Morning Briefings

Hope is often the most important gift we can impart to each other. When you’ve suffered a great deal and yet manage to emerge with your strength and hope intact, you can be of tremendous assistance to others.

– Anthony DeStefano
Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To

Poll Question: Is Prayer a Regular Part of Your Life As an Entrepreneur? 82.91 percent answered yes in the 2007 survey.

–
Startup Nation

If anyone lacks in wisdom, let him ask God, who is always ready to give a bountiful supply to all.

– James 1:5

Oops, sorry: Charter Communications officials believe a software error during routine maintenance caused the company to delete the contents of 14,000 customer e-mail accounts.

– Jim Salter, AP, as reported by
Techmeme.com

It doesn’t matter if you’re the greatest guitar player in the world, if you’re not enlightened, forget it.

– George Harrison from
Zen Guitar

When the spirit is present, there is no job that doesn’t become noble and holy. There is a way of drawing cartoons, or of working with wood, or emptying bins which shows that love has been placed there, as well as attention to detail and a little spark of something personal–and there is no human understanding or task in which such a personal ingredient cannot flourish. The other way, that of loathing one’s work and despising it instead of redeeming it and transforming it, is wrong.

– Francis Fernandez
In Conversation with God

Every godly leader understands she is just a servant using her natural gifts while waiting to be ushered into God’s purpose and presence.

– Victoria Lowe
10 Spiritual Principles of Successful Women

As Economy Slows, Reputation Takes on Added Meaning: Rushing to the scene are lots of experts with advice about sustaining or repairing a corporate reputation in tough times. Their tips may seem obvious, or even preachy in boom times, but when the economy stalls, nervous bosses are more eager for help.

– George Anders, The Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2008

When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’

– Martin Luther King, Jr.
I Have a Dream…(speech)

For better or worse, it’s highly likely that many of the events and ideas about your life haven’t worked out exactly according to plan.

– Tony Dungy
Quiet Strength Men’s Study Bible

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.

– Mark 1:35

Do not feel overwhelmed by the length of this journey. All you ever need do is focus on one thing: what you are doing. Stay on the path and put one foot in front of the other–that is all. There is joy in the struggle.

– Philip Toshio Sudo
Zen Guitar

Farewell to a titan: Carl Karcher, who parlayed a modest hot dog stand into a multimillion-dollar fast-food enterprise, died Friday. He was 90. ‘I interviewed Carl regularly in the mid-1980s. Everyone who met him received two things: a coupon for a free Carl’s Jr. hamburger and a copy of the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi,’ according to

– The Orange County Register’s
Jan Norman

At the heart of a truly great business there is a lack of busyness and the presence of a humble, determined visionary.

– Abbot Christopher Jamison
Finding Sanctuary: Monastic Steps for Everyday Life

McDonald’s Takes on A Weakened Starbucks: Food Giant to Install Specialty Coffee Bars, Sees $1 Billion in Business. Starting this year, the company’s nearly 14,000 U.S. locations will install coffee bars with ‘baristas’ serving cappuccinos, lattes, mochas, and the Frappe, similar to Starbuck’s ice-blended Frappuccino.

– Janet Adamy, The Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2008

Housing Construction Hits 16-Year Low: The overall construction decline left home building 24.2 percent below the level of activity a year ago.

– Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer

When you’re really good at something, you always feel that you can do better.

– Lindsey Buckingham
VH1 Classic Albums: Fleetwood Mac

There are useful and necessary things to be done that are best done by old people, partly because old people have greater perspective of experience, but mostly because the things that need to be done do not fit into a career, or they are too risky for young or mid-career people.

– from
Reflections on Leadership: How Robert K. Greenleaf’s Theory of Servant-Leadership Influenced Today’s Top Management Thinkers

I will be what I will be–and I am now what I am. My power is with me, not with tomorrow. I will work in rhythm with myself, not what I ’should’ be. God revealed his name to Moses, and it was I Am What I Am.

– Hugh Prather
Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person

I don’t want to do things to sell myself on myself. I don’t want to do nice things for people so that I will be ‘nice.’ I don’t want to work to make money, I want to work to work. Today I don’t want to live for, I want to live.

– Hugh Prather
Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person

It’s not that the Christian faith has been tried and found difficult, but rather it’s been found difficult and left untried.

– G.K. Chesterton

Mine was a Disney World sort of life –inauthentic, narrow, utterly predictable, and largely devoid of any real meaning. The end to this illusion would come to me, as it has for so many, by means of a personal crisis.

– Joseph Jaworski
Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership