Arnold Palmer was called the King of golf because of his key role in making golf successful in the 1960’s and establishing it on TV. Palmer was followed on the golf course by his army and was the first great athletic hero of the Television Era. Palmer passed away this year at age 87.
Palmer was extensively quoted during his life and Jack Freed used on of his quotes in a recent blog post to his blog Jack’s Winning Words.
“Success in golf depends less on strength of body than on strength of mind and character.” (Arnold Palmer)
I would submit that Arnie’s saying is good advice for life in general. Success in life is not about physical things, such as strength or beauty; it’s much more about the strength of one’s mind and character. We’ve probably all known someone who was very beautiful or handsome in their looks but totally insecure and perhaps shy or withdrawn. Certainly most of us have seen many examples of very strong or athletically-gifted people who
failed in life, due to severe character flaws. Certainly Mahatma Gandhi was not strong of body ans not all that good looking, but he had tremendous strength of character and mind and was wildly successful in his efforts to free India from Colonial oppression.
Dicionary.com defines character as –
the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing.
So, character is what makes you unique; and your character can be viewed as having good or bad traits or features. You might be described as kind, gentle and loving or perhaps arrogant, loud and self-absorbed. You could be seen by others as a saint or a sinner, a winner or a loser, or trustworthy or flaky.
Lik
e lifting weights to build strength, there are things that we can do to improve our minds through training and education. We can be more ready for things that may come at us in life. We can also strengthen our characters.The key to developing and having a strong character, to my way of thinking, is to base your character on a strong foundation of faith and belief. Character built on the teachings of Jesus will make you stop before acting and consider what the “right” thing to do is in the situation. A mind trained the teachings of the Good News makes decisions based upon asking the simple question that has been printed on millions of posters and bracelets – “What would Jesus 
Do?” If you can’t see Jesus going down the path that you are about to take; why would you go down that path yourself?
Many might say, “Jesus was perfect; why should I hold myself up to a standard that I can never achieve?” The answer is found in the benefits that accrue when you continue striving towards that image of perfection. A better question for us to ask ourselves might be, “If I understand what the right thing to do is, why would I do the wrong thing.” Doing the right things is both based upon and further adds strength to your character. It gives your mind a stronger base upon which to make life decisions. Conducting your life, based upon a strong character and a mind rooted in faith and belief gives us integrity, which is the right path to true success in life.
Proverbs 28:6 – “Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways.”
Face the day and the rest of the week with strength of character and mind. Peace be with you.
Posted by Norm Werner 
resistance is the key to building muscle (to increased strength and growth). In life, too, the twisting path or detours offer the type of resistance that allows us to get stronger and grow as human beings. We learn little from the straight and easy paths in life.
Indeed it is the unexpected nature of those detours that prevent us from planning ahead for them. We can, however, be better prepared mentally for dealing with them. Perhaps it will take us a few moments of reflection to calm down and accept that life has taken yet another turn and that we must do something other than panic about it. In many cases the bend that life may have just taken you around can be very enjoyable. Some of the best times in my life were not the result of planning, but rather just happenstance – another detour that life took me on. I’m sure that all of us can recall some unplanned, but enjoyable event or place that we visited. Those were some of life’s little detours.
that you try will result in success. The secret is figuring out how to use this resistance that life throws at you to grow and get stronger and the key to that is keeping a positive attitude about life. You can start on that by taking to heart this little saying by Joel Osten –
“I’ve come to realize that the detours can be the best part of the journey.” ( Jack Freed)
particularly true ion the real estate business than I’m in. It is a fear of getting into a situation with which they are unfamiliar or being asked a question by a client that they don’t know the answer to that causes them to delay seeking or taking on clients.
each failure.
esteem and confidence when approaching new things. If you start with the thought in mind that the Lord will not abandon you in tough situations and will give you the strength to find solutions to the problems that you encounter, how can you go wrong? With that in mind, the second most important thing is to be unafraid of saying, “I don’t know, but I know where to go to find out.” Saying, “I don’t know” does not label you and a failure, so long as you demonstrate confidence that you can and will deal with the situation or question. Tossing off a wrong answer or lying to appear to be knowledgeable will get you into more hot water than an honest, “I don’t know.” Clients will not abandon you for that honest answer, so long as you follow up with the answer, once you have found it.
affection. Often these are subtle, not grandiose, things that constitute a connection based upon live or concern and caring. You have hundreds of opportunities every day to do something or say something that takes up residence in someone else’s heart. The great thing is that you also get a small piece of that good feeling in your heart, too.
These days we may not even notice many of the opportunities, because we are “busy” looking down at our smartphones. We have become self-absorbed and self-centered to an extent that we are often by ourselves, even in a crowded room. It’s not that there isn’t room in our hearts for new things, large or small; it’s more that we aren’t paying enough attention to allow them in.
beliefs as obstacles to just having fun playing with another human being. They just play. As adults we let all of our “knowledge” about the world – what we’ve been “taught” by others – get in the way, most of the time before the first word is even spoken. No wonder we have forgotten how to live together, much less to play together.
or life preferences – and open your mind’s eye, so that you can just “see” the person that is there in need of a kind word or gesture. Maybe He can help you overcome your preconceived notions and prejudices long enough for you to discover the kindred spirit of a fellow human being with needs and fears and beliefs that are shared with all others, including you. Maybe that will allow you to act and become that small something that they carry in their heart the rest of the day. You may also discover that they have taken up residence in your heart, too.
Most of us know the difference between right and wrong and we know that the choice is up to us. For most the choice to do the right thing is obvious; but, for some the other choice is just too tempting or too easy. For some, the shortcut seems to be the route that they always take. An when that fails. Those same people have another tendency – to try to blame their failures on others or on society, when the right thing to do would be to accept responsibility.
seem more difficult to us than others, but we know, in the back of our minds, what the right choice is. Perhaps it is there, in the back of our minds, while listening to those little voices (which cartoonists always draw as the devil and an angel), that we make or decisions. Make sure that you listen to the right voice. God may be whispering to you, even while the devil is shouting, but you know what the right thing is to do.
The road reaches a deep chasm or faces an intimidating hill.
there for you and feel the power of God lifting you up. Remember God’s promise in Isaiah 41:10 –
– as seen on the 
with a grain of salt or do they take your words as a commitment that they can count upon? Do you casually toss of commitments that you later find easy to blow off? How many pairs of shoes do you wear out between the saying and the doing?
something without any real sense that you are actually going to do it. It makes you feel good at the time that you “commit” – Yeah I signed up, I joined the group, I’m part of the “:in-crowd”. But, when it comes to actually do what you committed to maybe you are the one that always has that last minute conflict or change of plans that prevents you from being there.
upon; the person who is always there when needed; the person who is so reliable that we begin to take them for granted. Those are the people that hold things together when the going gets tough. That person wears out many pairs of show doing, rather than just talking.
Jack went on to write about keeping a sunny disposition and the power of positive thinking, which was probably what Emerson was thinking about, too; when he wrote those words. We tend to associate certain things with the sun – warmth and perhaps happiness and smiles and a positive attitude.
shadows we tend to think about dark things, such as unhappiness, depression, fears, uncertainty and doubts. We don’t like being in the shadows; yet many dwell there because they see no way out of the darkness.
Son of God. In fact, if you surround yourself with His presence in your daily life there will be no place for shadows to form, no dark places for evil to hide, no room for the dark things. He is the way out of the darkness.
Gandhi would surely be aghast at the current times. We see daily headlines about businesses, especially big banks conducting their business without ethics or morals. We read about more and more science being devoted to removing humans from the daily activities of life, including driving; and, we certainly are in the midst of one of the most unprincipled presidential election seasons ever. We have national level politicians loudly proclaiming that they are standing upon their principals as they obstruct legislation; when, in fact, the perches that they occupy are those of bigotry, hate, homophobia and racism.
which the faithful can live. The perversion of many religions comes from the leaders within those religions who find ways to manipulate the written messages of their faith to serve their own purposes. Even in Christianity there are church leaders who loudly thump their Bibles as they spit out messages of hate, exclusion and bigotry. Perhaps Gandhi should have included a fourth danger in his quote – “Religion without love.”
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” — Matthew 22:35-40. If you can get those two down as the base of your values, you are off to a great start.
Failures are a part of life and a key to learning and the building of knowledge and eventually the accumulation of wisdom. Some people experience fewer failures than others, sometimes because they are too afraid of failure to even try. Others may work extra hard at planning to avoid failures, thus limiting themselves to the number of things that they try. Still others go through life blissfully failing at almost everything they try, yet learning nothing from those experiences. Failures happen – move quickly beyond it
that you can never be friends or that you will never get that date. Learn from that failure and move quickly beyond it.
failures is dealing with dead ends and learning to move quickly beyond it.
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