Breakfast with Fred

Gary O'Sullivan is always passing along great books for me to read. The latest is "Breakfast With Fred". It is a book full of leadership lessons from Fred Smith with commentary from folks like John Maxwell, Ken Blanchard and others. I had never heard of Fred before Gary told me about him, but evidently he has had an unbelievable influence on many people during his life. You can check out Fred's wisdom for yourself by clicking here.

I will be reading through this book slowly during the next year and I'll share some cool stuff from it as I go. Here's some good stuff from the first chapter entitled,
Effective Self-Management.

"The hardest person on any executive's team to supervise is himself."

"One of the most important executive disciplines is cutting off escapes from effective work."

"Most people already know considerably more than they are actually using in the workplace. Education is not the problem - disciplined motivation is."

Those three statements remind me of Galatians 5:22-23. You're probably familiar with it. That verse lists the fruit of the spirit (or is it fruits of the spirit?). The last fruit on the list always gets me. Self-control. Perhaps, Paul placed self-control last on the list because it is the key to doing all the others. Being kind, gentle, loving, patient, and all that other good stuff only seems to happen when I am disciplined to be under control. I have plenty of areas that need to bear the fruit of self-control, maybe you have some as well.

The carpet is in. Now I think we need to come up with a better name for the new room other than "the bonus room". If we named it based on what it will be used for it would be called the "guestbed play study mancave" room. That doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Maybe we could call it the Fortress of Solitude.

Thursday will be the annual Beacon Christmas Lunch Blowout. (a very appropriate title) Any men who can get to Spartanburg by 11:45 or to the office in Greer by 11:15 are invited. Donny and I would love to have you join us as we nullify 12 months of exercise and eating right in one lunch.