One of my goals in life over the last several years has been to become an internationally recognized inspirational speaker. There’s nothing like watching an audience be moved by the words which you speak. Having them cry is one thing but having them laugh is my favorite.

My grandfather was a ToastMaster years ago and he was in the state government and worked under Grant Sawyer, the governor of the state of Nevada during the 60s. He had the best sense of humor you could ever imagine. Bob Hope had nothing on him! His one-liners are something I wish we would’ve recorded. We actually tried several times to get him to putting down on paper or even into a tape recorder but he wouldn’t do it. Oh how I miss him!

My father also had a tremendous and humor but he wasn’t quite as good a speaker as my grandfather was. My father was known, well known I should say, for his ability to make people laugh though. He also had a type of humor that we used to call the “Smith sickies” as they were very pun oriented (and not really sick as they say in modern terminology). He would say stuff like this while holding up his index finger on his right hand, “Do you know why Elvis never played guitar with this finger? (He would then wiggle that finger). He couldn’t. It’s my finger!”

That’s the type of humor I grew up with. I have my own brand of humor that I don’t think it’s possible for me to describe. But I have fallen in love with Toastmasters and especially the humorous speech contest every year. For seven years in a row I won every one of my club and area competitions until this last year. I think it was time for someone to take over by now.

The International speech contest is also fun to be involved in. I actually made it all the way to Regionals in 2005 and that was a wonderful experience. I live for these contests. In fact they have truly been a highlight for me over the past six years. They boosted my confidence and taught me some amazing things. They gave me something to really look forward to and work for.

I still have a goal of winning the entire “National Championship of Public Speaking” someday and I’ve written it down as a goal. It’s always good to have a goal. It’s also always good to write that goal down. I can’t remember how the phrase goes but something about, “a goal not written down is just a dream or a wish.”

Anyway, here’s to hoping that you have your own goals and dreams that you’re working towards them. Just make sure they’re your own goals, and not someone else’s. I find that many people in life are really living somebody else’s goals. It’s hard to stay motivated or work very hard in such a fashion.

But I also see something else very interesting. I see a lot of people pursuing a goal and sacrificing the basic necessities of their own family in order to reach it. I don’t think this is a wise idea. A great man once said that, “no success can compensate for failure in the home” (David O. McKay). I believe that’s true. Yes we must have goals and we must have dreams but we also have responsibilities and it’s important that we keep things in perspective.

I saw people several times in a program called “The Shark Tank” who had spent their entire fortune and several years of their life trying to invent some new product. I encourage people to try to reach out and accomplish great things and do something to change the world but if they lose their family in the process, they are a failure. No matter how rich they become if they ever reach that goal and they lose the most important thing in their life-their wife and family, they are a failure.

Keeping a proper perspective in life is a daily decision. If there is one thing that helps me more than anything else to keep that proper perspective it is this: prayer and scripture study. Now I know that’s two things but they go hand-in-hand. Prayers go straight to God and many times he answers them through the Scriptures.

I love the Scriptures. I have read them every day for the past 25 years only missing about 40 days during that time. I cannot tell you how many experiences I’ve had by reading them. But I have found that during those last 25 years every time when things have gone severely wrong, it’s because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to them.

But all these mistakes will give me experience. I believe these experiences will last far beyond the grave. These experiences are here to build me up and teach me things that I could learn in no other way. You can tell a curious young child to stay away from the flames or the hot stove, but he won’t really know the reason until he touches them and gets burned.

Life isn’t about getting rich. It isn’t about becoming famous. It isn’t about so many things that we are fed every single day. Life is about becoming the best person you can be. It’s about learning from your mistakes. It’s about forgiving others, developing talents, learning the joy of service to others, learning as much as you can, giving as much as you can and learning how to depend upon God.

It is my prayer that this blog will bring you something of hope and inspiration to help you in your life. We all need a little help. We need each other because there really is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. That it just another myth of our day.

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