If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you may recall that I entered a blog posting contest earlier this year around the topic of Writer's Doubt. If you're new, (or just want to read my post again) you can check out the post I wrote.

Well, the contest is over and I'm happy to say that I did not win.

WHAT?
Why am I happy you ask?


A funny thing happened over the last week. Bryan Hutchinson has been posting the top three entries on his blog over the past several days. I was excited to see that I had not taken third place. I thought I still had a chance to grab the first or second prizes. On Monday of this week I saw that I had not taken second either. More excitement as I realized that I had to be the winning entry.

Then I read the winning entry that was posted on Wednesday. It was a fantastic essay and one that I will probably end up referring back to in the future.

Growth From Despair
OK, maybe despair is a bit too melodramatic.

As I read through the winning entry, I realized that there are too many other phenomenal writers out there. I'm not going to win every contest. Then I remember that I have won. I am a writer. I have my work in print.

So you can see that maybe this was one of the best things that could have happened to me. It spurred me to sit down and write this very blog post. It is pushing me to continue working on my other writing projects, even if they are not yet published or even on paper yet.

It's true that writer's write. That's what distinguishes us from other "normal people." We don't just talk about telling stories, we actually sit down and let them come out.

I want to extend a big thank you to Bryan Hutchinson from PositiveWriter.com, Jeff Goins from goinswriter.com and countless other influencers in the world. Without those people, it probably would have been years between my stints as a writer. For now it has only been a few months.

Are You A Writer?
Let me know. If you took a break to read this post...you're done now, so get back to writing!

Last fall I was looking for some podcasts to add to my listening arsenal and came across the Writing Excuses podcast. This is a weekly show that is only 15-20 minutes long so it can be handled quickly. There are several hosts, all of whom are published writers from a variety of fields. They have also brought in guest authors to join the weekly panel and have done Q&A episodes using listener questions.

Each week the team brings you discussion on a specific topic related to writing, editing or getting your work published. Every episode also includes a “book of the week” and they finish with a writing prompt and the instructions that “you’re out of excuses, now go write!” I need to stop listening to this one in the car on my way to work so that I can actually follow that instruction as soon as I’m finished listening to each episode.

While not every topic may be related to what you are writing about at the moment, it’s great to hear experienced authors talk about their craft and know that they have overcome hurdles and challenges in their careers. It’s also nice to hear them speak candidly about writing as a career and understand that it’s not all sunshine and roses to be a “professional writer.”

All in all, I highly recommend Writing Excuses for anyone serious (or even not so serious) about being a writer.

I am pretty sure that I have written before about shifting perspectives and how I look at things in different ways as I age, but I ask that you indulge me with that topic once again.

I have written earlier this week on several topics that are difficult to nail down in terms of a specific definition.  Beauty, love, heroism, and leadership are all things that we think we know about, but when asked to define them, the answer is more often than not that we will “know them when we see them.”  I looked back at my own experiences in life and realized that I would have defined all of these things much differently 10 or 15 years ago than I do today and I owe that entirely to the things that I have seen and done.

Long ago I would have listed physical attributes as the only thing that could denote beauty, but I know now that inner beauty is so much better.

My thoughts on love haven’t changed too much over time, but have only strengthened.  I am able to understand that I love more things and why I love them that I may have when I was younger.

My heroes are certainly different today than they were in high school or even college and I understand today much more clearly what it truly means to be a hero.

Finally, leadership has probably changed the most in my mind.  As I wrote yesterday, leadership had long been about position in an organizational structure until my eyes were opened by leaders like John Maxwell.  I now understand that leadership is much more than just being a “manager” or “supervisor” of people and that one can lead from any position.

As you can see, my own personal thoughts about these different concepts have changed over the past several years.  I urge you to think about what you have experienced that has led to changes in your thinking over time.

As I was hunting for something to write about this evening, I wanted to take a little bit of a departure from the happy go lucky topics I've been covering this week but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  So the topic of the day is Leadership.

If you had asked me three years ago what my definition of Leadership was, I would have given a much different answer than I would today.  I owe much of this change in perspective to the chance to attend the first of three leadership conferences.  Little did I know the morning that I walked into the event that my life was about the change for the better and I was going to start thinking about things in my life in a FAR different way.

I've mentioned once or twice that the people who speak at the Chik-fil-A Leadercast each year are some of the best and brightest minds in business, sports, entertainment, and academia.  They are all widely considered to be strong leaders in their fields and I feel like they genuinely want to help others to succeed as they have been able to succeed in life.  From John Maxwell to Tim Tebow, from Condoleezza Rice to Coach K, the list of notable personalities goes on and on.

Three years ago I sat and tried to absorb as much from the speakers as I possibly could, furiously taking notes along the way.  The second time around I similarly took notes, but also tried to listen to everything that the speakers were saying.  I made it a priority to sit down at my computer within the week following that second conference and type up synopses of each speaker based on my notes so that I could flesh out the ideas while they were still fresh in my head.  I still look back on these notes on a regular basis today and continue to gain inspiration from them.  I did the same after the conference earlier this year and hope that I am able to attend the conference next year as well.  I strongly urge you to work with your employer, school, church group, etc. to set up a satellite viewing of this event.

But what did this conference really do for my concept of leadership?

Before I attended this conference, I was actually in a management position at my job and had been for almost four years, but I thought that was enough to make me a leader.  Now I know how wrong I was.

In the years since going to that first conference (2011) I have come to understand that true leadership can be performed at any level of an organization and getting a promotion to management doesn't immediately make you a good leader.  As John Maxwell has written about time and time again, true leadership is the act of making others better.  It is service to others; service that will enrich the lives of the people around us and lifting everyone up to be able to achieve more and better things.

Think about the people in your life that you would call leaders.  Perhaps it is a coach on your high school sports team or a pastor at church.  These are likely two very different types of people and two very different types of leaders, but both can get the job done and help those around them.  Managers at work can be leaders based on their position, but true leaders should be striving to bring everyone else up to and even beyond their own level.

Take a look at your own thoughts on leaders and leadership.  If you think like I did several years ago, I recommend seeking out some established leaders in your community or picking up some books by well known authors on the subject (John Maxwell, Andy Stanley, Jack Welch just to name a few) and read through some of their thoughts.  You’ll be glad you did.  More importantly, the people around you that benefit from your leadership will be glad too.

I went back and read my very first blog post from June 18th of last year the other day and was amazed at how far this blog has come in the 13+ months since.  I certainly had grand ideas that I would be making posts every day (take a look at the “archives” for April, May, and June of this year to see how well that went) and that I would have a book of five short stories published by now.  In terms of those original goals, I have fallen short, but I have found a passion for maintaining this website and blog and hope that I have made an impact on your life in a positive way.

Looking ahead to the next year, I see positive things in store for this website.  As I noted the other day, there are great changes in the works for the poetry section which will only continue as I get more comfortable with how I want people to use the site.  My next step is to truly devote a portion of every day to writing these stories.  I do have two complete and the other three are in the works.

Regular visitors to the site may have noticed a new look to some of the pages.  I decided that the blue text on a blue background was getting a little tired so I changed it up last week.  My hope is that this will make the site a little easier to read and let people be more engaged with it.

I also put up a new image for the page headers throughout the site earlier this week.  I had been using a picture that I had taken myself at the ocean last year, but felt that I needed to get something “mountainous” at the top of the page given the name of the site.  Many thanks to torepaul on sxc.hu for the use of the image of a true Norwegian mountain at the top of the page.  Maybe someday I can get a picture of “the” outer mountain that indirectly lends its name to the site, but until then, at least I have a mountain in the same country.

It's that time of year that kids are getting done with college and preparing for final exams in high school.  Proms are in full swing and there is a general optimism in the air.

What better time to sit down an ponder your goals for the summer.  take an hour or so today and make a list of things that you absolutely MUST accomplish before Labor Day.  Maybe it's something simple like reading a new book (check out my list for this year so far).  Or it could be something crazy like going skydiving.

Regardless of what it is you want to do, get it down on paper.  Once you have it written down, you can figure out what the necessary steps are to achieve that goal and start down that path.  Let me know what you come up with.

If you've been on my blog and website before, you probably know that I have read a few books by John Maxwell.  I think he's a fantastic author and has a way of simplifying certain topics that we might think a very difficult (and some we might consider ourselves experts on) and making them accessible in a way that makes one think more about themselves than they ever thought possible.

Tonight, Mr. Maxwell hosted a webcast where he presented certain elements of his latest book on The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth.  Because I have kids and life just seems to happen, I didn't get the opportunity to watch the entire thing, but I did get about half of it in and even without reading the book yet, I can tell that it will live up to its billing as "invaluable."

I'm not in the business of being a book reviewer, but as a writer, John Maxwell is someone that I truly admire and hope to emulate.  One of the lessons that I have learned from him in the past few years of reading his works and listening to him speak on several occasions is that in order to fully reach our potential, we need to pass on what we learn to others and teach them to do the same.  Only then can we try and claim to be truly influential in life.