NOVEMBER 2019

Business Tips:

15 Invaluable Laws of Growth

Our management is doing a new study on the John Maxwell curriculum with the book called the 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. We recommend you pick up a copy or listen to it online if you have the technology to do so. We will be exploring these laws as a team this year.

                The goal in the study is to help each of us learn how to grow and develop ourselves so we have the best chance of becoming the person we were created to be.

~ The Law of Contribution~

Growing yourself enables you to grow others. If you are not doing something with your life, it doesn’t matter how long your life is.

In the morning, Benjamin Franklin would ask- What good shall I do today and in the evening he would ask - what good have I done today. He said, “I would rather have it said that I lived usefully rather than die rich.” – Benjamin Franklin. Instead of seeing how much money he could make he sought to find out how many people he could help.

You have to get better because you cannot give what you do not have. What do you have to give? No matter if you feel that you have nothing to give now, if you start growing…….tomorrow you will have! That is the difference in life.

When you start a growth plan, you feel like you may feel you have nothing to offer. Everything that you are today should be credited to 2 things – the unbelievable blessings of God that we don’t deserve and hopefully the beginning of your growth journey to help and contribute to others in their lives. Don’t let life come to you, GO TO LIFE. Don’t expect things to happen to you – GO MAKE THINGS HAPPEN. HAPPY GROWING – THERE IS NO FINISH LINE!

Personal Tips:

~ Resolution 12 ~

RESOLVE To Develop Adversity Quotient (AQ)

Everyone gets knocked down, but winners get back up. Adversity quotient (AQ) is a combination of mental and emotional intelligences, used for one to have the ability to endure the challenges of life. A person with high AQ refuses to compromise on personal and professional excellence no matter how difficult the obstacles are. In Adversity Quotient, author Paul Stoltz described, “Your success in life is largely determined by your AQ: 1. AQ tells you how well you withstand adversity and your ability to surmount it. 2. AQ predicts who will overcome adversity and who will be crushed. 3. AQ predicts who will exceed expectations of their performance and potential and who will fall short. 4. AQ predicts who gives up and who prevails.”

Not surprisingly, AQ is one of the biggest factors lacking in people and one that is sorely needed in our progressively complacent, faithless, and purposeless generation because AQ strengthens perseverance. And perseverance is one of the traits that all abidingly successful people have. During the moment where one has given his all and results are not achieved, perseverance is critical. Without a strong faith in his purpose, a person will make fatal shortsighted decisions, compromising his dreams and ideals for his comfort. When the scoreboard of life displays dismal outcomes, he must exert his AQ, persisting despite the current facts. It’s during the gloomy times, when everything seems to be going wrong, that a person decides to quit or press on, birthing victims or victors based on the choices made. In fact, a person can implement all the other resolutions, but if he lacks AQ, he will fall when the “chicken hits the fan.”

The world is filled with educated derelicts, but anyone, even someone who has a below-average IQ, can develop and implement a plan for success. More importantly, every person must plan according to his strengths and weaknesses. The key is to magnify one’s strengths and guard against one’s weaknesses. In fact, the ability to do just that is a bonus for the average individual because people with high IQs tend to overestimate their abilities, leading them to believe they are experts in areas where they actually need help. Ford said: None of our men are “experts.” We have, most unfortunately, found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself an expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the “expert” state of mind a great number of things become impossible.

Learned Helplessness: One compromise was discovered by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman in 1965, when he stumbled across what the American Psychological Association has called the landmark theory of the century— learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is a belief that what a person does cannot alter his outcomes, that somehow, life’s cards are stacked against him. Seligman’s studies created a revolution in the psychology field, displacing Skinner’s hopeless behaviorism (stimulus controls response). Pavlov’s original study, in which he rang the bell and provided food, showing that dogs would salivate after ringing a bell, seemed to prove that only humans responded to the stimulus provided. From this experiment, Pavlov, and later Skinner, concluded that man lives by learned behaviors only, leaving no room for thinking, responsibility, and change, and, therefore, no room for destiny. But Seligman’s experiments altered the field of psychology forever with the hopeful cognitive psychology revolution (thinking determines behavior). His experiments revealed, in other words, that what we do matters.

AQ = IQ × EQ × WQ The formula for adversity quotient is AQ = IQ (intelligence quotient) × EQ (emotional quotient) × WQ (will quotient). Some may be surprised to find that intelligence comes in many forms, but one must realize that AQ is only developed by someone who can join the mind, heart, and will together as was discussed in the Introduction of this book.

EQ is a choice to slow down and think through issues before reacting. It is true the senses hit the “feeling” part of the brain first, but with patience; one can train himself to allow the senses to combine with the “reasoning” mind, responding with the whole brain in a high-EQ fashion. Leaders refuse to react to an emotional stimulus, choosing instead to respond with high EQ after allowing the mind to feel and think. No one enjoys associating with low-EQ people because tension is created when behaviors are unpredictable.

Will Quotient (WQ) There are two aspects of AQ that make perseverance possible, and both are needed in order to endure the dark nights of the soul: trust (EQ) and obey (WQ). WQ is the ability to align the will to obey the laws of success, consistently doing what everyone else merely discusses. Simply put, when all is said and done, much more is said than ever done. For example, if a person trusts but doesn’t obey, his success will never arrive. On the other hand, if a person obeys but doesn’t trust, he will quickly become disillusioned by the slow process of growth. Results typically require longer time periods than expected, providing ample opportunity to apply AQ on one’s success journey. A common saying among Christians is, “Work as if everything depends upon you, and pray as if everything depends upon God.” This, in essence, describes the mix between faith and work (trusting and obeying) needed to achieve enduring success. The trust-and-obey process applies even when people do not believe in the Creator who developed the process. In fact, Matthew 5: 45 reads, “That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust”

Woodward, Orrin. RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions for LIFE (Kindle Locations 5116-5120).  . Kindle Edition.

Life Skills:

Faith, Family, Fitness, Finances, Friends, Fun, Following, Freedom; we call these the 8F’s in life.

Many of these categories can tell one where their priorities are in life by measuring the time one would spend in one of the above categories. I know we don’t have it all figured out, but we have a lot of great sources that speak into these items and we welcome your comments. Please feel free to drop us a line concerning any of them.

THE DAILY DOZEN - REST

This year we are going to use this concept to explain 1 word per month that if made into a habit, we believe your life will, no doubt, improve.

Rest is a strategy and a very important component to healthy living. Have an appropriate balance of hard work and rest

Notable quotes: They are italicized above.

Something I want you to know:

Contribute, Develop AQ, and don’t forget to get good rest!