life on planet earth on Professionalism

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

In the most basic sense, managing your perfectionism looks like becoming aware of the core impulse all perfectionists reflexively experience: noticing room for improvement—Hmm, this could be better—an...

Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

The defining ingredient of real human life is fidelity. It’s not wealth, power, control, or knowledge. It’s fidelity, the question of practice—how do we maintain fidelity [with God]?

Ability involves responsibility; power, to its last particle, is duty.

Sharan Merriam and Carolyn Clark, in their fine study Lifelines , effectively show that life is fundamentally about two things—our work and our relationships. And maturity is found in having the c...

It’s what you practice in private that you will be rewarded for in public.

Perfectionism makes you stay home, not take chances, and procrastinate on projects; it makes you think your life is worse than it is; it keeps you from being yourself; it stresses you out; it tells yo...

Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.”.

Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.

Self-Discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from expectations and the demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear—and doubt.

Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

No voluntary act of spiritual discipline is ever to become an occasion for self-promotion. Otherwise, any value to the act is utterly vitiated.

Maturity is the ability to think, speak and act your feelings within the bounds of dignity. The measure of your maturity is how spiritual you become during the midst of your frustrations.

Our modern dogma is that of Batman: “It’s not who you are underneath. It’s what you do that defines you.

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.

Courage is a virtue only so far as it is directed by prudence.

To live well is to work well.

I’m a college professor — I have been for almost a decade. I work reasonably hard at my job, and I think I do it fairly well. In fact, in my honest and solitary moments, when there’s no occasion false...

Attitude is an accurate monitor of where we fall on the spectrum of pride and humility.

Moralistic behavior change done for one's self simply manipulates and leverages radical selfishness without challenging it.

One of the great truths in life is that you can only go so far as you can be trusted. Every time a well-known pastor has a moral failure, the church’s reputation is hurt. This is at least partially wh...

Almost all heroic individuals face grave crises while they are still on the road to reaching the ultimate decision that they will remain faithful to their selves, whatever the cost.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without co...

Community service has become a patch for morality. You can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck.

Perfectionism is not a way to avoid shame. Perfectionism is a form of shame.

Perfection....it functions as a form of myopia, a preoccupation with self-image that can stunt emotional growth.

People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromis...

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leade...