Practicing responsibility will do great things for you. It will strengthen your talent, advance your skills, and increase your opportunities. It will improve your quality of life during the day and help you to sleep better at night. But it will also improve the lives of the people around you.

Borrowed beliefs have no passion, therefore no power.

Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess." Your goal should be to waste as little of your life as possible. As former MLB catcher Jim Sundberg says, "Discover your uniqueness; then discipline yourself to develop it.

If you've done something for one year—look at it carefully. If you've done it for two years—look at it with suspicion. If you've done it for five years—stop looking at it and do something to change it.

Every time we make an excuse, we fail to learn from our mistakes.

I love the story about the shortest letter to the editor written to England's newspaper the Daily Mail. When the editor invited readers to send in their answers to the question, "What's wrong with the world?" writer G. K. Chesterton is reputed to have sent the following: Dear Sir, I am. Yours sincerely, G. K. Chesterton.

Before I discovered that helping myself made me more capable of helping others. That's one of the reasons I tell people that to add value to others, they must make themselves more valuable. You can't give something you don't have. You can't tell what you don't know. You can't share what you don't feel. No one gives out of a vacuum.

Stopping to reflect is one of the most valuable activities people can do to grow.

Final analysis, results are what matter; attendance and activity don't.

Psychologist and New York Times best-selling author Phil McGraw states, "I always say that the most important relationship you will ever have is with yourself. You've got to be your own best friend first." How can you be "best friends" with someone you don't know or don't like? You can't. That's why it's so important to find out who you are and work to become someone you like and respect.

We should work on changing ourselves before trying to improve others. A great danger to good leadership is the temptation to try to change others without first making changes to yourself.

The bottom line is that when you long for the gifts, favor, position, or opportunities of someone else, it distracts you from the gifts, favor, position, and opportunities that God has given YOU.