The Secrets to making This a GREAT year | John Maxwell

Serving Others for a Great Year

Here’s the secret of making it a great year every day: serve someone, every day. Every day, add value to people. Every day, serve one. Every day, live the intentional life of doing for others, sometimes what they cannot do for themselves. And if you will put people first, add value to them, and serve them, it becomes absolutely amazing what you and I are going to have and achieve, how we’re going to help people, and in return, how it comes back to us.

Benjamin Franklin said this: “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of someone else.” If you’re helping someone else lift a load in your life, you become a very useful person. Manot Andy said that the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. But perhaps, on this kind of a theme, my favorite quote is from Albert Schweitzer who said, “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” He’s right. The happiest people are not always the most successful people, but they’re the ones who serve the best. I’ve met a lot of unhappy successful people, haven’t you? But I’ve never met an unhappy person that gave their life of serving and giving and adding value to other people.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.” Only one time, only one time in the gospel is it recorded that Jesus said, “Follow me,” and follow my example, only one time, and that’s when he was washing the feet, serving the disciples. And I want to talk to you today about how you and I can just intentionally begin to do this.

In my younger years of forming myself as a young leader, I kind of thought that what leaders did was get everybody to join their team and cast the vision. And so that’s what I was doing. And then, at about 27, I heard Zig Ziglar say, who became a great friend of mine, Zig said, “If you will help people get what they want, then you’ll receive everything that you need in life.” And when I heard that, I thought, “Oh, I’ve got this turned around. I need to focus on people. I need to put others first. And if I help them, then all the stuff that I’m going to need, I’m going to get as a return.” And about the same time, I read a book by Eugene Habacker called “The Other Side of Leadership.” He became also a wonderful friend of mine, and Eugene said in his book, “The true leader serves people and their best interest. True leaders are motivated by loving concern rather than personal glory.”

So, if Jesus were here and we would say to him, “What’s important?” What he would say to us is he would say valuing people is important, and not only valuing people, but serving people. And he would just say to all of us, “If you want to have a great 2019, value people, serve people.” So, we’re going to look at a couple of biblical examples here and really get some good understanding under our belt about what does it mean to intentionally serve people.

Biblical Examples of Serving

The first story is where Jesus is going into the upper room, and the disciples are all arguing about who’s going to be the greatest in the kingdom and who’s going to sit the closest to Jesus. And so they’re back and forth, and basically, as Jesus listens, he realizes that what they’ve got is they’ve got what he calls horizontal thinking. They’re thinking about, “Am I better than you?” and “Where would I position?” And he wanted to get them on vertical thinking. So, he started talking to them, and the passage is in Luke 22. Within minutes, they were bickering over who of them would end up the greatest. But Jesus intervened. Kings like to throw their weight around, and people in authority like to give themselves fancy titles. And then, the key phrase here is, “It’s not going to be that way with you. Let the senior among you become like the junior. Let the leader act the part of the servant.”

Now, who would you rather be? The one who eats the dinner or the one who serves the dinner? You’d rather eat and be served, right? But I’ve taken my place among you as one who serves. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Jesus, Son of God, has taken his place among us as one who serves. When you biblically begin to understand serving people, there are three things that you kind of understand and come to grips with.

Understanding Serving Biblically

Number one is that a servant puts first of all service over status. Philippians chapter 2 says, “Don’t push your way to the front. Don’t sweet talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage.” And here’s the key phrase: “Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.” If you’re going to really serve people, you’ve got to forget yourself. Now, I know a lot of people; they’re the exact opposite. They’re full of themselves, you know, people like that, huh? How many of you are sitting beside somebody just like that? Don’t.

And when you’re full of yourself, when I’m full of myself, it’s all I can think about is me. And the moment that it gets there, all of a sudden, everything’s going to be centered about who I am, where I am, what’s happening to me. And we all have to fight that because we are basically selfish. We’re born selfish. And the illustration, in effect, I’ve used to hear before is, if you don’t think you’re selfish, just let me ask you a simple question: when somebody takes a group picture of you and you see that picture for the first time, who is the first person you look for? The first person you go right to yourself, don’t you? I mean, my gosh, you pass those other seven people; you go, “Oh, there I am.” And let me tell you what, if you look good, you go, “Great picture, great picture.” You’ve judged the whole picture on how you looked. You didn’t even look at the rest. “Oh, great.” And if you don’t look good, “Oh, come do it again, do it again, do it again, take another picture.” Everything’s based upon, “Did I look good or didn’t I look good?” So, this is who we are. One of the reasons why living an intentional life is so important is if we are not intentional, we will be selfish. We’ve got to work at this. If 2019 is going to be an incredible year, you’re going to have to look at the year and say to yourself, “What can I do to add value to people?” instead of, “What are people going to do to add value to me?” What can I do to serve people instead of, “I wonder who in this next year is going to serve me?” We’re going to have to

do a complete mind shift in that whole process: service over status.

But a servant, secondly, puts character over comfort. In other words, they do the right thing whether they feel like doing it or not. You know, there are two kinds of people: there are the people that do what is right and then feel good, and there are some people who want to feel good before they do what is right. And if you want to feel good before you ever do what is right, you will not do a lot of things right because we’ll let our emotions control it. But the moment that we say, “No, I’m going to do the right thing, and then I’ll let the emotion follow,” character over comfort.

A couple weeks ago, right after Thanksgiving, I was teaching on the Good Samaritan, the message on perspectives about possessions. And as we know the story of the Good Samaritan, the man was robbed, he was on the side of the road, he was half dead, the Good Samaritan went over and took care of him, took care of his wounds, put him on his donkey, took him to a place to recover and paid for it, took care. And the whole thing that is huge is that the Good Samaritan was willing to be inconvenienced. Now, here’s the key: if you and I are going to make 2019 a great year of serving people, let me tell you the first thing that’s going to happen to you. The first thing that’s going to happen is we’re going to be inconvenienced. Because when you have to serve people, when you serve people, they don’t do it on your time schedule.

In the Good Samaritan story, what did the priest and the Levite do? They saw the guy that was robbed, half dead. And one, they saw him, and they went to the other side of the road and they walked by, didn’t they? They not only walked by, they walked by as far as they could get from him. And you know why they did it? You know why they didn’t stop? They didn’t want to be inconvenienced. They’re going somewhere. They’re going down to Jericho. And now let me tell you what, because they were good religious people, here’s what I’m sure they did: I’m sure they prayed for him. Yeah, I bet. Don’t you think so? I think as they went on their own way, not taking care of him at all, they said, “Oh, my God, Lord, help him, heal him, help him, send somebody to serve him, oh Lord, Lord.” Isn’t it amazing Christians can make prayer the biggest cop-out sometimes? We need to kind of shut up and serve. Just shut. Character over comfort. And if this is going to be a year where you serve, I promise you, I promise myself, we will be at times inconvenienced. We just will.

Jesus, you know, he said, “Look, let me explain it this way. If you want to save your life, what do you have to do? You have to lose it. Yeah. And if you want to be lifted up, you have to humble yourself. And if you want to be the greatest, you’ve got to be the servant. If you want to be first, you’ve got to be last. If you’ve got to live, you’ve got to die.” And I look at that, I say, “Well, I want to save my life. I want to be lifted up. I’ve got all these things I want.” He says, “Well, you’ve got to go to the other side.”

Another thing that servant leaders do is they put we over me. They think of the big picture and they think of others, not so much of themselves.

In John Chapter 13, Jesus knew that the father had put him in complete charge of everything, and he came from God, and he was on his way back to God. So,

Serving Others: A Crucial Lesson from Jesus

He got up from the supper table, set aside his robe, put on an apron, and then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the feet of the disciples, drying them with his apron. Now, we know this story. This is a story of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. Well, the first thing that pops out to me is this is amazing. In the most difficult hour of Jesus’ life, this is a crucial time. Literally, in just a few hours from this situation, he’s going to be in Gethsemane, he’s going to find out that he has to go to the cross, and he’s going to have the Romans come and take him. He’s going to go into a mockery of a trial, he’s going to be beaten. I mean, he’s coming into his most difficult period that he came on Earth. And in his most difficult time, what is he doing? He is serving other people. Well, this is huge. And he takes a basin of water and he washes their feet.

Interestingly enough, in the Gospels, there’s only two times that a basin of water is ever mentioned, and it happens to be just connected to these two stories right here. Pilate, remember when the people brought Jesus before Pilate and were wanting him to sentence him to crucifixion, and the press kept pressuring him? And finally, remember what he said? Okay, look, he said, “I find, I think he’s innocent. I don’t see anything wrong with him. But if you want to do this,” then he said, “bring a basin of water.” And he took his hands in that basin of water and he washed his hands and excused himself of the responsibility of what he was about to do. Now, catch me. I call this Basin theology. Pilate took a basin of water and put himself first. Jesus took a basin of water and washed feet and put others first. That’s the difference between how a Christ follower thinks and how a person who lives for self thinks. It’s an entirely different world. And think about this. You talk about a great test as a servant leader. He’s washing the disciples’ feet, and as he’s doing it, being God, knowing all things, he’s washing the feet of one who will betray him, one who will deny him, who will lie about him, and will curse about him. And every one of the people’s feet that he will wash in his deepest, darkest hour will forsake him and run. And what’s he doing? He’s serving. He’s washing their feet.

Every year in November, we have this event called Exchange for Leaders. We go to a different city. It’s an amazing event, and we give them leadership experiences. And so, in November, I had them in Los Angeles. And one of the places I wanted to take them, I really wanted to open their eyes and really get them to see a pretty amazing story. So, I took them to the Dream Center out in Los Angeles that is led by a long-time friend of mine, Matthew Barnett. And here’s the story. This is a great story. Matthew Barnett decided to go to Los Angeles and care for the poor and give his life in the worst area of Los Angeles, a lot of drugs, a lot of poverty, a lot of crime. And he had no money, and yet he wanted to start his ministry there. So, here’s what he did. He literally, on the sidewalk, on a busy sidewalk in this poor area of Los Angeles, he put a desk and a chair. He didn’t have an office, he didn’t have a building. And people would come by and they’d say, “What are you doing?” He said, “Well, this is my office, and I’m here to care for people and meet needs. Do you have something I can help you with?” And people began to come around and gather around. And to make a long story short, now, this was several years ago, probably now today, if you’re in Los Angeles, the hospital, Los Angeles, you can see on the hill that City of Angels hospital. Now, that’s the Dream Center. And hundreds of drug addicts are taken care of and met, and he’s done this incredible ministry.

So, I had all these leaders there to stretch their minds and stretch their hearts a little bit. And so, I had Matthew talk for a moment. Here’s what he said. He talked about the fact that they were a bridge between people that were poor and getting, who had lost their whole dignity and value. Basically, they were the bridge to help them get back their dignity and value, and their health, and all these things. And then he said something very interesting about a bridge. He said, “If we are to be a bridge for others to cross over into a better life, we will get walked on.” I’m just letting you think about that for a moment. We’ll get walked on.

Okay, there’s another passage of scripture I want you to look at because we’re learning how to serve so we can do 2019 better. Because I want you to see this passage because when we serve others, here’s what’s beautiful: we serve Jesus. So, you know the passage. Here we go, on the screen. “I was hungry, you fed me,” Jesus is talking, by the way. “I was thirsty, you gave me drink. I was homeless, you gave me a room. I was shivering, you gave me clothes. I was sick, you stopped to visit. I was in prison, and you came to me.” Now, notice the response of the people there. The sheep, they go, “Master, what are you talking about?” Now, these are the people he’s just talked about. He said, “You, I was sick, you visited me. I was naked, you clothed me.” And so, he said, “You did this to me.” And he said, “Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?” Then the king will say, “I’m telling you a solemn truth: whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me you did it to me.” Jesus values people so much that when we serve them, he takes it personally.

Yeah, I run into people all the time. They’ll say, “You know, John, I just don’t feel close to God. I just haven’t connected with God for a while.” And they’ll look at me, they’ll say, “What do you think I should do?” Oh, that’s so simple. My gosh, you gave me an easy one. Just go serve people. Just go serve people. Because you see, every time you serve a person, you serve Jesus

. You want to get close to him? You can feed him, you can clothe him. Come on, this is amazing. And what’s incredible about the story is when Jesus is telling them this, they’re looking at him, saying, “When did we feed you? When did we clothe you?” You see, they were doing some wonderful things, but you see, they saw the hurting people, but they didn’t see Jesus. This is huge. So, every day when I serve people, if I come up and hug somebody and just give them an encouraging word, you know, I walk away and I say, “Just hug.”

Jesus and Personal Faith

Jesus, so you say, “Well, you know I, I, I haven’t been close to Jesus for a while. Go start hugging some people. Look, got 42 hugs with Jesus today. See, you’re still trying to pray. My name’s J. I’m your [Music] friend.”

Writing and Leadership

One of the books that I revised about a year ago was “Developing the Leader Within You 2.0.” And one of the things I love about my writing anymore is I’ve written to the business and secular audience so long, and they know me now so well that I can get by with a lot of stuff. It’s just beautiful. I can just be Salt and Light, and it’s just, you know, I’m trying to be respectful and value everybody, but I just am slipping in all the time. Just the other day, I was doing a Q&A with a secular business company, and then they mentioned, they said, “Well, now you’re a person of faith. How does that affect your leadership?” Oh, I said, “It’s everything. I said, “Do you know everything I’ve learned about leadership is from the Bible?” And they’re all looking at me, “You’re kidding.” Oh, I said, “I’ll tell you something that will surprise you more.” They said, “What’s that?” I said, “Everything you know about leadership is from the Bible too.” “Yeah, yeah, it is.” Oh, this is so huge. This is, I said, “You know, you’re good people. You just don’t have a clue, but you’re good people. You’re good people. You’re good people.” I said, “Let me explain it to you.” I said, “Any of you in the audience, give me any leadership principle that you just really love, that you just have bought into, that you just… give me the leadership principle, and I’ll tell you exactly where you can find that in the Bible.” And they started giving me this. I said, “Oh yes, that reminds me of the story here and there.” And then after a while, they just kind of look. Oh, they got real quiet. I want to talk to you about the best advice that I ever received, and then I want to pass it on to you. If I titled this lesson, I’ve never done this lesson, I wrote it just for you, to be honest with you. If I entitled the less, I would call it the best thing you can do for yourself and for others.

Valuing People

When I graduated from college, my father, who happened to be the president of the first college I graduated from, I sat down with him. I was getting ready to begin my life, my calling, and I asked him for advice. And what he told me was the best advice I ever received, and this is going to be the core of the lesson. He said to me, “John, if you want to be successful, three things you need to do every day: value people, believe in people, and unconditionally love people.” He said, “If you do those three things, you’ll always have people follow you, you’ll always be a person of influence, because it’s all about people.”

Lessons from His Father

Now, my father just died July 4th of this year. He was 98 years of age. The day before he died, I was with him, just the two of us alone, and we spent a few hours together. And I began to talk to him about lessons that he had taught me. In fact, that day on my iPhone, I literally would put down a lesson he would teach me, and then I’d say, “Now, Dad, this is what you taught me, and this is how I’ve applied it to my life.” And there were 29 lessons. The other day, I was reviewing those 29 lessons that my dad taught me. And I think it’s… let me count them on my pad, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 of those 29 lessons were about relationships, about either valuing people, believing in people, and unconditionally loving people. And I’m going to give them to you just quickly. This is not the meat of the lesson. One of the lessons that my father taught me were things such as: encourage others, walk slowly through the crowd, see the best in others, remember their names, travel the high road, express gratitude to and for others, unconditionally love them. And when I looked at these lessons that he taught me in life, what was huge was this: that he understood the value of people, and he understood how to give value to people. Now, there’s a relationship, I think, between understanding the value of people and also, at the same time, understanding how to add value to people.

The John Maxwell Team

I have a coaching company. It’s only 10 years old, but it’s now the largest coaching company in the world. I think we have like 35,000 members in about 168 countries of the world. So that’s pretty fast growing for 10 years. And when we bring these coaches together every six months, we have these major three-day conferences where we especially bring in new coaches, people that just signed up to be part of our team, the John team. And we bring them together, and every time we do every six months, I have this about an hour and a half lecture called JMT, that stands for John Maxwell Team DNA. And I take them through what is the DNA of a John Maxwell team member, because I want them to understand, this is who we are. We are creating a culture of people that really add value to people. And the first thing I teach them is this, and I want you to catch it: that we are people who value people and who add value to them.

Adding Value Every Day

I’m a person of value, but I’m on this teaching call with you today because I value you. I value who you are, what you’ve done. I value Stephen. I value Erica. All the people that lead your organization, I value. I’m a person of value that values you. So, what is the best result? The best result of all of this is that I add value too. If I value myself and I value you, that there’s an automatic action that I take, and that is that I value you. And the best thing that you can do for yourself and the best thing that you can do for others is to value yourself, value people, and then add value to them. You see, I wrote another book called “Winning with People,” and in it, I have what I call people principles. And one of the people principles is what I call the elevator principle, which basically says we either lift people up or we bring people down. And in fact, I could basically summarize any kind of relationship teaching in almost one sentence, and it would be something like this: you and I are either a plus in people’s lives, or we are a minus in people’s lives. We’re either adding value to them or, to be honest with

you, we’re taking a little piece from them. That’s just the way it is. And again, this is huge because when I think about the best thing I could do for myself and the best thing I can do for you is I can value myself and I can value you. Because if I can do those two things, if I am a person of value and you’re a person of value, then my next response is that I’m going to add value to you. So, how do I do that? How does that happen? So let me give you just my little five-step every day, a process of adding value to people. Here we go. Number one: I value people. Okay, I go back to the Golden Rule, you know, treat others as I want to be treated. So every day, I make sure that the core of everything I do is based on the fact that I value people. And the reason that’s so important, especially for leaders, is leaders see more than others see, and leaders see before others see. And because of that, because I see more than most people and because I see before other people, this gives me a very distinct advantage over other people. Trust me, in life, if you can see more and you can see before, you’re going to win the race. So the question is, what do I… what do I do with that advantage? What do I do with the advantage I can see more than I can see before? I can either use it for personal gain, or I can use it for your gain. I can either manipulate you, which means I move you for my advantage, or I can motivate you, which means I move you for your advantage and personal and mutual advantage. So, I’m either going to be a plus or a minus, and I’m going to be a plus or minus with people based on the fact that I value those people. If I value you, I’m going to be a plus. If I don’t value you, to be honest with you, or if I don’t even value myself, I’ll be a minus. I’m either adding or I’m subtracting. So, every day I value people. The second thing I do every day is every day I think of ways to add value to people. In other words, I look at my calendar in the morning. I know I’ll be talking to a lifestyle publication today, so what am I doing before I ever get here, in our teaching lesson? I’m thinking of ways I can add value to you. I’m thinking ahead. I’m intentionally saying, “I’m going to be with you today. What can I say to you that is going to be a plus in your life, so that when I’m done, you say, ‘Wow, John just moved us a little bit further down the road.'” This is huge. So, you know, when I look at my calendar, I ask myself, “Who will I see? Oh, I’m going to see Lifestyle Publication today. And what can I do? What can I do to add value to you?” In fact, one of the things I felt that I could add value to you today was to do a kind of a unique lesson just for you, because I know how much you value people in your publication, and the whole intent of why you do what you do. A few years ago, I really book “Intentional Living,” and I was trying to… we have five grandchildren, and I was working on teaching my grandchildren how to be intentional and adding value to people. So, I was having dinner with all five of my grandchildren. I was asking what they were going to do the next day at school. Add value to people. And our youngest grandson at that time, I think James was nine, said, “You know, Papa, you know, tomorrow when I go to school, I’m going to open doors for people. I’m going to… if I’m near a door and people are coming, I’m going to rush ahead, I’m going to open the door, and when they pass through, I’m going to smile and I’m going to say, ‘Have a good day.'” I said, “Oh, James, I like that.” The next evening, he called me, said, “Papa, I had a great day.” I said, “Well, tell me about it.” He said, “Well, remember I was going to open doors and, you know, tell people to have a great day?” And I said, “Oh, yeah, I remember.” Well, he said, “Well, I did that. I did that all day.” He said, “I opened up 47 doors for people today and smiled and said, ‘Have a great day.'” Now, James is nine, and he’s already learning to think ahead of how he’s going to add value to people. I want to encourage all of you to look at your calendar, what you’re doing tomorrow, see who you’re going to see, and ask yourself a very simple question: when I’m with them, what can I do that would add value to them? Wow. Number three, I not only value people and think of ways to add value to people, but number three, I look for ways. I look for ways to add value to them. In other words, when I’m with you, I’m constantly looking and saying, “What can I do right now to add value to this individual?” Wow. Because here’s what I know: who I am determines what I see, just like who you are determines what you see. If I’m a person of value who values people and wants to add value to people, guess what I’m going to see? All kinds of opportunities to add value to you. Why? Because that’s who I am. I don’t see what’s before my eyes. There’s a whole bunch of things before my eyes I don’t see. I see what I’m prepared to see. And how I view others is how I view myself. Now, this is huge. So how do I add… how do I do this? How do I look for ways to add value to people? Well, I love to play golf. When I’m on a golf course, one of my desires is to find somebody that’s working the ground, you know, maybe somebody’s raking the traps, the maintenance people, and I intentionally separate myself from the other golfers for a moment. I go over and introduce myself and I thank them for their hard work and how beautiful they make the course, and then I give a financial guy just slip them some money and say, “Hey, take your family out to eat today.” And, uh, I’m John, I’m your friend, and I move on. If I’m in a restaurant, uh, especially if it’s a single mother, if it’s an elderly person, I make sure that I really, you know, give them a great tip. In fact, during COVID-19, I’ve done… I’ve done… I just tip 50% of the meal anymore right now because I know everybody’s having a very tough time. Now, what I’m just saying is, you want to be conscious and look for ways that you can begin to add value to the people around you. These are people I don’t even know. In fact, every day, I make

Transfiguration and Affirmation

In the biblical account of the Mount of Transfiguration, where Jesus is accompanied by Peter, James, and John, a profound moment occurs. Amidst the radiant cloud enveloping them, a voice from within the cloud speaks: “This is my son, marked by my love. Listen to him.” This divine affirmation is reminiscent of another significant event: Jesus’ baptism.

Baptism and Divine Affirmation

At Jesus’ baptism, similar words are spoken: “This is my son, whom I love; with him, I am well pleased.” These two instances, baptism, and the Transfiguration, mark pivotal moments where Jesus receives affirmation from his Father. The consistency in the message is striking: Jesus is beloved, chosen, and special.

The Power of Parental Affirmation

What significance does this affirmation hold? It shapes Jesus’ identity and confidence. Knowing he belongs to God, is loved unconditionally, and is special gives Jesus unwavering confidence. He demonstrates this confidence not only in facing trials but also in humble service, as seen in his act of washing the disciples’ feet.

Growing into Affirmation

Diana Kay’s statement, “People grow into the conversations around them,” aptly describes Jesus’ experience. He grew into the identity affirmed by his Father. This growth fueled his confidence and guided his actions, ultimately leading to his sacrificial service.

Embracing Divine Love

The love of God, as described in 1 John 3:1, is profound. We are called children of God, a testament to the boundless love God has for us. No matter our past mistakes or present struggles, God’s love remains constant. Like the prodigal son welcomed home by his father, we are embraced with unconditional love.

Invitation to Belong and Be Loved

Regardless of our circumstances, God extends an invitation to belong to his family and experience his love fully. Ephesians 3 portrays the vast dimensions of God’s love, inviting us to immerse ourselves in its breadth, length, depth, and height, living fully in its embrace.

Conclusion

The affirmation Jesus received from his Father transformed his identity and fueled his mission. Similarly, we are invited to embrace our identity as beloved children of God, empowered by his unconditional love to live fully and serve humbly.

Experiencing God’s Love

The speaker starts by emphasizing the fullness of God’s love and desires for people to know and experience it fully. He highlights the extravagant nature of God’s love and explores its depth, breadth, and height.

“Fullness of God,” he said. “I want you to know and experience the extravagant love of God,” he said. “The breath, what, what is… What’s the breath of God’s love? That means it’s everyone. God loves everyone. You say, ‘What do you mean, God loves everyone?’ God loves everyone. Everyone. Everyone. And as God’s children, we need to love everyone too. Everyone. Everyone.”

He elaborates on the dimensions of God’s love:

“The length of His love is… it goes on forever. It never ends. It never ends. There’s no end to His love. The depth of His love is… it reaches as low as you have been, and then a little bit lower to pick you up. And the height of His love is all about your potential. Once you become His child and you have that sense of belonging, that potential, that height of His love is just going to take you and lift you to a whole new level.”

Additionally, the speaker emphasizes how special individuals are to God, referencing Ephesians chapter 3:

“God wants you to know how special you are,” he states. “How blessed is God and what a blessing he is. He’s the father and our Master Jesus Christ, and he takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before, long before he laid down Earth’s foundations, he had us in mind. He had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago, he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. What a pleasure he took in planning this.”

The speaker recalls a conversation with an atheist friend, expressing empathy and understanding towards his longing for connection with God:

“I was talking to this week to a friend of mine that’s an atheist, he’s one of my beautiful people, that one of my projects sometime I’m going to just do a whole evening on people that I dearly love that are hard cases in the kingdom. And he’s an atheist. So we were talking and he was getting vulnerable, and I was sharing, and I’ve developed years of trust with him now, and so he was being fairly open with him me, and he got to the place where I could sense that, um, I could say this to him. And I, I, I called him by name and I said, um, I’ll call this is not his name. I, I said, ‘Joe, I, I know you don’t believe in God, but I can tell you’re really miss him.’ Everybody created by God misses him. And I know it. And that’s why I’m so passionate to share my faith because all they’re waiting for somebody is to come and help them connect with that miss in their life. I prayed with him on the phone, and when it was all over, he said, ‘John,’ he said, ‘uh, thank you.’ He said, ‘while you prayed, I did what I’ve seen you do before. I lifted my hands and I prayed too.’ It’s a beautiful thing when an atheist… I love this. Amen. I just love this. This is my world folks. It’s wonderful when an atheist lifts his hand, you see. Yeah. Yeah. My friend, I don’t know if you believe in God or not, but I do know this. You’re sure missing. You’re missing because you have a longing to belong, a desire to feel unconditional love and to believe that you’re special.”

The speaker then transitions to discussing the concept of self-talk, quoting John Maxwell and reflecting on its impact:

“That kind of does lead to my next question because then John talks about… he quotes, um, most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you’re listening to yourself rather than talking to yourself. I do love that quote. I even quoted that in my book, Real Life Marriage, because I, I, I heard it first… since we’re talking about Super Bowl, that’s so funny. I heard it first from a former Eagles player, John Dorboss. He was the long snapper. He ended up being on America’s Got Talent as a magician. I don’t know if you ever watched that show. I did. But one of the things that he had… he has a great life story. But one of the things that he said that really stuck with me… I always attributed this quote to him, but he said, ‘Don’t listen to yourself. Talk to yourself.’ And I have quoted that for so long because what we’re hearing, what we say to ourselves… what we’re hearing ourselves say, we don’t even realize that narrative is running all the time. And so, learning to talk positively to ourselves is an intentional step that really can turn around the narrative that is going on in our head. Maybe that’s really dated back to our childhood where we are echoing things that were said to us. I’m getting into relationships here, but things that were said to us as children that we’ve come into an agreement that we’re allowing to run through our head and that we now speak to. That is a powerful thing. And so, I’m curious for you, in that positive attitude kind of thing, what are the kinds of things that you say to yourself to encourage yourself, Mark?”

Encouraging Self-Talk

The conversation continues with the speaker, Mark, discussing his approach to self-talk and encouragement. He emphasizes gratitude, recognizing the favor and blessings in his life, and acknowledges the importance of his role in supporting his family. Additionally, he reflects on the concept of abundance and stewardship, striving for continual growth and contribution.

“One is always the favor,” Mark shares. “So I’m a person of faith, you guys know that by now listening to the podcast. The favor of the Lord is so real. When I think about what I get to do on a daily basis, I mean, I get to hang out with John Maxwell for 20 years. I’ve been riding shotgun with him and helping people, and I realize the significance of what I do. It’s humbling, but it’s also extremely invigorating because I couldn’t have gotten here, and there’s no way that I could have orchestrated the life that I live. There’s no way. Let’s start with the incredible community that I live. The United States. I enjoy that. I enjoy some of the rest of your countries out there as well. I love the state of Georgia. It’s nice people talk like me. That’s really nice to be around people that talk like me. We understand each other. But I love my community, Buford. And I go, what’s the chances that I could have made just a series of good decisions and ended up with so much favor, so much blessing? And so the first thing that I work hard on is to make sure that I recognize I’m living a life that is almost euphoric. And it’s keeping that in perspective so that I never get entitled.”

He further emphasizes his perspective on life being about service to others:

“Number two, I realize the life is

not given to me for me; it’s given to me for others. And so, anytime a very small, crazy example: my wife is a professional, and I do mean the word professional, homemaker. She is incredible at the load she carries for our family so that I can carry a different load for our family, right? So we’ll go out to eat, and I guess I could be called the breadwinner, but that is a joke in my opinion because the way that it takes both of us. But we’ll go out to a restaurant, and invariably, we’ve taught our family this. Everybody that goes with us, friends, our family alike, they always go, ‘Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the meal. Thanks for the meal.’ It’s just a real, probably southern thing, but everybody thanks my wife. Well, I go, ‘Hey, Mark, thank you.’ And I go, ‘Steph, me, thank you.’ I never want to be seen that I am the provider for our family, number one. I want them to see God’s the provider, but number two, I want them to see we are the provider of each other. So there’s not a time that does not go by that we go out to eat or something like that that all of our family thanks me or Stephanie, and Stephanie and I thank each other.”

Lastly, Mark discusses his approach to continual growth and abundance:

“And so, that’s a very simple thing to say, ‘Hey, whoa, whoa, whoo. This is not something I carry alone.’ I encourage myself by realizing it’s bigger than me and it’s not just for me. And then the final thing that I really work hard at to make sure that I encourage myself is to ask myself how to multiply it. It’s never a destination. ‘Oh, okay, got enough money in the bank now. Oh, this car is just nice enough. Oh, thank goodness for this home.’ And it’s not greed that drives that, it’s a sense of greater abundance so that others can be blessed in a greater way. And so, I never want to be satisfied with, ‘Ah, I’ve arrived,’ or ‘I’ve got enough.’ And it’s always the hope for more, bigger, better, not from a greed but from a stewardship standpoint that keeps me from getting discouraged. I love that. First of all, it blows my mind to read that quote from Paul McCartney when he read that quote saying that they wrote a song every day no matter what happened. I’m sure there are some songwriters out there or some people who write for a living. I’m sure that is very impressive and crazy. But is there any, that’s why he’s Paul McCartney. That’s why they were the Beatles because every day they did the work. They put in the work.”

The conversation touches on the discipline and dedication required for consistent productivity, drawing inspiration from the example of successful individuals like Paul McCartney and the Beatles.

Self-Reflection and Improvement

In this segment, Tracy and Mark delve into the importance of self-reflection and intentional improvement. Mark shares his daily practices of personal growth and adding value to others, highlighting the significance of these habits in fostering consistent high performance.

Daily Practices for Personal Growth: Mark emphasizes two key daily practices:

1. Personal Growth: At the end of each day, Mark asks himself, “Where did I grow today?” He views growth as a requirement and an expectation, actively seeking opportunities for improvement and learning. By consistently challenging himself to grow, Mark experiences daily wins, contributing to his overall sense of fulfillment and success.
2. Adding Value to Others: Mark’s second daily focus is on adding value to someone else’s life. For him, adding value means motivating and inspiring others to reach their potential. He measures his success in this area by reflecting on whether he has positively impacted someone’s life each day. Mark finds satisfaction and purpose in knowing that he has made a difference, whether through a podcast episode or a personal interaction.

Reflection on Consistent High Performance: Tracy reflects on John Maxwell’s distinction between occasional high performance and consistent high performance. She acknowledges the temptation to strive for excellence in every aspect of life but emphasizes the importance of prioritization and focus on the most impactful activities.

Tracy encourages listeners to identify areas where they may be “winging it” instead of dedicating sufficient time and preparation. She prompts individuals to consider where they can invest more effort to excel and make a meaningful difference. Tracy emphasizes the value of embracing the process of improvement and focusing on becoming consistently excellent rather than seeking perfection overnight.

Mark’s Response: Mark candidly admits his tendency to “wing it” in relationships due to his natural relational skills. He recognizes the need to combine his innate abilities with intentional preparation to create unforgettable moments in his interactions. Mark appreciates Tracy’s pointed question, acknowledging the importance of continually refining his approach to leadership and relationship-building.

In conclusion, Tracy and Mark underscore the significance of daily habits and deliberate effort in achieving sustained high performance. They advocate for self-reflection, prioritization, and the pursuit of excellence in all endeavors to maximize personal and professional impact.

Leadership Habits and Mindset

Day like in order to benefit, what, where is your sweet spot, and your part of leadership that you really put in your time and effort and energy and heart and soul. What do you do every day?

So there’s two things, you know, John teaches the rule of five and we could get into that whole subject maybe but another time, but there’s two things that come to mind every single day that I attempt to do. One is I attempt to grow myself every day. At the end of every evening, Tracy, every evening I ask myself, where did I grow today? Now, if growth is a requirement, growth is an expectation, and you look for ways to grow, most days I can identify something that challenged me to growth, to improvement. So what have I done? I’ve won at what I was trying to do. So every day, I experience a win because every day I attempt to grow in some area. The second thing I try to do every single day is I try to add value to someone. Now for me, let me tell you what adding value to me means. It means to motivate and inspire people to reach the next level of potential in their life. So my goal today, I’ll finish up the day at some point later on, and I’ll go, did I add value to people? In my mind, Tracy will go immediately back to this podcast episode you and I partner with John Maxwell, we partner with Jake Decker, our podcast producer, to inspire people to reach the next level of potential. And I’ll smile, I’ll sit back, if it’s very late, I’ll lay my head on the pillow, and I’ll go, I added value today through the podcast that Tracy and I recorded. Having said that, if you have that mindset, that’s how you make winning a habit.

Now, I’ve had days where I made bad business decisions. I’ve lost dollars, in fact, millions of dollars. I’ve misled somebody or frustrated somebody. But if I put into my day, today, “Today, I want to add value to people, I want to grow myself,” I have found that I have made winning a habit by focusing on those two things.

I love that, and I’m gonna, I have a question before I get to, well, I’m gonna jump to the end and ask a question because it ties to what you just said…

Valuing the Process of Winning

But then I have a question for the middle of what he was teaching on. So if you’re, if you’re listening, you’re thrown like that was the end of what he said, but at the very end, John talked about in order to prepare and process correctly, he needs to pull away from things and he listed, I don’t know, six things that he needed to pull away from. And at the very end, he talked about occasional high performance versus consistent high performance and then paying the price every day.

Now, if you guys are like me and you’re like a type-A person and you hear that, the first thing that I think of in all transparency is I think that sounds overwhelming because I’m already all systems go in so many things. So now if I have to think of myself as like bringing high performance to everything I do, but let’s not forget the very first thing that he said is what is good to do versus what is best. So there are a ton of good things to do that come at us every single day, and having the discipline and understanding of what is the best, it’s a lot of good stuff that’s one of the biggest learning lessons for me as a leader is learning that there are a lot of good things that I have to say no to in order to do the best and to bring my high performance consistently every day that it needs to be, you know, just to the things that are the best things or else I’m kind of going to waste my time like John will say, “I do three things well, and I have a team around me who is great at all the things I’m not great at, but he works really hard to do those three things well.”

So I think it’s freeing and not something not to miss that we aren’t supposed to bring high performance to every single thing we do in the day, but really to the things where we need the, where we’ll get the most return. Am I saying that clearly? I mean, I know that’s a lesson John always speaks to us. Well, I love that you brought this up because what we do is we mystify success, yeah. We put a mystique to high performers, we look at John Maxwell on stage and we go, “Wow, that guy’s incredible. I bet you it’s awesome to talk to him at 4 in the morning.” I’ve talked at 4 in the morning, and most of the time, 4 in the morning is not this great or, that is communicating this beautiful memorable message, it is, “Mark, why can’t we get XYZ done now?” I say that because we mystify the performance, we put a mystique on the performance and don’t realize that John is the same guy that says, “You need to be consistent in high performance.” He’s the same guy that teaches you can’t be 100% all day every day on yes. And so John is not speaking in paradoxes there. We take a point that should be meant to improve our consistent aspiration of high performance, and we, we cause it to lose credibility because we think we got to do that all day long. Yeah, and it overwhelms us. Tracy, I’ve been around you, we’ve traveled the world together as board members in John’s nonprofit and you supporting John and I through all the different things that you do, you are a high performer consistently. And so I’m glad you brought this up because if you, knowing you like I know you, are sitting here hearing John teach that today and go, “Man, I’ll never measure up to high consistent performance,” then certainly there are others in our podcast family that’s feeling the same way. And I’m just going to challenge you, don’t try to win the championship in one day. Have more, take us back to the very beginning of what John said because he said, “Winners value the process of winning.” Hold that thought because I’m going to come back to it and I’m going to teach for a moment, winners value the process of winning. Value the process of becoming a consistent high performer without the burden of becoming that overnight. If you got impacted by something John said today, wake up tomorrow and be a little bit more consistent in your pursuit of high performance, rather than waking up tomorrow discouraged because you failed at XY or Z. Right, going back to the point of winners value the process of winning, value the process of improvement.

I am an Atlanta, I am an Atlanta, Georgia native. There’s not many of us. What that, I love sports. What being an Atlanta, Georgia native and loving sports means is there are 99.9 seasons of every sport in our city that I’m disappointed 99.9% but today, December, the last podcast of December, I can say right now that the Atlanta Braves are the world champions. Oh, yeah. I know that was about two months ago, but forgive me, I’m still living in the

glory being world champions. But listen to this, listen to this. I’m thinking as we record this podcast, I’m thinking of the interviews with our coach and with a couple of our champion performers right after the World Series. And I don’t know if any of you stayed up, East Coast past midnight to hear the interviews, but I did. I missed again because I was reeling in the moment. You know what every one of them said, Tracy? They weren’t like, “Man, we were awesome tonight. Oh, my, the sweetest thing about tonight is the win tonight.” No, it was six games into the World Series, it didn’t take a seven, but it took a six. It wasn’t the fact that we finished it in six rather than seven. You know what everyone them said, “The sweetest thing about this victory is in August, we were not even a 500 winning percentage team. The Atlanta Braves of 2021 that are the world champions were the latest team to ever get to 500.” In other words, just as many wins as losses. In the history of the World Series, we were the latest. And what they said is the most sweet thing about this is we couldn’t even play 500 ball in August, and in two months, we turned it around and became world champions. You know what they were saying? We love the process more than the wind tonight. That’s right. We love the fact that we were bad but now are good better than we love the great experience of championship. Guys, winning is a habit. You know what the most favorite part of this subject title should be for all of us? The word habit, not the word winning. But most of us want to focus on the word winning as if it is the formula. The formula is not winning. The formula is habits that take you to winning. That’s the secret sauce.

And they had a lot, you know, winning the World Series, that’s beautiful. And congratulations to all you Brave. Thank you. I’ll take it, thank you. But it really is, winning is not necessarily winning the end, it’s all the wins along the way, the successes that you find along the way so that you enjoy the process. And so if some of you were thinking like, man, I have some bad habits, I quickly grabbed while I was listening to John, I grabbed off my shelf this “Today Matters” book. Today matters, and John referenced it, but I want to encourage those of you if you don’t have it, get this book. If you do have it, go pull it off your shelf, and it’s like this. This is what it’ll look like on your bookshelf, red and white. So for those of you who are watching us, but and the first page before he even gets to chapter one, he says, just for today, and he makes a list of 20 things maybe, and 20 things to do. So if you’re like, I’m not really sure how to create healthy habits, I’ve just been one of these people who like Tracy goes up, tries to go a 100 at everything, and then I realized I don’t need to go a 100 at everything, you know, Mark talked about when we travel for transformation to these countries and, you know, we are with the people and you’re all giving 100%. And then you get back on the bus and you go to the next event, and on the bus, we’re all very kind of, well, John is talking and teaching always, but in that moment, we’re kind of quieting ourselves because we don’t need to be at a 100 when we’re on the bus. And so there’s those moments in the day where you can give yourself permission that you don’t need to bring a hundred except for those moments where it really is going to bring the biggest return. So if you’re looking for a launchpad for that or to try to wrap your head around those habits that Mark talked about, open up “Today Matters” and look at just for today, the list that he put there, which I think is so powerful.

Albert Einstein says, try not to become a man or woman of success, rather become a man or woman of value. And that’s not at the day where you win the World Series, that’s every time. Are you a person of value every time you show up where it’s going to bring the biggest return? Which he then goes on, it kind of leads me to the next one. Are you okay if I ask another question? Yeah, okay.

Preparedness and Winged Approaches

So he talked about when he decided whether he was going to be a wing-it speaker, and this, sorry if that was on my microphone, pierced my heart because I, I know that there were times as a young speaker that I winged it. I called it in because I knew I had charisma, I knew my topic, I could teach it like that. If somebody said, “Hey, Tracy, can you stand up here and talk, talk on this?” I knew that I could do that. But there came a time where the first time I ever heard John say this, it was very convicting to me because I think I was relying on my natural gifts rather than developing my gifts.

So I want to ask our podcast audience, number one, what are you winging that you need to put a little bit more preparation into to knock it out of the park, to really honor the moment where you get to influence other people? What are you winging that you need to put more time into and take away time from something that’s less of value but really where your sweet spot is that you need to not wing but really prepare for so you just kill it?

And then my second question is for you, Mark, and I’m just curious what are you tempted to wing in the day and how do you keep yourself from relying on your natural gifts and talents because you have many? Yeah, thank you for that. I love this question. I love how you highlighted it because and I love how you challenged our podcast listeners to identify where they’re winging it. You know, I want to say one thing on it before I answer the question, and that is most of the time we wing where we are naturally gifted. In other words, John is one of the greatest connectors I’ve ever met. Now, what I really mean by that, he’s one of the greatest communicators I’ve ever heard, but he doesn’t see communicating as getting a message across. He sees communicating as connecting with the audience. That’s why I call him the greatest connector I’ve ever met. He connects with people from stage better than I’ve ever met.

What John was saying is years ago, he could have winged it because he’s so good at it, yet he decided he wanted to be excellent with it, right? So most of us struggle with the winging it syndrome on the things that we really have to be, we have the opportunity to be unforgettable with. See, you won’t be unforgettable by just being good, you will be unforgettable when you are better than anybody else. John’s good because he decided he wasn’t going to settle with being great at a natural gifting, he decided he was going to go to the next level of greatness by being unforgettable.

Back to your question, which is probably

true for most of us podcast listeners. I wing it with relationships. I’m a relational person. I’m naturally gifted to be relational. But I have found that if I rely on relationships, the higher the level and competence of relationships around me, the least effective I am because I was not intentional with that. And so I’m convicted with your question to go most often, whether it’s a leadership moment with my team, whether it’s a moment to communicate with a president or prime minister of a country, I don’t always spend a lot of prep time on relationally connecting with people, doing a little biographical research, finding out what they like, what they don’t like, because I don’t need all that information to connect with people. Yet if I spent time to get to know their interests, coupled with my natural gifting, I would be unforgettable. But not unforgettable sometimes relationally just because I’m good. I’m only unforgettable when I take good and make it exceptional and unforgettable. The way a relational person, i.e., me, becomes unforgettable is when I bring my natural talents with my preparation and I create unforgettable moments. And I’m not doing that extremely well before you ask me that very pointed question in front of tens of thousands of people, Tracy. So thank you very much for the conviction.

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results.