Who Troubles You The Most

Good morning. Today’s quote for the day is, “I’ve never met a man who’s given me as much trouble as myself.” And I can resonate with that.

Now, that comes from a preacher way back in the 1800s. If I remember correctly, maybe it was the late 1800s. His name was Dwight L. Moody.

I’ve never met a man that has given me as much trouble as I’ve given myself. That resonates true for me.

I’ve been married to Karen for 32 years here coming up in November. It’s amazing to me that, as I think back, how many times I probably have said to her, “If you’d change, I’d be a better man.” And I think she said, “I’d be a better wife if you would change.”

And we always want to attribute our problems and our situations sometimes to other people. Some of you probably think, if my boss was better. If this were better, if that was better. If my parenting was better, if my parents would have been better parents, I’d probably be smarter than I am today.

Things like that. We always want to attribute all of our problems in life to somebody else. We blame it on the government, we blame it on taxes, we blame it on politicians.

But nobody has given me probably as much grief and trouble in my life as I’ve given to myself.

And I think that when we get to a place where we can own that and learn from that and face that, then the end result is that we have a real track record of growth to gain. You can’t control what is done to you, but you can control how you handle it. You can control how your attitude is towards it. And that’s easier said than done. I get it.

Trust me, I am not a magical guru that does everything perfectly in a box. But there are many times that the disciplines and the things that we do in our life, the habits that we form, some of the books that we read, and who we associate with all contribute to the success or failure of our ability to handle it in the moment.

If you are spending a lot of time down on yourself and dealing with all the different issues that are going on and you’re feeling really kind of worn out inside yourself, then the end result many times is that when something hits you kind of hard, you’re not prepared for the storm. You’re just not prepared.

If you know there’s a storm coming, and you don’t do the things that you need to do to prepare your house, then you get overcome by the storm.

So as we go through the rest of this week and as we move into fall and leadership classes coming up, and we’ve got Christmas and all the fun stuff coming up with that, I want you to think about what kind of trouble have you given yourself. What have you done and what can you do for yourself. Who can you associate with. What can you do. What kind of things can you put into practice for you to make you continue to move forward in a better way and stop giving yourself so much grief.

The trouble that we usually create for ourselves is the thing that holds us back. So again, never met a man that has given me so much grief like I’ve given to myself.

Keep that. Keep that. Let it resonate within your own spirit, within your own thoughts, and start thinking about how can I change. What can I do. What book can you read next quarter to help you move in the right direction.

If you need help with that, give me a call. Give Sonia a call. Talk to somebody. We will give you resources and ideas to help you move past yourself.

All right. God bless you guys. Have a wonderful week. I’ll see you guys. Well, probably next Monday. All right. See you.