All posts by Keith Thompson

Alone in a crowd

Life

Not everyone in a crowd feels like they are part of the crowd. I was at the University of Alabama yesterday for a hotel grand opening. You had to drive through the University to get to the hotel and the place is spectacular. I am a Georgia fan so I felt like I was spying on the enemy. Ha

I watched all the activities on campus with the students playing Frisbee, drinking at the frat houses and walking to and fro in their Abercrombie shorts and flip flops. I thought about what a great time this must be for the students and wondered if they even knew how special this time was in their life. They will never have a period like this again once they graduate and get jobs and start life. There are the cool kids that have probably been cool from birth and I have often wondered how that happens. You know the ones, that just are the life of the party and have all the right actions, words and personality and just blend in perfectly and are accepted everywhere they go. They are the popular ones. They are everywhere you go and in every job, neighborhood, church and hang out.

It was so peaceful looking at these kids at the University reading under trees, hanging out in groups and eating at the restaurants and coffee shops. It looked perfect with no stress and probably very little obligations. All they had to do was study and graduate.

Then I realized there were the kids that were by themselves and not part of the fraternity houses or the Frisbee games with friends and they were the serious ones. They may have even been lonely in the crowd. There are just some people who are happier not going with the crowd and rather, just doing their own thing. If you look through history, many and probably most of the real leaders, inventors, Presidents, CEOs and the influential folks were not the popular ones. It is most likely that most of them would be classified as the non-cool type.

I was with a publicly traded company once and like the college example, it had all the perks of people, events and comradery. It should been perfect for me but for whatever reason, I was the like the college kid that wasn’t cool. I wasn’t playing Frisbee with the popular kids. And you what? I was really perfectly ok with it because I knew who I was and I was not influenced by a moment in time.

Being cool only gets you so far. It works well when no one is making money and life as they know it is one big social event like being at the University of Alabama. When you get in the real world, all the coolness seems to fade and then real life sets in and they know that they have to compete with a different set of standards and being the life of the party is clearly not enough.

I guess if I was going to speak to the kids that were walking alone at the college I would tell them to keep to their moral principles and be who they are and never try to be someone else. College is 4 years at the beginning of being an adult and life itself is much more defined after college when people can see who you really are. KT

If you could hit pause

Life

If you could hit pause and stay in one period of time in your life, when would you choose?

Would that be in high school, college, right after you graduated, when you first got married, when your children were small, when you got your first job, in your early 20’s, late 20’s, 40’s, when your children graduated from college, when they got married, when they left home, when you became an empty nester, when you first retired, etc. Got the idea?

There is a period when we all were or are the happiest. If we could go back to that time period and stay in that period, when would that be for you?

I guess the real question is how you get your life to the point that you would choose now versus sometime in the past. How do you get your joy back? How do you become all that you want to be today? I am convinced it is not about money, jobs, titles, houses or status. It is really much simpler than that. It is about when you were the happiest and had the most peace in your life. When you could laugh out loud, feel, cry, and enjoy little moments and when you and your family were full of hope, love and joy.

That’s it. You would choose when you were at the most peace, had the most joy and filled with the most hope for the future.

How do you get it back?

Obviously we cannot go back and we only have today and the future. I believe in God’s perfect will, he would want us to choose today. He would want us to be full of joy, peace and hope today. So the question is how we become “today” people instead of “yesterday” people. Well, I believe it begins with beginning and I think beginning starts with a real direct conversation with God. He wants to hear your pain, heartache, problems and hear what your hope for the future is. Side note here, I have never seen God look at his watch while I am talking to him. Ok, back to the blog. At some point we all have to choose a path. The path that will take us forward or the path that will keep us looking behind. Everyone has different issues that need to be overcome and different dreams that need to be restored. We all have trust issues and keep our hearts covered with a veil so we won’t get hurt.

If there is ever a time to sit down in a quiet place, turn off the phone, and deal with your life, I believe it is now. If not today, when? Do you want to be in the same place 5 years from now? If your answer is no, then take a few hours by yourself and get out a writing pad and while praying and talking to God, write down your dreams and desires, hurts, fears, and past and also write down what you hear from God. Write it down because I am telling by experience that God will give you what to write down and it will be direct from the almighty. I can also tell you by experience, that what you write down on that day will become so very precious to you for many years.

For me, my period of pause would be now. I know it is going to change because life is like that but if I could stay in any period of my life, it would now. KT

One more day

Career, Family, Life

Life can change so quickly. Don’t wait to do what you know you need to do. Every single one of us knows in our heart what changes we need to make in our lives. There are no gray areas, no questions and everyone knows what to do. We just sometimes don’t want to do it.

I have attended many funerals for people far too young to have passed away. I suspect that with many of them, they woke up that morning and did not know it was their last morning. The bible says to not put off till tomorrow what you can do today. That is very sound advice for family, health, business and life in general. It doesn’t mean you have to accomplish the full thing, it just means you have to start. It is the starting where I believe God gives us a special grace and a special anointing for that moment because he knows it is the most fragile period. The starting point is the hardest part.

I believe each person who is at the one yard line of life, if they have their mental faculties, want one more day. If they were given that one more day, they would tell everyone in their life that they love them, they would do the best they could to fix a strained relationship. They would do the most important things for their family so there would be no question, they were loved.

There are some things I can change in my life and some I can’t. For instance, I am ugly and I stutter, but there is nothing I can do about those things. It is how God saw me in his eye before I was conceived in my mother’s womb. He knew a thousand years ago exactly what I would look like and be like and talk like and the precise time era I would live in. On grave stones there is a beginning date and an ending date and usually there is a dash between the dates. God knows the length of the dash and he knows exactly when we will be called home. Yes, called home. That is what heaven is, our ultimate home and he knows exactly when each of us will open the front door to that home.

Don’t put off doing what you know you need to do. In fact, do it or start it before you go to bed tonight and ask God almighty to give you the strength and will power to see the decision through. We all have fears and anxiety and all hide things behind the veil so other people can’t see it but we know what needs to be done.

Face the fear of the thing you are most afraid of and I believe you find out that it is simply a shadow. Psalms 23 says; that we shouldn’t have fear when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Let me say that again. The valley of the shadow of death. Have you ever seen your shadow? It is much larger that you actually are. It looks scary because it is so large. That is what God is talking about in Psalm 23. He says to not let the size of the shadow scare you into thinking it is so big. The thing you probably fear the most, when you face it head on, is probably not that big after all. KT

Writing an outline

Career

Don’t laugh, but when I retire from selling hotels I want to try my hand at writing books. The kind of books that intrigue me are detective novels and suspense books. I read on average a couple of books a week. The authors I really enjoy are like John Sanford, Lee Childs, Vince Flynn, Brad Thor etc. I feel pretty certain that what I write will pale in comparison to these authors, but I want to give it a go.

In all the books you read about how to write effectively, they all say you need an outline to start with. This will probably give you some insight to the quality of books I will write because I cannot think through outlines. Ha. I have tried but the computer chip in my brain just doesn’t work that way. Even with each blog post I write, I literally do not know the full structure of each post until I get into it. Many times, even the blog post takes a different route than what I first thought it would. I literally only can write and create a message or story when I start writing.

Many times in business I will just start writing an email or a message and let it take me to where it needs to go. My brain simply doesn’t not work on the outline program. So maybe when I write the first book it will start with a police detective and end up with a ski boat. Ha. I may be one of these guys who write only one book that ends up being sold at the dollar store.

Why am I telling you this? Think about life for a moment. Many people get lost in the plan or the outline and never get to the real life part. They have the perfect plan and the perfect outline but cannot shift gears and put it into motion. You have seen these type people, that have everything perfectly organized and in place and every idea or thought is written down and changed and rewritten until it is perfect. The problem is they cannot get past the outline stage. In life, many people only have the outline but never put it into practical life experience.

I am not saying to just go off into life and education and jobs without a plan. What I am saying is to be honest with yourself if you are stuck in the planning stage and unable to get into motion. I had this guy years ago that worked for me that was so organized it was a little scary. He knew every answer and had every document and every file and everything he needed to succeed. The problem was he never went out the front door. He was stuck in the planning and outline stage of life.

Sometimes we just need to go with what we have and trust the Lord that he will direct our path. In our line of work which is sales, the most important call you will ever make is a new sales call. The new client and the new project is the life blood of what we do. If a salesman only works on the stuff he already has and does not continually fill the pipeline, he/she will become stagnant and most likely fail in our business. In our business it is the voice of a new client that keeps us in the game.

See I told you, I had no idea when I started this blog where it would end up. Ha. KT

Milestones and moments

Family, Life

In life there are many more moments than milestones. There are only so many milestones in a person’s life. Examples would be graduations, marriage, children births, certain anniversaries, promotions, retirement etc. Examples of moments are what happened today and yesterday and last week. It’s the hug of a grandchild, the uplifting word from a friend, the peace of sleeping well, a good book in front of the fireplace, a spouse that kisses you each morning before work, a child that tells you they love you, the success of an accomplishment, and the joy of a job well done. These could go on for page after page.

What I am saying here is that to many people, quality is more important than quantity. Ask your child if they would rather have a fancy vacation once a year with you or have you pray with them each night as you tuck them into bed. I will tell you that quantity of time together is far more important than an every now and then quality time. Life is in the simple moments when there is no video camera rolling in background. It is setting on the side of your child’s bed and making sure they know you love them. It’s the holding them when their heart is hurt over some boy or girl they liked at school. It is doing the right thing in front of them so they can see who you really are.

In my experience, the teaching does not end when the children leave home. In fact the teaching and good examples are even more important after they have been exposed to living around other people.

Don’t let your life become centered around a destination. Let it be a joy journey. Don’t just decide you will be happy when this event or that milestone is reached. If you do, when you are older you will look back over the years with regret. You will see that you put your joy milestones ahead of special moments. When you pass away and your life on earth is over, the most meaningful things your children will remember will be the simple moments when they felt safe and secure in your love. KT