The Right Way To Be Wrong

To err is human… -Alexander Pope Alexander Pope knew us pretty well. We all mess up. We all fail. It’s a given for all humans. How we handle our failure and mistakes is what sets people apart. How can we respond to our own failures in ways that lead to growth and success? To understand […]

How Good Questions Build Strong Relationships

The heart of this blog is relationships, how to enjoy them, and how to repair them when they have broken down. For that reason, I write a good deal about communication. Communication is the life blood of relationships. Couples that communicate well tend to have strong marriages. Families that communicate well handle adversity better than […]

Not All Communication Is Relational: How To Know If You Are Relating When You Communicate

As a minister and counselor, I’ve sat across from countless couples who were seeking to restore, repair, or rebuild their families. When I asked what they felt the biggest problem in their relationship was, the overwhelming majority answered, “communication”. Everyone knows that communication is an essential component of healthy relationships, but did you know that […]

3 Ways To Have Healthy Debates (Without Being A Politician)

Depending on when you are reading this post, either the Republican primary debate is about to happen or has just happened. It’s been all over the news, possibly because there’s not a ton of other news, or maybe because there are 72 candidates. For all of their hype, political debates rarely deliver what they promise. […]

How To Live With And Enjoy The Extroverts In Your Life

Having healthy relationships means learning to relate to lots of different kinds of people. This can be tough sometimes, because most of us generally assume that the things that work for me will work when relating to others. That’s not always the case. In fact, more times than not we are drawn to people who […]

Why Your Use Of The Truth May Be Pushing People Away

Last year a recurring problem in Somalia made the world news. People throughout the world were reaching out and sending food, medicine, and other critical supplies to help starving people in that country. The supplies, however, rarely reached the people that needed them so desperately. They were often intercepted by the very warlords and militias […]

The One Thing That All Smart People Know

The most brilliant people on the planet all share one piece of knowledge. They all know something that adds to their greatness and allows them to achieve remarkable things. What is that one thing they know? They know that they don’t know everything and thus greatness never occurs in isolation. To put it another way, […]

How To “Really” Love The People You Love

I fit perfectly with the stereotype of a young man born and raised in the south: I loved my mama. My mom was incredible. She was sacrificial and loving in ways I only hope someday to be. When my mom was hit by a recurrence of cancer I made the 6 hour trip to see […]