Nuggets of Wisdom

Today was a fantastic day. I spent the entire day gleaning wisdom from two of my favorite leaders—Dr. John C. Maxwell and Major Al Smith.

Wow! This is a day that I will never forget.

John Maxwell reminded me of some wonderful and powerful truths today, such as

“The two greatest days of your life are the day you are born and the day you learn why.”

“When you practice on your weaknesses, you don’t get better, you get consistent. When you practice on your strengths, you get better at what you are already gifted to do.”

He also reminded me of Paul Harvey’s quote, “You know when you’re on the road to success because it’s uphill all the way.” Success requires hard work along with constantly working on your strengths to get better and better.

“Every day you are either preparing or repairing.”

“Most people don’t lead their lives; they accept them.”

“Experience doesn’t bring wisdom, experience evaluation does. When you fail, stay down there for a while and figure out what went wrong. Don’t run away from your failures, evaluate them and learn from them.”

“Most people like the perks of leadership, not the price of leadership. When you become a leader you give up many rights; one being the right to put yourself before your followers. On the other hand, you need to be the number one priority for developing yourself because you can’t take others where you haven’t been.”

“To be successful you don’t have to do everything right, you just have to stop doing what’s wrong.”

“Don’t swat a fly off someone’s forehead with a hammer. The number one killer of relationships happens when we overreact to a situation. Often the “reaction” is worse than the “action” that has caused us to react.” (Anyone have teenagers? This one definitely hit home with me.)

Finally, John’s four suggested ingredients for being successful:

1. Being Relational. (“People won’t go along with you, if they can’t get along with you.”)
2. Help other people get better. (People who are around successful people get better themselves.)
3. A Good Attitude (Successful people have an uncommonly good attitude during adversity.)
4. Be an effective leader (Everything rises and falls on leadership.)


Hopefully you can use some of this. If not, remember “It’s what you learn after you know it all that really counts.” Who said that? Oh yeah, John Maxwell.

Grace and peace,
Johnny