs our ability to produce our most essential food sources for life, the law of the harvest governs our ability to reach our full potential in the most important areas of our lives.

A helpful first step in reaching our full potential is to acknowledge the reality that our cramming strategy will not work as we look to be our best for those we care about most at home, work and in the community. Once we accept that reality, we can then make a thoughtful and sustainable plan. As we take meaningful steps overtime to deliver on that plan, we will build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity to reach our full potential and have a positive impact on those around us.

How can I help you today? My mobile is 269-370-9275 and my email is david@harvesttimepartners.com  

Please download some FREE resources at www.harvesttimepartners.com  I hope you will find them helpful in your journey to be your best for those you care about most.

We often see a great emphasis from attention grabbing headlines on the various disappointments and sufferings we endure during our journey. The tragedies seem to garner the most views, clicks, and “stickiness factor” for advertisers.

On a more personal level, some of these are relatively light-hearted sufferings like a missed plane, a canceled meeting, or the important phone call that was dropped while navigating a big-city traffic jam. However, many of us would classify some sufferings as almost too much to endure, like the untimely death of a loved one, a parent holding the hand of a terminally ill child, the heartbreaking destruction of a once close family, or the addiction that resulted in a tragic ending.

Although we all hope to avoid a great deal of pain and suffering in this world, the reality is that we all will endure our share of suffering. Most of us will find a way to carry on, some in silence and some with a loud roar. There is no escaping disappointment, discouragement, and suffering. Our typical pathway to addressing suffering is to rally our own strength, perhaps we are fortunate to gain some encouragement from others close to us, and we endure the journey with the hope that we will somehow continue to grow stronger through the experience.

As we continue on our journey to be our best for those we care about most, there is a another side of suffering that is helpful to address. This other side of suffering is an opportunity to grow in empathy towards the suffering of others in order to be a genuine and relevant source of comfort to those in need.

When we walk through the valley of suffering, as opposed to growing bitter or spending too much precious energy on the endless wondering of “why me,” we have an opportunity to deeply understand the suffering of others and proactively reach out to help them find comfort in their own troubled time.

There is often no greater connection that can be made with someone suffering through a difficult family experience than one who also has walked through that experience. Those who have endured the financial hardship of a painful bankruptcy are often the most effective in guiding others through the experience of rebuilding their credit and confidence. Who better to support and encourage someone struggling with addiction than someone who has walked down that same road?

Those who have endured a particular hardship are very often the most helpful to relate to the needs of those dealing with a similar struggle. The other side of suffering can be an opportunity to build and strengthen our character and have a positive impact on others when we make a decision to:

1. Make the choice to grow in empathy towards the suffering of others as opposed to growing bitter through our own experience.
2. Act on an opportunity to make a connection with someone who is enduring a similar struggle to our own.
3. Grow stronger, not just by enduring our own struggle, but also by the truth that being a comfort to others in need grows our own capacity to live a more abundant life.

As we leverage the experience of our own suffering to help others in need, we build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity to have a positive impact in this world.

How can I help you today? My mobile is 269-370-9275 and my email is david@harvesttimepartners.com
Please download some FREE resources at www.harvesttimepartners.com I hope you will find them helpful in your journey to be your best for those you care about most.

“Put Me in Coach” is the memorable line from John Fogerty’s song Centerfield that has been playing at stadiums across the US for years and has rivaled Take Me Out to the Ball Game as the anthem for baseball memories.

The song highlights a theme in many of our lives about the impact of a coach and a game we played to our fullest.  Whether it was a baseball or basketball coach, a band or theatre instructor, a teacher for a subject we were passionate about, the impact of a coach that uplifted our spirit, built our confidence and added fuel to the fire within ourselves was memorable and left an indelible mark on our life’s journey.

In today’s increasingly competitive and intense world, the traditional coach of the school or community team seems no longer sufficient for kids to be their best as we see families going all out to ensure kids have access to a personal coach, instructors, and specialized sessions with experts in the field. We see leading athletes and actors who always seem to have an army of coaches and trainers to ensure they are continuously raising the bar on their performance.

The question that needs to be asked on all this effort to be our best is where does this leave the average adult “Joe” and “Jane” like most of us? As we look to be our best at home, work and in the community there still seems to be a heavy stigma on any of us getting some coaching to be our very best for those we care about most. Sure, there are plenty of self-help tools nowadays to get some insight to help increase our effectiveness in the important areas of life. However, those easily accessible tools still fall short in replacing the engagement that a personal coach can provide in the traditional sense of experience.

Whether it is to be our best in our role in the home, work or community, we all could use the helpful boost that comes from some direct, traditional engagement with a coach.

A coach or trusted advisor or counselor or therapist or friend (whatever label works for your story and mine) brings about some effective ways to help us be our best for those we care about most.

Here are a few benefits to help encourage all of us to connect with a coach:

• A safe environment to share. We all carry around a few “silent” burdens. Having a safe place to get those burdens out on the table will help.  
• Another point of view of our situation. We are all on the field of play with a limited viewpoint that is restricted by our own experience. A coach can help widen our view.
• Some additional action steps to take. We can get stuck in some patterns of behavior that are not always effective. A coach can help get us out of our rut and try some new steps to improve.
• An occasional kick in the A&%. We all can get comfortable and make excuses to remain in our place. A coach can help call out the truth that we have unlimited potential to make a positive impact and sometimes a swift kick or loud voice is just what we need to work a little harder to bring about amazing results.  

Partnering with a coach will help us move further and faster on our journey to build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity for us to reach our full potential and make a positive impact on those around us.

How can I help you today? My mobile is 269-370-9275 and my email is david@harvesttimepartners.com  

Please download some FREE resources at www.harvesttimepartners.com  I hope you will find them helpful in your journey to be your best for those you care about most.

We all remain amazed at the rapid pace of technology advancement in all areas of our lives. However, the conversation gets kind of quiet when it comes to the technological advances on increasing our time. We face the same challenges people did thousands of years ago and most likely those challenges will be the same for people thousands of years into the future. We cannot make any more time. We all get 24 hours each day and that is it.

Time is the great equalizer in our world.  It does not matter how rich or how poor, how intelligent or how ignorant, how privileged or how marginalized, everyone gets the same amount every day. There will never be the possibility of a mandate to redistribute time from those who have plenty to those who have little. With an equal amount granted to everyone, those who use it wisely reap the greatest rewards regardless of their current situation.

As we continue on our journey to be our best for those we care about most at home, work, and in our community, we need to periodically challenge our routines around the normal cadence of our days to see if we are being good stewards of the gift of time.

Here a few thoughts on the importance of guarding our time:

1. Be present in the moment: When we remain focused on an individual, a task at hand, or an experience and we eliminate the distraction of multi-tasking, we lessen the risk of losing time to re-doing the work or repairing the relationship. In addition, being fully present in the moment with someone strengthens the relationship more than anything else we can do. Being mindful to pay full attention in these moment-to-moment experiences will help make the most of our time.
2. Find moments to decompress: We can get overwhelmed daily as we jump from one frying pan to the other which can create some zig-zag patterns in our days which burns time. Creating brief moments where we can unplug from the cadence of the daily grind provides us with a chance to catch our breath and confirm our daily direction to help minimize time wasters like getting lost in the chaos of daily life.  Whether it is taking a brief walk in the fresh air, simply walking away from a computer or smart phone screen, or having a snack in a quiet moment are all helpful steps to break a pattern of constantly scrambling around from task to task.
3. Connect on the long-term plan: At some point in our day like an early morning or evening before bed, we should pick our heads up and reconnect with the long-term plan of our life. Taking a brief moment to step back and reflect on the big picture beyond our present situation has been proven to be helpful in using our time wisely each day as we work toward achieving that long-term plan of our lives.

As we make daily decisions to guard our time, we build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity for us to reach our full potential and make a positive impact on those around us.

How can I help you today? My mobile is 269-370-9275 and my email is david@harvesttimepartners.com  

Please download some FREE resources at www.harvesttimepartners.com  I hope you will find them helpful in your journey to be your best for those you care about most.

We all seem to want a fair amount of freedom and independence in the manner we live our lives at home, work, and in the community. Freedom and independence provide us a great deal of space to create, search for more effective ways, and enable us to stay one step ahead of the problems that can develop from getting stuck in a routine rut around the important things in life.

As we all look to be more effective in the roles we play, it is critical that we acknowledge the other side of freedom and independence, and that is responsibility. When we have one without the other, the environment we operate in starts to breakdown. Well-trained psychologists and kitchen table counselors would all come to the same conclusion that refusing to take responsibility and blaming others when things go awry with the choices we make within our freedom and independence is not a healthy pathway over the long term. When we consistently apply blame to others, it can become a real hinderance to our personal development and some observers would identify it as a borderline personality disorder.

Here a few thoughts as we look to set a strong example around freedom and responsibility to ensure we are our best for those we care about most at home, work, and in the community:

1. Freedom and independence create the foundation for great progress in any endeavor. When we have too restrictive guardrails, we eventually create a rut that will become simply a coffin with the ends kicked out of it.
2. We must embrace the universal and timeliness truth that we are responsible for the choices we make with our freedom and independence. We can’t have one without the other for the long term…maybe in the short term, but not over the long term.
3. Over time, as we become more effective in shouldering the burden of responsibility with our freedom and independence, we take an important step to ensure our freedom and independence remain for the future.  If we consistently play the blame game in follow-up to our choices, then those close to us at home, work and in the community have a tendency to clamp down on freedoms and independence as we set an example that we can’t handle them and need to be somewhat controlled with a few extra guardrails.

As we continue down the long road to build and strengthen our character, we need to support freedom and independence while we also remain firm in our responsibility to own the outcome.  Refusing to play the blame game and simply owning the outcome of our choices are admirable and rare qualities that will result in setting a strong example for others to follow that Character Creates Opportunity to reach our full potential and make a positive impact on those around us.

How can I help you today? My mobile is 269-370-9275 and my email is david@harvesttimepartners.com  

Please download some FREE resources at www.harvesttimepartners.com  I hope you will find them helpful in your journey to be your best for those you care about most.

There seems to be no shortage of major events these days that take up a great deal of space across newsfeeds around the world. These same events spill into our discussions at home, work and in the community as we all try and sort things out in our own minds and determine what, if any, actions we should take instead of just sitting in our easy chair at home. 

We have all been a bit conditioned over time that whomever can talk the most and be the most articulate in selling their point of view usually carries the day and sways the majority opinion. We see this time and again in our community, workplace and homes.

As we think about our own willingness to learn and grow within the increasing complexity and intensity of life, there are a few simple principles we can adhere to as we work to make a positive impact on those around us.

1. We typically learn nothing when we are talking. Our world seems to gravitate towards the talkers who garner most of the attention. However, as we work towards trying to better understand others as things grow more complicated and intense all around us, the reality is, we learn very little when we talk.
2. Asking questions is a good place to start. Most of us move quickly to our side of the debate or corner of the ring. Instead of working our way into the conversation with our strong opinion or brilliant argument, if we can start by asking some thoughtful questions, we will open a door to better understand the points of view of others. We stand a better chance of keeping the discussion going when we ask some questions instead of talking over others.

For those where strong opinions in the past have created cold, sound-proof walls among close friends and family, I am sure we all would welcome the chance to hear again the voices of those who have withdrawn in silence because of the shouting matches of the past…ask questions to bring some voices back around to the table and keep the discussion going.

We all have our set of experiences and personal learnings that we would love to share. However, opening a door first with a few thoughtful questions is most often a good place to start as we remain committed to making a positive impact in our home, work, and community. In addition, as we adhere to a few of these principles, we will continue to build and strengthen our character and we will set a helpful example for others that Character Creates Opportunity to reach our full potential and make a positive impact on those around us.

How can I help you today? My mobile is 269-370-9275 and my email is david@harvesttimepartners.com  

Please download some FREE resources at www.harvesttimepartners.com  I hope you will find them helpful in your journey.

“Good luck in this next chapter of life.”

We hear that and we say that many times throughout our lives. Whether it is starting or finishing an educational pursuit, a new career path, marriage, children, retirement, etc. There is always a tremendous amount of excitement when we journey off into a new chapter of life. The reality for all of us is that inevitably we will hit a few “bumps in the road” as we make our way into this next chapter.

No next chapter in our lives goes totally smooth. For most of us, if we are brutally honest with ourselves, these “bumps” can become significant challenges and at some point, the once exciting path in this next chapter of life has turned into a dark valley. Often times with some self-reflection, we can figure out how we got into this valley. However, there will be other times where we can just simply shrug our shoulders and conclude “it is what it is.”

With today’s easy, point and click access to ideas and methods from some of the best thinkers on the planet, we have a tendency to search for the latest feel-good idea or new solution to address our present challenge. We may find some helpful ideas to kick start us into gear to deal with the valley we are in, but shiny new ideas have a tendency to lose their luster when the real work begins.

In trying to navigate our way through a dark valley in one of the many next chapters of life, there are a few simple truths that can help sustain our progress to see a brighter day:

• Simply start moving with a few small steps of change. We don’t need some massive re-direction, but just some small steps to get moving. Perhaps just changing a consistent wake up time or bed time routine, or time for casual walk, or just keeping the smart phone out of reach when sharing meals with others. Some consistent small steps of intentional change that can help us to start moving in a better direction than simply sitting in darkness will help bring about some needed energy.
• Avoid expending a great deal of energy on assigning blame to someone else for our situation. Yes, there are probably a host of contributing factors to how we arrived in this dark valley, but all we can control is our response to where we are today, so limit the energy spent on blaming others or staying angry at others. Redirect as much as possible of that negative energy into the small steps of change noted in point #1.

As we remain committed to making a positive impact in our home, work, and community, we will enter some dark valleys in our journey. If we can guide our efforts on some simple, timeless truths as opposed to searching for some new “easy button,” we will be most effective in reaching our hopes and dreams. In addition, as we take these steps, we will continue to build and strengthen our character and we will set a helpful example for others that Character Creates Opportunity to reach our full potential and make a positive impact on those around us.

How can I help you today? My mobile is 269-370-9275 and my email is david@harvesttimepartners.com  

Please download some FREE resources at www.harvesttimepartners.com  I hope you will find them helpful in your journey.