Max Living

“Endurance and to be able to endure is the first lesson a child should learn because it’s the one they will most need to know.”
—Jean Jacques Rousseau

By Mark Brown
It has been said that the only constant in life is change. One who doesn’t anticipate change of some sort—in careers, economics, home life, and more—is bound to be frustrated and possibly even angry when change comes his or her way.
Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your [...]

By Mark Brown
One of our recent blog posts asked “what is your recipe for success?” If success is a recipe, then it may also be true that constantly repeating that recipe will lead to stale leftovers. As we pointed out in that post, once you master the basics of the recipe, it’s time to “improvise [...]

Tony Snow, an American journalist, served for a short time as George W. Bush’s press secretary. In 2005, before taking on that role, he was diagnosed with cancer. A few months following his diagnosis, he shared this powerful perspective on his mortality:

The art of being sick is not the same as the art of getting [...]

One hundred and fifty years ago this month, the American Civil War began when Confederate batteries in Charlestown, South Carolina, surrounding Ft. Sumter opened fire. The nation would not know peace again for almost exactly four bitter years. The war claimed the lives of some 620,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. Destruction, especially [...]

By Mark Brown
Time management is a tough topic to grapple with: its core tenets are so fundamental that many discount the value they can have in our lives, and yet so many people are such poor managers of their time that the focus has to be on these tenets, over and over again.
When it comes [...]

This blog has focused from time to time on the power of words—power to motivate and help, or, conversely, power to harm and discourage. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov 23:7) is well known, but let us not forget, “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh [...]

By Mark Brown
In the personal development field, few names have as much cachet as Stephen R. Covey. His book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is a true classic, spawning or otherwise propagating such familiar terms as “begin with the end in mind,” “Put first things first,” and “seek first to understand, then to [...]

Ben Comen and Living without Limits
Ben Comen has cerebral palsy. Ben Comen ran for his high school’s cross country team. Those two statements usually don’t go together.
Perhaps one definition of character is not relying on excuses when excuses are readily available to us. Ben wanted to be part of a team, and paid the price [...]

By Mark Brown
Imagine you received a dire diagnosis that you had only a short time to live. How would you feel? What would you do? Would you feel cheated? What would you tell people?
Randy Pausch received such a diagnosis. His story is well known to most people, and this week’s book, The Last Lecture, has [...]