I recently took the opportunity to re-read a wonderful book called Silent Alarm, written by a dear friend of mine, John Blumberg.  After a near fatal accident, Jack Turner jumps off the corporate treadmill to seek a more meaningful life. Inspired by the voice of an angel that only he can hear, Jack begins to stop living accidentally and begin living intentionally. Silent Alarm is a wake-up call for those who are ready to take a step towards personal and professional excellence.

May 2012 be a year filled with abundant blessings, memories, laughter and may you enjoy moments of God’s grace that take your breath awa

I began renovating my great-great grandfather’s home a few months ago.  Built in 1895, the house has remained in my family for well over a century. With the death of my parents a few years back, my four siblings and I had thought someone in the family should purchase and remodel the home. Little did I realize then that that someone would be me.

Life has a way of turning things around. I had grown up playing in the gigantic living room and running up the creaky stairs to play hide and seek in the spooky attic space. Family baseball and football games were played in what was once the chicken yard and small garden on the side of the house. The swing on the front porch, where my great grandfather, granddad and my dad had courted their spouses became a place where Linda and I dreamed of our life together over 38 years ago.  Oh, the memories and stories that that this old house holds for generations had always intrigued me.

Our family huddled in this house to ride out many hurricanes and after Katrina came roaring through our small town, my siblings and I retreated to the family home and watched the waters rise up to porch but no further.  The house was our sanctuary that August night in 2005 and the place where 31 members of our family would call home for some duration many months after as we rebuilt our tattered houses.

With a planned renovation ahead, I have spent the last few months tearing out the old plaster in preparation for our new home. I always tell people that it has been” an archaeological dig.” I found old doors inside of walls, a 8 foot chimney filled with soot and many carpenter designs that left me wondering what and why? I found an old cross in the wall as well. Generations of Catholics have lived here.

As I haul this “rubble” out in large buckets, I am really moving buckets of memories and buckets of times past. I find I am taking time t o wonder about those who made homes in this space during those 116 years. Homes where life is shared, people are loved, and difficulties are overcome. I suspect that my family will only add to the memories.

This Christmas, I recall that our “cabin” is really a sacred space of family, faith and fond memories.

While there are numerous factors involved in creating sustainable improvement, research has been able to focus in on one key aspect that is critical to creating successful change for the better:  Our ability to stay focused on the big picture during the moments of challenge, frustration and confusion.  In his book, Good to Great, author Jim Collins termed this notion of focusing on the big picture the Hedgehog Concept.  An ancient Greek parable distinguishes between foxes, which know many small things, and hedgehogs, which know one big thing. All good-to-great leaders, it turns out, are hedgehogs. They know how to simplify a complex world into a single, organizing idea – the kind of basic principle that unifies, organizes, and guides all decisions.

If you’re like most people, you’ve got a well-articulated to-do list. Now take another look: Where’s your stop-doing list? We’ve all been told that leaders make things happen – and that’s true.  But it’s also true that good-to-great leaders, according to Jim Collins, distinguish themselves by their unyielding discipline to stop doing anything and everything that doesn’t fit tightly within their Hedgehog Concept.

To put it another way, what is the very core of who you are (or who your company is) and who you truly want to be?  What behaviors are keeping you from achieving this reality?  It is fairly easy to create a revised to-do list as they are often written in such a way that the action implies “sometime in the future”.  However, if we look at reality today and zone in on our big picture, what actual behaviors that you currently control need to be moved to the “stop-doing” list.  There is a liberation in this kind of list.  In our over-worked and over-stimulated world, to let go of things that are holding you back rather than adding more things to the mix to fix your behavior offers us relief, not burden.

If you really want to improve your faith and prayer life because your Hedgehog Concept is that your Christian identity should drive all decisions and should be the core of your family life, explore what barriers such as television, Internet, sports etc…need to be removed from your routine rather than continually get frustrated that you have “no time” or downloading the next great App that promises to simplify your life for you.

If at work you have pledged that people will be before paper and that this will be the year you and your team focus in on the customer without assuming you know their needs, then decisions simply cannot be made solely on the “policy” or “procedure”  anymore.  The time spent pushing paper and doing the daily tasks MUST be reduced and your contact time talking with your staff and customers MUST increase.  Remember the key phrase of the Hedgehog Concept: unyielding discipline.

In the end, the results are worth it.  Being able to bring the conversations back around to “what is the very core of who I am/who we are/what we are about and how is this issue moving us closer to that core when the complexities of life distract us leads to both success and confidence.

AAA estimates that 39 million Americans will travel this weekend for a vacation getaway.  However, the employment firm Hudson says more than half of American workers fail to take all their vacation days. Thirty percent say they use less than half their allotted time. And 20% take only a few days instead of a week or two.

The negative effects of not getting enough rest and relaxation are well documented.  Beyond health issues such as high blood pressure, headaches and ulcers, the effects on our personal lives are also well documented.  Over time, the effects of over-working leads to anger issues, communication breakdowns, increased time away from home and family and a tendency to take life too seriously.

We simply cannot enjoy this life we are given and all the wonderful blessings God has bestowed upon us if we do not take time away from our normal life to laugh and play and appreciate our family and friends.  Even Jesus took time away from his “job” to pray and relax and share meals with his friends.

This July I will have the opportunity to not only spend significant time with my family and friends enjoying barbecues and conversation, but I will enjoy 4 days at Boy Scout camp with my youngest son and a week in mid-July keynoting a conference in Yosemite National Park in California.  While yes, as a speaker I am technically working, but I will certainly find time every day to enjoy the majesty of the park and the Redwood forest.

This is the great thing about summer break that I always enjoyed as a child and still enjoy today: summer offers the opportunity to break from our routine to play and visit different places.  The memories that are created during summer vacations are priceless and the disappointment that we sometimes feel when our vacation time is ending is a sure sign we have played hard and laughed long and rested well.

This holiday weekend, be sure to leave the cell phone and laptop on the desk and get outside to enjoy your life, your family and your blessings; your health depends on it.

It pays to be in game(s), moms and dads