The 4:8 Principle—Amazon AND Barnes & Noble Best-Seller!

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s explosive launch campaign for The 4:8 Principle: The Secret to a Joy-Filled Life!  Because of your efforts, The 4:8 Principle achieved both Amazon and Barnes & Noble Best-Seller status simultaneously! I believe this is just the beginning of

What are you feeding your mind?

In The 1% Club, Positive Mental Nutrition refers to an ultra-healthy mental diet.   A healthy mind, like a healthy body, must be continuously fed a diet

Whatever happened to real boys?

 “Whatever happened to real boys?” That’s a question a friend and client asked me recently. Not knowing the answer, I replied with “what’s a real boy?” It’s a question that a lot of folks are trying to answer these days. John Eldridge raised a similar question in his bestseller Wild At Heart and Bill Perkins raises it in his

It Spreads Like A Wildfire!

It’s easy to resist the downside of human nature when all is well. When we’re reaching our goals, life can be great. And the very fact that life is great tends to beget even more greatness. Riding the natural high of success readies our mind for even more success. When we feel like we’re on a roll, that very feeling

The Stanger

The piece below was sent to me from 1% member Palmer Bayless. We could not determine the source but thought everyone with a 1% mentality would appreciate it. It is called “The Stranger” 

The Stranger…
A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small Texas town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.
As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors:
Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger…he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.
If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn’t seem to mind.
Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)
Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home… Not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush.

My Dad didn’t permit the liberal use of alcohol. But the stranger  encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.
I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked… And NEVER asked to leave.

More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first.       

Still, if you could walk into my parents’ den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures (continue…for the rest of the story)

Goals Call Your Bluff!

In each of my last three SuperFOCUS sessions in The 1% Club, I have emphasized the power of goals with a succinct sound bite that distills the importance of establishing and then focusing on a clear specific outcome. Last November, I said that “goals tell your brain what to

Drink, drink, drink

Now there is one more reason to stay away from soft drinks, or at least minimize their prominence in your diet. A new health scare erupted over soft drinks last week as evidence surfaced that a popular preservative in most fizzy drinks may cause

Put The Cooper Clinic On Your Goal List

A couple of weeks ago I made a return visit to The Cooper Clinic in Dallas, Texas. This is a world class operation! If you are serious about living your life to the max, then it is important to make sure your body is healthy both inside and out. No matter how many life time goals you have or how compelling they may be, they will rapidly become

Can You Hear That?

Can you hear yourself think?  Can you hear God speaking to you? Sometimes, in this day and age, it can be hard to silence the noise around us long enough to hear God’s voice? I was driving home yesterday and saw 6 people walking independent of each other down the sidewalk. The first 5 women were all holding mobile phones to their ear as they walked. The last person, a man, appeared to be

Terminal Stupid?

Do you need a terminal diagnosis from a doctor to spur you into action, to prod you into living life to the fullest? Imagine you only had 6 months to live, what would you do differently with how you spend your time? What if you only had