Mark Twain | Craig T. Owens

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Links & Quotes

April 29, 2023 — Craig T. Owens

Our negative self-told can limit our lives. If you’re a leader, your negative self-talk is putting a life on how well and how far you can lead. Check out this full episode from The Craig And Greg Show. And be sure to check out all of my videos on my YouTube channel.

“Courage is the mastery of fear, not the absence of fear.” —Mark Twain

“A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children…” (Proverbs 13:22). In his excellent book Proverbs: Amplified and Applied, my cousin Dick Brogden uses our grandfather as an example of the principle in this verse: “Good has multi-generational implications. My grandfather was an incredibly generous man, and his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren have reaped the benefit. I am convinced that one of the reasons my family is so generously provided for is because our ancestor repeatedly gave significant financial gifts to his church, the Billy Graham Association, and missionaries around the world. Contrary to Shakespeare’s pessimism in the mouth of Mark Antony, the good that men do does indeed live after them, it is not interred with their bones.”

Self-care is vital. Without taking care of yourself first, how will you have any strength to take care of others? To Write Love On Her Arms has a helpful list of self-care items you can do in just 20 minutes per day.

“Knowledge follows understanding. We invert it and think that if we know facts, we are wise. In reality, it is only the wise who can rightly interpret the facts. … There is a posture of humility before God that opens the lowly to the understanding of God. This spirit of understanding becomes the filter with which we sift facts. Facts sifted by understanding lead us to accurate knowledge. Scoffers reject the reality that they need God’s help and God’s Spirit to understand facts. They foolishly think that true knowledge can be gained outside divinely enabled understanding. They have earned their PhD in ultimate idiocy.” —Dick Brogden, in ‘Proverbs: Amplified and Applied’ commenting on Proverbs 14:6

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: Craig And Greg Show, Dick Brogden, Greg Heeres, legacy, Mark Twain, proverbs, quotes, self-care, self-talk, video. Leave a Comment »

New Habits

September 6, 2011 — Craig T. Owens

Do you have any habits? I’ll bet you have more of them that you realize! In fact, most of our day is made up of habitual things: same wakeup time, same morning routine, same route to work of school, same lunch choices, same way of thinking, same way of coping with stress, and so on.

For many families, a new school year begins today. Even if you don’t have school-aged children, the Tuesday following Labor Day is sort of the (un)official start of the fall season. And it’s a good time to take a look at your habits.

“Take your mind out every now and then and dance on it. It is getting all caked up.” —Mark Twain

Good advice! We usually learn things through four stages:

Unconscious incompetence: we’re no good at something, but we don’t even realize it.
Conscious incompetence: we realize something must change, but we’re still no good at it.
Conscious competence: we’ve learned something, and now we’re good at, but we have to think about it a lot.
Unconscious competence: we’ve become proficient at something, and we don’t have to think about it any longer.

The problem is with both of our unconscious zones. Unless we pull out our habits and look at them every once in awhile, we may never know what’s holding us back.

QUESTION: What new habits are you going to try to make/break this fall?

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: habits, Mark Twain, quote, thinking, time management. 2 Comments »

sHAkE it uP

July 8, 2009 — Craig T. Owens

The other day my son Harrison and I were talking about the books he was reading. Like a chip off the old block, he loves to read almost as much as I do (just makes a Dad so proud!). Our discussion about reading was about the variety of genres. I suggested that just like a healthy diet for our bodies includes a variety of healthy foods, so should our mental diet include a healthy variety.

We are all creatures of habit. In fact, some scientists estimate that as much as 90% of our daily routines are things we do by unconscious habit. We just do it because we’ve always done it.

You know when your daily routine has been messed up, don’t you? You feel agitated and out-of-sorts. You think, “I just don’t feel like myself today.” Because you are not yourself: your routines, your habits have been shaken up.

So if unplanned things mess up your routine and make you grumpy, can I propose something else? Instead of waiting for something unexpected to shake up your routine, go ahead and sHAkE it uP on purpose.

Do something far from the norm, completely different, out of the box. Who knows, you may uncover an unhealthy routine that needs to be changed, or you may find there’s something new that you never realized you would have liked so much.

Instead of reading the same books by the same authors, grab something new.
- …or try nonfiction instead of fiction, or classic instead of contemporary.
Instead of watching TV after dinner, go for a walk.
- …or play Monopoly with your family.
Instead of going to your usual spot for lunch, brown bag it and eat outside on the grass.
- …or fast your lunch and spend the lunch hour in quiet meditation.
Instead of sitting in the same seat at church, sit in a different section.
- …or make a rotating plan to sit somewhere new every month.
Instead of allowing the same topics to trigger an argument with your spouse, find a new way to handle the emotion.
- …or read a book together to help you resolve the issue.
Instead of returning your empty pop cans to buy more pop, donate the cash to charity.
- …or find a cause your whole family can support together.
Instead of scooping ice cream at home, take a family walk to the ice cream shop.
- …or buy popsicles for all the neighborhood kids when the ice cream truck rolls by.