There are 35 posts filed in Excerpts (this is page 4 of 4).
Thanks to our capacity to adapt to ever greater fame and fortune, yesterday’s luxuries can soon become today’s necessities and tomorrow’s relics.
Excerpt from The Funds, Friends, and Faith of Happy People by David G. Myers.
The quality of life does not depend on happiness alone, but also on what one does to be happy. If one fails to develop goals that give meaning to one’s existence, if one does not use the mind to its fullest, then good feelings fulfill just a fraction of the potential we possess….Without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved.
Excerpt from Finding Flow by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.
John Schnatter is the founder, and up until 2007, was the CEO of Papa John’s; a business that is currently worth about $750m and on it’s way to becoming a billion-dollar company.
Below is a short but inspiring excerpt from an article that was written about him in 1997 by Nation’s Restaurant News.
“I don’t deviate much from my schedule,” he says. On a typical day he gets up at 5.30a.m., lifts weights and runs three to six miles before arriving at his office between 7.45 a.m. and 8.30 a.m. He takes care of administrative matters and meetings in the mornings before either having lunch with one of the officers or swimming laps.
In the afternoons he returns phone calls and visits stores or attends more meetings. Some days he gets home between 7p.m. and 9 p.m., and on others he gets there around 5 p.m. to spend time with his wife and two daughters.
Later in the evenings he reads for 90 minutes. “I read books on psychology and why people think the way they do,” he says. “I also read the history of successful companies. I read about one book a week.”
On Saturdays he either works or spends time with his children. Sunday is church-and-family day.
“I keep things very basic and simple because building a business and raising a family are plenty if you want to do it right,” he says. “Occasionally, I do a few speeches but very little socializing or parties.”
His minister, the Rev. Robert Russell, pastor of Southeast Christian Church, who is also a golfing partner, describes Schnatter as “very thorough and intense in everything he does. He’s always trying to grow. He has a strong work ethic from youth and solid moral values.”
Russell also notes that Schnatter is a generous contributor to the church and the community. His largest donation to date was a $5 million pledge toward building a new, $56 million stadium at the University of Louisville, to be named Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium.
Focused as he is on work, family and church, Schnatter says he eeps his life as simple as his pizza concept. That enables him to never lose sight of one of his primary Papa John’s goals: “We want to be the biggest [pizza] delivery company in the world.”
If his performance so far is any indication, he just may make it.
The first time I heard ‘Bright Life‘ (a song by Rie Fu), the following line resonated with me so much, I had to blog it:
Try not to think about getting credit for doing what you were born to do.
Why? Because the need to bask in glory and praise can get in the way of doing authentic work.
I was reading a journal article on business ethics and came across an interesting footnote worth thinking about:
Blaise Pascal was a seventeenth-century French mathematician and philosopher who argued that we do not know whether or not God exists, but we should gamble on the fact that God does exist. This is a better wager, since if God exists and we acknowledge that, we will be granted eternal life. If God does not exist it does not matter anyway.
