Jackson Thigpen

Most working professionals do some type of networking as a form of “word of mouth” advertising for their respective businesses. If you have a strong enough relationship with someone they may even give you a discount. Of course whenever we feel that we got a great deal for our money, we stick our chests out, and run out to tell people how well we can negotiate a deal. There are many cases however, where you are doing work with someone you would consider a friend, or someone with whom you feel you have a very strong relationship with, and it doesn’t always end well. I have heard from several professionals who I know personally that they have felt taken advantage of many times when working with “friends”. This is because the “friend” is trying to get as much work out of them as possible without offering the appropriate amount of funds for their time.

There are many people who have been through this with someone they were close to and as a result they have decided not to work with anyone they know personally. I feel this is a tragic situation because if you can’t do work for your friends then who can you do work for? I have worked for, and still work with many friends, and even use many friends for THEIR services. There are a few secrets to the success in my professional relationships with these individuals that I am so close to.

First off, I draw clear boundaries. We are friends, but business is business. Therefor my time is valuable and my services are as well. I may offer a “friend discount” to certain people who are really close to me, but once I have made my offer, it is my final offer. I don’t haggle my prices, especially with friends because they, of all people should know that I am worth it. To negotiate your price is to negotiate your own professional value. What do you think of that?

That being said, if someone is calling me just to get advice as you would any other friend, I don’t try to bill them, but if my friend has an issue that truly needs my services, then game on. I NEVER work for free, and neither should you. Remember, your time is worth something and if you are doing work for your friend, THAT is time that you can’t be working with someone else. Therefor you are loosing money if you don’t charge them. I have 2 prices. The price I charge my clients, and a price I charge good friends. I would charge an acquaintance my normal price. I also use all the same contracts and set the rules for our relationship regarding our professional involvement just as I would a stranger off the street. Likewise as with any other client, I start work after they have paid. Working on credit will get you into trouble. This holds especially true when working with friends or family members.

These are a few areas that I see many people take a dive. Since it is their friend they are working with, they behave too casual with one another and leave allot of room for error in the “payment for services rendered” department. Without setting all these things in stone verbally and then agreeing to them on paper you open yourself up to be taken to the cleaners financially. Your friend isn’t deliberately trying to hurt you. He is only looking out for him/herself. The economy is tight, and people look for breaks where ever they can get them. You can’t fault them for that, but you can protect yourself from it by setting your boundaries up front. Once you make your offer and tell your friend what you are going to do, don’t start renegotiating on it if they don’t act like they want to use you. You just gave them a price under what you normally work for anyways. It’s a take it or leave it kind of thing.

Finally, a word to those of you going to your friends for “the hook up”. We are all in a tough economy, not just you. In an effort to make your situation better, should your friend’s kids eat Ramen noodles for dinner? It is disrespectful to your friend as a professional for you to try and undercut them for their work. You should offer them something for their efforts even if they tell you not to worry about it. If they still say no after you insist, then so be it. It’s funny to me that we treat strangers, in many cases, better than we treat our closest friends. What would your doctor say if you went to him and said, “Come on man, give me a discount.” Do you ask your massage therapist, attorney, or your dentist for a discount? You hardly, if at all, even know these people!!! Why give them more respect for their work than someone you have an actual relationship with? I don’t believe most people are really trying to get one over on their buddies. It is a mater of perspective, and you can hereby consider yourself enlightened!

** If you have any questions about anything you have read here please contact Jackson at 561-324-1900.

All my life I have heard people say that marriage is a 50-50 relationship, but I argue that marriage is a 100-100 relationship. I realize that statement is meant to represent that both parties contribute to half of the success for a marriage to work, but that is just my point. I am not responsible to my wife for only half of the relationship. I am responsible for the whole thing!! Likewise she too is responsible for the whole thing. Let’s look at some examples.

It is widely thought and accepted that the responsibility of financial security ultimately weighs on the husbands shoulders, and the home along with the children falls on the wife. I remember a couple I was speaking with where the husband brought home a respectful six figure income while the wife had a home based business and managed the home along with their 2 children(ages 2 and 3). In this scenario, the husband worked 9-10 hour days. Then came home to a hot meal with his family and a clean house. The family ate dinner together and then the husband would go sit in front of a computer the rest of the night playing video games. Meanwhile his wife would clean up after dinner, help the kids get cleaned up and ready for bed, and then put them down for the night. Many nights she would watch tv and he would continue his gaming extravaganza until after she had gone to bed.

Now, according to the traditional model the husband is doing his job because he pays the bills, and the wife is doing her job because she takes care of the home along with keeping up with the kids. However, I ask you, do you think this 50-50 relationship is growing and maturing over time or are they slowly growing apart? Of course the latter would be the case. When you step back to look at the big picture like this, it is plain to see that the husband is doing less than his part, but when you are in the thick of it you can sometimes be oblivious to the long term effects of your decisions. As I was speaking with this couple his defense for his case was that he works hard long hours providing a stable life for his family and simply wants the freedom to come home, relax, and unplug to recoup from the toils of the day. There is nothing at all wrong with what he is saying, but the fact is that he gets carried away with his downtime so that the whole night goes by and he hasn’t invested any real time into his family.

In his mind he isn’t doing anything wrong for the simple fact that he was under the impression that he fulfilled his side of the bargain by providing the income. Marriage is not so linear. Today he still plays his video games, but he only does so a few nights out of the week. The family as a whole gets together for a family night every Thursday and he makes sure to spend some quality time with his wife after the kids go to bed several nights a week. In short their marriage is back to growing and maturing effectively. Marriage is a 100-100 relationship so that in times when one spouse gives less than 100% the other spouse’s 100% can carry the relationship for the short term until the other spouse gets the opportunity to wise up.

Keep in mind that the 100-100 philosophy isn’t a reality so much as it is a mindset. If you have your spouse, three kids, and a career all fighting for your time, there is only so much of you to go around. It’s not about breaking down your energy into different fractions to fill the varying demands. That would be ridiculous! It’s about a mindset that your marriage gets 100% of you at all times. It’s about being proactive with your spouse’s needs. If you know your spouse enjoys a good massage and he or she had a rough day, then get the oils out and have them come to bed early for a nice massage. Keep the romance. If your wife likes flowers, go get her favorite flowers and show up unexpected at her office, or at home when you should be at work to surprise her. The point here in the 100-100 ideology is put some extra thought into what makes your spouse smile, and chase that smile the rest of your life! This part is all about courtship continued, and not living in the marriage romance graveyard.

Being proactive in your spouse’s needs goes beyond the romance department. My wife does the cooking at our house because she enjoys it and happens to be nothing short of a brilliant chef. However, sometimes she doesn’t have the energy to cook dinner as she works 24 hour shifts at the hospital. In those cases, when she is exhausted from the previous days work, I will cook a simple dinner for her. If I am not in the mood to cook either I will run out and pick us up something. The point here is that dinner in our household is my wife’s “job”, but if she can’t do it for some reason, I will. That’s part of the 100-100. It’s my job to do the dishes after dinner. She cooks and I clean, but one night I had a friend over to the house and we were in the garage working on installing a new garage door opener. My wife made a big fancy dinner for the three of us and then cleaned the dishes while we went out to finish our project. She could have left the dishes for me to do later. It IS my job you know, but the fact remains that she knew I would be tired later and did my job for me because she saw that it needed to be done. This is the kind of thing I am talking about.

I have come across a few marriages that have issues stemming from the husband running off and making decisions without involving their wife. If your marriage is 100-100 then don’t you need your wife’s input? Of course!! I worked with one couple who’s marriage was on the brink of disaster, and it was truly an ugly situation. As we talked through all of their issues we traced all of their conflict back to a single moment in their relationship when the husband made a somewhat big decision without including his wife. As a result she felt that she had to nag, scream, and fight with him on every little thing just to be heard. By improving their communication and the husband involving his wife in all the decisions, their marriage returned to a loving and respectful relationship. Sometimes I bounce ideas off of my wife even though I already know what she will say. I do this purely to show her that her opinions and ideas matter to me.

Remember back to when you were engaged and you thought your fiancee hung the moon? You would have done anything to make them happy and earn their love and respect. Why should that change? It takes two to tango so to speak, but you are only responsible for YOUR actions and YOUR attitude. Be proactive in your marriage both romantically and with the household responsibilities. Who knows, helping with the household responsibilities may even lead to some of that romance! To me 50-50 reminds me of the scenario of looking at a glass and stating if it is half empty or half full, but 100-100 represents an overflow. Which visual would you like to represent your marriage?

When we were all coming up through middle school or high school, there was inevitably some guy or girl in the class that always sat in the first row and  correctly answered every question the teacher would ask.  This individual would sometimes offer to stay after and help the teacher with various things around the class room, and seemed to almost always ace the tests.  In most academic environments we labeled this person a teacher’s pet and often ridiculed them for sucking up and brown nosing the teacher.  Despite the fact that you may not have liked the kid, guess what?  He or she still got better grades than you did.  Ha!

In some companies I have seen the office politics create an “us versus them” atmosphere between management and the workers. This a toxic situation and you should see to it that you don’t get involved here. At work, your boss can be your biggest asset(provided he/she knows what they are doing). Most likely your boss is good at what he or she does and you could learn a lot from that person to be better at your own job. It is not only possible, but probable that in this type of work environment you will be accused of sucking up to the boss, but if you worked for a growing company that was leading it’s industry, this would be normal. Nobody likes a suck up, but that is something entirely different from allowing your manager to mentor and groom you professionally. If you work hard and continue to learn from your superiors, you will most likely be the first to get the promotions and/or raises.  In this case, you can take all the brown nosing accusations straight to the bank!

I’ll give you an example of what I am talking about.  My brother works for an engineering firm that for five years in a row has made Fortune Magazine’s top 100 companies to work for list.  When he started working for this company right out of college, he hit it off with one of his superiors and latched onto to this guy so he could accelerate his learning curve.  This type of thing is encouraged where he works so he didn’t get any type of criticism for being the “teacher’s pet”.  The result of my brother always looking to see what he can learn from others, and his solid work ethic, is that he is now a VP in the firm and is in charge of one of their offices.  Again, their were other people who were hired the same year as my brother, and may not have gotten “as good of a grade”.   The reason for this could have been that they didn’t reach out to those who had the information they needed.  Some of them worked hard, but minded their own business not trying to learn other sides of the business outside of just their own job description.

To some people reading this, you might think, “so what?  I do what is expected from me at work.  What’s the big deal?”  The big deal is, you are limiting yourself.  To illustrate my point I will stay with the same analogy from before.  When it comes time for the final grade and you have 2 students on the line from an A to a B, who do you think gets the bump?  The kid that is always asking questions and putting in time with you to make sure they understand the material, or the kid that slips in on time and slips out after the bell, but you never hear from them otherwise.  Please understand, I am not suggesting you make coffee runs for your boss, or suck up for special treatment in any way.  I am saying that if you are always putting in the time and effort to learn and grow, make sure you have the relationship with your boss so that he or she knows what you are doing.  Plus, it is only human nature that if someone thinks you look up to them and respect them, they will respect you in kind, and want to help you succeed.  However, if you put in the time and effort, but don’t have the relationship with your boss to where they know the extra things you do, they will be less inclined to stand up for you when the time comes.  Not to mention that you won’t be taking advantage of the opportunity to learn from someone who is farther along in their career than you are.  If you ARE in the negative work environment I mentioned at the beginning of this article, don’t worry about your coworkers giving you a hard time for being a suck up.  They will keep their comments to themselves after they are working for you!

**If you have any questions about anything you read here, or if you have any questions on how to take your career to the next level call Jackson at 561-324-1900

No matter how well you plan or how hard you work, life still gets in the way at times. That’s what keeps life interesting I guess. However, I have met with many individuals that panic or even shut down when they find themselves in hot water so to speak. If you are one of these people that often finds yourself dealing with anxiety over a situation, getting easily angered by a situation, or in general flying off the handle for any given reason, then this article is for you. First, you have to realize that when you allow yourself to be manipulated emotionally by a situation without due cause, you are out of control and therefore you become of little use to resolve the situation at hand. This could be a work related hiccup, a social disaster, or maybe you just didn’t get your way with something that AT THE TIME seemed to be very important, but in the grand scheme of things it really isn’t. You should always leave room for the fact that there may be something that you don’t know. These are the situations where you will almost always come out on top by keeping a level head, and taking your time to better evaluate the situation.

A perfect example of what I am talking about in principal, is when my wife and I were in the process of buying our new home. The mortgage broker called her to discuss a financial snag that MAY come up, but hadn’t yet. With the housing debacle from a few years back, new laws and legislature were being implemented to protect the banks, and since we were buying the house as a second property, we were getting the book thrown at us to make sure we could afford it. After my wife got off the phone with the mortgage broker, she called me all a fuss. She was very upset because she was sure that now we wouldn’t get the house, and we would have to live in a box on the side of the road eating spam and cheese every night for dinner in the rain. Meanwhile we owned the condo we were living in, so the worst case scenario would be that we would have more money and still keep a roof over our heads. No big deal. I called the mortgage guy back myself to discuss the matter. After talking things over with him he realized that he had made an error and that the deal would process just fine. In short, we still got our dream house, and life kept moving right along. If my wife had taken more time to talk things out with our mortgage broker as I did, she would have found the same results as me.

Another example of what I like to call the freak out syndrome happened with a friend of mine at work. We will call him Tim, for posterity’s sake. Tim is an honest hard worker, who worked for an aggressive sales organization and had for 4 years produced respectable numbers for his boss. He was not the best salesman in the world, but respectable. Around the office Tim was known for his integrity and undeniable character. This particular organization had a tremendous amount of turnover due to their management style and Tim was one of the only “long time” veterans in the office. As such, he had computer codes that other sales people didn’t have so that he could adjust pricing for certain customers if necessary in order to close a deal. The other less tenured reps had to have the supervisor make the changes himself.

Tim was in need of a price adjustment one afternoon and ran the price change by his boss in the hallway before making the change. His boss said it was no problem and they both went about their business. Apparently, the approved price Tim gave the customer caught the attention of the person that supervises Tim’s boss, and he called them both in his office to get an explanation. The meeting started with both gentleman yelling loudly at Tim and belittling him in an effort to make him retreat with his tail between his legs like a beaten dog. The problem for them was that Tim wasn’t the type to get flustered so easily. He calmly explained that he had bounced the price change off of his boss prior to making the change and explained that he would NOT have done it on his own authority, as he is well aware of the rules. Given his record with the company you would think that they might have given him the benefit of the doubt, but no.

This turned the heat onto Tim’s boss since now he was the one approving a price change that upper management didn’t agree with. Prices had recently gone up and the price Tim gave the customer was the same price the customer paid 10 days prior. Instead of owning the error and explaining it to his boss, Tim’s supervisor began to yell at Tim further and called him a liar. In an effort to keep things from getting worse and prevent his higher ups from going in circles, Tim respectfully asked “what are we going to do now? Are you guys going to write me up? Am I fired? What’s going on?” His boss flew off the handle further and said, “That’s it! You’re done! Clear out your desk!” Tim was upset and annoyed, but continued to keep his cool and left their office to go do as he was instructed.

About ten minutes later his boss called him back into his office and was trying to give Tim another opportunity at his job as the now embarrassed supervisor realized he had made an error in his rage. However, Tim’s response was not what his boss was expecting. Tim calmly replied, “I have worked here for 4 years without ever causing any problems and the two of you handled this whole thing without showing any respect or professional courtesy. I am glad you fired me just now and I wouldn’t want to work for a company that operates this way. Have a nice day.” If Tim’s boss hadn’t flown off the handle and reacted so volatile, he would still have a hard working sales rep, who’s numbers he could count on like clock work. Tim is self employed today following his dreams and excelling in life. Who do you think lost in THAT transaction?

The title to this article is the carrot, the egg, & the coffee bean. You may have been thinking, “what does that have to do with what I am reading so far?”. Well, here it is…if you stick a carrot in boiling water it turns to mush over time. If you stick an egg in boiling water it gets hard over time. When the pressure is thrown on you, do you turn to mush? Do you stiffen up not knowing what to do? When you put a coffee bean in water over time, the coffee bean flavors the water. Which one are you? The carrot, the egg, or the coffee bean?

**If you have any questions related to what you have read here, or if you want to talk to someone about becoming a coffee bean call Jackson at 561-324-1900

When you were a kid, I am sure that you had one or two other kids you knew, whom your parents didn’t really want you hanging around. That’s because as a parent they know that it only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch, and they didn’t want you getting into trouble or learning any bad habits. Everyone accepts this to be a true principal for children. However, I have found that many adults forget this concept as it applies to them directly, and many times hold themselves back by not guarding their association. “Who you are in life will be defined by the books you read and the people you associate with”. – Author unknown-

Let’s take a look at your work environment. Many times people buddy up to coworkers in an attempt to fit in better at the office. There is nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but many times compromises are made because some of your coworkers may not have the same values that you do. If the office culture is way off from your own set of values I would recommend finding a job at a company that better suits you. However, with the economy the way it is that is not as easy as it sounds so let’s address how you can mix and mingle with your colleagues without letting their conflicting values rub off on you.

I have known many Christians who have faced this dilemma as I have faced it in the past myself. I worked for a very aggressive sales organization that had a very negative work environment. Many of my coworkers had very different values from me as did my direct supervisor. They would invite me to go out with them after work a couple times a week in an attempt to befriend me and get to know me better. In the beginning I went to a few events so they wouldn’t think I was antisocial or arrogant or anything like that. I treated everyone with respect and made sure not to compromise my values while I was out with them. It didn’t take long for them to realize that I didn’t drink alcohol, and I didn’t use any foul language(even outside of work). Because I was not judgmental or condemning of their behavior, they were not of mine. In fact the more I stuck to my guns, the more they respected me for my beliefs which in turn gave me several opportunities to share my faith.

After going out with them a few times after work I no longer attended any additional night time outings, but I did go to lunch with these guys both as a group but more frequently on an individual basis. I kept my private life private and always maintained professionalism and common courtesy with my coworkers so that I always had their respect. Since they knew where I stood on several issues and didn’t drink, they were not offended by me not going out with them any more. This gave me the opportunity to focus my personal time on my friends and family outside of work with whom I shared the same values which only reinforced my belief system. We all spend the majority of our waking hours at work, and therefore you would think that those individuals have the greatest influence on your life. However, YOU control how much influence they have by deciding how close you let certain people get to you. Set your boundaries and let people know where you stand and who you are. Then don’t become an influenced person…become a person of influence!

**If you have any questions about anything you read here please call Jackson at 561-324-1900.

Almost everyone has been in a relationship at one point or another in their lives when it just wasn’t working out. This is when the other person comes to you or maybe it is you who approaches the other person, and says, ” I don’t think this is going to work and we should start seeing other people”. Your specific conversation may have gone differently but you know what I am talking about. The next line you sheepishly say is, “I still want to be friends.” The reality is, a conversion from romantic relationship to platonic friendship overnight is impossible in almost all cases.

There IS however a correct way to break up and then remain friends down the road, and I am going to share this method with you. I was dating a girl named Stephanie* many years ago who was a bright, attractive, and spiritually grounded individual. My mother loved her, and we had almost identical life goals at the time. However, our relationship lacked the “it” factor necessary to continue to cultivate this relationship and take it to the next level. To keep a long story short we broke up.

We had no animosity between us as no one had necessarily done anything wrong, but it hurt nonetheless because we both lost a valuable person in our lives. Furthermore, we worked for the same company and also had joint business interests outside of that which required us to see each other on a regular basis. Here enters step 1 to the effective break up. We agreed to not associate unless there was a genuine business reason for a period of time. In our case, it was a month or two. This allowed us both to grieve the loss of the relationship separately and get back to our lives as single adults.

If you try to engage as friends at this point, you will fall back into the gray area of romance where you reap certain “benefits”(not necessarily sex) without the romantic commitments it requires. This will add confusion and you will be back in the cycle of a potentially toxic relationship with this person that you are clearly trying to get away from. Instead, spend time with your other friends and get involved in activities that won’t put you in a position where you have to interact with the other person. You need this time off. Allow yourself the time to grieve the loss of the relationship so you can experience the emotions and deal with it within yourself. Talk to whomever you need to about it and use this time to detox. Whatever you do, STAY AWAY from your previous sweetheart during this time.

Once you have reestablished yourself as an individual and healed from the breakup, get back out there and start meeting new people if that is what you want. Some people enjoy being single. At this point you should be able to be around your old flame without your lost romance flaring up. If you can’t do this, then you still aren’t ready. Back to my story.

After a couple of months had passed, I started talking to Stephanie* more at work and other business events to reestablish our friendship. Since we had both been busy with our lives separately and hadn’t really talked much at all since our break up we were both emotionally past our previous romance and found it quite easy and natural to become “just friends”. In fact, we went to lunch one day a few weeks later and when I went to the rest room a guy named Bob* came to our table and asked her if she was married. He got her number and ran off before I came back. Today they are married and I couldn’t be happier. My mom still asks about Stephanie* and the three of us are great friends.

The lesson here is delayed gratification. When you are going through a break up there is nothing wrong with “just being friends”. However, you won’t achieve true friendship until you let the whole relationship go and take the time necessary to heal from it. It’s like the old adage, “if you love something let it go. If it loves you it will come back.”

* The names in my story have been changed to protect the innocent.

** If you have any questions about anything you read here or other relationship issues please contact Jackson directly at 561-324-1900

Much to the dismay of parents in America today, their kids have no interest in parental advice. For many parents the teen years are a time of major frustration and angst. The fact is that somewhere around 14 or 15 your once wonderful child becomes much smarter than you and this will last until they hit about 20-22 years of age. At that point you will become brilliant again. I think Jesus said it best when he said “A prophet has no honor in his own house.” What does that mean?

That means that when you give your son or daughter advice, they won’t listen to you regardless of the quality of what you are saying. It’s not your fault and there is nothing you can do about it. They simply aren’t listening, NOT because they think you are wrong, but because you are the one saying it! So what can you do? Well, I would suggest getting someone other than yourself to give them the same advice. In your mind you are thinking, “What is Johnny’s problem? Doesn’t he know that I was a teenager before too?” The answer is yes.  Logically he knows you were a teenager once, but emotionally no, he doesn’t realize that. To Johnny, your teenage years were so long ago that you couldn’t possibly know what he is going through today.

Take my young adult life prep course for example. This course covers several life skills that kids SHOULD learn at home, but since most kids are deaf to the wisdom of their parents it is necessary to have a third party come in and share the information. Your kids hear what you say, but if you don’t have someone else reinforcing what you teach, they may fail to get the point. For this reason it is also smart on the parents part to get well acquainted with their kids closest friends. Believe it or not and as stupid as it sounds, they listen to their friends advice a lot easier than yours sometimes.

You will benefit from this relationship in two ways. One, you can give your great advice to “Johnny’s” friend who if he listens may rub that off on Johnny, and two, you can get to know that kid’s parents and have them give advice to Johnny. I realize that some young people will classify all older people into the same category and still may not listen, but you never know what will stick. In the end this is a time period where you have to give your kids to God and trust that he has a plan to take care of them. Don’t worry, when they turn 20, 21, or 22, God will give them back to you.

**If you have any questions about my young adult life prep course visit my website at www.thecoachingcorner.org or call Jackson directly at 561-324-1900.

Each one of us have three phases that we go through in life. I call these three phases the three S’s of life. The first S we all face is the survival phase. This a point where you are just trying to get from one month to the other with a little bit of money left in your bank account. This is typically when you fall into a career(I said fall on purpose) and get your start trying to “make something of yourself”. This is a very trying time and generally a period in your life where you learn what you are made of and build some character.

The second S we hopefully go through at one point or another is the success phase. This is a period where all your hard work from the survival phase has paid off and you now are experiencing a season of abundance. This can be a fun time, and can instill a great deal of self confidence, which is a good feeling. At this point you feel that you have “made it” and over time you gradually start to slip into the third S.

The third S everyone goes through in life is significance. It is when you turn around and look at your life with all your accomplishments, and say to yourself, “What was it all for?” Then you start to “soul search” so to speak to find a meaning to life. Some people find this through their Church, some people quit their jobs and then try to become a consultant thinking their work will be more rewarding if they are self employed, and still others just try to find something to belong to that gives them a sense of brotherhood or camaraderie. This can be a very challenging time for any person at any age, but I have a solution to break this life cycle and make your life more meaningful.

All the variables are already present for the equation to work, but they are in the wrong order so the outcome isn’t what you are looking for. Wouldn’t you rather experience fulfillment through your carreer from start to finish instead of trying to make sense of it half way through your career. The truth is most people choose a job at a young age based on how well it will pay their bills. Instead of going through life with the 3 S’s in this order Survival, Success, Significance, go through life with them in THIS order, Significance, Survival, Success. WOW! What a difference that will make!

By starting a career based on something that stirs your emotions and gets you out of bed in the morning, you will be able to work harder and more willing to give yourself to the cause. As a result, you will be more successful at it and since it is most likely something you are passionate about, you will create multiple income streams from the work you create. Most people go through the survival phase in their twenties as they start their working life. By starting a career chasing significance you will still go through the survival phase, but it will be more tolerable since you have a purpose to what you are doing. The success phase usually comes to people just as they enter their thirties which you would still experience by remaining committed to your chosen path. The difference now comes as you hit your forties. Whereas most people will be starting their soul searching journey, you will be happily breaking through to new heights with your passions, and experiencing a complete feeling of fulfillment to boot!

Where are you in the life cycle now? Look at your own life and take this advice. Don’t chase dollars. Chase your dreams and let the dollars chase you!

**For any questions about identifying your passions and translating them into income please call Jackson at 561-324-1900

Each time in my life that I have embarked to start a new endeavor there is at some point in the beginning a moment where I feel a cold chilling sting. This sting I am referring to is the fear of failure. Perhaps some of you reading this have never had that problem, and you just go from one business to the next with your chest out conquering the world. This article is NOT for you. There are many people that experience the fear of failure at one point or another in their lives, and some people live with it indefinitely. This article IS for you.

If you do not take ownership of and conquer your fear early on it will debilitate you causing your biggest fears to become a reality. There are a few short truths that I am about to share with you to aid you in your quest of conquering fear. First, you have to accept the fact that Fear is a spirit as the Bible states in 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of love and of a sound mind.” The opposite of fear is faith which is also a spirit. In fact, one could define fear as the expectation of something bad whereas faith could be defined as the expectation of something good.

That is an over simplified definition of either term, but let me explain. One individual may be afraid of dogs and when meeting a new dog, is afraid because they are expecting to be bitten, whereas another individual who loves dogs, has faith that the dog will be friendly. You see? Your fear of failure isn’t that you are failing now. It is from the expectation or at least a concern that you will fail, and the fact of the matter is that fear and faith being spirits cannot coexist in the same vessel. You will be in submission to one or the other.

I realize that all of that was deep but the way to cure your fear isn’t deep at all. The thing that cures fear is simple…ACTION cures fear. Whatever you are afraid of, do that thing over and over and you will no longer be afraid of it. If you have a fear of failure then go to work and work hard until the fear goes away. In this case your success would chase fear away. Whichever spirit you submit to will determine the outcome of your expectations. Faith is God’s activator and fear is Satan’s activator. Which one will you choose?

Life comes to all of us in phases, and many times we get caught up in looking to the next phase instead of enjoying and learning from the phase we are in now. When I was single I focused soooo much time and energy into finding “the one” because I believed that having a wife would make me a better man. After banging my head against the wall enough I learned that you don’t need a woman to be a better man….you work on being a better man, and in the process you will attract the right woman.

You can’t get the cart before the horse. I have heard people say all of my life that marriage is a 50-50 deal. I couldn’t disagree more. Marriage is a 100-100 deal. All the time I spent fumbling through mediocre to bad relationships could have been avoided by focusing on improving myself. There is a difference between being alone and being lonely, and you won’t do anyone any good in a relationship until you are able to be alone because it isn’t until you are completely self sufficient that you can give to someone else.

When you are in a place where you are happy just being yourself by yourself you are now ready to give of yourself to other people. I don’t mean being alone in a room completely entertained by your alter ego. I mean staying single and enjoying your time as a single adult. This is a unique time in life where you can volunteer your time and energy to things you are passionate about and quite frankly be far more productive without the distraction of a family. Don’t get me wrong a family is a wonderful thing, but God has a plan for all of us and the time you have alone is a precious opportunity to work on yourself to be the best you can be.

You can apply this to a ministry, your career, a hobby, reading and education, or whatever else floats your boat and toots your horn. The bottom line is people spend an insurmountable amount of time making a list of the perfect spouse that they want and then scouring the Earth to find this person. However, they should have two lists. First, write a list of everything you want in a spouse and put it somewhere in your house where you can read it and see it on a regular basis. Then instead of WASTING your time searching for that person, write your second list, and hang it next to the first one. What is the second list? This is the list of the changes you need to make to better yourself so that the perfect person you just came up with will be attracted to you. Then INVEST your time in yourself, and submit yourself to God’s will for your life, and before you know it you will be better off due to your accomplishments and you might even meet that perfect spouse to boot!

**If you have any questions about anything in this post or would like additional information please contact Jackson at 561-324-1900