Increased Vocabulary = Influence

Self-development expert Jim Rohn once made the important point that “all of life is sales.”   Throughout each day of our life journeys, we are all involved in some form of communication, seeking to win a hearing and persuade others for mutual benefit.

I’ve listened to some older success audio by the late Earl Nightingale over the past year.  One of the points Earl made was the fact that people in very powerful and influential positions in business are characterized by their expansive vocabularies.  A large and varied command of language carries with it the potential for advancement and increased income for its possessor.

I love words.  Just ask my wife.  And I get bored easily with clichés.  Aren’t you tired of hearing things like “awesome,” “been there, done that” and “just sayin’”?  I’m sure others are too.  The use of a cliché often betrays laziness if nothing else.  We all need color and freshness of expression.  It enriches life in a profound way.

It’s been said that the difference between a sparse versus a rich vocabulary is a mere 3500 words.  Ponder that for a moment.  By taking time to learn new words and fresh expressions, you can elevate your powers of persuasion, influence and earning.

Here are some tips to grow your vocabulary and your station:

• Read widely.  One public figure whose stunningly rich vocabulary sets him apart from the rank-and-file is political commentator George Will.  One might not always agree with a position Will espouses but listening to him articulate it is a treat—candy for the ear.  As well, read novelists who’ve distinguished themselves as wordsmiths.  Ralph McInerny and Daniel Silva are favorites of mine.  As well fine writers like Morris West and Eugene Peterson.
• Read with a dictionary close by.  Corollary to the above bullet point. I have a Kindle Fire® reader.  It has the advantage of a built-in dictionary–the New Oxford American Dictionary– that activates when you highlight a word in your downloaded books.  If a word is unfamiliar to you, look it up.  Then begin using it in your own speaking and writing.
• Use new words in speech as appropriate.  The rule is to prefer the shorter word if it conveys the precision and color you are looking for.  But using just the right word trumps all.  Take a little time before speaking and seek to say something in a new and winsome way.
• Learn foreign languages.  My own studies of French, Russian, Hebrew and Greek have all helped me to understand my own English and to communicate more vigorously.  President Richard Nixon once commended the study of Latin because 1) it is the most orderly of all languages and 2) it is foundational for much of our own language.

One of the goals we should each strive for is to give those with whom we interact a superior experience to that which they are currently enjoying or loathing.  New words bring color and freshness.  And everyone thrives on that.  Be the source.

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Ambition and Its Corollaries

Ambition has become suspect in the minds of a lot of people.  The classic stereotype is the self-centered man or woman who claw their way to the top of the corporate ladder stepping upon anybody perched on the other rungs.  Ego, indifference to time-honored virtues, and bullying are all.

This is unfortunate.  Frankly, ambition has gotten a bad rap.  In fact, without it you will not hit any of your goals, whether personal and professional.

Some months back, some friends and I discussed healthy ambition and its importance.. We focused on moving up in one’s career and becoming the best in our chosen fields.  There is cost, effort and sacrifice to do this.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch.  The pursuit of a highly valued station of influence and achievement takes patience, focus and a lot of hard work.  Those who take shortcuts are cheating themselves and are usually found out.

In his fascinating book Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else, Geoff Colvin shatters a number of myths about “natural” talent, genius and how pros become such.  These are usually echoed in statements like this: “Well, Tiger Woods was born to play golf.  He’s a natural.”

Here’s something you may not know. Tiger Woods and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart both had fathers who started them on the paths of golf and music from infancy.  Earl Woods had a putter in Tiger’s hands before he was a year old.  Leopold Mozart was an established musician and composer before his son was born.  He set Wolfgang on a very focused and intense vocation in musical performance and composition from childhood.  Neither Tiger Woods nor W.A. Mozart were geniuses in common parlance and legend.  They spent many years mastering their crafts.

Peak performers in any discipline acquire that position through untold hours of deliberate practice.  Not just practice, but focused periods of review and goal setting with specific objectives in mind.  When Tiger Woods goes to the driving range, he doesn’t simply pull out a driver and see how far he can hit the ball.  Instead he might take a five iron out and practice hitting the ball not more than sixty-five yards.  There is much more intense energy and concentration that attends deliberate practice.

Here are some steps that are crucial for you to rise to the top of your calling:

• You must be a lifelong learner.  This means college, vocational school, online seminars, or training at the feet of a master whether a cabinet-maker or a jazz pianist.  It will cost time, discipline, sacrifice, and money.  Make the investment.
• Saying yes also means saying no.  Getting to the top of the classical guitar world meant that a teenage Christopher Parkening was unable to play baseball with his pals as much as he’d like to have done.  His father, Duke, had him executing deliberate practice from the age of eleven.  Up at 5:00 AM to practice before school.  More practice when school was over.  Choosing mastery in an enterprise means you will not be able to say yes to lots of other pursuits simply because of the time and focus it takes to excel in your chosen field.
• You must move past the drudgery curve.  A woman once told the great pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski, “You are a genius.”  His reply: “Madame, before I was a genius, I was a drudge.”  The driving range, the woodshop, the music room are not glamorous environments but it is in such places, over long hours, that one becomes a master.

The world is looking for individuals who are outstanding at what they do.  Mediocrity, for such as these, grates against every instinct inside them.  You are called to such excellence. The sky is the limit.  Focus and move forward.

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Manageable Goals: A Key To Growth

Goals.  How do you hit them?  How do you place them within sane and profitable range?  How do you avoid the extremes of setting the bar too low—and being thus unchallenged and bored—and shooting unrealistically high—and being discouraged and defeated?

Today, one of my colleagues and I were discussing the importance of setting goals that were challenging yet attainable.  My friend told me that when he was an insurance salesman, he and his fellow agents would huddle in the mornings and lay out their sales goals for that particular day.  His buddies would generally shoot for the moon:  “I’m gonna sell ten policies today.”  He would set more modest but sufficiently difficult targets: “I’m going to sell two of this policy and one of that package.”  And he would usually hit the mark, while his co-workers failed to meet theirs and were thus discouraged.

There’s an old adage that says “slow and steady wins the race.”  This, of course, is a nod to Aesop’s famous story of The Tortoise and the Hare.  Through patient plodding, the much slower and ungainly tortoise won the race over the flashy and fleet-of-foot hare.  If you persevere, you win.

This is not to discourage the practice of giving yourself a worthy but difficult task.  But it is important to keep a healthy balance between mediocrity and insanity.  Those who avoid the shoals on either side generally sail on to success.

What are your goals for 1) continuing education—whether at a learning institution or through self-education via reading, listening and viewing, 2) physical fitness and weight loss, 3) strengthening your relationships, 4) improving your vocational skills?  Have you written them down, which is critical to their fulfillment, having engaged your conscious and subconscious mind by doing so?  Have you a process, broken down into manageable bites—“baby steps”—whereby you can meet these destinations?

Here are some of the benefits one derives from setting goals and then meeting them:

• You get the benefit of meeting the goal itself.  If you lose that portly thirty pounds, you feel better about yourself and have become healthier.  If you learn a new skill, you can use that to help others, elevate your station and earn more.
• You receive a boost in self-confidence and self-respect rooted in genuine accomplishment, rather than in aspiration and fantasy.
• You strengthen your goal-attainment muscles because you are encouraged that, yes, you can do this!

Set goals.  Set them high enough to stretch you.  Write them down, with concrete dates and metrics indicating you’ve met them.  Then hit them!

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Less Is More

One of the most fascinating books I’ve read over the past ten years or so is Inside Steve’s Brain by Leander Kahney.  In this book, the author unpacks some of the keys to the design and marketing philosophy of Steve Jobs and Apple.  Some of the chapter titles are provocative (Focus: How Saying “No” Saved Apple; Elitism: Hire Only A Players, Fire the Bozos).

Jobs was leery of trying to do too many things with Apple.  In fact, when he took over Apple again in 1997 after a twelve year absence, he slashed and mothballed a lot of projects in the works.  Apple was in deep trouble financially.  He made the decision to focus on a few key products and make them superior to anything in the market.

One of the gnats he had to dispense with early on in his second tour with Apple was feature creep.  “Feature creep” is the IT design practice of creating all sorts of bells and whistles for any new piece of technology, thus increasing the product’s versatility and, therefore, sales.

Steve Jobs had no patience for feature creep.

This impatience was an outgrowth of his Zen minimalism which, in design terms, meant making technology as simple and user-friendly as possible.  So he and his colleagues worked painstakingly to do a few signature Apple devices extremely well.  As Jobs’ famous mantra says, “Focus means saying no.”

In the summer of 2011, Apple passed Exxon Mobil as the most profitable corporation in our country.  Jobs really knew what he was doing.

As a musician, it’s taken me quite a few years to learn that less is more.  Young musicians tend to want to overplay, to “express themselves,” to get everything possible out on their instruments.  Over many years, however, I’ve learned that the spaces between the notes I play are as important, sometimes more, as the notes themselves.  Or, as Dan Fogelberg said as a young studio musician, “I learned that it’s not what you play, it’s what you don’t play.”

What have you been given?  What do you do well?  What can you pare down or eliminate to simplify and focus, bringing your contributions to a higher level of excellence? Some suggestions:

• Social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.  All fascinating platforms but they tend to eat time the way SUV’s suck gas.  Limit your involvements–and unnecessary participation in the drama of others, something you really don’t have energy and patience for anyway.
• News media: Consider some other outlet to get your news than the Big 5.  BBC or NPR are good places to start.  Again, do you really need five different viewpoints on a story?
• Pour the extra time and effort thus gained from limiting your involvements in pointless, time-wasting pursuits into honing skills in your vocation and your avocations.  As the song from the Franco Zeffirelli film “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” (1971) says, “Do few things, but do them well.”

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Take Charge Of Your Life (It’s Yours, After All)

True confession: I don’t like taking responsibility for where I am at in life.  It’s much easier to be a victim rather than a survivor.  And I’m pretty good at it—and at self-deception as well.

I kvetch about working too many hours or having too many things on the schedule.  But I said “yes” for a myriad of good and lousy reasons. And then I’m tired and irritable.  I grouse about looking like a chubby little hobbit but I ate the M&M’s and Tootsie Rolls staring at me from the bowl, saying, “Take me, I’m yours.”

It doesn’t work for me, frankly.  This incident from Scott Peck’s life, recounted in The Road Less Traveled is mighty convicting.  But he nails this whole matter of taking responsibility for one’s life:

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Almost all of us from time to time seek to avoid-in ways that can be quite subtle-the pain of assuming responsibility for our problems. For the cure of my own subtle character disorder at the age of thirty I am indebted to Mac Badgely. At the time Mac was the director of the outpatient psychiatric clinic where I was completing my psychiatry residency training. In this clinic my fellow residents and I were assigned new patients on rotation. Perhaps because I was more dedicated to my patients and my own education than most of my fellow residents, I found myself working much longer hours than they. They ordinarily saw patients only once a week. I often saw my patients two or three times a week. As a result I would watch my fellow residents leaving the clinic at four-thirty each afternoon for their homes, while I was scheduled with appointments up to eight or nine o’clock at night, and my heart was filled with resentment. As I became more and more resentful and more and more exhausted I realized that something had to be done. So I went to Dr. Badgely and explained the situation to him. I wondered whether I might be exempted from the rotation of accepting new patients for a few weeks so that I might have time to catch up. Did he think that was feasible? Or could he think of some other solution to the problem? Mac listened to me very intently and receptively, not interrupting once. When I was finished, after a moment’s silence, he said to me very sympathetically, “Well, I can see that you do have a problem.”

I beamed, feeling understood. “Thank you,” I said. “What do you think should be done about it?”

To this Mac replied, “I told you, Scott, you do have a problem.”

This was hardly the response I expected. “Yes,” I said, slightly annoyed, “I know I have a problem. That’s why I came to see you. What do you think I ought to do about it?”

Mac responded: “Scott, apparently you haven’t listened to what I said. I have heard you, and I am agreeing why you. You do have a problem.”…[cursing] I said, “I know I have a problem. I knew that when I came in here. The question is, what am I going to do about it?”

“Scott,” Mac replied, “I want you to listen. Listen closely and I will say it again. I agree with you. You do have a problem. Specifically, you have a problem with time. Your time. Not my time. It’s not my problem. It’s your problem with your time. You, Scott Peck, have a problem with your time. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”

I turned and strode out of Mac’s office, furious. And I stayed furious. I hated Mac Badgely. For three months I hated him. I felt that he had a severe character disorder. How else could he be so callous? Here I had gone to him humbly asking for just a little bit of help, a little bit of advice, and the bastard wasn’t even willing to assume enough responsibility even to try to help me, even to do his job as director of the clinic. If he wasn’t supposed to help manage such problems as director of the clinic, what the hell was he supposed to do?

But after three months I somehow came to see that Mac was right, that it was I, not he, who had the character disorder. My time was my responsibility. It was up to me and me alone to decide how I wanted to use and order my time. If I wanted to invest my time more heavily than my fellow residents in my work, then that was my choice, and the consequences of that choice were my responsibility. It might be painful for me to watch my fellow residents leave their offices two or three hours before me, and it might be painful to listen to my wife’s complaints that I was not devoting myself sufficiently to the family, but these pains were the consequences of a choice that I had made. If I did not want to suffer them, then I was free to choose not to work so hard and to structure my time differently. My working hard was not a burden cast upon me by hardhearted fate or a hardhearted clinic director; it was the way I had chosen to live my life and order my priorities. As it happened, I chose not to change my life style. But with my change in attitude, my resentment of my fellow residents vanished. 

______________________________

This is tough medicine.  But we are responsible for our choices.  You didn’t have to take that job.  Go out with that person.  Vote for Obama or Bush.  Drink too many margaritas.  Eat the M&M’s.

Life is so much easier when we live free.  But freedom comes at the price of taking complete responsibility for all that is in our power.

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Habits of Successful Writers

Writers are an interesting lot of people.  They often have the strangest habits.  They are all unique and quirky.  I’m fascinated by the stories writers tell about how they ply their trade.

Consider Ralph McInerny, for instance.  McInerny was a philosophy professor at University of Notre Dame for over fifty years.  He emerged from academic obscurity as the writer of the famous Father Dowling mysteries, a series so engaging that it was eventually made into a television series starring Tom Bosley of Happy Days fame.  He wrote other novels with different protagonists and settings, as well as numerous philosophical treatises, an adjunct of his day job.  He was a prolific and multifaceted craftsman.

McInerny became focused on writing in the early 1960’s.  At that time, he was teaching at Notre Dame, had a large family, and had just bought a new home.  As a result, he was financially overextended and needed to earn extra money to make ends meet.  He’d done some writing before, selling stories to magazines, but had never taken the idea of being a writer seriously.

So, facing a recurrent financial squeeze, he set himself up into an apprenticeship in writing.  Each night after the children had gone to bed, he went into his basement and pecked away on a manual typewriter from 10 PM to 2 AM.  Every night for a year.  Though pooped after a long day, he said about going to his subterranean writing desk, “It was as if the sun came up and it was a new day.  I just loved it.”  He tells the story of his writer’s apprenticeship here.

He did this for a year, having determined from the outset that, if he didn’t sell anything by the year’s end, he’d find a different way to moonlight.

He published over fifty books before he died three years ago at age eighty.

I’m inspired by hard work like this.  Here are some curious habits of some well-known writers:

• Ernest Hemingway wrote every day for six hours.  Sober.  His average output being about 500 words.
• Truman Capote always wrote reclining on a couch.
• Stephen King writes ten pages a day.
• Dan Brown rises at 4 AM and writes.  Seven days a week.
• George Will writes his editorials with a fountain pen.
• Vladimir Nabokov wrote his novels on index cards.
• Daniel Silva writes all the first drafts of his novels in longhand on yellow legal pads in pencil.

What writers inspire you in your creative tasks?  What are their habits?

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Know Your Time

Time is the only inelastic commodity that any of us possess.  We are each allotted 24 hours to the day.  Given the fact that time has an end for all of us, it is priceless and demands we steward it carefully.

Those who make their mark on the universe learn this well, the earlier the better.  I’ve been listening to some outstanding lessons on time management by Brian Tracy.  This material is about a quarter of a century old but is timeless (pardon the pun).  You can drink from the same well here.

A leader advances because he knows his time and that of those with whom he interacts is precious.  So without further ado, here’s some tips that will increase your effectiveness, production and value in the marketplace:

• Arrive early for any appointments.  People will take note quickly that you are a pro, a force in business.  Being fashionably late may be de rigueur for parties and proms but it will destroy you in the marketplace.
• Use early morning hours to get a lot of work done.  Tracy points out that it’s possible to get the work of a typical day done in 3 hours of undisturbed effort.
• Turn off your smart phone.  If it’s important, those trying to get you will leave a message or call back.
• Find gracious ways of economizing or taking leave of people who tend to waste their time as well as yours.  “Hi.  What can I do for you?”  You’re not helping them or yourself by letting them simply drop in to chew the fat when you should be working. Again, this is for business.  Don’t do this with family or friends.
• Keep your workspace organized, free of clutter.
• When making appointments to meet with someone, prepare an agenda on paper, smart phone, PDA or iPad.  Set a definite timeframe for the meeting and announce it ahead of time.  If it’s 30 minutes, end it at 30 minutes and be on your way.  It will speak volumes.
• Write down the contents of phone discussions or meetings.  When meeting with customers, follow up your discussions with an email.  This keeps assumptions crystal clear.  It will save your time and your neck, believe me.
• Remember that really high achievers understand the value of minutes, not just hours.
• When discussing a topic, ask direct and specific questions.  When answering, get to the point.  The only time you should exercise the urge to “Ramble On” is when you’ve got Led Zeppelin’s 2^nd album cued up.

Enough for now.  If you follow these steps diligently, you will see your production increase, your influence grow and your income go north.

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Listen To Your Own Life

What makes you come alive?  You know what I’m talking about.  When a particular subject comes up, you become animated.  Your pulse increases.  Your eyes light up.  Your speech becomes dynamic and dramatic.  People see that something matters  when they look in your eyes and hear your voice.

You can’t hide passion.

One of the most important things I’ve ever heard anyone say is this: Listen to your own life.

This is not psychobabble.  You need to pay attention to what lights you up.  It is a clue to what you should probably do in life to put your own dent in the universe.  Passionate people are far more effective than the complacent and bored.  Passionate people make better art, better commerce, better lovers.   And they’re far more interesting than a thousand people merely getting by, content with mediocrity and playing it safe.

Some time ago, I had an interesting conversation with an even more interesting young man.  He is near and dear to our family.  As he began talking about his love of wildlife and animals, he got excited.  I told him, “Pay attention to yourself.  Do you hear your own voice?”

We are each given different gifts, callings and interests.  You can still the voice of these deposits through fear.  What will my friends think if I want to play the cello?  Can I make a living as a writer?  Do I really want to be a politician—people don’t trust them because they all lie, right?  Listening to these voices will slowly kill something inside you.

The problem is this:  If you stifle who you are and what you are called to do, it will inevitably emerge in a number of different ways, either 1) in inferior forms–like settling for being a technical writer when you’re really a novelist–or 2) in toxic forms.  The depression and frustration that accompany the unfulfilled destiny, like buried nuclear waste, will poison the water table of your life.  And when that happens, you will seek to medicate and mask that pain and discontent with all sorts of unhealthy stuff.  Believe me, I’ve been there.

The next time you find yourself getting excited about some pursuit—creative, vocational or social—pay attention.  Note your own body language.  It doesn’t lie.  If you’re near a mirror, take a look.  What you see is a clue.  A clue to fulfilling your destiny.

Life’s too short to settle for getting by.  You are here for a purpose.  Listen to your life, lock on and pursue.

You and the world will be better for it.

Perseverance and Determination

I have been a student of biblical languages since 1981.  That year I fell in love with Hebrew.  I loved the look of the letters themselves, the guttural timbre of the words when spoken, the direction of the text–right to left–and the picturesque nature of this Semitic tongue.  Hebrew is a graphic vehicle of communication, the language of shepherds and farmers.  I learned the alphabet quickly and have been reading over for thirty years now.

In the wake of the Diaspora, Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language.  It was, in effect, a dead language, confined to rabbinic and biblical studies.  And it remained that way until the 19^th century.

And then Eliezer Ben-Yehuda stepped onto the scene.

Ben-Yehuda was a Lithuanian Jew, passionate for the return of Jews to their ancient homeland in Palestine.  He was also a language scholar and knew that a common language—other than Yiddish, a mishmash of Middle German and Hebrew—would unify his people.  In short, he was a fanatic.  A man with a mission.

So he set out to resurrect an essentially dead language.  He did this in an extreme way.  When he and his wife immigrated to Palestine, he determined that once they set foot on the Holy Land, they would only communicate in Hebrew.  A rigorous path indeed.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was fiercely determined to revive Hebrew.  Modern Hebrew is based on biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew.  And this amazing man, working tirelessly, single-handedly brought spoken Hebrew back to life.  It is the national language of Israel.  And a miracle of linguistics.

I’m stunned by Ben-Yehuda’s example of perseverance and determination.  It shows me that the most remarkable things are possible if one has grit, laser-like focus and tenacity in pursuit of a very specific goal.

What “impossible” goals do you have before you?  How can you learn from the example of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda?

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Inspirations

I read an interesting article some months ago about Viggo Mortensen and his influences.  Viggo is an actor of no mean accomplishment and a Watertown native.  He spent a number of his growing up years here in the North Country.  People who frequent neighboring Clayton see him from time to time as he comes back to visit family.

The article was not so much commentary as it was comprehensive lists.  Being a list junkie, I found it fascinating and invigorating.  You can read about it here.

I heard a wise speaker remark once that we are all a composite of the people who influence our lives, whether directly or through their work.  I resonated with this observation and it helped put to bed the nagging urge to “be an original.”

So I thought I would list some of my own, collected over forty-eight years.  I’d be interested in yours if you choose to comment.

I am a Christian man and so the biggest influence, without question, is Jesus Christ.  He is the summit.

I am also a husband, father, son, IT professional, musician and writer.  So here goes:

People:  My wife, Kath.  My daughters, Anna and Emily.  My extended family and friends. My teachers and ministers. My employers and colleagues.

Guitarists:  Phil Keaggy, Julian Bream, Christopher Parkening, Jeff Beck, Alvin Lee, David Russell, Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Brian May, Chuck Berry, Andres Segovia, John Williams, Earl Klugh, Larry Carlton, Ted Nugent, Paul O’Dette (lute), Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, Slash, Steve Howe, Eric Clapton, Joe Fava, Konrad Ragossnig (lute), Tommy Emmanuel, David Gilmour, Rick Foster, Angel Romero, Wes Montgomery, Jacob Moon, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Anthony Phillips.  And many more.

Music and Artists: Dan Fogelberg, Keith Green, Richard Souther, Elton John, The Allman Brothers, Paul Clark, The Beatles, 2^nd Chapter of Acts, Donovan, Honeytree, Sara Groves, Vineyard Music, Maranatha Music, Hillsong Music, James Taylor, Larry Norman, John Michael Talbot, Yes, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Luciano Pavarotti, Frank Sinatra, Michael Buble, Jethro Tull, Randy Stonehill, The Eagles, Billy Joel, Kemper Crabb, Lamb, Peter, Paul & Mary, Queen, Simon & Garfunkel, Twila Paris, Yo-Yo Ma, Michael Card, Bob Bennett, Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), Brian Doerksen, Debby Boone, Kenny G, Norah Jones, Andrea Bocelli, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Dave Brubeck, Ralph Sharon, Tony Bennett, Neil Young, Jascha Heifetz, Glenn Gould, Malcolm & Alwyn, Phil Ramone.  And many more.

Composers: Johann Sebastian Bach, John Dowland, Gaspar Sanz, Ralph Vaughn Williams, Erik Satie, G.F. Handel, Ludwig Von Beethoven, Jimmy Webb, Francesco Da Milano, Henry Purcell, Pyotr Illich Tchaikovsky, Domenico Scarlatti, Enrique Granados, Isaac Albeniz, Michael Praetorius, Joaquin Rodrigo, Antonin Dvorak, Ennio Morricone, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Rachel Portman, Felix Mendelsohn, James Newton Howard, John Williams, Mychael Danna, Stephen Schwartz, George Gershwin. And many more.

Film: Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Marlon Brando, Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Johnny Depp, Steve McQueen, Ben Kingsley, Anthony Hopkins, Liam Neeson, Sir Laurence Olivier, James Caan, Sean Connery, Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness, Steven Spielberg, Gus Van Zandt, Jim Caviezel, Franco Zeffirelli.  And many more.

Writers: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Morris West, Will & Ariel Durant, Viktor Frankl, Chaim Potok, Ralph McInerny, M. Scott Peck, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael D. O’Brien, William Manchester, Dan Brown, Daniel Silva, Leo Tolstoy, Randy Alcorn, Joel Rosenberg, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Elie Wiesel, Sol Stein, Mitch Albom, Mortimer Adler, Will Strunk & E.B. White.  And many more.

Christian – Protestant: A.W. Tozer, R.C. Sproul, C.S. Lewis, J.C. Ryle, Francis Schaeffer, A.W. Pink, Derek Prince, Jack Hayford, Ravi Zacharias, Chuck Missler, John MacArthur, Robert Shank, Gordon Lindsay, Leonard Ravenhill, David Wilkerson, John Piper, J.I. Packer, Richard Foster, Jonathan Edwards, Eugene Peterson, Gordon Fee, Dallas Willard, Robert Dick Wilson, John Bevere, D.M. M’Intyre, Watchman Nee, John Wimber, Jack Deere, Bill Johnson, Thomas Oden, Edward J. Young, Hobart E. Freeman, J. Barton Payne, Gene Edwards, William Branham, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Smith Wigglesworth, Josh McDowell, Dave Hunt, Chuck Smith, Robert Murray M’Cheyne, Ronald Enroth, Larry Burkett, Jack Van Impe, A.T. Robertson, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Charles Colson, John G. Lake, Paul Livermore, Michael Brown, Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, John Wesley, Charles Finney, Bill Hybels, John Eldredge, Billy Graham, Jim Elliot, Chuck Swindoll, Charles Spurgeon, Alfred Edersheim.  And many more.

Christian – Catholic: St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas Merton, Francis MacNutt, Louis Bouyer, Karl Adam, Msgr. Ronald Knox, Scott Hahn, Peter Kreeft, Thomas À Kempis, Mark Shea, Romano Guardini, Thomas Howard, Madame Guyon, G.K. Chesterton, Fr. John Hardon, Dietrich Von Hildebrand, Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II), Angelo Roncalli (John XXIII), Raymond Brown, Brennan Manning, Joseph Girzone, John Henry Newman, Karl Keating, Malachi Martin.  And many more.

Leadership and Self-Development:  Jim Rohn, Peter Drucker, Michael Gelb, John Maxwell, J. Oswald Sanders, Jack Canfield, Dean Karnazes, James Allen, Napoleon Hill, Brian Tracy, Anthony Robbins, Stephen Covey, Earl Nightingale, Dale Carnegie, Warren Bennis, David Schwartz, Zig Ziglar, Warren Bennis. And a few more.

Politics and Economics:  George Will, Henry Kissinger, Abba Eban, Ronald Reagan, John Kenneth Galbraith, John F. Kennedy, George Schultz, Thomas Sowell.  And a few more.

Science and Technology:  Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, E.F. Codd, Stephen Hawking.  And a few more.

Enough for now.  Who inspires you in your talents, work and avocations?