Martin Luther King, Jr. said,

“We have learned to fly the air like birds; we have learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we have not learned to walk the earth as brothers and sisters.” 

We are hurting, but even in this tragedy, we are not lost.

In 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, Paul said, “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.”

This past weekend at Hillsong Phoenix we discussed these 3 truths that we know to be true:

1. The enemy is not people. The real enemy is Satan who wants to create havoc and division among the people of our nation.
2. When we strip away the surplus words and remove the façade of social issues, our problem is fear. Fear is irrational and must be recognized and replaced with the hope and grace of God.
3. We need prayer – for our nation and for our neighbors. Prayer will drive out hate. Pray for peace, understanding, justice, humility, repentance, forgiveness, protection and that love would prevail. Pray that we will truly be “one nation, under God.”

It is the church’s time to stand up and be the hope of the world that we declare we are because we have the hope for humanity…JESUS!

Click here or play below to hear a short clip from this weekend’s message, or you can click here or play on the video below to watch the message in it’s entirety.

Also don’t forget to grab your copy of my new eBook COURAGE. Click here to purchase for only $1.99.

WATCH THE VIDEO

The post Courage | Week 2 | The Courage To Hope appeared first on Dave Martin.

This week’s coaching session is a short video to help you define courage and a useful tool to start making success simple in your life. Click here or click the video below to play this week’s coaching session.

What is an area in your life where you need a little more courage? Comment below to share your thoughts with our community. We are better together.

Also don’t forget to grab your copy of my new eBook COURAGE. Click here to purchase for only $1.99.

WATCH THE VIDEO

The post Courage | Week 1 | Are You Courageous? appeared first on Dave Martin.

If you’re like me, family vacations are an important part of every summer. I’ve had some good ones, and I’ve had some not-so-good ones. I always tell people the difference in the outcome of a situation in your life depends on the wisdom you have, and I wish had this wisdom years ago. But now that I have it, I am want to share it with you, I believe if you will use these 10 Tips, you will be on your way to making a great family vacation.

Ten Tips for Making a Family Vacation Great

Written By:  Guy Winch, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist and author of Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts.

Why do so many family vacations fail to live up to our expectations? Family vacations usually seem great when we’re planning them and yet more often than not, we return home feeling… well, that we really need a vacation.

Somehow, despite our best efforts, arguments, stresses, and the inevitable assault of unexpected-things-going-wrong, contribute to making our family vacations experiences we would rather forget than ones we would like to cherish, or even remember.

The trick to making a family vacation great is anticipation and planning. While we cannot predict what might go wrong, we can predict that something probably will. Yes, we might hope we won’t encounter stresses and tensions, but we can make good guesses about where they are likely to occur and take steps to avoid them.

Following these steps will help minimize stresses and tensions and give you tools for getting through such moments with the least disruption to everyone’s mood and good-time when they occur.

The Family Vacation Survival Guide

1. Create a family vacation packing list: Which are you more likely to forget to pack, your daughter’s favorite doll, your son’s allergy medication, the new book you were hoping to read by the pool, or everyone’s passport? If you want the answer to be ‘none of the above’ create a packing list well in advance and print it out. The time it takes you to write it will be less than the time you spend worrying if you forgot something essential. You can then update the list before each family trip so you don’t have to create a new one.

2. Have a family packing night: Start the family bonding early by having a family packing night where everyone contributes according to their ability. Put on some music, play a slide show of previous vacations on the laptop in the background, and discuss which activities or places everyone is most looking forward to experiencing while you fill the suitcases.

3. Leave the house early: Many couples argue about when to leave the house, which starts of the family vacation with tension and irritability instead of excitement and anticipation. Instead of starting your family vacation stressed and worried you’ll miss your flight, train, bus, or boat, simply plan activities to pass the time at the airport and leave the house early. It is better to have spare time at a transportation hub than to spend the first day of a family vacation trying to ‘come down’ from the tension of trying getting to your destination on time.

4. Set realistic expectations for your kids: Children are likely to be super excited about going to a theme park and super bummed when they realize it takes hours of travel to get there. They are equally unlikely to focus on the fact that they will be spending far more time in line than on the actual rides. The best way to keep them from having a meltdown is to alert them to the inevitable lines and waiting ahead, and problem solve with them ways they can keep themselves occupied and distracted when they encounter them.

5. Don’t over schedule: Yes, there might be lots to see or do, but younger kids can easily get overwhelmed by rushing from one activity to the next and older kids need their alone-time to text complaints to their friends and post snarky comments on social media. Therefore, plan on no more than one or two activities a day and divide the rest of the time between alone-time for teens or play time for younger kids, and family bonding time in which you show all the pictures and videos you took, and discuss everyone’s favorite parts of the day.

6. Prepare kids for different foods and customs: It might not always be possible for younger kids to have the kind of foods they know and like so make sure to discuss alternatives with them ahead of time so they’re prepared to try something different. Teaching kids how to say ‘please’ and ‘thank-you’ in the local language will make them feel more comfortable in a foreign country and make them more open to experiencing the local cuisine.

7. Don’t forget your own needs: It’s your family vacation too, so make sure to schedule time for yourself. Let younger kids know when they will be expected to play by themselves so you can nap, read, or get a massage, and inquire ahead of time about babysitting services so you can have a night out.

8. Inform kids about the next day’s plans each night: Kids do much better when they are prepared for things, so go over the itinerary for the next day before they go to bed and be ready to make adjustments based on the experiences of the current day. If it was a tiring one, consider getting a later start tomorrow and dropping an activity so you don’t have to rush. If teenagers felt bored by sightseeing, offer them a pool or shopping option the next day.

9. Have a backup plan: Hopefully it won’t rain, no one will get sick, and everything will work out exactly as planned. Hopefully. But having a backup plan for such eventualities will not only come in handy if things actually do go wrong, it will minimize stress when your youngest develops a sniffle and cough, your boss needs you to be on a six hour conference call in the middle of the night, or the folks in the vacation houses around you begin frantically boarding up their windows while mumbling the word ‘hurricane.’

10. Use humor to deal with setbacks: Your flight got cancelled and you have to spend the night at the airport. You can either get bummed and miserable or try to make the best of it. One way to put a spin on things is by playing, “It could be much worse” where everyone has to come up with totally unrealistic and funny ways in which things could get even worse (e.g., “Zombie unicorns from space invade the airport”) or play humorous ‘complete-the-sentence’ games like “I love sleeping on airport floors because___” and “The sound of strangers snoring next to me is better than most songs by__”. Finding the humor in frustrating circumstances is a great way to model positive and adaptive coping mechanisms to your kids and to minimize the impact of setbacks on the rest of the family vacation.

Click here to comment where you’re going this summer and which one of these tips will help you the most.

Also email me at coachdave@davemartin.org to let me know how Wisdom On Wednesday is helping you.

Make the rest of your life the best of your life!

The post 10 Tips for Making a Family Vacation Great appeared first on Dave Martin.

Focus, therefore, is the natural result of what you think about, and what you think about is created by repetition. Consequently, through repetition, you can change your thinking, and by changing your thinking, you can change your focus. Focus is the key to success in everything you will ever set out to do.

Unfortunately, the average person is inclined to be busy rather than effective and to be stretched to the limits rather than focused. And the fast pace of our modern culture seems to feed this natural frenzy. We as a society are a people who worship at the shrine of busy-ness rather than the shrine of effectiveness. We are a society that is given to diversification of activity rather than specialization. We are a culture that lauds variety over similarity and multiplicity over simplicity. Somehow, we have conditioned ourselves to believe that focus is bad because it is restrictive and that concentration is dangerous because it is limiting.

But our infatuation with being broad has caused us to become mediocre. Instead of being great at one thing, we are now content to be mediocre at dozens of things. And we wonder why we fall short of our goals and fail to achieve great things. Focus is the catalyst for success.

Also, if you haven’t gotten it yet, we have a new eBook , Focus, for this month. Click here to order it for just $1.99!

The post Focus | Week 4 | TOO BUSY TO BE EFFECTIVE appeared first on Dave Martin.

These are a few practical tips on how to stay focused. However, what can you do when your focus is broken?

I sat down with my friends Jeff & Beth Jones of Valley Family Church in Kalamazoo, MI to discuss how focus played a part in the ups and downs of building their thriving church and ministry.

Click here or click play below to listen to the interview.

Also, if you haven’t gotten it yet, we have a new eBook , Focus, for this month. Click here to order it for just $1.99!

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO

The post Focus | Week 3 | Interview With Jeff & Beth Jones appeared first on Dave Martin.

Have you ever worked nonstop all day long, but at the end of the day you couldn’t remember anything meaningful that you did? Have you ever felt exhausted at the end of a long day, but at the end of that day you really couldn’t say that you had done anything significant to advance your dreams or push your passions forward? Unfortunately, most people feel this way most of the time. And the reason they feel this way is because their lives are devoted to what’s urgent instead of what’s important. Their lives are devoted to a daily series of emergencies rather than the execution of a plan. Day by day, the activities in their lives increase, but they walk around with an aching realization that they aren’t really getting anything done. They feel like time is marching on, but that they are making no meaningful progress in life, that their lives are nothing more than physical existence. The problem is that their lives lack focus.

Get focused. With focus, you can do more with less. Without focus, you will do less with more. Focus is the human condition that permits clear perception and understanding. It can truly multiply your potential.

Also, we have a brand new eBook , Focus, for this month.  Click here to order it for just $1.99!

The post Focus | Week 2 | Urgent vs Important appeared first on Dave Martin.

If you want to have a successful life, you’ve got to learn to focus and hone in on your goals, dreams, and priorities.

Listen to the audio below to learn about focusing with ‘God thoughts’.

Also, we have a brand new eBook , Focus, for this month.  Click here to order it for just $1.99!

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO

The post Focus | Week 1 | 2,400 Thoughts appeared first on Dave Martin.

The lowest level of communication is the cliché level, where we give people the programmed questions and statements that they expect regarding the weather, sports, and so forth. The next level is the gossip level, where we talk about more substantive issues, especially people. The third level of relationship building is the “testing the waters” stage, where we actually put forth ideas, including basic dreams and goals, to see how the other person will react to them. The fourth level is the “passionate” level, where we reveal true thoughts and feelings and where we share the passions and emotions that really make us tick, realizing that the relationship in question has advanced to the point where we won’t be rejected if we say something unusual or “wrong.” And the ultimate level of relationship and communication is the level where we connect spiritually with the other person, actually becoming “one” in mind, heart, and motivation.

All of us have relationships on every one of these levels. We have family and friends, of course. But we also have coworkers and clients. Farther down the food chain, we have suppliers and vendors, the mailman, the delivery guy, and the lawn care people. We rarely think about it, but we all know a lot of people on a lot of different levels.

This is healthy. This is good. We should have many relationships on many different levels, and we should embrace relationships at all levels, learning to appreciate the value these diverse relationships add to our lives and learning to harness the benefits that other people afford us by their involvement in our lives.

Also, if you have not yet picked up my brand new eBook Relationships, you can today for only $1.99. Click here to get it now.

The post Relationships | Week 4 | RELATIONSHIPS ON MANY LEVELS appeared first on Dave Martin.

It is important to have relationships with people who have the right mindset and motive.

In the audio below, My friend Tim Storey, author & celebrity life-advisor, explains the three levels of relationships and how to determine which kind of relationships you have with key people in your life.

Click here or click play below to hear more from my interview with Tim.

Also pick up my brand new eBook Relationships today for only $1.99. Click here to get it now.

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO

The post Relationships | Week 3 | Interview with Tim Storey appeared first on Dave Martin.

“People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
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Relationships come in a variety of levels, but they all impact your life and your future in different ways.

Click here or play below to hear a few of my personal tips when it comes to dealing with people on a regular basis.

Also pick up my brand new eBook Relationships today for only $1.99. Click here to get it now.

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO

The post Relationships | Week 2 | My Top Relationship Tips appeared first on Dave Martin.