No smith can forge a chain that can't be broken, but every person can. We build bonds, it's what we were designed for. The metal of a personal bond is honesty. The more you refine it, the more you knock lose the impurities and distill it to a basic constant in your relationships, the stronger your bonds will be. In life, love, and business it's the bonds that help save us. Forge them well with more honesty (be fully candid about yourself, your views, your virtues, and your failures) and watch barriers dissolve and relations strengthen. #forgebonds     #honestsmith     #refinerelationships     #ponderbonding     #EECLLC

Find your partner and find your challenger. That person that pushes and that person that pulls. Only then will you have found the keys to your success regardless of industry or obstacle.

Some are lucky enough to have someone to hold them accountable such as a referee, a leader, a shareholder, a competitor, or even a regulator. The ones successful at making the leap to the path of permanent improvement though stop letting others hold them accountable and internalize the need.

Letting those you're working with, for, or leading know where you stand and what you think is difficult, but priceless.

As the idiom goes, no strategy survives contact with the enemy. All conquering strategies though contain integrity to ideals.

The value you can bring to your customer is in sharing the values that drive them. Sussing out your customer's deepest needs and desires, and then helping fulfill them is the core of great customer service. Satisfaction though comes in sharing the values that motivate those needs and desires.

As has been said, the mother of invention is surely desperation. However, only controlled desperation coupled with specific dreams of a better end-state can create larger inspiration that leads others.

Public speaking forces you as the speaker to manufacture connection without significant feedback.

A great pyramid made of straw wouldn't last, nor could a skyscraper made only of marble. What we build from must be both strong and flexible. How we arrange it must be planned to the environment and resilient to the stresses of it.

Failure is not a state of existence, merely a state of being. When you notice the path from the past through the present and to the future is not straight, you begin to understand that steps back are still forward despite your expectations or current feelings.

The emotional connection between message and decision making is underestimated by modern marketing. Most marketing treats customers as a puzzle to be solved. Press the right sequence of keys on a person's psyche and get the outcome you desire.

You put your time and effort where your values lay. When you labor it is in the hopes of creating something, either something you value or more resources for some later day.

Thriving is one of the hardest conditions to exist in because it contains enormous observer bias. In physics, it's known that observations inside a system are biased toward the perspective and orientation of the observer. When you think you aren't doing well, or as good as you should or can, realize your perspective is oriented outward only.

Change is a constant! It hurts sometimes to think about the unfairness; it can be jarring, unexpected, and even uncomfortable. However, none of us have ever lived in constant. Birth, life, death; there is really only more change.

On a day as solemn in our country as this, it's important to remember what so many have given their all to warn our world about. Freedom is the right and value of every person on this planet. However, for much of our history freedom has been thwarted, cowed, or stifled between people. This is because freedom is no less and no more than mutual respect between all people.

The fine lines between creation and destruction. Between reason and purpose. Between betterment and devastation. Humankind guides and is guided by our creations.

In order to forgive you need not forget, but you must understand. It's important to understand where the act and intent came from. Until you understand you cannot accept. Until you accept you cannot move on. Until you move on you cannot forgive.

The old saying that for communications humans were "given two ears to hear, but only one mouth to speak. Listen twice as much as you talk" is very true. The wisest of counsel rarely ever needs to be very talkative. It, like a good communication itself, needs only to understand and convey the subject, the objects, and the actions to provide a concise nugget of wisdom for the listener to draw upon.

It's not how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get back up. Or so the old saying goes, right? Well that's what victory in anything is. It just takes one. One more time, one more try, one more "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"! Victory is a game of numbers that's made of math even an infant can master.+1!