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“You’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt.” – Merle, The Walking Dead Is Merle’s quote true? Perhaps, to some degree, in some ways, at some time. But not today. Not any more. Not in the ways that matter most today. No, Merle, not in the slightest. Am I responding to a fictitious character’s quote from a zombie TV show and drawing real-life parallels while we wade through Poker analogies to disprove him? Yes. Let’s talk about how we can get a new hand professionally, relationally and spiritually. ...

As our working world shifts from assembly lines and manual labor to a knowledge economy where we get paid for ideas instead of physical tasks, there’s an increasing likelihood you’ll be taking your work home with you. When you work on an assembly line, there’s not a whole lot you can do after hours. You might think about how you can process pieces faster or ways to be more efficient in your role, but you’re not lugging home a press, conveyor belt or pneumatic drill. Work is at work. When you arrive home, work is no longer part of the equation. ...

I’m forgetful. I’m a very good forgetter of important things. Somehow, I manage to forget some of the most critical parts of my life. Like loving God and my wife. That I’ll die. My life is not a vacation. Simple things that are hard to remember all at once. I decided it was time to write a manifesto. Things I need reminded of daily. Things I know somewhere in the deep recesses of my heart, but that I can’t seem to surface without some brain-jarring via morning reading. I’ve printed this list out to read through each morning, before I do anything else. It takes less than 4 minutes to read aloud and it’s full of truth, high fives and pointer-fingers driven into the chest. It may seem a bit harsh at times, but it’s what I need from myself. Feel free to remind me when you see me forgetting these things. Also, I’d love to hear if you do anything to remind yourself of truth you need to hear each morning. ...

If you’ve ever wrestled with Microsoft Word for an hour trying to line up a few blocks of text and a couple of pictures to just create a one-page document, I feel your pain. At some point, everyone needs to make a PDF with pictures, lots of different text boxes and other vital information. We do this every month for our newsletter we send out to our ministry partners. It looks like this. Our monthly letters contain only two rounded rectangles (one at the top and bottom with our information), three main text boxes (for our main story, a box for prayer requests, and a caption for our photos) and two to three photos. It’s really that easy. Here’s how you can make a slick 1-page PDF in 20 minutes flat. ...

Leading overseas is exactly like leading in your home country. Except you don’t speak the language, know the customs or feel emotionally stable. After living in Slovenia for the last 6 months and leading a team of incredible friends as we trust God for a student-led movement following Jesus, I’ve learned a few things. This is the advice I’d give if I could give a pep-talk to my pre-departure self. 1. Acknowledge that you are under-qualified. Two weeks of training and one year of vocational ministry experience before moving to a country where you don’t speak the language is not enough to be qualified. My team of recent college grads were all as qualified as I was to lead a team. Unfortunately, everyone was completely perplexed about what it would take to build a movement of college students making disciples of Jesus. Embrace all of your inadequacies. You can’t lead on your own, but God can lead through you. ...

I can’t pay full-price for anything. It’s some type of genetic mutation that definitely came from my mom’s side of the family. My grandma was a yard-sale warrior and would buy things for a nickel on the dollar. My mom hasn’t bought a non-sale item since 1976. We’re freaks. I like finding deals. I’m not much for yard sales because I can’t stand sifting through piles of garbage to find a rare gem, but I’ll gladly sift through the interwebs to find a good deal (yes, I see the irony). Here’s my precursor to what I won’t do to save a buck: Sign up for a ton of services where I get a penny back for every thousand dollars I spend. I know that works for some people, but it’s just not worth my time. Buy crap I don’t need. This defeats the purpose of saving money buying things online. If I wasn’t going to buy something in the first place, I’m not going to buy it just because it’s on sale. You didn’t save any money if you bought something you didn’t need. So if you were hoping for a post with pictures of me holding a coupon purse with an online shopping cart full of 300 packages of toilet paper and 10 cases of Heinz ketchup, I’m sorry to disappoint you. < p style=”text-align: center;”> With those disclaimers out of the way, here’s where I turn and how I work when it comes to finding a good deal. ...

Subscriptions are the future of sustainable, growing businesses. They can also change your life. It’s obvious by the success of Spotify ($10 a month for all the ad-free music you want, wherever you want), crazy ideas like The Dollar Shave Club ($6 per month and you never have to think about buying razors again) and specialty products like Tonx coffee ($24 per month and you have the freshest, tastiest coffee delivered to your doorstep) that subscriptions are catching on and they aren’t disappearing soon. Businesses love subscriptions because they generate recurring income with no added costs. While they are beautiful for business, costs compound quickly for consumers.  We all have a finite amount of subscriptions we can support based on our income, but we can transpose the subscription-model idea to our time as well. **I call it subscription limitation. ...

Budgeting is like a magic trick: everyone is impressed when they see it done but few have the guts to try it for themselves. Prepare for the tricks of budgeting to be demystified as we pull back the curtain to enable you to make your own cash-flow plan with ease. There are a lot of tasks here, but they all fall under three main steps (via The Prestige)–the Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige.  The Pledge **Committing to changing your financial reality. ...

I haven’t been bored since 2007. That was my freshman year of college when I thought taking 12 credit hours was exhausting and I took three naps each afternoon. I’ve fallen in love with learning over the last few years. I always have something new on my radar to learn. Coding. A new language. A skill to refine. Learning prevents me from accruing multi-nap days and it helps make my life matter. Below, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite ways to destroy boredom. **...

I take things personally far too often. I've known for a long time that I need to just _ get over_ myself and stop taking everything like it’s a personal attack. It’s happened multiple times today already, once over a floor mat. Yes, a floor mat. It’s out of control. It’s difficult to lay down my right to be offended. Everything someone says, does or thinks about me is automatically filtered through my thin skin and the worst is assumed, leading to disgust, bitterness and hurt beyond what is rational. Most of the time, I’m just plain wrong in my initial assumptions and conclusions. [Before we get too far, let me say this post isn’t meant to excuse racism or sexism or any other -ism out there. Of course oppression should be fought against. We’re evaluating taking things personally at a (here it comes) personal level. Attacks based not on your identity, but rather your personality.]  Some things roll off my back with ease–especially when an anonymous poster says something silly on my blog or when someone I don’t know makes a harsh comment (like the time I was partially verbally assaulted at a Czech symphony performance by some teenage kid. Oye). When it comes to people I care about though, it seems like my heart beats outside my skin, completely exposed and easily targeted for unintentional attack. I know I need to believe the best about the people closest to me, but for some reason, I draw conclusions and make unfair inferences that totally miss the mark. ...