Pain is the devil! Pain is what makes us stop. Pain is what makes us give up. Pain is what makes us say, “I’ll never do that again!” Pain is what stops us most often from achieving our greatest version of us, our greatest inner potential, and stops us from unleashing the power from within. This week, my challenge for everyone is to embrace pain. My challenge to you is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. And as a way to execute this, sit down and think about your grandparents, or your great-grandparents, and put yourself in their shoes briefly just trying to feel their pain they experienced or the highest level of discomfort they experienced. Most of them drove a tractor with

Conflict is around us every day. I routinely talk about conflict to repeatedly remind people around me that we can all grow and better handle conflict that occurs each day. Conflict is everywhere. And at its core, conflict occurs because there is a negative energy that is created by the gap between what we want and what we experience in any given situation. We may see this with our spouse in how we handle parenting. One parent may want their child to finish the food on their plate, while another may let them get something else to eat. We may see this with our children’s teachers when we have a differing opinion on how a child was disciplined after a negative behavior. We may see this with a

We live in a world today of more plastic surgery than ever, a media force showing us beautiful people after beautiful people most being airbrushed to the point of unrealistic beauty, politicians more polished than an airport shoeshine, and academics talking out of whatever side of their mouthpiece to recruit a dollar and preserve their existence. The issue in all of this is there is zero authenticity, in a time when almost all of us common folk are screaming for authenticity even if we don’t like it. But even for us, being authentic, being ourselves may not always be done. The greatest and most valuable gift you can give yourself is the gift of authenticity. There is absolutely not one as

Mentorship is one of the noblest forms of giving to someone else to help them in their personal pursuit of excellence that we can do as a generous person. We live in a time when the younger generations are dying for it as well. This is one area in which millennials are begging for our help in, and we often don’t understand, realize, or meet those expectations for them. And we want to look to apply mentorship principles to them as best we can. Sometimes as we grow, we grow tires, we grow weak, and we grow weary given past experiences, having others fail us, and having others disrespect us. But we must get past the short term and long term past and move forward. And for others beginning