Blog Insights and actions for a better life

Insights through words aimed at helping you make an impact.

Insights through words aimed at making an impact.

A proper understanding of authenticity matters

If when you hear authentic, you hear something of Freud and a call to follow your desires and appetites to find and fulfill your pleasures, then chasing after and becoming authentic will not serve its ultimate purpose in your life. You may feed your appetites and achieve happiness, but appetites are never fully quenched, and happiness is based on circumstances. So you may have fleeting moments of success in being authentic, but you will never be truly full or fulfilled. There is an alternative way.

Read More
jonathan couser
Seven C's of a Successful Marriage

A healthy marriage is one of the biggest blessings that you can experience. An unhealthy marriage can be one of the most significant burdens you will ever endure. You get to choose.

A hard reality is that your marriage will impact the lives of generations of individuals, some you know and some you will never meet. The question you must ask yourself is what do I want that impact to be (positive or negative), and am I living out my marriage in an intentional way to get there?

Here are 7 factors that if you apply them intentionally to your marriage, you will achieve lasting positive impact and leave a legacy worth repeating.

Read More
How to communicate simply but influence exquisitely

Effective communicators will rule the future. The mediums will change but the basic blocking and tackling (or scale for my musical friends) will stand the test of time. The best communicators share content in ways that bring others into the story. They are able to influence others into action by making sure the value is felt. They are willing to learn about and then be empathetic to the experience that others filter the message being shared through.

Read More
The Courage to be Intentional in a World of Amplification and Distraction

The books on culture, leadership, and success I read last year provided consistent advice for teams, leaders, and companies that want to be great. Get exceptionally good at knowing what the most important things are, talk about them constantly, execute against them flawlessly and measure success. The advice is basically: Be more intentional.

Read More
The word of 2022 needs to be Courage Part 1: What is Courage and Why you Need it

As I was reflecting on my reading list from 2021 , two things stood out. First, it’s a much shorter list this year. I only read 27 books. This was mainly because my family bought a farm, which required me to divert my time resources for three months away from reading and towards packing, moving, unpacking, and then restoring our full of potential fixer upper.

Read More
Chase Success not Perfection

It is not uncommon for our family to receive solicitations from organizations asking for help in doing good. Donate here, give to this cause, make a difference in these lives. Not going to lie; most of these get recycled with no action taken. However, on one occasion, it was our daughter Jenna who intercepted the catalog from a group called World Vision.

Read More
jonathan couser
Life Lessons from the other side of moving (Part 1)

Having experienced the reality of barely surviving (more truth than hyperbole in that statement) the stress, discomfort, lack of control, and fatigue of moving. I on fully on board with the research that concludes the physical, mental and emotional demands of moving lead it to being one of the most stressful events in your life.

Read More
Asking for Help is Strength Not Weakness

If you are actively engaged in living, you will encounter problems. However, especially in the workplace, some people choose to live life as if one of the definitions of success is never letting anyone know you have encountered a problem. Success looks like being so buttoned up and so over-prepared that things appear always to be going as planned. There is a better way.

Read More
Feedback is a gift or a weapon you get to choose which one

We all receive feedback continuously. Everything from projects we are working on to teams we are a part of to the apps we use involves feedback loops.

Since feedback loops are everywhere, it is not whether or not they exist that dictates the effectiveness of the feedback, but how we choose to engage in the loop and react to the feedback that dictates if we move closer to or further from achieving a new future state with better outcomes. Meaning YOU own if the feedback becomes a tool or a weapon.

Read More
Falling in love with a process leads to death

So, although the process exists for a reason, and there may be parts of the process that are necessary because they enable you to follow the rules/laws, or they keep you/others safe or enable success today. The goal of your job is ALWAYS BIGGER than the process. I guarantee it. How can I do that? Because if the BIGGER thing didn’t exist, there would be no need for the process. The process exists to achieve the thing, not the other way around.

Read More
Guiding Principle: Speak Boldly, candidly but always with positive intentions

Great people, teams, and businesses are great because of the things they achieve. They achieve greatness by always growing, always moving forward, and always pushing past mediocrity. Replacing comfort and contentment with healthy amounts of discomfort and stress. This requires team members to speak boldly, candidly but always with positive intentions.

Read More