You have heard people opine about what they think the secret (s) to success are, but I want to tell you what I believe the secret to failure is.

The secret to failure in my humble opinion is trying to please everybody. It’s a recipe for failure because I don’t care how great your leadership skills are, you never make everyone happy with your decisions. There will always be the naysayers, the complainers, the argumentative group, the disenfranchised, the ones that always seem put-out, angry, disgruntled and the ones that simply live to create strife. They are everywhere and, in every organization, and unfortunately in many families.

At the end of the day, all you can do is make the best decisions you think are correct and just try as hard as you can to anticipate conflict, but still do what you think is right. It’s great when our national leaders do the hard thing and make the hard decisions knowing full well that there will be a push back.

There are some people that no matter what you do, they will talk badly about you. We have a few leaders today that could come out and find a cure for cancer and people would still talk bad about them. At first that concerns you but after the 10^th time they counteract you and talk bad about you, they simply lose all their credibility. That in a nutshell is what is happening to many of our national leaders today. At some point you know you will never make the other side happy; you simply quit trying and that unfortunately is also what is happening across American today.

Mathew 5:9 says, ‘blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” There is a big difference between peacemakers and peacekeepers. Peacemakers are the ones that make the long-term hard decisions that may seem wrong for the moment but over time will be proven to be the right decision. They are the peacemakers that hopefully will be followed by peacekeepers. It’s the makers that do the hard work hoping that the keepers will continue the peace.

So, the secret to failure in my albeit humble opinion, is to try to please everybody all the time. You have to take a stand every now and then and then when you have done all you can do to stand (Ephesians 6;13), you stand, therefore. KT