it makes it difficult to appreciate what you have. If perfect is the standard, it’s rarely met and never exceeded.
it leads to tantrums. Tantrums about sharing, about the lack of ‘more’ and about the endless poverty of comparison.
As a community increases in wealth, the number of spoiled citizens increases as well.
It’s often the acid that corrodes the magic that created the wealth in the first place.
Whining is a symptom, it’s rarely a cure for anything.
Kathryn Kuhlman said “I have come to the conclusion that this age knows almost everything about life___except how to live it” . It is not enough to know about life,we must know how to live life.
We have handed over our bodies to the doctors,our mind to psychiatrists,our souls to the ministers/pastors and our spirit to…….. But we are not three separate entities.Man is trinity;body,soul and spirit.Life is a whole.You cannot affect one part without affecting all three.
Man was made to give himself to a higher power than himself.In other words,man is going to be mastered by something.If you are not mastered by God,then you are going to be mastered by things.Or circumstances.
Christian need never go down in defeat.Never.No man,no woman,if his confidence is in God,need ever go down in defeat. You will never be defeated in the hour of sickness,in the hour of mental strain,in the hour of disappointment,in the hour of temptation. You and I ARE NOT ONLY CONQUERORS,WE ARE MORE THAN CONQUERORS THROUGH CHRIST WHO LOVED US and we surrender to.
But when we take our eyes off Jesus,when we refuse to submit to His lordship,His ownership,we gradually,slowly or silently turn our control of our precious lives to things,circumstances,negative habits,and negative spirit.
If you don’t know who to hand your life to and get revelation of what to do with life, (the fresh,the world and the negative spirit) with find something to do with you.
Dreams are fine. And dreams involve contradictions. We want this AND that, but both can’t happen. That’s what keeps them from being plans.
Plans embrace boundaries and reality, they don’t ignore them. Plans thrive on scarcity and constraints. Plans are open for inspection, and a successful planner looks forward to altering the plans to make them more likely to become real.
It’s surprisingly easy to be generous and find solutions to our friend’s problems.
Much easier than it is to do it for ourselves. Why?
There are two useful reasons, I think.
FIRST, because we’re unaware of all the real and imaginary boundaries our friends have set up. If it were easy to solve the problem, they probably would have. But they’re making it hard because they have decided that there are people or systems that aren’t worth challenging. Loosening the constraints always makes a problem easier to solve.
And SECOND, because resistance is real. Solving the problem means moving ahead, confronting new, even scarier problems. It might be easier to simply stay where we are, marinating in our stuck.
When we care enough to solve our own problem, we’ll loosen the unloosen-able constraints and embrace the new challenges to come.
Until recently, most of the decisions we were called on to make were based on hunches, insight and a little bit of data. Occasionally, a field like direct marketing would develop into something quite data-driven (“I don’t care if you like mailer one, mailer #2 did three times, better! Number 2 it is.”) but not often.
It took Ignaz Semmelweis more than twenty years (he died before it happened, actually) to persuade doctors that washing their hands could save the lives of mothers giving birth. He had the data, he had the proof, but that wasn’t enough to change minds.
Data mining and the proximity of the internet to most of what we do is changing the proximity of proof to decision. Now, you don’t need to do a lot of research, the data is just a click away.
What are you going to do when your hunches don’t match the data that’s now pouring in?
The data shows, for example, that texting while driving is more dangerous than driving drunk. It doesn’t feel that way, of course, but will you respect the data and stop, cold turkey?
The data shows that the vast majority of wine drinkers can’t tell the difference between a $20 bottle and a $100 bottle. Will that keep you from buying the fancy wine? How much is the placebo effect worth?
The data shows that famous colleges under perform many cheaper, friendlier, smaller colleges. How much is your neighbor’s envy worth?
These are just a few of the millions of examples of counter-intuitive data-driven findings. It took Galileo decades to persuade people the light objects fell as fast as heavy ones… even though he was busy dropping them off buildings for all to see. I wonder how long it will take us to get our arms around this avalanche of insight. Probably longer than most of us think, and marketers that jump too quickly to data are going to be disappointed (while lifehackers that use the data are going to continue to have a huge advantage).
“Nothing Without You” is a powerful worship song by Dr. Tumi that resonates deeply with believers who recognize their complete dependency on God. The song’s lyrics express a heartfelt acknowledgment that apart from God, we are nothing and can do nothing. With its soul-stirring melody and honest lyrics, “Nothing Without You” has touched the hearts of many Christians around the world.
Getting someone to switch because you offer more of what they were looking for when they choose the one they have now is essentially impossible. For starters, they’re probably not looking for more. And beyond that, they’d need to admit that they were wrong for not choosing you in the first place.
So, you don’t get someone to switch because you’re cheaper than Walmart. You don’t get someone to switch because you serve bigger portions than the big-portion steakhouse down the street. You don’t get someone to switch because your hospital is more famous than the Mayo Clinic.
The chances that you can top a trusted provider on the very thing the provider is trusted for are slim indeed.
Instead, you gain converts by winning at something the existing provider didn’t think was so important.
One of the biggest risks you’ll face as an employer is hiring the right people. When you hire well, it can catapult your business ahead of the competition. When you hire poorly, it can cause your business to suffer major setbacks. The fact of the matter is that the people you hire can make or break your business.
When it comes to the hiring process, it’s your job to choose the right person for the job. It sounds so simple, yet it’s incredibly challenging. There are so many factors that go into making a hiring decision that it’s easy to make common hiring mistakes that cause you major headaches. No matter how perfect your hiring process is, there’s always room for improvement. Let’s take a look at a handful of common hiring mistakes that you’ll want to avoid:
Being Unrealistic
Not Understanding The Job You’re Hiring For
Lack Of Interview Preparation
Poor Communication Skills
Hiring Out Of Desperation
Terrible Employer Brand
Not Targeting The Right Audience
Hiring For Experience, Not Personality
Lack Of Adequate Screening
Rushing To Make A Decision
Waiting Too Long To Hire
Are you guilty of any of these common hiring mistakes? It’s highly likely that you are. To minimize your hiring risks, it’s important to dedicate a team of HR professionals to focusing on the task of hiring. These pros know how to look out for red flags during the hiring process, how to screen potential candidates, and how to make educated hiring decisions. These skills are essential if you want to hire wisely.
Do yourself a favor and minimize your risk of making any of the above hiring mistakes. Your business will thank you.
Freedom is the ability to set your schedule, to decide on the work you do, to make decisions.
Responsibility is being held accountable for your actions. It might involve figuring out how to get paid for your work, owning your mistakes or having others count on you.
Freedom without responsibility is certainly tempting, but there are few people who will give you that gig and take care of you and take responsibility for your work as well.
Responsibility without freedom is stressful. There are plenty of jobs in this line of work, just as there are countless jobs where you have neither freedom nor responsibility. These are good jobs to walk away from.
When in doubt, when you’re stuck, when you’re seeking more freedom, the surest long-term route is to take more responsibility.
Freedom and responsibility aren’t given, they’re taken.
People are fickle, but we’re generally rational. When someone makes a choice (hiring, firing, choosing a vendor, buying a soda) they’re using some sort of internal logic and reasoning to support that choice.
As a marketer, you win when they choose you.
So, why choose you?
The answer to that question is your competitive advantage. What makes it likely that more than a few rational people will consider their options and choose you or your company or your organization?
Truth: It’s rarely a computerized cost/benefit analysis. Instead, it’s a human choice.
When the factors that matter to me are processed through my worldview and compared against the options I’m aware of, I will choose you when your advantages are greater than the competition, provided I believe that you’re worth the cost of switching.
Key points:
Matter to me: Not matter to you or to the next guy, but matter to me. That’s all I care about. (Example: it might mean more to me that my friends use your product than it does that you’re cheaper).
Worldview: Based on the way I see the world, the assumptions I make, the truth that I believe in. (Example: If I don’t trust young people as a matter of course, I’m not likely to choose you if you’re young, all other things being close).
Options I’m aware of: If I don’t know about you, you don’t exist.
Switching cost: The incumbent gets a huge advantage, especially in high cost/high risk/network effect instances.
Some of the ways you might build or maintain a competitive advantage:
Access to hard-to-replicate Talent
Hard-earned skills
Higher productivity due to insight or organization allowing you to be cheaper
Low cost of living for you and your staff allowing you to be cheaper
Protected or secret technology or trade secrets
Existing relationships (switching costs working in your favor)
Virally organized product and organization
Large network of users already and a network effect to support you
Focus on speed
Monopoly power and the willingness to use it
Unique story that resonates with the worldview of your target audience
Shelf space due to incumbency
Large media budget
Insight into worldview of prospects–making what they care about
Emotional intelligence of your salesforce or customer service people
Access to capital and willingness to lose money to build share
Connection to community
Not on this list, at least not prominently, are “we are #1!”, “we are better!” and “we try harder.” Cheerleading skills are not a competitive advantage in most settings. And, with few exceptions, neither is “we are new.” Also, “we are better and I can prove it,” is rarely a successful argument.
Here’s what your board wants to know:
What’s your competitive advantage?
Is it really, or are you dreaming it up?
How long will it last?
Can your competition copy it?
Does it resonate with the part of the market that is looking to buy?
Is the advantage big enough to overcome the switching cost?
