How often during a conversation with someone do you spend the time they are talking actively listening to him or her? Are you paying attention to them, or are you forming your response to them or thinking about how their situation isn’t all that bad and you’ve seen worse? Or perhaps someone is talking to you, and you just need to get that one thing done today and so instead of stopping what you are doing, you try and listen while still working on that task?

Being positive does not mean that you are naïve or that you gloss over the fact that there is so much trouble in the world today, being positive means that you don’t allow yourself to focus solely on the negative. Even on the best days you have, there will be negative factors, but on the best days there is so much else to focus on that we sometimes hardly notice. It is on the days when we aren’t doing the best that we need to intentionally be positive.

There is a something to say about being loyal. My grandpa always says, “Make new friends, but keep the old. Those are silver, but these are gold.”  Last week I wrote about being intentional, and this weekend I took my own advice. I made it a goal during another busy weekend of weddings to make sure and stop and see a friend who I hadn’t seen in way too long.

Happy Monday,

Over the last few weeks I’ve had one point or idea that has seemed to be popping up all over the place. It has come from sources that are not connected as far as I know, but all speak to the same point as if in unison. The idea is intentionality, and the importance of it. Intention is defined as “a determination to act in a certain way” or “done on purpose; deliberate” and “performed with purpose”.

In what I view as the culmination of all his books Jon Gordon puts all the pieces of the puzzle together in The Power of Positive Leadership. In the fall of 2014 Oregon Women’s Basketball head coach Kelly Graves mentioned a few things to me from the book The Energy Bus that he was using for his team and suggested I read it and also Soup.

The definition of true bravery is often misconstrued. I won’t get into everything that is labeled brave or what is and isn’t brave, that I leave for your interpretation after you read this.