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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

My 100th Birthday Speech





A couple of years ago my church gave all the men in the church a book for Fathers Day. The book was "Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance" by Bob Buford. (it's truly an excellent book and I'd encourage you to read it)


At one point in the book, Mr Buford suggests that the reader go through an exercise in where you are asked to write out a speech that you would like to be given at your 100th birthday party.


(This is similar to a eulogy at a funeral but I'm thinking the author wanted to promote a feeling of life and hope by having it said at your 100th birthday party rather than at your funeral.)


The goal of this exercise is to get you to think about, when it's all over, what is truly important to you. It forces you to ask the question, "What do you want to be remembered for?"


So I took some time and went through this exercise. I ended up printing out my speech and pinning it on my wall at work so I could constantly be reminded of what is truly important in my life.


Here is the speech that I would like for one of my friends or family members to give at my 100th birthday party:


Today we are here to celebrate a friend, a father, a husband, a brother, a son, a grandpa, an uncle, a businessman, a teacher, an entrepreneur, a veteran, a Marine, a pilot, an athlete, a student, a scholar, a brother in Christ, a writer, a speaker, an adventurer, a world traveler, a thrill seeker.


Lynden is a man of passion. He knows who God made him to be. Lynden has spent every day of his life striving to release the potential that God has placed inside of him and to help others do the same. Lynden has a zeal for life and is always looking for the good in people and in situations.


Lynden has diligently studied the lives and teachings of others and has taken the information that he has gleaned from their experiences and used it to make his life and the lives of everyone he comes in contact with better. You can’t know Lynden without knowing his heart for teaching. Lynden can take a difficult concept and make it so clear that even a child could understand.


Lynden’s desire to bring glory to God and to do his part to bring about God’s Kingdom here on earth is evident in his ministries and businesses. Everything he does is in an effort to know God and to give Him praise.


Lynden is a fantastic father and grandfather. He has worked hard to be able to ‘be there’ for the life events in his children’s and grandchildren’s lives. He has touched hundreds of thousands of lives through his speaking and millions through his writings, videos, audios and ministries.


Lynden is the epitome of taking the talents that God has given him and investing them to increase God’s kingdom. He has been blessed with many skills and abilities, all of which he has used to be a blessing to others.


Rather than just hearing about the lost and hurting around the world, Lynden has gone to the suffering and used his resources to relieve their pain and to introduce them to their Creator and Redeemer.


Lynden has battled ignorance and the frustration of failure with practical, easy to follow solutions that have improved the lives of countless people and will continue to improve the lives of generations to come.


Lynden truly is the’ wise old man’ who has taken many young people under his wing and helped bring out all of the potential that God has placed inside each of them. He has inspired many people to take back the reigns of their lives and to not settle for a shallow, meaningless existence that so many people find themselves in.


I would encourage you to take some time and sit down to write your own 100th birthday speech. Really think through it and ask yourself, with what you know about who God made you, "What do I want to be remembered for?"


If you decide to do this exercise, I promise your life will be more rich because of it.


God Bless!

Monday, June 13, 2011

I Hate My Job




How many times have you heard someone say these words?

"I Hate My Job!"

Sadly, you've probably heard these words or some other form of this statement more times than you can even count.
Why is it that so many people share this feeling today?

I believe that the reason so many people feel this way is because they are working in jobs/careers that do NOT match who they are.

In other words, most people are frustrated with their jobs because they are working in job fields that neither match their natural talents & giftings nor their natural motivations and passions.

If you want to experience more career satisfaction, and even get to the point where you find yourself saying, "I LOVE my Job!", you must first find out what your "Sweet Spot" is! Your "Sweet Spot" is the place where your: 1) talents, skills, and giftings overlap your 2) passions, motivations, and energizing activities.

Said in another way, your "Sweet Spot" is where you're good at doing something that you love.
Most people find themselves using skills that they have developed which they are now good at but they don't enjoy using those skills.

I recently heard it said that "Being good at something is not enough reason to do it." Meaning that if you are good at something but don't enjoy doing it, then you probably shouldn't be doing it. If you aren't enjoying what you are doing, if you don't get some form of pleasure from the activity, then don't continue doing it.

So how do you find a career where you can wake up excited every morning to go to work? How can you be assured that you will be able to say, "I love my work! I am passionate about what I do!"?

The first step is to discover your Sweet Spot. This means you discover the place where your talents and abilities overlap your motivations and passions. (see my posts on "Who Am I?" to discover how to do this)

Once you know who you are, what you are good at that you enjoy doing, then your next step is one of these two options:



  1. Find a business or individual who is doing what you love and start working for them


  2. Start your own business using your gifts to serve as many people as you possibly can

You don't have to hate your job. You have a choice! You can make a decision today to start doing something that you love, that uses your God given skills and abilities, and that gives you a sense of purpose, meaning, value, and significance.


What are you waiting for? Take action now!

My Sweet Spot



Up to this point we've looked at how to analyze your MAPP exam on Assessment.com. In this post we are going to look at how to use that information to determine your personal "Sweet Spot".




Wikipedia defines a Sweet Spot as "a place where you get a maximum response for a given amount of effort."



In our lives, this is the place where our: 1) talents, skills, and giftings overlap our 2) passions, motivations, and energizing activities.


The most effective people in the world are those who have discovered their Sweet Spot and are living the majority of their life within it.


So, in my last post we made a summary of what I have within my Talent and Motivation circles. Using the info from that summary we are going to start identifying what my Sweet Spot contains.

The first step is to re-read both lists and write down anything that shows up on both lists.


My Sweet Spot:


  • Leading, directing, managing, and supervising people.

  • Communicating to people in an influential or persuasive manor.


  • Teaching people information that will result in their good, growth, or gain.

  • Seeing the big picture and directing people within that picture towards the accomplishment of the overall goal.


  • Coordinate the skills and direct the actions of others towards a goal that benefits everyone.

The second step is to put this summary into one short sentence. Here is what you could say my Sweet Spot is:


Communicating information that will inspire people to take action and then leading them, through providing direction and coordinating their skills within the scope of the big picture, towards the accomplishment of a goal that benefits everyone.




The third step in using the MAPP test is to go back to the top of your MAPP Assessment, where we chose the top 5-10 phrases that jumped out at us and motivated us the most, and compare them with our Sweet Spot summary to see how they fit within it.


Here were my top motivational phrases from the career list:



  1. Develop/apply human skills

  2. teach

  3. instruct

  4. human development

  5. training

  6. inform

As you can see, these phrases are an exact match of my "Sweet Spot" summary.


Now that we have extracted a pretty clear picture of who we are from the MAPP exam, we should have a pretty clear answer to the question, "Who Am I?"


However, during my journey to discovering "Who I Am" I chose to validate my MAPP exam findings with a series of other tests and simple processes. Although the other exams did not uncover any new or 'life changing' information about myself, I found that they made my picture of 'Who I Am' even clearer by giving even more detail into some of the other components and aspects of my life.


One of my next posts will show you what these tests and processes are and give you some guidance on how you can walk through them to if you would like.


Thanks again for reading my posts!

Friday, June 10, 2011

My Assessment - Who Am I Pt 2

Ok, I'd like to complete my MAPP assessment.com results walk through today.

Section 5 deals with how I relate to THINGS and whether or not I have mechanical savvy and/or enjoy working with my hands. Here's what I learned from this section:


  • I have a mind for engineering - I naturally understand "what makes things tick"

  • I don't like activities that require close attention to precise standards, exact measurements, or detecting minor defects.

  • Basically a job where I'm operating machinery or working with my hands as the majority of my job would frustrate me.


The 6th section deals with how I relate with DATA. This measures motivations and priorities for mental activities. Here's what this section taught me:


  • Is so motivated to see things in "Big Picture" context that I typically look at all parts within the big picture and then see each part as it relates to each other yet still within the big picture.

  • Sees things in holistic and conceptual forms.

  • Loves to Synthesize: "putting two or more things together to form a whole; the combination of separate elements of thought into a whole; the operation by which divided parts are united" (Webster).

  • Strongly motivated to coordinate: to take actions, to manipulate that which is at hand in order to "get the show on the road.




Section 7 is labeled REASONING and deals with how I choose apply my talents and motivations listed in Section6, DATA. Here's what I learned from this section:


  • First priority when looking at data is to see how it fits within the big picture.

  • Uses scientific/technical/logical thinking to solve problems.

  • Is motivated and perhaps even mentally equipped for troubleshooting: to recognize or otherwise identify problems or developing problems in familiar areas; to tackle problems with intent to solve the problems and restore function to former levels or better.

  • Change, variety, options, challenge, and opportunity to move up based on merit represent more preferred activities.


Section 8 is the MATHEMATICAL CAPACITY piece which shows the your motivation level for using math in a job or in day to day activities. Here are my top results:


  • Is motivated to work with a wide variety of theoretical math concepts; make original application of those concepts; apply knowledge of advanced mathematical or statistical techniques to new areas of challenge, interest, or opportunity.

  • Motivation is derived from conceptual, analytical, curious, and exploratory thinking.

  • Research and theoretical logic probably appeal greatly.


Finally, section 9 deals with LANGUAGE CAPACITY and reveals your motivation levels for engaging in different forms of communication (oral, written, etc...). Here are my results:


  • Highly motivated to consider creative writing and communicating at professional levels.

  • Preferences are holistic, conceptual, imaginative, and creative.

  • Preferences that probably include writing fiction, poetry, scripts for movies or television, advertising copy, marketing copy, teaching creative writing.

  • Motivated to describe, explain, teach, illustrate, and interpret.

  • Journalistic trait dedicated to inform people.


Ok, so we've looked at all of this cool data and have sifted it down to the point that we are left with only the "meat", or the main points/lessons we learned from each section. Now, let's take one more step and process all of this data into organized information that we can actually use to answer the question, "Who Am I?"

The first step is to put all of these main points into one of our two Circles: Talents or Motivations. Here is the result of this process:

Talents Circle:


  • Seeing things as they relate to each other within the Big Picture.

  • Leading and directing people.

  • Working hard on a project until it is completed and then moving on to a new project.

  • Independent and self directed.

  • Persuasive communicator.

  • Perception and mentally seeing concepts and ideas and communicating them.

  • Talent for understanding or even 'experiencing' abstract ideas, concepts, theory, assessments, etc...

  • Strong research skills.

  • Engineering mind which easily and naturally understands how things work.

  • Gifted in bringing things/people together to form a united whole/team for accomplishing a task or completing an objective.

  • Gifted troubleshooter.

  • Natural teacher that can take difficult ideas and present them in simple, easy to understand ways.

  • Leads people with emphasis on performance and creating measurable results.

Motivation Circle:



  • Leading, managing, supervising, communication with people.

  • Highly motivated by the cause of good, growth, and gain in the lives of others.

  • Influential communication.

  • Recognition by others.

  • Need change & variety - change is motivating, stimulating, energizing.

  • Change, variety, options, challenge, and opportunity to move up based on merit represent more preferred activities.

  • Giving of myself for the benefit of others.

  • Organizationally active with others.

  • Assume responsibility for the good, growth, and gain in the lives of other people.

  • Loves new ideas.

  • Direct access to a listener.

  • Communication with goal of causing the listener to understand, accept, and act on what is being said.

  • Enjoys taking ideas of others, filtering through own experiences, and then communicating them to others for their entertainment/pleasure/benefit.

  • Motivation and drive to educate, train, or influence others.

  • Persuasion is the primary preferred trait with intent to convince people toward a particular idea, viewpoint, direction, objective, or product.

  • Self-satisfaction comes almost exclusively from the subjective realization that the information, voluntarily given, has been helpful to other persons.

  • Feels prime responsibility as developing the will to work with employees and motivating them to higher levels of attainment and performance.

  • Strongly motivated to coordinate: to take actions, to manipulate that which is at hand in order to "get the show on the road.

  • Motivation is derived from conceptual, analytical, curious, and exploratory thinking.

  • Highly motivated to consider creative writing and communicating at professional levels.

  • Motivated to describe, explain, teach, illustrate, and interpret.
Now that we have organized all this information into ether our Talents or Motivations circle, our next step is to find where these talents overlap. The goal of this is to find our "Sweet Spot", which is the place where we are 'good at' (or gifted in) something that we 'enjoy doing' (or are motivated/energized by).

So there you have it, a quick down and dirty on my MAPP test from Assessment.com. My next post will look at how to compile this info into discovering your "Sweet Spot"!

Thanks for reading!

Thursday, June 9, 2011

My Assessment - Who I Am Part 1

I now want to show you my results from this exam and show you how I used this information to learn more about who I am.

This is just a shot of the top of my report showing you that it is indeed my MAPP report from my Assessment.com profile.



As you scroll down the report the first part you come to is the listing of the top 20 career areas that your personality matches with the best. This was a wonderful section for helping me narrow down my search for a fulfilling career. Here's how I used this section:

1. List the most common words or phrases - in my report I found that the following words came up over and over again.





  • Consult, consulting, evaluate, influence, teach, counsel, training, human development, develop/apply human skills, promote, inform, dispense information, teach/nurture, write/send information, supervise, instruct, manage, business training, communicate, demonstrate...

2. From that list, pick the top 5 - 10 words/phrases that jump out at you - choose the words or phrases that excite you, that give you energy, that make you feel good. These are some of the words from my list that jumped out at me.



  • Develop/apply human skills, teach, instruct, human development, training, inform...
3. Match your top 5-10 words with the career areas that match them the closest


Next, the report gets into the section called "Narrative Interpretation". In this section there are 9 sections discuss more details about who you are.

The first section is INTEREST IN JOB CONTENT. This helps you discover your 'motivations and preferences'. This is a 'first glance at your top motivators'.

Here are a few pieces of info I learned about myself from this section:


  • Prefer to work with and around people and I prefer to do is in a leadership, managing, supervising, communicating way. Togetherness is essential for my work/play environments.

  • Very conscious of meaning, purpose, potential & destiny. I am highly motivated by the cause of good, growth, and gain in the lives of others. I prefer to do this by influential communication.

  • I think in Big Picture terms.

  • I am wired to be an executive or manager. I don't do well being in a subordinate position.

  • I'm highly motivated by recognition by others.

  • I love projects that can be planned, scheduled, and completed.

  • I need change and variety. I wouldn't be good on an assembly line. Routine causes me to lose interest.


The next section is TEMPERAMENT FOR THE JOB which identifies motivation and talents. Here's what I learned about myself:


  • Need change/variety. Change is motivating, stimulating, energizing to me.

  • Benevolent (giving of myself for the benefit of others) which means I gain pleasure in helping others.

  • Strongly motivated to be organizationally active with others.

  • Self assumed responsibility for the good, growth and gain of others.

  • Love new ideas and have talent for understanding or even 'experiencing' abstract ideas, concepts, theory, assessments, etc...

  • Strongly motivated to have direct access to listener, communication with goal of causing the listener to understand, accept, and act on what is being said.

  • Is going to persuade: the only questions are where, when and for what purpose.

  • Leads people with emphasis on performance and creating measurable results.

  • Independent, self-directed, self-achieved activity is preferred.

  • Not great with detail but strong awareness of ideas, patters, concepts.


The 3rd section is APTITUDE FOR THE JOB focuses on combining talents with motivations/preferences. Here's what this section taught me:



  • Ideas are the heart of my talent. Gifted at perception and mental seeing.

  • Enjoys taking ideas of others, filtering through own experiences, and then communicating them to others for their entertainment/pleasure/benefit.

  • Strong potential for academic, scientific, research, literary, executive, or consulting activities.

  • Good at seeing the core concepts and how they fit within the big picture.


The 4th section is called PEOPLE and it deals with motivational levels and even talents for dealing with people. Here's what this section taught me:


  • Mentor: trusted counselor or guide.

  • Interested in helping people reach their full potential.

  • Motivation and drive to educate, train, or influence others.

  • Highly motivated persuasion with goal of having listener hear, understand, accept and act on what is said.

  • Persuasion is the primary preferred trait with intent to convince people toward a particular idea, viewpoint, direction, objective, or product.

  • Feels both privilege and responsibility to use communication (including persuasion) to voluntarily provide beneficial information to others.

  • Self-satisfaction comes almost exclusively from the subjective realization that the information, voluntarily given, has been helpful to other persons.

  • Feels prime responsibility as developing the will to work with employees and motivating them to higher levels of attainment and performance.



I'll continue going over the rest of my MAPP assessment in Part 2.


I hope you're having some fun and getting some useful information from my posts.


As strange as it may sound, I'm absolutely enjoying writing this for you!


Till my next post... Cheers!

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Who Am I - The Answer


Okay, so now I'm convinced that I need to answer the question, "Who Am I?"


But putting everything I am into words seemed like a daunting task. I wondered, "Where do I start?"


Remembering the example of the two overlapping circles (from my June 6th post), I decided my first step was to discover what was in my "Talent Circle" and my "Motivations Circle".

As a quick review, the "Talent Circle" contains all of the talents, skills, abilities, giftings, etc... that you have while the "Motivations Circle" contains all of the activities that you love doing, that give you energy, that excite you, that you are passionate about.

Where these two circles overlap is called your "Sweet Spot". This is where you enjoy doing something that you are good at. This "Sweet Spot" is where the happiest people in life exist. They have built their lives around doing activities that they love to do, that they are good at doing, and that actually gives them energy to do.

Sadly, most of us are existing outside of our "Sweet Spot". In fact, many of us are existing completely outside of our "Talent and Motivations Circles"! This means many of us are in careers, doing jobs, or building our lives around activities that:





  • We don't even like


  • Actually drain us of energy


  • We aren't really that good at


  • That don't use any of our greatest abilities

Recently I heard someone say, "Being good at something is NOT reason enough to do it." This matches perfectly with my story. I've been able to be 'good' at lots of things! But just because I can do them doesn't mean I enjoy or should be doing them.

In order to truly experience a life of passion, meaning, significance, purpose, etc... I need to





  1. be using my best talents, gifts and abilities


  2. be doing things that energize and excite me

The philosopher Confucius once said,

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."


Well that sounded very appealing to me! As I looked at some of the great actors, athletes, business people, etc... I found that many of them were saying things like,

"I can't believe I get paid to do this! I absolutely LOVE my
job!"

It finally dawned on me that the reason these people were able to say this is because they were all living in their "Sweet Spot"!

It was now time for me to find my sweet spot!


I started by performing a Google search for topics like "skills assessments" and "career placement tests".

I came across a website called Assessment.com that had a FREE assessment. Now, like most people, I have limited funds to work with, but I knew that I could afford "FREE". So I took the 73 question test and it only took me about 20 minutes.

The results were amazing! This test absolutely pegged me! Although it only showed me the first half of each description, I was amazed at how accurately it was describing me. It was putting my gifts, skills, personality traits, etc... into words that when I read the descriptions I though, "That's exactly what I was trying to say but I just couldn't find the words."


After several days of pouring over the results, I decided to go a head and purchase one of the smaller packages.

In my next post I'll continue sharing what I learned about Who I Am and how I started breaking down the information I received from my Assessment.com report into information I could use!

Below is a link that you can use to take your FREE Assessment.com report. Go ahead and click on it and start taking your test right now. Yes you have to register with an email and password, but don't worry, they've had my info for almost 2 years and they have never once sent me any spam.

Get started on your test today and I'll continue my story on my next post.












Who Am I? - The Question



In my journey to discover "what to do with my life", I uncovered a new question which must be answered first. This new question is: "Who Am I?"

Now, once this question was uncovered, it became obvious that there was no way to know how to best use my life (what to do with my life) if I didn't even know what my life was (who I am: what my skills/abilities/talents/attributes are).

Trying to choose a path in life without first knowing who I am is like wanting to use a tool to build something without even knowing what the tool does/is used for. If I have a crescent wrench that I'm trying to use to cut boards, I'm going to be very frustrated at the terribly slow progress I'm making. When I figure out that a crescent wrench is used to turn bolts, nuts, and screws then I won't keep trying to use it to cut boards.

It only makes sense that I must first identify who I am, what my gifts/skills/talents/abilities/attributes/motivations/passions/etc... are, so that I can then identify the best place to apply myself. If I choose a path to follow in life, a career for example, that doesn't best utilize all of the unique skills and passions that I have, I was going to end up being very frustrated, just like trying to use a crescent wrench to cut boards.

As I examined this question, I started remembering all of the different places I've seen this idea before.

The great philosopher Socrates said, "Know thyself".

It's also what Jesus talked about when he said, "I know who I am and where I am going."

The book "What Color Is Your Parachute" is the gold standard for finding a fulfilling career. Although first written back in 1970, it has been updated every year since then and, as of the 2009 printing, it has sold more than 10,000,000 copies. In this book, author Richard N. Bolles, also starts with this exact idea when he paraphrases Alexander Pope:

Know then thyself,
Do no the Market scan
Until you've surveyed all you are,
Then you will have your plan.


Bolles says, "Most job-hunters who fail to find their dream job, fail not because they lack information about the job-market, but because they lack information about themselves."

Before choosing a life path to walk down, you must first discover the answer to the question, "Who Am I?"


My next post will look at some methods for discovering the answer to this question.

Monday, June 6, 2011

What To Do With My Life?



A couple of years ago I set out on a journey to discover the answer to the question: "What should I do with my life?"



Like many people, I did not have the luxury of knowing "What I want to be when I grow up".



From an early age my parents told me, "Lynden, you can do anything you set your mind to." (In my house the word can't was almost officially classified as a 'dirty word'.)



So, like any young child, I trusted what my parents told me and believed that I actually could do "anything I set my mind to."



Now I was a competitive young guy. As the second born of 5 athletic boys, I learned very quickly how to compete. My brothers and I competed at everything: who could run the fastest, throw the farthest, climb the tallest tree, do the most back flips on the trampoline, jump their bike the furthest off of the ramp, eat their food the fastest, shower the fastest, etc... (and yes, I did hold the family record of showing in just under 12 seconds when I was 10 years old. Ha, ha...)



If anyone ever beat me at something, I'd work hard to figure out how to get better and then I'd practice hard until I could beat them at whatever it was we were competing in.



While competition and confidence are both wonderful traits to have, they became a barrier to me when it came to discovering 'what I wanted to do with my life'. Since I always believed I could do anything, and due to my competitiveness I'd usually figure out a way to become good at it and do it better than most, it made it difficult to know what I wanted to do.



During this journey of self discovery I came across this idea:



Imagine a piece of paper with two overlapping circles on it that represent different parts of your life. One circle contains all of your Motivations/Passions. It's everything that moves you emotionally or activities that you enjoy doing. The other circle contains all of your Skills/Talents/Abilities. It's everything you are ether naturally good at or skills that they have developed over time.



Where these two circles overlap is what some refer to as the 'Sweet Spot'. The 'Sweet Spot' is where you're good at (gifted in) something you love (one of your passions). When people identify their 'sweet spot' and build their career/life around it, they say that life becomes much happier and more fulfilling.



As often happens when you delve into a subject in search of the answer to a question, initially the answer remained hidden while more questions were brought to light.



The new primary question that I discovered I must answer first in order to find the answer to 'what I should do with my life' is this, "Who am I?" Or said another who, "Who did my Creator make me to be?"



Without first knowing who I am and taking invintory of my gifts, tallents, skills, motivations, and passions, I can not begin to answer the question, "What To Do With My Life."



My next post will look at our new question, "Who am I?" and walk you through the steps I have taken to discover the answer to this question.