A buddy of mine and his wife had a baby boy on Mother’s Day (just a few days ago – that’s him up there!). He’s a little, five-pound beauty that just melts you. I’m a big baby guy, and my wife is crazy about babies, so we enjoyed just hanging out with them and passing the kid back and forth, watching him sleep or groggily stare at the weird people who were holding him.

We’ve been married for more than six months, so now is the time when everybody and their brother pounces on us and asks the same question:

“So when are you guys going to start having kids?”

Before we were married, my wife and I made sure we were on the same page when it came to kids. The last thing you want is to be stuck in a marriage where you disagree about when/if you’re having children. We settled on two years, feeling that we would want time to get used to each other and enjoy being married before adding kids to the mix. We made up our minds, and even though we are tempted from time to time, we know it’s a smart decision and one that both of us can be happy with.

But you know, that doesn’t matter to other people. And they’re usually just trying to be cute or funny when they do it, but there’s a grain of truth behind their badgering. Just like when you are dating for a while and they start asking, “So when are you guys going to get married?”, bugging couples about kids is just what people who have kids do, because they are anxious to see someone else go through the experience.

And it’s not that we dread the idea – we’re looking forward to what having kids will do for us and the opportunity to raise a family. But we know we’re not ready for it yet.

The importance of making up your own mind

It amazes me how often people make decisions based on what other people think. I used to do it all the time. You start in school, when you pick what to wear based on what others are wearing, and what music to listen to based on what everybody else is listening to. You see the same movies and the same TV shows, because you just want to fit in with everybody else.

But some of us don’t grow out of that. We keep making decisions based on what we think we’re “supposed” to do, instead of what we really want to do. People that do that are destined to just repeat history, so to speak.

There’s nothing wrong with being logical

It’s very easy to judge actions based on emotions. Some of the people who have kids and are pushing us to have kids didn’t plan on getting pregnant when they did. So they just assume that it’s going to happen to everybody. They figure, “Why bother trying to have any control over your life if it’s just going to spiral out of control anyway?” You can see this attitude in their approach to having kids, managing their money, or pursuing their careers.

The truth is, you have much more control than you think. When you are making life decisions, you can certainly sit down and be logical about it – working on facts instead of looking at your emotions.

For example, if you are deciding when to have children, you should sit down and look at your age, how many kids you want to have, your goals for your marriage, and what you want to do over the next few years. My wife and I did that, and that’s how we approached our baby-making decision. This is the same approach you should have for any big decision: where to live, where to go in your career, managing/improving your health, and your money management.

Life will throw you curveballs

Being logical also means understanding that not everything will go according to plan. A married couple may have an unexpected bundle of joy, a crisis can wipe out a bank account, and any number of unplanned events can impact your health.

But that does not mean you just go through life without a plan – even a loose one. Setting goals for yourself is important to take full advantage of everything that has been given to you. Everybody has opportunities for growth and for success in different areas, but if you are not working with some sort of guideline, then you’re going to miss them. You know where that gets you? Exactly where you are now.

Be flexible. Roll with the punches. But have a plan. And most importantly, don’t let anybody else influence it for you. Their life is not yours. They made their own decisions, and you make yours. And just like their success or failure has no influence on your life, your success or failure won’t do anything to theirs. Don’t feel guilty about trying to build a life that is not in line with those around you.

I was never too broken up about it.

Actually, I was indifferent to it. I had told myself during my freshman year that I would never have a chance with her, so there was no point in investing my time, energy, or emotions chasing after her. I settled for other girls, who were just fine and seemed to be more “my type”.

During my senior year, I was doing the cliche thing of passing around my yearbook to have my fellow classmates sign it. That girl walked up to me and asked that we swap yearbooks to sign. I, of course, agreed. We were pretty friendly towards each other for the past four years, so I had no problem signing something nice in her yearbook. I figured it would be a cool little blurb that typical high school kids write. It was (they all were), but there was an interesting little section where she wrote the following:

Do you remember our freshman year of cross country? Guess what, I thought you were really cute and I had a little crush on you then.

She spent all of high school dating some other dude, and by the time I tried spending some time with her and seeing if we could date while we were in college, she was carrying way too much baggage and nothing ever came of it. So I spent high school settling for those I thought I should have been dating rather than the ones I could’ve been with.

Now, this is a rather pedestrian story. It happens all the time to people. But that’s the problem, and it goes way beyond who you date in high school.

We do things because we think we “should”.

We do them because it’s what is expected of us. We don’t do what we really want. We don’t chase our dreams. We don’t make real changes in our lives because we settle for what we’ve always known and always done. This is why we spend our lives in miserable jobs, carrying loads of debt and about 25 extra pounds.

We tell everyone we “can’t”. But we can, we just need to know how.

Next Wednesday, February 9th, I’m going to show you how.

On February 9th, I will be releasing a free ebook called, Subliminal Captivity: Why We Tell Ourselves to Give Up. It’s a guide to recognizing the times when we chain ourselves to mediocrity and the way things “should” be instead of making great, real changes to our lives. Here’s just a quick sampling of some of the topics covered in this ebook:

• Why “I can’t” is the enemy and the excuses we cling to like security blankets
• Getting from “can’t” to “can” in our vocabulary
• Recognizing that you are not a puppet, and you need nobody’s permission to change
• A variety of resources and tools to help and encourage you on your journey

Subliminal Captivity is going to be free of charge and readily available with one click. I don’t need to collect your email address or anything. You will be free to do with it whatever you want (except take credit for it). All I ask is that you read it. It will help.

Remember that girl in high school? I have no idea where she is now, but I saw the mindset I had that kept us from getting together, and I promised myself that I would not miss another chance to date somebody that I was interested in. So I took a chance on a girl a couple years ago, and now she’s my wife. Awesome things can happen when you recognize the limits that you are placing on yourself. You can take the first steps next Wednesday – come back then!

It's one idea of many.

Growing up, I didn’t have a ton of friends. Whichever friends I had, I didn’t live by them. So when I needed something to do, more often than not, I was on my own. So I sat in front of that beautiful idiot box and watched an endless stream of sitcoms and professional wrestling. And while I have fond memories for both of those things, I started realizing as I grew older how much time was being wasted on that stuff – but I couldn’t stop. When I moved into my first apartment, we got a DVR, and I kept taping stuff and watching it. I still spent hours every day watching TV. When I moved in with my brother’s family, I got my own DVR box and recorded everything under the sun – if it was on, I’d watch it.

When I finally broke out on my own, and I started to build my business, I needed to cut living costs, so I dropped my cable. My family laughed at me, knowing my love for television, and they said, “I could never live without ESPN/Lifetime/Disney Channel, etc.”. And while I had a place in my heart for the Travel Channel and ESPN myself, I forged ahead. And I survived.

Actually, not only did I survive, I thrived! I had more time to really accomplish things and more time to spend with people, instead of staring at that box. I started reading more, and writing more. It’s a wonderful feeling. But here’s the kicker: had I not needed to cut costs, I’d still have cable today. If I had not went cold turkey, I’d have lost approximately (quick calculation here, based on $70/month for cable and DVR service): $2,940. Nearly THREE GRAND. What can you do with that kind of money?

And those who argue that three grand over three years isn’t that much are usually the same people who have cable and then complain that they don’t have a dime extra to spend on going out or getting a book or taking a vacation or whatever. What would you do with an extra $70 per month?

So I’m going to issue a challenge: take this week and don’t watch cable. You want to watch network shows? Go ahead. But take a week and don’t turn on any of the cable channels. The Monday Night Football game is the Ravens-Texans and should be something of a snoozer anyway. If you want to force yourself even further, unhook the cable box and get yourself a set of rabbit ears. If you live in a city, you’ll likely get good reception, and you’ll still get all the HD channels. And here’s a list of things you can do to get yourself through the week:

• Ditch the DVR and watch your favorite shows on your computer the next day. Virtually all network shows have their new episodes on the morning after. Or hop on Hulu. Get your sports fix by watching “America’s Game” on Hulu, which is a miniseries of documentaries on all the Super Bowl winners – it’s fantastic.
• Go to InstantWatcher.com and browse the Netflix Watch Instantly library. It’s growing all the time. Start entertaining the idea of signing up at least for their streaming-only option if you watch a lot of movies ($70/month vs $8/month).
• Go get a book from the library, or order one from Amazon. Find something on a topic you like. You like sports? There are TONS of fantastic and gripping sports books out there that chronicle great, dramatic stories that makes the latest “Brett-Favre-Is-Still-Questionable-So-We-Should-Keep-Talking-About-Him” headlines seem ridiculous by comparison. Like celebrity gossip? Read about the sordid lives of celebrities of the past – you’ll have the same scandal, but at least those people were famous for DOING something.
• Get your news from sites like Google News or BBC. You can even watch local news, but watch with discretion: most stories are local violence stories and are not indicative of the state of the world as a whole. Online news sources update in real-time (for the most part), and you can browse the news quickly and get back to your life.
• Start a blog. Yup. Go to WordPress and sign up for a free blog. Just start writing about something you love. Create something. It doesn’t matter if you’re good or not. Hate writing? That’s because you never wrote about something you wanted to write about.
• Get a hobby. Pick up that old guitar and start browsing some tabs over at Ultimate Guitar. Go to Instructables and find a tutorial on how to make something you really want to make. Dive in.
• Work on your relationships. When was the last time you sat down and played a board game with your friends? Your parents? Your wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend? Your kids? I don’t mean Madden, I mean Scrabble. I mean Catchphrase. I mean Monopoly. Invest some time in your personal relationships and have fun doing it.
• It’s winter – go ice skating. Go sledding. Go outside and build a snowman. Grab some friends and go play some tackle football. Have a snowball fight. I don’t care how old you are. It’s good for you and it gets your blood moving.
• Find the one thing you’ve always been meaning to do, and do it.

And that list is just off the top of my head. Nobody cares if you miss the latest I’m a teenager and I got pregnant so I get to be on TV now-type show. When someone says, “Hey, did you see [insert name of show here]?”, you can respond by saying, “No, last night I [insert meaningful activity here].”

Uncomfortable with the idea? Hey, this site’s tagline is “Try something new today.” Go for it and see what happens. You can always go back to your old ways if you hate it. But stick to it for a week and see what kinds of cool things you can dream up.

What follows is a very interesting tale of a guy who saw the Samurai as savages, but watched them work and take care of their families. He observed the honor that they live with, and in the end, he winds up fighting his own soldiers on the side of the Samurai.

We’ll come back to that, but let’s switch gears for a second: on our honeymoon, my wife and I came across people whose sole forms of income were tourist-y type activities. There was a simple crew that existed only to take tourists like us onto big boats, drive us out into the middle of the ocean, and let us snorkel for a while. They fed us sandwiches and soda. We were charged over $75 apiece for this trip. During the hour-long boat ride to our first snorkel destination, I remarked to my wife that it looks like it would be a fun and lucrative gig – all you need to do is really pay for the upkeep of the boat, and the rest is profit. Plus, you get to be laid-back and enjoy the Hawaiian sun and the ocean every single day. What could be better? Our captain seemed to really enjoy his job and his life.

But in retrospect, I feel like that would be one of those “be careful what you wish for” moments. Back to the movie: Tom Cruise observed that the Samurai’s daily life was full of work. They cleaned, they cooked, they farmed, and they trained for battle. Everything they did went towards their survival. They worked tirelessly, and did so with a smile on their face. I don’t think they felt that it was fun, but they felt the immense sense of honor that comes with working like that.

So what are we? We go to an office and “work” 8 hours a day, which really consists of about 3-4 hours of actual work on a good day, and the rest filled by bathroom breaks, chatting with coworkers, pointless meetings, and busywork. We come home, whining and complaining about having to work that long, and then we pull out a “meal” of pre-processed crap that we have to put in the oven for 20 minutes, and we complain because we’re a little hungry.

Now, I’m not recommending that you stop going to the supermarket, and I’m not recommending that you quit your meaningless job. That would be a stupid risk if you didn’t have anything else lined up. But not even 100 years ago, daily life was full of work that was not done for a paycheck at the end of the week, but for the survival of your family. It was for the care and feeding of your loved ones. It was for protection against your enemies. It was life.

Let’s pull it all together. That guy that captained our boat seemed happy, but in retrospect, he must not find a whole lot of fulfillment from his job. He gets to relax and help people get some memories from their vacations, but is that all? I could be completely wrong – he could be very fulfilled by it. Or, he may do things in his spare time that give him some honor. I have no idea. But for me, I’d need more.

Instead of floating through life doing miserable work that you get nothing out of and you complain about every day, start taking ownership of your life. Figure out what would be the most fulfilling for you to do with your time, and then start Googling around. Look at some blogs for ideas. There are ways to start doing them on the side, and yes, you have time. Instead of putzing around, leading a fairly meaningless existence in this world, pull yourself and your family together and take charge. Live with honor and respect for yourself, and you will see how happiness follows. Then work won’t feel so much like work anymore.

Three days before, on December 28th, I was standing in the post office lobby reading a certified letter from my landlord informing me that I had five days to catch up on rent or I had to move out. I had put all my eggs into one basket, business-wise, and that basket stopped producing money months prior. I held on as long as I could: my then-fiance exhausted her savings to keep me afloat, my parents had run out of money, and I was completely tapped. I had given up on the business and took a customer service job, working 1:30pm until 10:00pm. I was unhappy, and I was broke. I missed one month of rent and I couldn’t get it back.

Now, I was getting kicked out of my home.

My gracious parents offered up their basement for me to stay in until I could get caught up again. Despite my mom’s terrible allergy to cats, we figured out an arrangement where they would just live down there in the darkness until I got married and could move out. That wasn’t until October.

I was staring down the barrel of a long ten months – working opposite shifts from my fiance and not seeing her much, losing my nights to work and putting off time with friends, working weekends instead of being with my family, and now coming home to a basement every night. As much as I love my parents, it wasn’t what I would call “ideal”. But with no money in the bank and no business left, I didn’t have a choice.

Fast forward to October. I was sitting in a booth of an open-air Italian restaurant overlooking a beautiful golf course at sunset. To my right was my beautiful new wife, and I was sipping Sangiovese as I waited patiently for my lobster tail and New York strip steak plate to arrive. As the cool Hawaiian breeze brushed up against my face, I smiled to myself as I explained to my wife how I never imagined I would have ever gotten to that point.

How happy are you in your life currently? What would you change? Is there something that you sit back and think, “Man, I wish that could be different!” The truth is: it can be. It doesn’t matter where you are in your life. If you are unhappy with something, you can change it. So why don’t you?

For most people, it’s because it’s difficult. Changing your current circumstances often involves a lot of work, a lot of patience, and a bit of sacrifice at times. But the reward is incredibly satisfying.

For me, it involved less time with my fiance, less time with friends and family for a while, and a bit of temporary insanity as I lived in a basement with two cats. But in less than a year, my fiance and I went from broke to having a savings account, a beautiful two-bedroom apartment, a dream Hawaiian vacation (that we paid cash for – no credit cards!), and the freedom and flexibility to allow me to pursue my dream once again. I’m in a situation that I thank God for every night. You can, too.

Allow yourself the imagination to dream up a better situation for you. Then push yourself to achieve it. I’m here – where are you?

[Note: our wedding photographer was the fantastic Andy Stenz. If you need any pictures taken for anything and you are in the Wisconsin/Midwest area, give him a holler. His site is http://www.andystenz.com. In addition, if you would like to see more wedding portraits from my big day, hop on over to http://proofs.andystenz.com and enter "meitner" as the code.]

When I first saw the advertisements for Boardwalk Empire, I got a little excited. This show had some very intriguing elements to it. I’m a fan of Steve Buscemi and the idea of him being in a dramatic role was certainly something that I was interested in. On top of that, it’s about Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties, and that’s a pretty cool period of time to take a look at.

Now, I don’t have cable, so I do not have HBO. The only way to watch this show would be to download the episodes. I was fine with that, as I have a home server set up to stream episodes to my XBox 360 (soon to be my Revo nettop PC, which I’ll post about after I set it up), so I could still watch them in decent quality in my living room.

But as the season got started, I fell behind. I haven’t watched an episode yet. When I went to look and see how many episodes I was behind, I realized I was 5 episodes behind, and they are hourlong episodes to boot.

I was laying in bed last night and I realized something: why should I stress myself out trying to get caught up on this show? I’ve never watched it before, and I don’t want this to turn into some kind of chore.

So I’m not watching it. At least not now.

It’s really easy to get so emotionally involved with a show that you feel like you need to watch it every chance you get. But I have little free time, between a full-time job, a side business, my desire to read, spending time with my wife, and everything else, I just don’t have the desire to push myself to watch yet another show.

I consistently watch The Office, Community, Parenthood, and Mythbusters. Beyond that, I don’t want to suck up all my free time with another show. My solution? Netflix. I’m already a subscriber, so I can wait until the show comes out on DVD and then get the discs in the mail. I don’t spend extra, and I could probably watch them in the summer or some time when my free time isn’t being eaten alive by other stuff.

So why should you care about what I watch?

Well, you shouldn’t. But here’s the point: in order for you to get the most out of your own life, you need to look hard at your priorities. You think you can’t live without watching the news every night or seeing the latest TV show, but you can. I’ve done it for a long time now. I will consume news at my own pace, and where I’m not bombarded by stupid political rants and the latest panic attack. I will watch shows when it is convenient for me, and I don’t care if “everybody’s” talking about it.

Keep your emotions in check. It’s just a TV show. It’s just [fill in the blank]. These things have importance because people are telling you they are important. Make your own priorities and free yourself from the chains of the masses. Trust me – you’ll get a lot more done and be much happier/more relaxed in the process.

As such, I’m a firm believer in pre-marriage counseling. Many marriages end in divorce these days, so I enjoyed taking the necessary steps to ensure a lifetime of commitment with me and my future wife. Pre-marriage counseling was a key cog in that plan. So we sat down for a couple weeks with my pastor and went through various Newlywed Game-esque exercises and discussions on what makes a marriage last – and what keeps a relationship healthy for 50+ years.

At one point, my pastor was discussing some of the excuses for divorce that he’s heard over the years: “I’m just not happy anymore” was a big one. We both nodded, as it’s something we’ve heard from people before. If you’re not happy, why keep punishing yourself? But then, my pastor’s rebuttal was spot-on, and it was one of those moments where I thought, “Ooo! I’m going to add that to my list of blog post ideas…” Here is a paraphrase of what he said: you can choose whether or not to be happy.

Pow. That blows all kinds of holes into that argument, doesn’t it? You have a choice. It’s brilliant thinking, and yet it’s so simple. But so many people overlook this. People seriously underestimate the power of the human brain. If you choose happiness, you will be happier with life.

If you are in a marriage that feels like it’s crumbling, you don’t need to give up on it. That doesn’t mean it’s run its course or anything. Just because you are bored or confused doesn’t mean that it’s time to throw in the towel. This goes for just about anything: job satisfaction, friendships, home life, possessions. And here’s a few tips on how to choose happiness in your own life:

1. Understand that it will be hard. This is the road that few take, so it’s not one that you can just stroll down. You have to march down it with intent. How easy is it to complain about politics? Or about the economy? Or about money? Everybody does it and everyone feeds off of it. But when everybody’s talking about something, how hard is it to change the subject? Depending on who you are with, it can be very difficult. And even if you are on your own, digging yourself out of the “shame spiral” is a giant undertaking. Just because something is easy to do doesn’t mean you have to do it. Choosing happiness is hard work.
2. It is a constant, active choice. You don’t decide to be happy, and then it just happens. You need to actively choose happiness every single day. The day you get lazy with it is the day you notice everything going wrong and you determine how much life sucks. Don’t just assume – choose it. Every day.
3. Mental happiness is directly related to physical happiness. That term, “physical happiness”, is something I just made up as I’m typing this. But physical happiness is the state of your body. Are you in decent shape? Do you feed your body good, healthy fuel every day? Do you exercise? How’s your posture? Do you carry yourself as a confident, happy person? These actions go a long way toward your own happiness. Start acting on them.

I’m going to be one of the happiest guys walking the earth on Saturday afternoon and Saturday night. I will be marrying the love of my life in front of over 300 people that I love. We’re going to party all night long and enjoy each other’s company. A week from today, the two of us will be hopping on a flight to Hawaii for 7 days of bliss. This is all going to be a very happy time.

But it’s temporary. We’re going to come home and settle into married life. We’re going to move in together and be next to each other every night. We’re going to eat nearly all our meals together. Once my business gets back on track and I can start working from home, I will see her even more. Every single day. For anyone, the passive happiness will fade. It will start to need more effort. But instead of falling into some deep depression about the state of my life, I’m going to be paying attention. I’m going to be thanking the good Lord every night for the gifts He gives me, including my wife. I’m going to evolve and change, just like our relationship will. And I’m going to resolve to be happy. That doesn’t mean life will be easy, or that there will be no conflicts. It just means that I am going to pull myself through those conflicts and use my attitude and demeanor as a weapon against misery.

And it’ll work, too – because none of us are going through unique situations. Everyone goes through this stuff. This morning, at church, a couple was celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. A few weeks ago, they were spotted walking out of church holding hands. They’re happy. But I don’t assume for a second that they had an easy go of it. I bet they work at it every single day.

You’re stunned. Your knees want to buckle because you are so shocked. Notice your posture in this situation: your shoulders are probably hanging, your head drooped, your eyes staring at the floor. You shuffle your feet because you just want to wallow in your pain. Perfectly understandable, right?

Now, let’s imagine that she didn’t break up with you – you are just walking through the office. Is your body language different? It should be, but for many people (including myself), it’s not. I am consistently strapped to the problem with slouching. As a result, my neck hurts some days, I threw out my back a couple months ago, and frankly, I look stupid.

If you are happier, why doesn’t your body language reflect it? Some people carry themselves this way on purpose. They may just be down on life, rather than be depressed about a specific problem. But who is this helping? I’m currently reading a book called The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz. As I was laying in bed last night reading, he came to a section on how posture affects you and those around you. He says that when people feel important, they will start making real results happen. I wholeheartedly agree with this statement, and I have seen it in action in my own life the past few weeks.

My menial office job has taken its toll on me recently. Working opposite hours than my fiance, struggling to keep some semblance of a social life, planning a wedding, and everything else – it’s all been hitting me lately. As a result, I was drooping even more than usual, and my mood sure reflected that. But once I started carrying myself like a winner, my mood really started to improve. Telling yourself that you’re an important person goes a long way to improving your mood. Here are some great benefits to doing so:

• Mood improvement. Like I mentioned, my mood really perks up when I tell myself that I am happy. If you force yourself to smile through your own pain, you will easily be able to turn your mood around.
• Get more stuff done. A happy brain is one that gets a break every once in a while. And when that brain is happy and not preoccupied with bills, relationship troubles, family life, or the injuries to the Green Bay Packers’ secondary, you are able to focus on the project at hand and get a lot more done.
• Land a better job. If you are a recruiter looking to fill a position, who are you going to hire: the guy slinking into the office while staring at his feet, or the guy that looks you in the eye, sticks out his hand, and confidently greets you?
• Be more attractive. Yup, this’ll do it. If you’re like me, you would watch some of the more “popular” kids in class walking around with stunning girlfriends. Then you start thinking, “What’s he got that I don’t got?” The answer is confidence. If you carry yourself confidently, women will swoon. Those guys in high school were outgoing. Girls dig that.
• Raise the moods of those around you. A well-placed joke will keep you in your workplace. When everybody is bogged down by the weight of the world, be the guy to keep everybody going. They will all thank you for it later.

Now that’s all nice and good, but it’s not as easy as it looks, right? Well, turns out it is about as easy:

• Lift your shoulders and puff out your chest. Don’t go running around looking like Popeye after a can of spinach, but stop slouching. When you are walking or sitting at a desk, start positioning yourself to stand up straight. You’ll get there.
• Look people in the eye. Straight in the eyeball. Stop staring at the floor or pretending to look somewhere else so that you don’t have to look at them. Nobody is asking you to have a long conversation with him. Just politely say hello, smile, and that’s it.
• Constantly tell yourself that you are important. Ever see that Friends episode where Bruce Willis is looking in the mirror giving himself a pep talk? Like that, just not so creepy or psycho-ish. Just take a few seconds a few times a day to tell yourself, “Hey, you’re doing good work, keep it up. You’re doing great!”
• Smile. No excuses. Greet everyone you come in contact with and use a big, fat smile. And show your teeth.

Bottom line: only you can control your mood. The world can’t. No matter what happens to you, nobody and nothing can make you be grumpy if you refuse to be. Start refusing and start feeling better.

First, he picked up some hard-hitting defensive players. In the first few weeks of the season, their defense played superbly and their offense kinda sputtered. Gruden gradually improved the offense every week, knowing that there was no way that the team could win consistently unless they were performing well on both sides of the ball. As we live in an age where immediate gratification is needed, those players on offense showed frustration as they struggled to get going. Coach Gruden then made a very important comment to them that summed up their entire season:

How do you build a mansion? Start with the foundation, then put on a few bricks a day.

I actually paused the video to stop and jot that down. What a great piece of advice – not just for the Buccaneers, but for anybody. It’s such simple advice that rewards patience. Think about how you can apply this in your own life.

Start with the foundation.

In The Bible, Christ talks about a foolish man who builds his house with a lousy foundation in the book of Matthew, chapter 7:

But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.

You could build the tallest, grandest mansion in the world, but if you don’t have a solid foundation, it will fall like a house of cards. If the foundation of your career is money, you’ll hit the glass ceiling pretty quickly. If you are dating (or worse – marrying!) because your significant other is sexy, that love will surely die.

Your foundation is the basis for what you do. When you build a house, the foundation is the most important first step. It is what the rest of the house is built upon. Your foundation starts from within – it’s what motivates you and it is what you build your life upon. If you do everything for the wrong reasons, then everything will fail eventually and you will be left miserable. Take a close examination of your life and what it means to you – where happiness comes from, and what you want to do with it and why. Knowing these answers and having a solid response for any of those types of questions will help you in achieving your goals.

Put on a few bricks a day.

Have you ever seen a house being built? Once the foundation is poured and set, the house doesn’t just go up in a day. First the framework needs to be done, then the walls put up, and so on. It doesn’t happen automatically, and it doesn’t usually happen particularly quickly. In the same way, the goals you want to achieve in life aren’t going to be met overnight. It takes ruthless determination and stubbornness; you need to be willing to stick with them for as long as possible.

In my case, the “few bricks a day” concept helps keep me on track on days when I don’t feel particularly motivated. When your business fails so many times, making adjustments and trying again can be difficult and exhausting. So I decide I just need to throw on a few “bricks”: work on my business plan a little bit, knock out a blog post, read something useful and educate myself a little more, and so on. Action needs to be taken every day. If that means doing a little bit of exercise to get your heart rate up to start losing a little weight, so be it. Sit with your other half and talk about each other’s days to form a stronger bond with him or her. Introduce yourself to someone influential in the industry you want to be in. The bricks don’t have to be huge and you don’t have to get there right away, but if you consistently push yourself to make even a little progress every day, you can get there.

Coach Gruden’s lesson on persistence paid off, and the Buccaneers won the Super Bowl. Their offense scored 48 points during that game, which is a sign of an offense that is working very well. At the beginning of that season, nobody would have expected that team to score 48 points in the Super Bowl. Don’t let other people’s expectations of you bring you down. Start with the foundation, and start throwing some bricks on it. You’ll see results.

“What poor substitutes for real diversity are the wild rainbows of dyed hair and other external differences that tell the observer nothing about what is inside.” – Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

The word “diversity” has become one of this generation’s buzzwords. When I attended freshman orientation at Carroll College (now, inexplicably, “Carroll University”), everything was about diversity. The message was, “Hey, we’re all different, so let’s just accept people for who they are, right? That’s healthy!” But so many people are taking diversity the wrong way.

To be fair, diversity is not a concept that the human race generally knows how to deal with. When it comes to diversity in our world, people don’t like people who are different from them. Take the race riots of the 1960s, or Nazism during World War II. We like to be around people who are like us, and we tend to avoid people who are different.

The roots of the concept of diversity are great: let’s all show some basic human decency and respect for each other. Not so bad, right? But the problem is that our generation has been force-fed this concept so much that it becomes a political soapbox rather than a respect for mankind.

Take your classic dumb liberal college kid. I don’t say that they are dumb because they are liberal. I say they are dumb because they are dumb. College kids are idiots. I was one, and I was an idiot. Like little children, college kids are fascinated by what they can see. It’s their first extended period of time out of the nest, so when they see somebody that dresses different or looks different than they do, they are mesmerized. So they do the same. To make some sort of statement, kids in college (and high school) start getting tattoos and dying their hair wild colors. They listen to goth music or punk music, or, even worse, Radiohead.

Their message is clear: “Look how diverse I can be! I’m totally into Kabballah like Madonna and my skinny jeans show you that I march to the beat of a different drum!”

But what is behind the piercings, the tattoos, the pretentious music, and the clothing? In the past, true diversity meant a completely different culture. I have visited Taiwan twice and spent a lot of time in the big city of Taichung. I met people who were raised to worship cows and who made eating food an event (and a darn good one, I might add!). If you want to see what diversity is all about, immerse yourself in a different culture. Instead of looking at how they are dressed, look at how they act. Real diversity shows itself when you are hanging out with someone who looks and acts just like you, but you find out in conversation that they have been raised a different religion than you, or that they have strikingly different beliefs.

The thing is, diversity doesn’t have to be a policy or something you hang your hat on – it’s all over the place anyway. Everywhere you look in any environment, you will see kids who were raised without fathers, people who are homosexuals, and those who put their faith in something other than your God.

I’m not going to split hairs over what is right and wrong right now as far as those belief systems go, but embracing diversity doesn’t mean ignoring it altogether and it doesn’t mean you need to wear goofy clothes in place of a sandwich board that says “I AM OPEN-MINDED.” The true tests of diversity are the ones that happen when nobody’s around.

Those people who make diversity a public action are the least diverse of any of us. In fact, you can lump them all together because they all look and act alike. Instead of being showy with your open-mindedness, just hang onto it and use it when you need to. Respect the people around you, and then just let the rest happen. Then, diversity will become even better than some policy – it will become a natural part of life.

(Note: I didn’t say you needed to believe what they believe or tell them it’s okay, either. The best part of true diversity is that you can stand up on your beliefs as well, however “open” or “closed” they may be.)