Nothing recharges my personal leadership “batteries” like the Global Leadership Summit, founded by Bill Hybels, lead pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in Chicagoland.

I’ve attended the Global Leadership Summit for 13 years at one of the first live videocast locations – Kentwood Community Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I served on the pastoral staff for 10 years.

2011 Global Leadership Summit Speakers

The 2011 Global Leadership Summit happens this Thursday and Friday, August 11 and 12, and features some of the top leaders in the business, education, government, and compassion arenas who will share their real-life strategies for personal and organizational turnaround, including: [Read more…]

I’m in Phoenix this week for work, and one of my favorite places to eat whenever I’m in the sunny southwest is In-N-Out Burger.

In fact, most of the time, In-N-Out is my first stop after getting off the plane whenever I go to Phoenix, LA or San Diego. And it’s usually the last stop before heading back home.

In-N-Out Burger’s menu is very simple.  It only has six items on it:

• Hamburger
• Cheeseburger
• Double Cheeseburger (called a Double Double – my favorite)
• Fries
• Soft Drinks
• Shakes

I had been happily eating my Double-Double, fries and a Coke for years, when a friend of mine asked me if I knew about In-N-Out’s secret menu.

“Secret what?” I asked.  “Secret menu,” he replied. [Read more…]

If you want to change your life, learn how to unleash your creativity.  So says Dan Perini,  author of Rhyming with Orange:  A Workbook for Unleashing Your Creative Potential to Change Your Life and World.

Perini is also the world’s first professor of creativity at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan (one of my alma maters).

So how does creativity help you change your life?  Perini says “Creativity teaches you how to think. So when you come across any problem, you know how to solve it.”

And in today’s world, with a million choices and voices around us, people need to know how to think, choose for themselves, solve problems, and create opportunities.  The more creative we are, the better we’re able to handle those situations, according to Perini.

How do you become a creative person when you feel as though you do not have a creative bone in your body? How do you generate ideas when you cannot come up with a single one? How do you resist fear, perfectionism, and self-doubt to complete a creative endeavor? [Read more…]