“In a very real way, ownership is the essence of leadership. When you are ridiculously in charge, then you own whatever happens in a company, school.”

A good test of a relationship is how a person responds to the word ‘no.’ Love respects ‘no,’ control does not.

If you are building a culture where honest expectations are communicated and peer accountability is the norm, then the group will address poor performance and attitudes.

Good pain is pain in the service of a purpose. Bad pain is pain endured because we are resisting a needed growth step.

When you encourage someone, it literally changes their brain chemistry to be able to perform, sends fuel to the brain.

To rescue people from the natural consequences of their behavior is to render them powerless.

When truth presents itself, the wise person see the light, takes it in, and makes adjustments. The fool tries to adjust the truth so he does not have to adjust to it.

Leave your pride, ego, and narcissism somewhere else. Reactions from those parts of you will reinforce your children’s most primitive fears.

One of the worst things you can die with is potential.

Love can only exist where freedom and responsibility are operating.

You will not grow without attempting to do things you are unable to do.

If your boundary training consists only of words, you are wasting your breath. But if you ‘do’ boundaries with your kids, they internalize the experiences, remember them, digest them, and make them part of how they see reality.

The amount of truth a relationship can handle is proportional to the amount of perceived love that’s present.

The human heart will seek to be known, understood, and connected with above all else. If you do not connect, the ones you care about will find someone who will.

If people are really narcissistic or have a need to be seen as more than they really are, or to be admired as having it all together, then they cannot be followed and trusted by others.

Encourage literally came from “in courage.” The courage is put “into” you from outside. Our character and abilities grow through internalizing from others what we do not possess in ourselves.

For someone’s character to grow, it has to be free from internal attack. Falling down never stopped children from developing. But getting yelled at, criticized, and put down can stop them for life.

The only way you can influence your fate is to put your soul into your performance and hope it registers with the audience.

It’s easier to avoid the snares of love than to escape once you are in that net whose cords and knots are strong; but even so, enmeshed, entangled, you can still get out unless, poor fool, you stand in your own way.

I’ve never been really great at trusting anybody, just because of the way I grew up.

Dating is primarily a numbers game. People usually go through a lot of people to find good relationships. That’s just the way it is.

In one way or another, it is a common mistake to think transformation is all in the will. And it isn’t! It’s in the mind – how we think, what occupies our minds, and so forth. It’s in our feelings. It’s in our body.

In fact, sometimes the only way they’ll ever exist is if you make them yourself.

We chose a place all the way at the end of an industrial park.

Two ways of thinking: Human kingdom and human cleverness or God’s kingdom and God’s cleverness.