Ken Fite

Last Saturday morning at five o’clock, I woke up, made my coffee, and sat down to write. I do this every day but Saturdays are when I write for the blog. The other six days of the week I’m hacking away at the next book that I’m writing, so Saturdays are fun and are like a recess for the mind.

The topic I chose to write about last week was the power of prayer. My writing has veered into “religious” territory before, but something about last week’s post must have really struck a nerve.

Because as soon I hit publish, stuffed the kids in the car, and headed to Chick-fil-A for our weekly Saturday morning father/son smorgasbord breakfast ritual (and by smorgasbord, I mean I inhale all of my food plus their food after unsuccessfully convincing them to eat) I started getting feedback.

Someone unsubscribed from my blog’s mailing list. “No religious stuff.” was the reason given.

Fair enough. I get it and I totally understand, it’s not for everyone. Not a big deal, I thought. I get unsubscribes maybe once a month, it happens. Good luck in your future endeavors, as they say.

As I walked into the restaurant, my phone buzzed again. Unsubscribe. Another one? I thought.

Fifteen minutes later as I tried to convince my three-year-old to eat just one more hash brown if he wanted to wreak havoc in the playground with his brother, my phone buzzed again. Unsubscribe.

Forty-five minutes later, as we drove home and I questioned my writing ability and existence on this planet, I heard another buzz. I winced and looked at my iPhone. Two more unsubscribes!

And all for the same reason!

I drove in silence and started to wonder if I had been too over the top. That’s when I was reminded of a story I had once read about how the CEO of a major airline handled a complaining customer.

There was a woman who was a frequent flyer of one particular airline and wrote a letter to the company’s CEO about her experience after every single flight when she would return home.

She was completely disappointed with every aspect of the airline. She didn’t like how they boarded the plane and thought it could be done more efficiently than it was. So she wrote a letter. She didn’t like how they didn’t assign seats, she didn’t want to deal with finding one on her own, so she wrote another letter. She didn’t like how there wasn’t a section for first class. She didn’t like not being offered a meal mid-flight and hated peanuts, so she wrote a letter about those things, too. She didn’t like how casual the flight attendant uniforms were, and of course, she wrote a letter.

Each of the letters were responded to personally by the CEO, who dedicated time each week to read them and prided himself on acknowledging anyone who took the time to write to him.

But the lady – who started to be known as the airline’s “pen pal” – wrote one more letter, slamming them with a lengthy list of grievances and explaining once again everything she hated about them.

The airline CEO got the letter and sat for a moment, deciding how to respond.

He had spent so much time already, replying to her letters and explaining why they did things the way they did, trying to make the customer happy while simultaneously knowing he never would.

So he wrote the shortest response he had ever written to a customer. It contained only four words.

“We will miss you,” he wrote, signed his name, and mailed the letter. She never wrote him again.

I won’t always write about “religious stuff.” I’ll still write about my three and six-year-old boys and the shennanigans that they get into and my reaction to them. I’ll write about what I learned about life from the prior week and share any insights that I gained with you. That’s why I do this, after all.

But occasionally, I will write about “religious stuff.” It’s part of who I am. I can’t not write about it.

Sorry (not sorry).

I appreciate you being on my mailing list. The readership and number of subscribers has exploded over the last few months and I’m so thankful for that and for you. And I hope you’ll stick around. I have a blast writing this every week and based on the emails I get, I know you enjoy reading it, too.

But if not, thanks for the time that we did share together. I will miss you.

On the morning of December 8th, 1944, General Patton called Third Army Chaplain James O’Neill.

Terrible rains were keeping the United States Army General from defeating the Nazis. They were no match for the  U.S. and Allied forces, but unusually heavy rains bogged down Patton’s Third Army for two months leading up to the Battle of the Bulge. What the Nazis were unable to do on their own was taken care of by the weather – keeping the third Army and the Allied forces at bay.

That morning, General Patton knew what needed to be done to win the war – that’s why he called.

“Do you have a good prayer for weather? We must do something about those rains if we are to win the war,” he said to his Chaplain. O’Neill responded that he did not know but would look for one.

“How much praying is being done in the Third Army?” Patton pressed. O’Neill thought for a moment before asking, “By the chaplains or by the troops?” Patton responded, “By everybody?”

O’Neill paused before responding. “I am afraid to admit it, but I do not believe that much praying is going on. When there is fighting, everyone prays, but now with this constant rain – when things are quiet, dangerously quiet – men just sit and wait for things to happen. Prayer out here is difficult.”

General Patton took that opportunity to explain to his chaplain the power of prayer.

“Chaplain, I am a strong believer in Prayer. There are three ways that men get what they want; by planning, by working, and by praying. Any great military operation takes careful planning, or thinking. Then you must have well-trained troops to carry it out: that’s working. But between the plan and the operation there is always an unknown. That unknown spells defeat or victory, success or failure…some people call that getting the breaks; I call it God. God has His part in everything. That’s where prayer comes in.”

O’Neill understood. The chaplain had just been schooled by his general about the power of prayer.

When he couldn’t find a good prayer for weather in the prayer books that he thought would be acceptable for the task at hand, he decided to write one himself. Here’s what he wrote:

Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen.

The chaplain’s short and simple prayer was printed on small, wallet-sized cards and distributed to each of the 250,000 soldiers in the Third Army from December 12th through the 14th, 1944.

They were asked to spend the next two days reading the prayer and asking God to stop the rain.

And that’s when General Patton and the Allied forces got their breakthrough.

Two days later, they had six straight days of perfect weather. The entire battle was turned around.

Over the next few weeks, with the help of Allied troops to the north, the Nazis were pushed back. Close to the end of the battle, when the troops were on the offensive and victory was near, Patton saw the chaplain and smiled. “Well Padre, our prayers worked. I knew they would,” he said.

The general was right. We can plan. We can work. But between the plan and the work, there’s always the unknown. And the difference between defeat or victory, success or failure, is prayer.

Tom had just a few minutes to get some lunch in between conference calls.

His job is very close to a McDonald’s, which works out great most of the time. He just goes through the drive-thru, orders, and can get back to his desk in just a few minutes. It’s a very quick trip.

But it wasn’t yesterday.

Tom told me that when he pulled in, there was only one car in front of him. They took a while ordering and finally pulled up to pay. Tom ordered and drove up and waited to pay, too.

It usually only took a few seconds to pay, but the guy in the car in front of him was taking forever. Not only were they slow when ordering, now they were slow paying. Tom started to get angry.

He tried not to think about it. He fiddled with his phone but then started to think about being late.

The person in the car in front of him paying (or apparently not paying) was, in Tom’s mind, starting to become an idiot. What’s wrong with him? How hard is it to pay for food? Is this his first time in a drive-thru? Has he never been to a McDonald’s before? Does he not know how this thing works?

Tom rolled down his window. He thought about saying something but didn’t know what to say.

He decided that he would blow his horn. He put two hands in the middle of his steering wheel and slowly began applying pressure, hoping he wouldn’t have to express his frustration in such an obvious way but knowing he had to do something or he might be here all day. Just before he could press hard enough for it to sound, the car started moving, got their food, and drove off.

Tom was disgusted. What a jerk, he thought and pulled up to the first window to pay, ready to unload on the employee and ask what that idiot’s problem was for almost making him late to work.

His car window was still rolled down and he stopped to talk with the lady at the first window who spoke first. “I’m so sorry for the delay. The gentleman in the car in front of you wanted to pay for your lunch. I’m new and it took me a while to process everything. Have a blessed day,” she said.

That’s where Tom’s story ended.

He stopped talking and looked at me. I cringed and he told me that he had the same reaction. To think that he almost blew his horn at a guy that was just trying to pay for his meal. And he almost unloaded on this poor lady new to her job who just needed a little more time to process everything.

That’s the danger in believing the stories that we tell ourselves.

It feels good to fill in the gaps when we don’t know the whole story. It’s natural for us to make sense of the world around us by creating our own stories. But what we assume is happening usually isn’t the truth. A loved one gives us a stern look so we tell ourselves a story that we must have done something wrong when really they were just having a bad day. Or we text a friend who doesn’t reply quick enough and we create a story to explain why they never got back to us.

We do it all the time and vilify others instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt.

The next time I’m in a McDonald’s drive-thru and I’m stuck behind a “jerk” who’s taking a little bit longer than I’d like, I think I’ll tell myself a different story instead and try to be a little more patient.

I spent the last week with one goal: to outline my first novel from start to finish.

While I’ve written a number of nonfiction books over the past year and I’m close to releasing my latest book on how to wake up early in the next month or two, I decided to spend a week outlining my first novel to create a road map before I’d begin writing. I’ve been wanting to write a thriller for some time. I knew I’d need a week to have enough time to dream up and capture the story.

Whenever you set out on a new adventure, it’s best to understand the rules first. I’ve spent months learning how to write good fiction and what I’ve found is every story follows the same pattern:

-Movement 1: The gripping opening where a character finds themselves in terrible trouble.
-Movement 2: The evil plot gets underway and the hero, in trouble, fights a defensive battle.
-Movement 3: The turning point (a symbolic death and rebirth). The hero goes on the offensive.
-Movement 4: The hero confronts the villain in a slam-bang climax.
-Movement 5: Resolution. What happens to the characters due to the hero’s victory or defeat.

At the end of movement 2 is a critical part of a novel. It’s called “the dark moment.”

The dark moment is when the hero finds themselves up against the wall and running out of time. There’s a deadline, so the clock is ticking like mad. The hero has run out of leads and the trail has gone cold. In the dark moment, it feels absolutely impossible that the hero will be able to foil evil.

It wasn’t hard to write the dark moment while outlining my thriller yesterday as I sat in a Dunkin’ Donuts eating a double chocolate and chugging a hot latte with notes sprawled out on the table.

It was a little too easy. That’s because we find ourselves experiencing dark moments often in life.

The bills pile up. We lose our dream job. We lose someone we love.

In a dark moment, we reach rock bottom. All hope seems lost. We see absolutely no way out.

But the dark moment is necessary in every story. Without it, there’d be no wisdom or revelation. The hero wouldn’t be transformed. Their determination wouldn’t be redoubled.

The rest of the story, from the turning point when the hero experiences a symbolic death and rebirth and goes on the offensive, to the confrontation with the villain in the slam-bang climax, to the resolution comes from one thing: The hero’s decision while experiencing their dark moment.

Only the hero can decide to muster up the determination to do something about their situation.

You’re the hero in your story, the story of your life that you’ll tell your kids and grand kids one day.

If you’ve found yourself in a dark moment, know that it’s a necessary part of any good story. Understand that you’re not really at the end of the story, you’re actually in the middle of it.

But you do have a decision to make.

Is this where the story will end? Or will hitting rock bottom be your turning point, the very thing that encourages you to go on the offensive, redouble your efforts, confront your villain, foil evil and win?

As the hero, you’re the only one that can decide.

Benedict Arnold is a name synonymous with the word “traitor.”

If you’re a history buff (or if you just paid attention in high school), you’ll know that Arnold fought in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War between Great Britain and the 13 colonies.

Over the years, Benedict Arnold had been given increasing levels of responsibility. He proved that he could be brave and skilled in battle, having helped with the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in 1775.

But like all villains, Arnold had a major flaw. His was jealousy.

Arnold was passed up for promotion and watched low-ranking men given opportunities that he felt should have been his. He became resentful that he wasn’t moving up the ranks as fast as others.

That’s why Benedict Arnold became a turncoat.

By 1780, Arnold was put in charge of the northern forts, including West Point. And that’s where he came up with a brilliant plan to take down George Washington and hand him over to the British.

Arnold would give detailed plans of West Point to the British so they would know the fort’s weak points. Arnold plotted with a man named John Andre. Andre hid the plans in his boot and set out to deliver them to the British while Arnold would move supplies out of the fort to make it weaker.

Benedict Arnold knew he had to act fast because George Washington would be arriving at West Point in just a few hours. Arnold planned to have Washington killed and America destroyed.

There was one problem – Benedict Arnold never expected to be taken down by ordinary citizens.

After John Andre left to deliver the plans to the British, he was stopped at a checkpoint that was set up by three Americans. They asked Andre for his papers and searched him. That’s when they found the plans for West Point hidden in his shoe and they knew they had discovered a spy.

When they reviewed the papers, they saw the signature of Benedict Arnold. At first they thought that Andre stole the papers and so they decided to turn him over to Arnold to deal with the spy.

But what the Americans didn’t realize was that Andre and Arnold had been working together. On the way to deliver Andre over to Arnold, the three Americans happened to run into Major Benjamin Tallmadge who was Washington’s chief intelligence officer. Tallmadge had intelligence that a high-ranking officer was planning on defecting to the British but didn’t know who it was. Tallmadge made the connection and intercepted Andre before he could be turned over to Benedict Arnold.

The men were experiencing divine providence.

George Washington arrived at West Point a few hours later and by then, Benedict Arnold had already escaped but Andre was in custody, the fort was secure, and the president was safe.

What stands out to me in this story is the three ordinary citizens who decided to set up a checkpoint in British territory. You may have never heard of John Paulding, Isaac Van Wart, and David Williams, but their decision to set up that unofficial checkpoint that nobody asked them to set up saved a president’s life and stopped what could have been a major turning point in the war.

What a small, simple role they played. It must have seemed inconsequential to them at the time.

But it ended up being the reason why America was saved from certain defeat that day in 1780.

The next time you think that you can’t make a difference, remember the story of the three ordinary citizens who did their part in faith and ended up saving George Washington’s life and America as we know it. You may not know how your actions and decisions fit in the bigger picture, but they do.

Play your part in what you feel called to do. Believe that divine providence will take care of the rest.

Author Loren Eiseley wrote in The Star Thrower the story of a boy who was walking along the beach after a storm had passed and found that thousands of starfish had washed ashore.

It was morning and the boy knew that soon, the sun would be coming up and the tide would be going out. If he didn’t act fast, the starfish would die. He knew he had to do something.

So the boy started to pick up the starfish and throw them back into the sea, one at a time.

After awhile, an old man, who had the habit of taking a walk on the beach before writing each day, walked up to the boy. He watched and then asked him why he was saving the starfish, because every time he threw one back into the ocean, another washed back onto the shore.

The boy said, “I’m saving them. If I don’t throw the starfish back into the ocean, they’ll die.”

The old man noticed that there were many miles of beach and starfish were scattered everywhere. “You can’t possibly make a difference. There’s too many of them. What does it matter?” he asked.

The boy picked up another starfish, held it for a few seconds, and threw it into the ocean.

“It mattered to that one,” he said to the old man.

We have so many demands on our time each day. Between the meetings, the never-ending email, and all of the people who need us, there’s just too much to do and not enough time to do it all.

Sometimes when I’m stressed and I feel like I can’t make a difference, I’ll think about the story of the star thrower. I might not be able to do it all, but I can give my all to a few things that matter.

Another way to put it is like this: Do for one person what you’d like to do for everyone.

When a coworker is overwhelmed, you can ask them what you can take off their plate to help out.

When a friend needs someone to talk to, you can clear your schedule and spend time with them.

When our kids ask us to play, we can say Yes, even though it may be inconvenient at the moment.

You can’t do it all – but you can give your all to a few.

Like the star thrower, the young boy who was determined to save as many starfish as he could, we can decide to make a difference for a few even though we know that we can’t help everyone.

And for those we do help, we can walk away at the end of the day knowing it mattered to that one.

“The boss needs to see you in his office right now” aren’t exactly the words you want to hear on a Friday morning. Or ever. But they’re the words my coworker said to me that day in August, 1997.

I was nineteen years old and working as an on-air disc jockey at a rock station in north Florida. I had wanted to be on the radio since I was eight years old. My dream was to get on-the-air at my hometown rock station in Orlando, but this first job in Gainesville was fun and great experience for me. I just knew that somehow, working there would pave a way to getting on-the-air in Orlando.

I had only been at the station for three months, but during that time I had hustled every single day. In addition to my 10am-12pm shift, I helped out the morning show from 6a-10a and I did overnights from midnight to 6am. Twelve hour days aren’t that bad when you’re doing what you love.

As I walked down to Gus’s office, my heart pounded. I could feel it beating all the way in my throat. I walked in, closed the door behind me, and walked out a minute later.

He was quick with his words. I wasn’t a good fit for the station and was shown to the door.

I had been fired.

I made my way to the radio station’s restroom without running into anybody, locked the door behind me, and sat down. Tears welled up. Not only had I been fired, I had also been set up.

What I didn’t mention earlier was that another DJ at the station was jealous of my success and was determined to stop me. He came up with a brilliant scheme to get me pushed out of a job that I loved – and it worked. I remember being heartbroken that someone could be so evil to get a hard-working employee with a big dream fired but even more so that my boss didn’t have my back.

What’s sad is that I’m not alone. This scenario plays out with many different people in many different ways every single day. A dream job today can quickly turn into a nightmare tomorrow.

But the lesson I learned from being fired from my dream job was this: When someone tells you what you’re not, you have to remember who you are. And remember Whose you are, too.

While that’s always stuck with me, it’s easy to forget.

You’re told you’re not a good speaker when you know you’re better than you used to be.

You’re told you’re not cut out for the job when your ratings clearly show that you are.

Although I had all of the stats proving my worth, I still couldn’t convince my program director not to fire me that day. It was too late. He had already been convinced otherwise by someone else.

I was devastated. In that moment, I almost gave up on my dream. That would have been easier.

But within a week I got hired on-the-air at two big name stations. Although I lost one job, God gave me two. Six months later, I was offered a job on-the-air at my hometown rock station in Orlando.

My real dream job.

Almost 20 years later, I still look back on the whole thing with amazement.

The job I lost in the end really ended up being the very thing holding me back from becoming who I was meant to be. Sometimes when you’re going through a tough season, it’s hard to see how things will work out. But if you have faith and remember who and Whose you are, they always do.

When was the last time you stopped being so busy and spent some time resting?

In today’s culture, that sounds ridiculous.

We have a to-do list a mile long. We complain about everything we have to do to anyone who will listen. And if nobody’s around to listen, we put it on Facebook. We wear being busy as a badge of honor to show the world how important we are. The more we jam into our schedules, the better we feel about ourselves. And the more activities we enroll our kids in, the better off they’ll be, we say.

My family just got back from vacation at a resort here in Orlando, Florida. We spent our days swimming, endlessly going down water slides, and playing games at the arcade. We had a blast.

It was great to call a timeout on the busyness of life and just get away for a few days.

But you don’t have to spend money and go away to give yourself the gift of rest.

There’s a word I haven’t been able to get out of my mind for some time now. The word is Sabbath.

Sabbath literally means stop. It’s derived from the Hebrew word sabat. It’s most commonly known and used in reference to the Bible, where God rested on the seventh day – the Sabbath – following the six days of creation. Many still observe the Sabbath today, dedicating a day each week to rest.

God thought the Sabbath was so important that He included it in the 10 commandments. It’s number four. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work.”

How many of us actually observe a Sabbath? How many of us stop working one day each week?

What makes a Sabbath is simple… it’s just the absence of work. So what is considered work? Doing anything you consider a chore is work. So if cooking is a chore for you, it should be avoided. But if you love cooking, then it’s not a chore and isn’t something to be avoided on the Sabbath. (Side note: I predict after reading this, my wife will suggest we order a pizza for dinner tonight.)

Besides the obvious chores around the house, observing the Sabbath means no logging into work. It means no pulling out the company BlackBerry just to check email. It also means no worrying.

My favorite book so far this year is Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. A few insights I gained from the book that can also apply to a weekly Sabbath are:

-By abolishing any chance of being bored, we lost the time we used to have to think and process.
-The busier things get, the more we need to build in thinking time into our schedule.
-Play is an antidote to stress.
-Essentialists see sleep as necessary for operating at high levels of contribution.
-Build sleep into your schedule so you can do more, achieve more, and explore more.
-Essentialists do one fewer thing right now in order to do more tomorrow.

While all of these nuggets of wisdom relate to a weekly Sabbath, the last one really speaks to me.

We all have a never-ending to-do list and it would seem crazy to put it off for a day so we can rest. We worry that we’ll get farther behind on our chores and all of the things we have to get done. The paradox is that by choosing to do fewer things today, we can be even more productive tomorrow.

Spend some time today planning to observe the Sabbath tomorrow. Give yourself the gift of rest.

One evening, Thomas Edison returned home after a long day working at his research laboratory. Shortly after dinner, a man rushed to Edison’s home and delivered some devastating news.

A fire had broken out at his research factory a few miles away. Firemen from eight nearby towns were desperately trying to put out the fire, but were struggling to contain the out of control blaze.

Edison arrived and pushed his way through hundreds of onlookers and stared at the green and yellow flames, seven stories high, fueled by the many strange chemicals inside the building.

That’s when Edison quickly looked for his son and told him with the excitement of a kid on Christmas, “Go get your mother and all of her friends – they’ll never see a fire like this again!”

“What?” Edison’s son said, not understanding his father’s strange reaction to the horrific scene.

“Don’t worry,” Edison continued, “It’s alright – we’ve just gotten rid of a lot of rubbish.”

This story was told in Ryan Holiday’s book, The Obstacle is the Way. When I first read it, I just couldn’t believe Edison’s reaction to seeing his many years of hard work going up in flames.

But Edison’s point of view when disaster struck was this: What other response was there?

Even though Edison wasn’t upset, it would have been understandable if he had been.

The years of prototypes, research, and formulas inside the building had only been insured for a fraction of their worth because the building was supposed to have been built to be fire resistant with fireproof concrete. Virtually everything inside of it was now reduced to ash and gone forever.

Edison was 67 years old at the time of the fire. In today’s world, he would have been encouraged to go ahead and retire. Friends may have said that the fire was a sign to just quit and go home.

But Edison didn’t quit.

The next day, he was interviewed by a reporter and said that he wasn’t too old to make a fresh start. “I’ve been through a lot of things like this. It prevents a man from being afflicted with ennui.”

Within a month of the fire, the factory was up and running again with men working double shifts day and night to create new products that the world had never seen before. Although the damages from the fire had totaled $1 Million dollars (equivalent to $23 Million in today’s dollars), Edison and his team earned almost $10 Million in revenue that year (well over $200 Million today).

The same man that failed 2,000 times to create a workable light bulb knew that giving up was always the wrong answer. Edison actually loved to fail. He once said, “Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.” He knew that he couldn’t succeed unless he failed.

The trials that you and I face each day may not be as significant as a fire that destroys everything we’ve ever worked for, but they can still feel significant to us, nonetheless. We need to remember that how we react to setbacks in life matters much more than whatever it is that we’re reacting to.

Edison’s formula for greatness was simple and is advice that we can apply to our lives whenever disaster does strike: Embrace failure and don’t be afraid start over, no matter how old you are.

And when your dreams go up in flames, don’t worry. You’ve just gotten rid of a lot of rubbish.

At some point in your career, you’ll get an email from your boss about an important announcement.

A colleague decides that they’re going to retire. They’re overjoyed. And you’re a little bit jealous.

Last week I had the opportunity to give a retirement speech for someone. She loved her job of 31 years and was sad to go but looked forward to setting out on a new adventure. It got me thinking…

While some love their jobs, many people do work that they hate. In a 2013 State of the American Workplace study performed by Gallup, 70 percent of Americans said that they hate their jobs. They described themselves as disengaged from their work and saw retirement as the light at the end of the (very long) tunnel. It makes me think of the scene from Office Space where disgruntled employees take out their frustrations on a jammed printer with a baseball bat behind the building.

Retirement is a concept that was created in the early 1900’s to bribe factory workers into working a job that they hated with the promise that one day they could leave and get paid to enjoy life later.

And it worked.

Millions of Americans worked jobs they hated, staying at the same company for 30+ years. They lived for their work. They were given the gold watch. But they also lost the best years of their lives.

While the days of staying at the same company for an entire working career are gone for the most part, we still haven’t abandoned the practice of doing work we hate now so we can enjoy life later.

Seventy percent of Americans will back me up on this.

Retirement scares the crap out of me. I imagine myself living in a van down by the river eating a healthy dose of government cheese. I don’t want that. I once heard someone say that they were serving their time, like the years leading up to retirement were like a jail sentence. Who wants that?

We need to stop waiting for retirement and find ways to become more gruntled now. Deferring our happiness until we retire is a dumb idea. But most of us don’t realize there might be another way.

What if instead of waiting for retirement, we found ways to enjoy life now?

What if we planned family vacations now instead of waiting until retirement to travel the world?

What if we listed what we want to do when we retire and we started doing those things today?

What if all of those people out there, the 70 percent of Americans who say they hate their jobs, made time out of their busy day to find their calling that they wouldn’t dream of retiring from later?

What if we realized that the archaic concept of working 9-5, modeled after the factory age, was dead, and we instead found ways to create passive income instead of clocking it in every day?

I will be honest with you – that’s why I love writing. To think that someone can buy my books at 3:00 in the morning while I’m asleep and drooling on my pillow is amazing to me. To think that I can write whenever I want from wherever in the world I want, click on publish, and thousands of people can read these books for years to come blows me away. To have the opportunity to help people become better with email, with improving their focus and concentration, their memory, and becoming a better employee at work by creating and publishing something once is crazy to me.

But that’s the world we live in now.

And that’s the dream I’m following.

What’s yours? What are you doing to create a life that you won’t want to retire from?

Stop waiting for retirement. Find work that doesn’t feel like work. Discover your calling.

Make some time to find a way to create the life you dream of living someday today.