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Significance Begins HERE

Character Growth Determines the Height of Your Personal Growth!

Achievement to most people is something that you do…to the high achiever, it is something you are – Doug Firebaugh

Professors James Kouzes and Barry Posner have administered their “Characteristics of Admired Leaders” survey to over 75,000 people on six continents. The results all point back to one common trait without hesitation is HONESTY! Causes and Posner write that in almost every survey conducted, honesty has been selected more often than any other leadership characteristic.

Bill Thrall suggests that people often focus on their professional capacity without developing character, and it will almost always cost them in the end. It costs them in their personal relationships and often in their career. He suggests that it is like climbing an extension ladder that is not secure. The higher you climb the more it wobbles and it eventually falls.

Let us use the picture of climbing a ladder and that the various rungs represent character qualities.

I will focus on being better on the inside than on the outside – Character Matters

• The inside influences the outside. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, if you focus more on the outside than the inside, you will get into trouble. What we fail to do in privacy impacts who we are.
• Our inside development is totally within our control. When we fail to make the correct character choices – we are giving away ownership of ourselves.I will follow the Golden Rule – People Matter
  • Here is a simple rule of thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them – The Message

  I will teach only what I believe – passion matters

  • Borrowed beliefs have no passion, therefore no power!

  I will value humility above all virtues – perspective matters

  • Playwright and author J.M. Barrie observed that the life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he hoped to make it.
  • Andy Stanley observed that while nobody plans to mess up their life, the problem that few of plan not to. That is we do not put the necessary safe guards to ensure a happy ending.I will strive to finish well – faithfulness matters!
    • If you take control of your behavior, emotions will fall into place. Radio preacher Tony Evans said once that if you want a better nation that is filled with better counties, better churches, better neighborhoods, and better families, then you will have to start with yourself.

    Pulitzer Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn went into prison for criticizing Joseph Stalin and came out a believer. He declared about this experience “I bless you prison – I bless you for being in my life – for lying their on rotting prison straw, I learned the object of life is not prospering, but the maturing of the soul.

    Senator Dan Coats once stated that habit is the daily battleground of character.

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Music: “Gratitude Mood” by David Arivett. You can learn more about his music by clicking on his name. THANKS DAVID!