The human mind requires a place to park. I know, because when I let mine “float” aimlessly it typically “lands” in whatever I’ve been thinking about the most lately, whether good or bad.

This morning I arose around daylight to go to the bathroom. Since it was a holiday and I knew my girls would all be making the most of the opportunity to sleep late, and since they also make the most of their opportunities to stay up late which really makes me tired, I returned to the bed catch a few more hours of sleep. It was there in that mental twilight, not quite asleep, but not quite awake that I found my mind repeating the lyrics of one of the last songs I’d played on my ipod as I drove home last night. The thought came to me crystal clear: the mind isn’t satisfied until it has a place to “dock.”

You’ve experienced it haven’t you? Awakening to a song that you’ve been playing a lot lately? Jolting awake from a nightmare with the same boogie man that was in the movie you watched right before you went to sleep? Muddling in your worries and fears only to awaken in the night and have your mind begin to race again with the same worries and fears? On many occasions I’ve awakened in fear and worry and had to pray “Lord I cast all my cares on you because I know you care for me. I’m here to sleep. You are here to handle my problems. So I’m going to do my job while you go do yours. ”

I suggest that our mind merely “digests” what we feed it. If we feed it positive, uplifting, encouragement, it “plays the tapes” back to us containing positive, uplifting, encouraging thoughts. Likewise, if we feed our mind fear, worry & doubt, if we feed it conflict, angst, and trouble we’re likely to find the “tapes” of fear, worry, doubt, conflict, angst, and trouble playing in our mind when we awaken in the middle of the night. I noticed that when I awoke with that particular song in my mind—and it was a song with a very positive message—I was happily able to roll over and go to sleep with that tape playing. But when I wake up and my mind kicks into the worry/fear gear it usually means the restful part of my night is over.

And ancient book of wisdom says “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, whatever is worthy of praise, think about those things.” That’s a great way to feed our mind. I think if we’d resolve to filter our thoughts through those Seven Thought Filters and only allow our minds to focus on things that can get through those seven filters we’d go along way toward feeding our selves thoughts that are delightful to wake up to; and ones you can roll over and go back to sleep with.

A tool I use to help me go to bed with right thoughts is a gratitude journal. On my nightstand is a notebook in which I attempt to daily (some days I don’t get it done) record what I am grateful for. It’s not fancy, and is most often one sentence. Each entry always starts with “I am grateful……” and finishes with the thing that first comes to mind. It can be something profound, but is usually something mundanely simple but important to me. This is a simple tool you might begin using to help you put your mind in a healthy space before you go to sleep.

The ancient writer said “take every thought captive to make it obedient.” Is your mind captivated by thoughts that are worthy? If not, why don’t you change it and start dwelling on things that can get through the Seven Thought Filters.

It hit me like a ton of bricks: You oughta “Pray, and not faint.”

I’ve heard and read that verse hundreds of times. It never mattered until last night. I was laying in my bed stewing over a problem at work, one that I can’t fix. Try though I might, I can’t muster up the power to fix it. It frustrates me. I toss and turn. I speak negatively to myself “Now you’ve done it. You can’t fix this one. You’re gonna fail. You’ll go down in flames. Loser.”

Then out of nowwhere (really?) came the thought “Pray and not faint.”

In Luke 18 Jesus was teaching his followers about the importance of having substantial faith instead of giving up. Here I was having “give up” talk with myself.

“Pray, and don’t faint.”

When I face trouble, its usually business related, and there’s usually a dollar figure attached to it. When its those “write a check and cure the problem” type of troubles its easy. When its those “can’t write a check big enough to cure that problem” then its time for worry, fear, haunting, voices from the past, and the sinking feeling that I am swimming in an ocean of waves so turbulent I can’t keep my head above water.

More self talk here….”Barry, you are an idiot. The One who created the Universe with His spoken word knows and cares for you. He invites you to cast all your cares on Him. He implores you to seek His help and here you are trying to swim through this by yourself. You know boy, it’s kind of stupid to go it alone. Yeah, I know you are strong and tough, but why retain the stress. Why not just call on God to help you? Why look to your obviously limited ability to fix things instead of to His unlimited ability? Why faint?”

Pride, I guess. And habit. It’s a habit that “I” have got to “figure out what to do” and that “I” am the “solution.” It’s a bad habit.

So, I need to change. I need to PRAY FIRST. That’ll be good. I’m tired of cracking my head on the floor everytime I faint.

I ask myself that question ALL THE TIME. Occasionally I like the answer. Sometimes I don’t. Usually I just don’t know for sure. But in a recent time of reflection I concluded the answer is YES!  I am/We are making a difference. Here’s some examples:

• There’s a guy who works on our corporate team who as of August has made twice as much money as he made in an entire year in his old job. In the two years he’s been with us he’s hated me (not literally), been offended plenty of times (it really hacked him off when I told him he wasn’t a salesman, he was just an “order taker,” but then he came back later and said “you were right”) and on occasion been beaten on (again, not literally) mercilessly. But today he sent me an email and said “I am amazed at how far financially I have come, having achieved monetary feats I didn’t even think were possible” and “I also think about how much better I am in my work, how much stronger an overall employee I am. I owe it all to you two.” He got that almost right. He is a stronger employee, but much more he is a stronger person. He’s changed the way he thinks, and from those thoughts have flowed the progress he’s made in his life. he’s made progress in part because he’s adopted the posture of a learner. (My friend Ernie Hughes says “The enemy of learning is knowing.”) He wrote to me today “When you submit, it is a lot of fun, as I learned this year.” But probably what made me feel the best was a few weeks ago when he told me about taking his family on a day trip to a theme park and about how it was no longer a financial stress for him to be able to do that.

We’re making a difference!

• There’s a husband and wife who are both members of our team. She’s starting her 13th year with us, and her husband has been with us 10 years. They are great people, the kind the world needs more of. At age 40, having never had children of their own they decided to adopt. Soon thereafter they became parents of three siblings, a 9 year old daugther, a 13 year old son, and a 14 year old daughter! Wow! Several weeks ago while talking about the kids she spoke of their strong financial status and about the things she’d learned and about the way her thinking had changed during her time on our team. She cried as she said “You’ve made this possible.” I think she overstates the case. But certainly God has blessed many of our team members financially and intellectually, particularly in the past few years as we’ve stretched and grown in ways none of us ever imagined.

We’re making a difference!

• There are over a 100 people (maybe closer to 150) who have food in their belly and a roof over their head paid for as a product of their work on our team. I’m proud of that fact alone. But I’m also proud that during a time of great economic turmoil when many are without jobs, these people—mostly in the construction trades of all places—are making more money than most of them ever have in their lives.

We’re making a difference!

• I finally got to spend some time with a guy who has worked for us off and on for a couple of years. In our conversations about life and God I discovered he didn’t understand what it meant to have a relationship with God through Jesus’ substitutionary penalty payment of death on the cross. Through our conversations he came into a relationship with Jesus, began attending church, and began studying his Bible.

We’re making a difference!

• A lady came in to interview for a job; one that I’m not sure we have available. When I asked her why she said “Because Shawn has told me this is a great place to work.”

We must be making a difference!

• One of our subcontractors took my partner to lunch today just to say thank you. He is planning a cruise with his family. Couldn’t ever have done it up until now because he didn’t have the money. He’s making more money today than he ever has in his life. They got into a big discussion about kids and my partner was able to teach him about instilling confidence in his children. Hmmmm. Confidence—one of the key components of our Core Values which are practically a “Statement of Faith” at our company.

Sounds like a difference to me!

• A middle-aged executive just resigned from a 14 year carreer at one of the world’s largest accounting firms to join our management team. I don’t know what was in his cool-aid but he must think we’re making a difference.

I’ve always wanted to make a difference.

To tell the truth, I probably have always defined making a difference in spiritual terms………masses of people developing faith in Jesus……or in miraculous terms……people being healed……..or in physical terms like providing for orphans or medical care for tribal people in the jungle. We’re not doing much in those areas. But we’re still making a huge difference.

In recent months I’ve began to see how we can take money I’ve previously been advising clients to mail off to Wall Street and instead keep those dollars working here at home through a concept called “Local Dollars Making a Local Difference.®” My clients like it, it makes a difference in our community, and just this week a banker from Arkansas told me how Walmart—the mass retailer—is pioneering a similar “back to local” project. What we’re doing with this “local” thing is going to pay huge dividends in our community and for our clients. It’ll really make a difference!

When it comes to making a difference, if I told the truth it would probably be that I always wanted to be Billy Graham. It appears though that God just wanted Barry Watts. Barry making a difference, teaching his team, sharing a vision, touching people, growing their lives bigger than they thought possible.

I/we are making a difference. It’s a great life! And I’m honored to live it!

A Dios sea la gloria!

Now quit wasting oxygen! Go make a difference!

In our American rush to success we entrepreneurs err critically in trying to grow our businesses when in fact we shouldn’t grow our business at all; we should grow our people and let them grow the business.

This is difficult for many of us to comprehend because our entrepreneurial careers were often started as a one-man show where if you didn’t grow the business today you were not going to eat tomorrow. I get that. But as soon as you begin building a team it is important to shift a portion of your mental and time resources toward planting the seeds of multi-generational growth in your followers, rather than continuing to just plant your own personal crop for harvest.

I’m not saying you should send them to a conference or workshop. That can be fine, or not. I’m saying you need to begin teaching them how to replace you. You do want to be replaced, don’t you? You do want to spend less time doing things you don’t want to do and more time doing the things you want to do, don’t you? Then, you’ve got to replace yourself with someone who can do all those other things that you aren’t so good at or don’t enjoy.

Twenty five years into my career, I’m just now grasping this concept at a level where it is meaningful and makes a difference for me. (I’m a slow learner.) It’s always been a nice idea that sounded good in books and from business guru’s, but I didn’t have a clue what it really meant that I should do. Now I do, so I want to share that hoping you can accelerate your achievement and increase your difference-making sooner.

When I speak of growing people who are on your team, I’m talking first about being sure they understand their job responsibilities. This involves the implementation of SYSTEMS. A system is simply “the process by which do something in the same way every time.” Because we entrepreneurs are creative by nature we tend not to follow systems. We’re easily bored and so we may do the same task a dozen different ways to keep ourselves entertained. However, when handing responsibility to team members we mustn’t burden them with an obligation to be creative—which often leads to inconsistency in results. Instead we must say “This is exactly how I want this done every time. Follow this procedure and you will not fail.”

W. Edwards Deming taught that failure was almost always a result of a break down in a system, rather than a people problem. If you have a system and perform the same activity in the same way every time, you’ll be able to predictably produce consistent results. It is that resulting consistency from team members that is required for you to replace yourself.

Teaching people to run your system is the key to getting consistent predictable results. You do have a system, don’t you? Of course you do. You just may not have realized it and written it down. So begin thinking “systemically” and you’ll likely capture little systems and ways that you always do things in a certain way that you never realized. That is an AH HA moment and you are now a guru!

Teaching people to run a system may be the first step in their career with you, but in order to grow them you must also begin to teach them how to think. “Who am I to teach them how to think” you may ask? It’s simple, you are the teacher. You are the better thinker, aren’t you? If you aren’t then you’ve already found someone better than you to whom you might want to consider handing over the reins and getting out of the way. That’s the goal: for your thinking to become obsolete because you have replaced yourself with people who are better than you. Meanwhile, you know things they don’t, and they’ll never grow in their capability until you teach them what you know and HOW YOU THINK.

Often when we run up against an unusual situation or challenge I’ll say to a member of my team “Here’s how I want you to think about this.” If they are “dull-eyed” or too busy talking to listen, learn, and develop thinking skill it then tells me that they are ultimately not promotable.

It is a lot easier to bark out orders than it is to teach thinking. But if you are ever going to be able to step aside, let others lead, and develop unstoppable momentum you’ve got to help them develop critical thinking skill. Doing so first involves helping them see how you think, what process your brain goes through, and then how and why you achieve a conclusion. Then, it’s time to put their own brains to work by asking questions about their thinking and decision making—typically hard questions—and critiquing their answers and thought processes. If you’ve got a team member who can stand up to and shine under that scrutiny, then you may just have a winner!

How do you teach them to think?

I’ll tell you one of the methods we use. Our company has six core values. These aren’t just platitudes developed by executives in some group-hug-in-the-woods retreat experience. These are the core, killer, non-negotiables; inviolable principles around which we make all of our decisions. (if you’d like a copy of our core values, email me.)

Each month our training meeting (you do have regularly scheduled training meeting where you teach your team, don’t you?) is built around a particular core value. For example, in January and July we train on Core Value #1: It’s About the People Who Depend on Me. In February and August we’ll train on Core Value #2.

“Don’t you run out of training material if you keep talking about those same things over and over?” No. Not so far. It kind of reminds me of the preacher who preached the same sermon Sunday after Sunday. When his parishioners complained he said to them “When you prove to me that you ‘get it’ and start doing what I am teaching you in that sermon, then I’ll move on to the next one.” A good philosophy!

Fortunately, my team gets it. By going back to the same topics over and over and interacting over them together yet again, we mine more deeply each time for the nuggets and kernels of truth that change the way we think corporately and individually. It’s those thought shifts that grow people, and its growing people that will grow our business.

Tomorrow I’ll be teaching my team on Core Value #4 Initiative: Be Solutions-Oriented. I’m going to start by asking the question “Why do we humans tend to complain rather than to help?” I’m going into training not with answers, but mostly with questions. My team will come up with answers (solutions) and we’ll all be better-off for it.

Being an entrepreneur in these challenging times isn’t for sissies. It’s a lot easier to just take a pay check from somebody else who is taking all the risk. But entrepreneurs were born to do this. We’d pay for the privilege. Part of the opportunity is to develop people.

If we’ll develop them, grow them, and teach them to think better they’ll build our businesses for us and in the process they’ll build themselves. Their families, their communities, and their lives will be much richer for it. In the end, they’ll gather around our coffin and say “I am better, because I knew him.” That’s about the best we could ask for.