"FINDING FAITH IN A WORLD OF CHANGE"
PACIFIC OIL CONFERENCE
GRAND SIERRA RESORT, RENO, NEVADA, SEPTEMBER 19, 2007

We are living in exponential times.

Everything has an interactive, symbiotic relationship with everything else in the world. Politics affects economics which affects technology which affects economics which affects politics. Spirituality can affect politics and no one believed that until 9/11 and now I don't have to talk about that any more.

Why are people afraid of change? People overestimate the value of what they are giving up and they underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving it up.

If your entire life's history has taught you that change is beneficial, why do you ignore that lesson?

I've learned that the moment you're willing to risk the least, that's the moment you need to be willing to risk everything.

Life has a funny way of causing you to have relationships with people who will allow you do do things later in life that you would never be able to do.

Everywhere you look you see this if you look for it. It's there all the time. But most of us live such busy lives we don't see it. We don't hear it. We don't pay attention to it.

The meek shall inherit the earth. For most Americans, meek means weak. That's not what it meant when it was written. A meek horse was a horse that submitted to the will of the master.

To grow, sometimes you have to move into unfamiliar territory. We like the familiar, the control, the safe, the tried, the true. The pain has to get so bad, in most cases, to force us to change.

The truth is you can't get the old idea out until you put the new idea in.

Everywhere I go, people are searching for meaning.

Sometimes, the path God wants you to walk isn't about you. Sometimes, there are secondary effects.

Life is a continuous training experience. What you do today gets you ready for what is coming tomorrow.

When we're not what we were meant to be, we know it. We're homesick. We're nervous. We're anxious. We know it.

You don't get to the right place by going down the wrong direction. Your inner life is a reflection of your outer life and your outer life is a reflection of your inner life.

For most people, their aspirations are truth in their own mind. What they aspire to be they believe they already are.

I'm not going to know your values by what you tell me. I'm going to know your values by watching how you spend your time. Because you're not going to spend your time on something you don't think is important.

When something happens, my first instinct is to ask, okay, where's the lesson?

There are three ways of living. There is procrastination: put off to tomorrow what you could do today. The deferred life plan. Why are you waiting? It makes no sense. You use tomorrow to put off living today. The road to life is filled with good intentions. But most of us don't get what time really means until it's too late.

Then there are the "yes but" people. They see the problems in life. They are afraid so they try to play it safe. When you see the future as a problem, you find problems in the future. You can't live the best if you expect the worst.

And then there are those who see promise in the future.

It doesn't matter what I say. It matters what you hear.