Recommended Book of the Month - OCTOBER

Leaders are readers and readers are leaders, pure and simple. I am determined to work into my schedule to read (at least) one book per month for personal development. I will share books I recommend to our Journey leaders on this blog.

I read books in one of two ways: on my iPad using iBooks or by listening to them on Audible.com. I listened to the audio version of this month's recommended book in about 15 days. Audio books are a fantastic way to redeem snippets of time that might otherwise be missed.

OCTOBER CHALLENGE BOOK for David: "Heaven" by Randy Alcorn.

Excellent read. Super encouraging. Very scriptural presentation. This book answered many questions about what heaven, the Millennium, and the new heaven and new earth may be like.

Click here to see it on Amazon.

- David

10 Acts of Kindness Towards Your Wife

10 Acts of Kindness Towards Your Wife (+ 10 "never do these!")

By Rick Renner

Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge,
giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel,
and as being heirs together of the grace of life…
— 1 Peter 3:7

1. When you and your wife approach a door, open the door for her and let her go through the door first.

2. When your wife walks up or down the stairs or when she gets in or out of the car, show enough consideration for her to reach out and take her by the hand and help her.

3. Instead of spending all the extra money on yourself, on your fishing trip, or on your personal pleasures, why not sacrifice a few of your own desires and give her that extra money to go do something for herself?

4. Tell your wife often how beautiful she is to you.

5. Speak honorably of your wife in front of your children.

6. Take your wife to dinner and let her talk, talk, and talk.

7. When you are at work, remember to pick up the telephone to call her during the day, just to let her know you are thinking about her.

8. Make time in your schedule to be only with your wife.

9. Men don’t like to write notes, but women love to receive them.

10. Always remember special dates, such as your wife’s birthday or your wedding anniversary.

Now let me take this one step further and suggest ten things a husband should never do to his wife! If you do any of these ten things, you are sending a wrong signal to your wife, for none of these actions will make her feel cherished and treasured by you. In fact, they will have the opposite effect!

Husband, listen carefully:

1. Never put your wife down in front of others or make fun of her.

2. Never point out your wife’s weaknesses to others.

3. Never tell your wife there isn’t enough money in the budget for her to buy a new outfit — and then turn right around and spend a lot of money on yourself, your fishing trip,  or your hobbies, etc.

4. Never tell your wife that you don’t have time for her.

5. Never walk in front of your wife; walk beside her.

6. Never compare your wife to another woman.

7. Never make sexual innuendoes about your wife in front of others.

8. Never lie to your wife or tell a half-truth to cover your tracks.

9. Never dishonor your wife in front of your children.

10. Never forget your wife’s birthday or your wedding anniversary!

The One Trait Essential For Success

The Importance of Persistence

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence,” President Calvin Coolidge supposedly said. The line actually goes back even farther, but the truth is indisputable.

We’ve all seen talented, smart, and well-trained people bottom out. Success takes something more—the willingness to keep going even when the odds are bad and our enthusiasm has waned. Think of the developers of virtual reality technology, tablet computers, or ebooks. After initial spikes of interest, all of these faded as failures. Finally the line of preparation and opportunity came together, and it can happen for us too if we stay persistent.

And the good news? Persistence is something we can all develop.

6 Tricks For Gaining Persistence

1. Set goals. Some tasks are simply too big. Maybe you’re recording an album, developing new code for a website, writing a book, launching a new product, or taking your business into a new market. Dicing it up into manageable pieces is one way we can stay on task instead of getting overwhelmed.
2. Keep the end in mind. Don’t just think of small goals. Think of the big win. What will persisting to the end do for you? If the reward is big enough, we can stay on task when the difficulties become discouraging. This trick has seen me through seemingly impossible circumstances more times than I can count.
3. Improve your pace and renew your enthusiasm. If you can set goals, you can measure progress. Working against deadlines and milestones enables us to accomplish more, more quickly. And the progress we make can keep us energized for the long haul.
4. Run and walk. When we’re working on a big project, it’s impossible to go all out all the time. But proper pacing improves endurance. Running coach Jeff Galloway has been teaching people to run marathons for years using his run-walk method. Alternating periods of intense effort with moderate efforts can keep us going longer. The method applies in other areas too; we can go farther if we take breaks, go easy, relax, and rejuvenate.
5. Kill the distractions. Exercising our determination is like exercising any other muscle. This relates to No. 5, but instead of taking breaks or going easy, the answer is removing the extraneous stuff working against our determination and wears us down. How many meetings, hobbies, projects, pastimes, even relationships are making it impossible to keep up our determination when it matters most?
6. Change your self image. The most important trick for getting more persistent is to see ourselves as persistent people. When the urge to quit arises, the first and best response is that quitting is not part of who we are. We are people who stay the course; we deliver, we get it done.

Yes, there are good reasons to quit all sorts of things. We can all be grateful that Steve Jobs quit college, for instance. But he quit because it was pointless, not because it was hard. When we have a calling or a dream, the most important factor to seeing it realized is persistence.

Source: Michael Hyatt - read full article.