The Best of Jack’s Winning Words – Originally sent April 30, 2021
“You’ll never reach your destination if you stop to throw stones at every dog that barks at you.” (Winston Churchill) There’s lots of “barking” going on these days. It reminds me of the carnival pitchmen (barkers) who’d try to get our attention. A friend of mine would say, “Jack, remember to make the main thing the main thing.” In other words, keep your focus on the important events, not the sideshow. I try to keep that in mind as I watch the news and read the ads. Churchill was a great leader, because he was able to focus. It makes for a more peaceful life too. 😉 Jack
As always, Jack’s words are resonant today as they were back in 2021. There may be different dogs barking today, but they are still only the sideshow. One of the traits of great leaders that Jack pointed out is the ability to identify and focus on the things that are really important in our lives.
For leaders of people or nations, the things that are important tend to have wide-ranging consequences that impact all, whether they be wars or economic trends or climate change. For us as individuals the important things most often involve interpersonal relationships – things that impact our wives, our children, our family or our friends.
We focus on providing for those that we love, so we work at jobs to earn the money to provide. For some the focus shifts from the reason that we work to the work itself, and career advancement becomes the most important thing for them. Becoming too focused upon one’s career is one of the main reasons that marriages fail, and families break up. There is a saying in business that “it’s lonely at the top”. Perhaps that is because so many interpersonal relationships were sacrificed to get there.
Another thing that sometimes get shoved down (sometimes completely off) the list of important things in our lives is our faith. Through much of the last half of the twentieth century and the first quarter of the 21st century church attendance has been declining. There are many reasons, but one cannot help but see the shift of attention away from this important matter and onto things that are just sideshows – the so-called “blue laws” that kept most stores closed on Sundays gave way to 24 hours a day seven days of the week sales and shopping, sports events or practices for children and adults became the focus for Sunday mornings, and we became more used to thinking of Sunday as a day to have fun than a day to worship.
So, maybe it is time to step back and re-look at what you have been focusing upon. What is really important in your life? Maybe you’ll discover that it is not what but who is important in your life. You will probably be able to come up with a short list of people whom you consider to be important. The longer you think about that and the more you re-arrange the list in order of importance the more God will advance up the list, until He takes His place at the top of the list.
Focus on the important things. If you make it back to that place where God is the most important thing in your life a strange thing happens – you stop hearing the barking dogs of life’s distractions. The fears and anxieties about things over which you have no real control anyway will melt away. As Jack puts it at the end of his remarks, it makes for a peaceful life.
Focus upon the important things!
Posted by Norm Werner 
speaker was Norma Nicholson, author, motivational speaker and owner of 
believe that we are in control. What we can control is how we react to those events. Almost all of life’s big events cause an initial, sometimes overwhelming, emotional reaction. There is nothing that we can do to avoid the fear or sadness or sense of loss that washes over us at the moment of impact of such an event; however, we can, and should, try to recover and regain control of ourselves as soon as we can. Why? Because we are also often called upon to make quick decisions and to answer the immediate question – What now?
regaining control of the situation is the admission to ourselves that we cannot or could not have controlled the event. For some that is difficult. They tend to spend time in self-recrimination, searching their minds for something that they could have done differently to prevent the event from occurring. What a waste that is. It did occur and there is no going back, no do-overs. There is only, “What now?”
politics. Both presidential candidates, and indeed most candidates for any office at all levels, tend to resort to mudslinging against their opponents, rather than focus upon what they would do if elected. The game seems to be trying to make the opponent seem like the worse choice because they have sinned differently than you. Our country has a rich history of this type of behavior, going back to the founding fathers. These days the mud being slung is not about getting in bed with slaves, but getting in bed with wealthy donors and selling out votes on issues (although there is still a lot of bedroom or locker room talk). Focus on the right things.
us. Perhaps it is just what color or race or religion or sexual orientation they may have been born to or adopted. Perhaps it is how they choose to dress or to act. Maybe it is how they talk or what they have to say that we find offensive because it is different from our notion of things. Whatever it is we find offensive or sinful, it is likely because it is different from us. We let those differences become the focus of our relationship with them. Focus on the right things.
If you must judge someone, buy a hand mirror and hold it up in front of you. Get the person that you see in that mirror straightened out before you worry about the actions, beliefs or sins of others. I suspect that, if you focus on following the two great commandments, you will find that your concerns about the sins of others will fade away and hopefully your own sins fade, too. Focus on the right things.
could learn from our dogs and focus on the right things.
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