The Key to Remarkable Performance

Tina Howard, aka spaghetti pie, posted an interview with Mark Sanborne last week about his new book The Encore Effect. Here’s a teaser of some of the great things Mark says:

Someone asked me which of the keys to remarkable performance was most important and I responded by asking which of the vital organs was most remarkable the point being that all the vital organs work together to create health. Eliminate one and you die. Even if I weren’t a Christian, I would have to recognize that if I remove the spiritual dimension of my life I wouldn’t be a whole or complete person; ignoring or denying the spiritual dimension of life – and the void that creates – is the strongest proof of its existence.

It’s not a long interview, so I encourage you to pop over and take a look.

Eisenhower on Leadership

What does it take to be a leader? By most any measure Dwight Eisenhower qualifies. Soldier, General, President of the United States - Eisenhower understood leadership and knew how to raise up leaders.

Howard E. Butt, Jr. shares some insight from Eisenhower’s life in this week’s audio message . Be sure to listen in.

Time alone with God

When I was young I was taught that one ought to have a “quiet time,” as it was sometimes called, a time of prayer and solitude. Being a good young man, I marked this down on my list of things that I needed to do. I needed to make good grades, please my parents, go to church, treat people nicely, help the poor, and have a quiet time. Somehow my time alone with God become another obligation.

As you can imagine, I wasn’t too good at getting that done.

As I grew older I began to learn that time alone and with God is more like a vacation. It is soothing and nice and something to look forward to. Now I find myself trying to find a place in my day where I can take a short vacation and sit in silent prayer with God. How you look at things makes all the difference.

Chris Depew is a new blogger in our network. He writes about getting up and leaving his desk to find a measure of peace with God.

I have just left my desk in the middle of corporate America to try and find some peace. Corporate America never stops - it is never still. There is constantly bickering and fighting between the ranks. Corporate America needs God’s love more than any “institution” that I know of. In the life that it demands you don’t have time stop and enjoy anything but the next report or email. I can’t live this life forever. I don’t think I am going to make it.

So, I have found my peace in a local park under a beautiful pine tree. I finally feel like I am away from everyone and everything, never mind the miles of asphalt and plastic picket fence that is just a few feet away. Here is where I can really focus on what matters in life. I turn off the blackberry, the radio, and my busy professional life. If only for thirty minutes, I need this. God and I talk during this time. Today He reminds me of what the psalmist said in Psalm 46, “Be still and know that I am God.”

You see, corporate America is so lost because no one living inside it can be still. …Read More.

One Mom, Two Mom, Red Mom, Blue Mom

With all of the tension of the political scene these days, it’s always nice to hear some good old fashioned, nonpartisan encouragment. Dena Dyer delivers with a fantastic, uplifting little bit of political parody. You must see this!

It’s Dr. Seuss meets Jim Lehrer.

Update:  Dena Dyer just sent me the full text of her book. Enjoy!

Red (State) Mom, Blue (State) Mom
A Dr. Seuss Parody by Dena Dyer

One mom, two mom
Red mom, blue mom
Short mom, tall mom
Big mom, small mom.

This one wants to go, go, go—
This one likes to take it slow.
Some stay home, some travel far.
Say! What a lot of moms there are.

Some have two kids, some have four.
Some have many, many more.
Some vote red and some vote blue—
Some are purple through and through.

Not one of us thinks like the other,
But each of us is still a mother.
Makes no difference who you choose—
Don’t see red or get the blues.

Have you kissed a boo-boo on a knee?
Or sewn a costume, 1-2-3?
Moms can do it, yes we can!
Even cook green eggs and ham.

Moms are more alike than not.
We work, we fret, we laugh a lot.
So when I talk about my choice,
Respect me please, don’t raise your voice.

And remember when November comes,
What we tell our little ones—
Be polite, and in a pinch
Please don’t turn into a Grinch!

When the armor doesn’t fit

You can only be who you are. That sounds obvious enough, and we’ve all heard that message in one form or another. But many of us still try to be people we are not. We try to do things we are not gifted to do. And we feel badly when we fail. There is a certain grace to knowing who you are and what you can do and celebrating it. And there is grace is celebrating what others can do.

High Calling blogger Kevin Sanders wrote a piece about this recently.

I’m sure many of you have heard the story of David and Goliath. You’re probably familiar with the heroic faith of David, who defeated Israel’s largest enemy.

There’s a part of this story that you may not be so familiar with. I’m talking about one of the events that led up to this epic showdown:

Then Saul gave David his own armor—a bronze helmet and a coat of mail. David put it on, strapped the sword over it, and took a step or two to see what it was like, for he had never worn such things before.

“I can’t go in these,” he protested to Saul. “I’m not used to them.” So David took them off again. He picked up five smooth stones from a stream and put them into his shepherd’s bag. Then, armed only with his shepherd’s staff and sling, he started across the valley to fight the Philistine.
-1st Samuel 17:38-40…Read More.

When no one wants an orange

We all know that the only opinion that truly counts is God’s opinion. If you are doing the will of God, then it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks of you, your job, your abilities, or anything else. We know that is true. BUT, there is another truth. We all have a need to be valued in this world, particularly for our work. We identify with our work, and that’s not a bad thing. We care about our work, so we appreciate it when other people affirm and value what we do.

But what happens if you enter a season of life where people don’t value your work?

High Calling blogger Reylo discusses this in a piece called “Orange you glad.”

For two days in a row, at two different Starbucks, my drink was served in a cup that had the Keith Olbermann quote above printed on it. I checked my wife’s cup to be sure that perhaps this was just…Read More

References

My wife was rather shocked once when an employee she had fired used her as a reference for his next job. She got a call from the prospective employer and was quite embarrassed to have to say that she wouldn’t recommend hiring the man. We wondered what he thought she was going to say when he put her on his list of references.

When you leave your job, what will people say about you? Will you feel comfortable asking your former employer for a reference? You will leave an impression, of course. Will it be one you are proud of?

Red Letter Believers is a High Calling blog that often calls us to responsibility. Recently they posted a piece about the references you’ll put on your next resume.

Most job applications ask for references. It’s standard practice to list previous supervisors, coworkers or other people that can attest to your character.

There are some funny stories out there about “unique” references.

One reference turned out to be the candidate’s mother-in-law. When asked about his employability, she said, “I wouldn’t hire him to do anything!”…Read More

More Custom Search Explanation

I recently had an email exchange with one of our HighCallingBlogs.com network members, Tina Howard who blogs at Spaghettipie . Tina asked some good questions about the new custom search that we recently added to the site.

After our conversation, Marcus suggested that the info might be useful to other folks in the network and Tina was gracious enough to give us permission to publish our conversation here.

Tina

If I search "spaghettipie" some of my blog posts come up (although not necessarily the most recent ones). If I search for the specific titles or topics of recent posts, I don’t find myself. Not sure what that means.

Tina Howard

Chris

It all comes down to search engine optimization (SEO) of the individual blogs. Blogs with better SEO will rank higher in the search. It’s a Google thing.

Since you are on WordPress.com you will have better than average SEO, which is a good thing. The challenge is that blogs in general perform very well in the search engines so your blog has some steep competition in that respect. I’ve noticed that the blogs that tend to rank highest in our custom search are often self hosted blogs where the site owner has taken some extra steps to optimize them even more. Those options are not available on a free WordPress.com blog.

One thing I did change in your behalf. Spaghettipie was listed only in the Writing category and should be in Parenting as well. I fixed that. You’re now in both categories.

It makes sense, based on how the search engines work, that your older posts would rank higher in the search engine than your newer posts and show up better. To give you a quick overview on how search engines work, here is a presentation I gave a while back. Slides 17-24 talk about some SEO factors.

You are doing some good things to help you out. Tagging your posts well is especially important. You are doing that.

You can also start using some headers within your posts. Here’s what I wrote about the WP advanced toolbar (where you can format headers in your posts) when it came out.

If you want to learn more, this book is a great resource.

Hope that helps you out some. If there is anything I can do for you, give me a shout.

Enjoy!

–Chris

Tina

Oh, that makes more sense. I didn’t really understand how the Google Advanced Search worked. I thought you were able to use the Google search technology (if you will) to search the limited subset of just the blogs on High Calling.

But I also really look forward to reading all the information you share. Especially since I’m doing a lot of this blog tour coordinating stuff, and I’m always looking for more info on SEO (it’s such a wild, unwieldy thing to me).

Thanks a ton,
Tina

PS - I absolutely don’t mind if you post your response. I’m always happy to offer up my stupid questions for the benefit of others

Chris

We are using Google just to search across the sites in our network. The thing is some of the blogs in our network are optimized better than others and will rank higher in the search as a result.

Even though the pool of web sites has been narrowed down to the couple hundred that are in our blog network, the same rules of SEO apply when comparing those sites to one another.

Enjoy!

–Chris

P.S. and your questions are FAR from stupid!

If y’all have any questions on the search, or can’t find your blog via the search in the header at the top of the page please give me a shout and I’ll get it sorted out.

5 Easy Steps to Join HighCallingBlogs.com

So you want to be part of our network? Great! Here’s what to do:

1) REGISTER with our sponsor, TheHighCalling.org. It’s quick and easy.

2) If you already have a blog, move on to step 3. If you don’t have a blog, you can start one with us . (You’ll have to login to TheHighCalling.org again.)

3) JOIN HighCallingBlogs.com! This will add you to our database of bloggers and start the process of review before we add you to our RSS feeds.

4) ADD our badge to your site. If you have trouble, don’t hesitate to contact Marcus through the messages you will have received in step 3.

5) Decide how you want to READ and COMMENT. That’s the whole point of the network. We aren’t some kind of link exchange, google juice farm. We are working to build real community around shared values. We expect all members of the community to read each other and leave encouraging comments. And we’ve built some nifty tools to help you do this. You can…

• Read featured posts at HighCallingBlogs.com/blog , or have our featured posts delivered to you via RSS or email (using the eNews & Updates on the upper right of our interior pages).
• Subscribe to category feeds via RSS or email through our "Blogs in the Network" menu at the top of the page. (To find the RSS feed, click on the highcallingblogs.com graphic in each category’s widget header.)
• Add us to your blogroll and check back regularly! Some people will prefer to add our homepage, highcallingblogs.com . Others will prefer to add our blog page, highcallingblogs.com/blog .
• DON’T FORGET TO LEAVE ENCOURAGING COMMENTS! That’s how we get to know each other, see?  (You can get even more ideas about how to participate in our community on our welcome page .)

We look forward to seeing you around the network!

Harvest Moon

Writer and professor J. Schaap has a nice piece out called, “Harvest Moon.”

It’s rise is hardly meteoric, but when it appears, it’s huge. Last night, the dust from a thousand harvests kept it from being as orange as I’d hoped; instead, it was a pink balloon until it shook free of all our chaff. But there it was, shedding a light so bright you could pick corn or almost anything else in the reign it brought to the earth.

Sometimes I wonder if I too wouldn’t have been prone to worship the sun and moon, if we had no other light. Last night I flew out into the country into a setting sun that was so bright it should have made driving illegal, but the moment that blinding glow fell beneath the horizon, a huge pink balloon appeared, almost like magic, all the way across the earth. What a show.

If it’s all we had, I’m sure we’d make more of it–millions have….Read More.

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