Five Years from Now....

Charlie "Tremendous" Jones said, “You’ll be the same person five years from now as you are today except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read.” I received a google alert yesterday about a graduation ceremony at the Webb Institute. The student speaker referenced my father's quote in the remarks to fellow graduates. Seems certain truths are timeless, ageless, and forever impacting lives.To be honest, it took me quite some time to get my head wrapped around my father's mantra. Wasn't what we become in the next five years more about what we do, produce, or will, and not who we meet or what we read?

The answer is no. At least on my life journey and the journey of so many in our tremendous community. I have the rare opportunity to meet hundreds of new people every week. Wouldn't it be tremendous if we had an app that would track each interaction we had with someone we met? What if we set a personal goal to get to meet three new people a day? Or maybe even five? What about ten!! Could you image meeting 3,650 new people in a year? Think it’s impossible? Think again. I don’t mean you must engage in lifelong recurring interactions, but you sure can meet someone and make a positive impact in just seconds. Be intentional with everyone you cross paths with, even if it’s just making a comment to a fellow human being in a checkout line, or waving someone the go ahead to cross the street with a friendly smile. Anything that impacts someone else counts as a meeting. Be cognizant of it. You'll be amazed at how closely you can draw humanity together with your sense of compassion, courtesy, and camaraderie.

Now let’s talk about the book side of the equation. I’ve been up to my cerebral cortex in all kinds of books since I entered my doctoral studies in 2015. I imagined that I would have to put aside the publishing part of the business since I was so busy working on publishing my own articles, journals, papers, and books. This was a tough decision for me because speaking and publishing have always gone hand in hand since my father founded the company in 1965.

But try as I might, people with a book inside of them kept crossing my path and the resources to continue to publish kept entering my world as well. I am delighted to still be producing life transforming material centered on personal development and renewal. If writing and publishing a book is something that is living inside of you, I’d welcome the chance to explore how to bring that dream to reality. Whether it’s a new masterpiece, or reworking one of your previous publications, your words hold value and need to be shared.

My father always said that he knew Abraham Lincoln, Oswald Chambers, and many of the greats throughout history better than he knew his own wife because of the words they left behind. I love reading books. I love writing books. I love publishing books. I love sharing books. I love experiencing books. I love the transformational power of books. Everyone has a message inside of them that needs to get out to the world. Let me know if we can help you write the next chapter of your tremendous journey and include you in our family of tremendous authors!