Integrity: The promises you keep to yourself Honesty: No Matter What. Loving the truth, looking for it, living by it even when it doesn't seem "practical". Frees you from remembering who you told what to! Salvation: The belief that no matter how much you mess up, you can be forgiven and move forward in faith. Growth in Grace: Helps people take risks. You are forgiven BEFORE you fail and helped to mature and move upward. John Maxwell calls this "Failing Forward". Love: The feeling, expression, and action which empowers greatness in self and those who experience you. Self Control: This is a gift and a thermometer of how much control the person has given to God. In performance self control brings about the gift of joy even in the hardest training or circumstances.
Love of God's Word: Outstanding performance comes from outstanding priciples and examples and the passion and certainty that the Word brings. Justice: This is more about not requiring it and allowing justice to play out in other courts. Life, because of sin, isn't fair. But the individual who chooses to play fair, no matter what, always wins, no matter what. Mercy: No matter how intentional or terrible you've been wronged, letting go brings the power of life back to you, and nothing short of mercy will restore you. Respect: Not only for great people tinking, speaking and behaving greatly, but for yourself and others at their worst brings power. Discernment: The ability, through a pure and open heart, to be able to tell the honest and wise people, ideas, and actions from lesser ones. Biblical self-esteem: The belief that God made you for a purpose, giving you all the talent and imagination you need. No amount of make-up or strutting can make up for this internal confidence.
Faithfulness: Relying on proven principles you can't see. This sounds spiritual and it is. But it's practical too. Courage: There is NO courage without fear. In the presense of fear, doing what is right anyway with all your heart, mind and strength. Purity: Keeping all but pure thoughts, words, and actions in your life. Purity is a "process" in a world full of temptation, which means it requires forgiveness, mercy, and letting go to be empowered by it. Kindness: Easy for your friends, essential for your competitors, it empowers by freeing you from guilt. MUST be sincere and come from a heart of love. Generosity: Not just materially, but giving time and mercy to the dweebs, the smelly, those who would hurt you, generosity means giving everything, expecting only God's love and freedom in return. Peace Loving: The business, the sport, even the war is just a game won only by those who love peace. Love the war or the game and you miss out on the joy that comes with aiming for the best prizes: the relationships with those you love -- men and God.
Joy: Much deeper than happiness, joy takes over your whole being, marrying peace, freedom, passion, and the arms and kiss of God. Perseverence: The extent of joy you reach is almost related to the extent that things are difficult and obstacles are surmounted over time. Even when perseverence doesn't bring a medal, it's its own prize. Humility: To see the world as a speck in the universe, and your talents and accomplishments as an instant in time helps you realize what you are and what you accomplish is only important becasue and if it's important to God. Compassion: Not just seeing the person begging on the streets, but KNOWING that but for the graceof God that could be you. One germ, one bad driver, one turn of events, and you would be or could be them. Loving them thanks God and helps empower you to realize your own potential. Faith: To believe in truth and act on it whether or not it bring immeidate satisfaction. True passion and true joy are always a result of acting on pure faith and then experiencing the unparalleled positive consequences. A Servant's Heart: This does not shut on and off depending on whether the person is on your "team" or family. Service empowers you with confidence and competence in ways not even dreamsed of by those who only think of winning a prize.
Hope: The powerful knowledege that when the impossible is all that is in front of you, there will still be more than sufficient resources to reach your goal. Willingness to Work: Talent may sometimes bring a prize without much work, but there isn't much joy in it. You must love the process of work as much as the results or the end will seem of less worth. Passion For God: Without God, all you have are ideas stolen from Him and a future without the colors, scents, and relationships you love about Him. The more passionate you are, the more you feel His joy in the work and the rewards. Self-discipline: The ability you have to do what you don't feel like doing in order to be what you never thought you could be. This is a personal choice and it's one you will make each day. Prayerfulness: God has promised to answer prayer of people who then leave the answers to Him. This is amazingly powerful and allows an infinite amount of peace. Gratitude: More than saying "thank-you", this is an internal feeling that you are lucky to think, speak, and act as you are.
A Heart For Missions: Not in the church sense, but the every- day excitement of answering questions of wisdom wisely, to lead by example, not only those who agree with you, but those who compete with you. Unselfishness: This is very powerful. The ability to lose yourself, to give up what Pat Riley calls the "Disease of Me" and focus on serving the team results in personal growth that ego make impossible! Sensitivity: Physical sensitivity helps athletes know which way to move, which muscles need work, how much pressure to apply. Mental and spiritual sensitivity helps us celebrate the differences and grow by understanding other people. Moderation: The human body improves most during rest after progressive physical overload. Wthout balance there is no growth. Eat, sleep, even practice in oderation, constantly searching for the best balance. Fidelity: Not just to prevent aids, but to prevent heartache, confusion, stress, and anguish -- dedicate yourself and stay pure to your beliefs and in practice, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Build your team, your family, and keep your commitments and you will prosper. Chastity: Is searching for one person and only one person to marry and be with "until death" boring? Or is it just a romantic notion? If you seek great things, you must act greatly. The single most important factor in a long joyful life may wll be marrying and depending on one person who can trust you. With this in mind, you will choose very carefully and make sure to BE or BECOME the person who attracts the person of your dreams.
Self-discipline: The ability to deny yourself the short-term wants in order to get the really cool desires of your heart is called self-discipline. Dependability: Chances are you won't remain friends with people who are undependable. You will attract lifelong friendships if you make and keep promises. Potential: This is the belief that, although you or others might not yet have achieved dreams, with wisdom, hard work, and peerseverence, those dreams have every chance of coming true. Unselfishness: This must be cheerful -- the action and heart to help other people reach their dreams is directly proportional to the chance you will reach yours and that, when you do, those accomplishments will matter! Sensitivity: Friendliness: If you wish to have friends, you must first culitvate a friendly spirit, a friendly way of speakiing and acting. If you are founded in confidence, this is easy.
Responsibility: This is better spelled: Respnse-ability. it is your choice to respond to any situation in a manner which is aligned with your most important values and principles, NO MATTER WHAT! Humor: Without humor, even the greatest accomplishment will seem hollow. Not only is this attractive, it keeps you stable in times of great stress -- certainly enhancing your chances to win. Consciousness: Just being alive is not being fully conscious. Knowiing who you are, what you stand for and against, what your goals are, and having the hert of a servant, ready to help others joyfully define you as a consious person, who recognizes great opportunities while others less consious complain and muddle by. Cheerfulness: Finding the best in every person and situation helps you make the best of them too. Character: It's times when you are alone, when no one is watching that define your character. It's times when the easy road you choose not to take in favor of the road you have dedicated yourself to stay on that grow your character and your chances to live your dream life. Change:
Leadership: What you do is far more important than what you say, or even what you think. Defiine yourself as a leader and you will be held and hod yourself to standards that ensure your success! Competition: From the Greek root which means to "agree with to cooperate", competition exists so that you will continue striving even when it huts so much that, on your won you would slow down or quit. Communication: The most important part of communication is the amount of time and focus you have when you are bringing information IN. Letting others know how you think and feel is easy if you have that focus first. Self-Improvement: The knowledge that you will never know too much, be too much, or serve others too much to be able to risk losing your focus on improving you ability to reach your dreams and he;p others reach their by your example. Self-Examination: Confidence and competence come from your honest ability and willingness to examine yourself for character and behavioral flaws as well as to congratulate yorself on your passion and perseverence in surmounting obstacles that would have crushed you before. Accountability
Science: To hypothesise, to test our ideas and those of others and to accept that not all your ideas may be factual, science is best defined as the search for truth. This is one component of faith. Repentance: To make mistakes is part of the scientific method, and also what happens when you go against what you know now is right. The ability to turn and be reborn with a new foundation and commitment too action more founded in truth is the mark of a successful person. Purpose: The saddest people you ever meet are those without a clear purpose. Unfortunately these are the majority. The saying seems to be true: The world steps aside for a person with a purpose. Take the time to discover your purpose, know your talents and limits and then passionately pursue your heart. Progress: Know where you are. Discover, and define ways to measure progress toward your purpose and mission and then measure that progress, both forward and backward. This will help you live a clear and joyful life and will postively affect those around you. Overload: Though there is a line to be careful not to cross, without some overload, going farther than every before in a systematic healthy way is the only way to grow physically, mentally, and spiritually. The overload must be in line with your specific mission and you must be ready to rest to allow the stress to rebuild you stronger than ever. Specificity:
People: We cannot reach great objectives without people. As frustrating as they can be, even the most talented person needs people to build his or her home, his or her roads, to make closthes, to cheer, and even to tell us our dreams are impossible. A great love of people will encourage and instigate the best in each of us, and we in them. Passion: Passion is what takes over when talent, money, even character aren't enough. Nuture it in others and in yourself and don't apologize for it. Just make sure what you are passionate about is right, is aligned with the truth, and is good for others as well as you. Art: Art is what's at the edge of science, where prose dares not to go. Art isn't right or wrong - it's like a great experiment. Founded in the heart, it speaks to the heart and when it's at its best inspires a new level of excellence and a new vision that makes the impossible probable and the improbable achieved. Modesty: It's when you've won the nost revered prize that you will need modesty most. The truth is that any achievement is mostly a blessing that could have been bestowed on someone else. The tiniest microorgansm could have ended your life or dream at any time and even your persenverence relied on the gifts of your DNA and experience, which were out of your control. So take your prizes with humility and hug them as much as they hug you! Manners: The ability to influence people will have much to do with whether or not you live a life of joy or a life of desperation. Please and thanks are not hard words to say and are almost as easy to mean. Time:
Liberty: Value liberty; not only your own, but the freedom of others to choose even the wrong way. It's a paradox even God agrees with -- you can't choose to love if you can't choose to hate. Knowledge: What you dn't know certainly can help keep you from your dreams. Knowledge is nowhere near as important as wisdom, which seeks the truth, but it's a great first step. Above wisdom even though there is something greateer which is acting on what you know to be true and acting on it consistently. Creativity: Matter and ideas cannot be created. They are always, and seem to have always been here. So creativity is really the combining of ideas from various fields and different material elements into more useful forms. Remember, it's not creative unless it helps make someone's dreams come true. Interdependence: When you are born, you are completey dependent n others for food, shelter, language aquistition -- everything. When you are an adolkscenct you experiment with the idea of independence -- not needing of following anyone. Mature people know they need people and have the wisdom to differentiate truth from bull. Most of your success will require the greatest maturity found in those who work well with others. Legacy: What you leave behind to answer the tough question: Why was I put here at this time in this place? Life: