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What getting fat taught me about focus.

Quitter/ Random August 31, 2011 • Comments

I will never be invited on The Biggest Loser. If you met me you might not say, “That guy is fat.” But there have been times in life when my weight has fluctuated in some less than healthy ways.

The biggest gain I ever had was going from 138 to 168. Thirty pounds might not seem like a lot, but getting 25% heavier isn’t great unless you’re also getting taller. Believe me, I thought about that. When I looked at the height/weight charts, I thought it would be great if I ate copious amounts of Gordo’s Queso & Chips and grew a few inches taller.

Weighing 168 is perfectly fine if you’re 6’4” but here’s the thing, that wasn’t my experience. I stayed 5’7” during this experience and added 30 pounds.

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Stop saying polite lies.

Random August 17, 2011 • Comments

A few months ago, I was speaking in Michigan. When I was signing books after the event, a guy came up and said, “Hey, I’m a musician. I go to Nashville a lot.”

I live in Nashville and said to him, “That’s great, let me know when you’re in town next time and we’ll grab coffee.”

Without missing a beat he said, “I’ll be in Nashville tomorrow!”

Busted.

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The truth about trailblazers.

Random August 3, 2011 • Comments

My friend is a trailblazer. Years before anyone else recognized a shift in technology, he jumped on it. He was a pioneer in his field and had to machete his way through a tangled jungle on the road to his big opportunity.

He’s made some mistakes along the way and caught a fair amount of criticism for doing things the way he’s done them. But that’s the great risk of being a trailblazer.

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3 perfectly easy ways to wreck your marriage with social media.

Random/ Social Media August 1, 2011 • Comments

I love social media. It’s been incredibly kind to me. I want to write songs about it. I want to bring it to the eighth grade winter formal and slow dance to Milli Vanilli’s “Blame it on the Rain.”

It’s a tremendous set of tools whose ability to provide hope and change is only matched in strength by its ability to wreck lives when misused.

Surveying the carnage of friends’ marriages and struggles in my own, it was not difficult to find three perfectly easy ways you can wreck your marriage with social media. There are a million ways perhaps, not just three, but a post with a million points would take a really long time to write and probably end up being pretty boring with points 800,001-900,000 just being completely mailed in and weak. So let’s stick with 3.

Here they are:

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4 things to remember if you’re unemployed

Quitter/ Random June 22, 2011 • Comments

Last weekend, Fox & Friends gave me the chance to talk to moms and dads who are unemployed. There are four ideas from that session that I wanted to pass on to you:

1. Remember, you didn’t lose your identity. You lost your job. You can still be a great mom or dad in this season.

2. This isn’t forever. Fear and unemployment will try to tell you it is, but it’s temporary. I promise.

3. This is an underdog moment, and how you react will create the story you get to tell.

4. You need to create conversation boundaries, space where you get to be a husband or a wife at home, not just a job hunter.

I also made a George Costanza Seinfeld block of cheese reference, but I didn’t feel like it needed to be numerical since it was off the cuff.

Check out the video of the show after the jump for a little more background on each point.

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The worst parade of all.

Creativity/ Quitter/ Random May 27, 2011 • Comments

My wife hates how fast I can fall asleep. I don’t want to exaggerate, but it’s a gift. I can go from wide awake, Jack Bauer like intensity to dead asleep in about 2.2 seconds or approximately 1.2 sentences from Jenny. I am not one of those husbands that is great at reviewing the day in bed at night. Working through issues as you both lay there under the same roof, and really the same stars, going through life together.

I fall asleep fast. Except when I was writing Quitter.

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Big new mountains & big new fear.

Creativity/ Random May 25, 2011 • Comments

You may never climb a mountain in Yosemite.

You may never scale 800 feet without the support of a rope or a harness.

You may never trust an inch wide gap in a granite cliff as the only thing saving you from instant death.

But, if all works out according to plan, you will do things you are not ready for.

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