Sometimes decisions are hard / Sometimes circumstances are hard / Sometimes we are afraid – and this has never been more true in my lifetime – 45% Canadians are anxious… and the number of Canadians contemplating suicide has more than doubled year over year / since COVID.
When you know that you’re already dead – you can start to truly live!
I can not think of a single event in all of history (including creation) that offers a greater foundation for resilience than the birth of Christ.
Through creation, we can discover that there is a Creator – but be yet unable to distinguish “god” from an impersonal creative energy. In Christ we see the heart of God revealed — if we can truly know that Jesus Christ was who he said he was.
Pause to reflect. If Jesus was who he said he was…what would that mean?
A few years ago I discovered some mind-blowing evidence to this end. Please Continue Reading …
Each year, on November 11, we are given the opportunity to pause and remember those who gave their lives in various wars to protect freedom.
Karen and I like to watch various war documentaries each year on Remembrance Day, especially those that help us get a view inside the lives of the every day people that lived with war as their reality. This year, one of those documentaries was the story of Anne Frank. Please Continue Reading …
Don’t fall out of your chair – Yes, this is a blog entry from David E White – and I confess that it has been far too long, with some difficulty in between.
“An easy life is rarely meaningful and a meaningful life rarely easy.”
― Oliver North, Counterfeit Lies
What do you do when you feel that you are losing your bearings? I am not referring to ball-bearings, which would amount to mental marbles in this case (which, in hind-sight, may actually work) – but rather the coordinates for your life journey.
Let me cut to the chase – this past year has been a difficult one for me. For a variety of reasons, I found myself in unfamiliar territory. I have been depressed before – but never like I was during several significantly low periods this past year. Ironically, the speaker, writer, facilitator and consultant (aka: expert) on the topic of resilience, was starting to look like he wouldn’t be so resilient himself. Please Continue Reading …
A leader’s life is filled with a barrage of external challenge of adversity, change and crisis, as well as with personal failures and lapses in judgment or will power. As leaders, we all want to finish well, but at times we may be tempted to quit.
American author and Presidential advisor Napoleon Hill once said, “Character is to man what carbon is to steel.”
Steel is forged in fire. The evidence of resilience in any great leader will be forged in the fires of daily life, and it is the very heat of the challenge that forms the strength of character that makes us resilient. Though carbon is used for steel, it is also used for pencil lead. As such it is soft and smudges easily on paper. This would be our character, and our resilience, without the fire of challenge. Please Continue Reading …
Search “uncertain future” in Google and you will receive 56,000,000 results in .04 seconds. If you are feeling the negative affects of uncertainty in your emotions, take heart – others who also are feeling it surround you!
Over the past few months, I’ve been working closely with many people experiencing the effects of uncertainty, and the price they (we) have been paying emotionally, mentally and even physically is significant. Some of these people are going through work-related uncertainty due to role changes and/or the possibility of dismissal because of corporate downsizing. Others are going through health-related uncertainty, such as the second round of cancer therapy or a battery of tests to determine the unknown cause of symptoms they are experiencing.
As I reflect on our collective wrestle with uncertainty, I find myself wondering: Please Continue Reading …
Business viability and sustainability depend on innovation and creativity. According to Andrew Winston, bestselling author and globally recognized business strategist, the way companies currently operate will not allow them to keep up with the current and future rate of change. Successful companies will need to be engines of innovation to thrive. Therefore: no creativity, no resilience.
Similar to business, professional athletes are sometimes forced to get creative in order to stay in the game. As athletes age, they may have to reinvent themselves for a different role, or come up with innovative approaches to their current role. Please Continue Reading …
I don’t like conflict. Sometimes it angers me, and at other times I come away feeling depressed. I am not always clear as to who owns the blame, or who is in the right or wrong within the conflict — but I have come to understand that conflict can be a good thing.
Conflict can arise in any relationship, and relationships are intrinsically woven into the fabric of lives. They are hardwired to purpose, and they bring a richness and depth to our meaning. A life without relationships would know nothing of love, encouragement, laughter, or celebration. Even solitude, as enjoyable as it can be, would lack its attractiveness and beauty without the contrast of relationship, being relegated to boredom and monotony. There is no part of our personal or professional lives that is not affected by relationships.
There is also a vital connection between relationships, commitment and our growth, Please Continue Reading …
I love baseball. I am not the kind of fan that follows all the trades and statistics, engaging in vigorous debate. In truth, I often don’t even know the names on the full roster of my favorite team.
I know where I was when Joe Carter hit his walk off home run to lead the Toronto Blue Jays to a come from behind victory in the over the visiting Philadelphia Phillies in the 1993 world series, and I know that Jackie Robinson was the first colored ball player and wore number 42 (thanks to the movie), but I couldn’t tell you much more for dates and big events. I just love the game. Please Continue Reading …
If you are, or ever have been involved in a leadership capacity, you may relate to feeling lonely. It’s not a simple social-disconnect loneliness, it’s more about carrying a weight of responsibility that you feel the people around you can’t relate to.
Worse than unrelatable, at times it would be impossible – even inappropriate – to share your concerns with the people you lead. These concerns may be about the business at hand and include potentially negative impacts to your employees and/or others that they are connected with, such as the need for corporate downsizing or behavioral correction.
Delivering loneliness in epic proportion, is the fear of vulnerability and weakness – especially Please Continue Reading …
Sign up to receive my blog posts via e-mail and get a FREE PDF copy of my book Resilience. Learn more ...
Privacy Guarantee: I will never share your e-mail address with anyone else.
“’Resilience’ describes the importance of having a compelling vision and working together to serve customers and create a profitably growing company. Thank you, David, for telling the Ford story!” – Alan Mulally, President and CEO, Ford Motor Company
