Table Of ContentACHIEVING
PERSONAL
GREATNESS
ACHIEVING
PERSONAL
GREATNESS
DISCOVER THE 10 POWERFUL KEYS TO
UNLOCKING YOUR POTENTIAL
TIM LAVENDER
Copyright © 2002 by Tim Lavender
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic,
mechanical, photocopy, recording, or other—except for brief quotations in
printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
All Scripture quotations are taken from the NEW KING JAMES VERSION®.
Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All
rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lavender, Tim.
Achieving personal greatness : discover the 10 powerful keys to unlocking your
potential / Tim Lavender.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-7852-6556-2
1. Self-actualization (Psychology) I. Title.
BF637.S4 L395 2002
158.1—dc21
2002006423
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 BVG 06 05 04 03 02
DEDICATION
To the three great mentors who have shaped my life—Donny, Larry, and
Michael. Thank you for using your positive influence to unlock my potential.
To my best friend and wife, Joy. Thank you for believing in me when I was all
alone. Your unconditional love has energized my life like nothing else ever
could.
To my dear children, Jacob and Rachel. You are my greatest gifts from the hand
of God.
INTRODUCTION
UNLOCK THE GREATNESS INSIDE YOU
ONE SATURDAY WHEN I WAS THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, MY best friend
invited me to play golf with him. At that time, I was an avid and successful
baseball player and, generally speaking, an excellent athlete, but I had never
picked up a golf club. My friend, on the other hand, had played golf with his dad
every weekend for a couple of years.
I picked up the clubs with the same ten-finger grip I used in baseball and slugged
away . . . and after eighteen holes, I had a better score than my friend. I had also
fallen in love with the game.
I played golf as often as I was able and slowly but steadily lowered my score.
Then I hit a plateau. I was determined to continue to improve, but nothing I tried
seemed to help. I sought out a pro at a local club and signed up for a lesson.
The pro took one look at my swing and promptly advised me that the ten-finger
grip I had used to hold a baseball bat didn’t work in golf, and that I would need
to change my grip if I wanted to play better golf. He showed me the proper grip,
and I swung away. Nothing about that grip felt comfortable. The ball didn’t go
nearly as far or in the direction I desired. After half a bucket of balls with the
new swing, I informed the pro that I couldn’t make the change.
I expected him to offer a Plan B approach to improving my game, but to my
surprise, he said, “OK, That’s all for today.”
I was stunned. “All for today? You mean the lesson is over?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“But why? That’s all you’re going to teach me in one lesson?”
The pro responded, “If you don’t change your grip, you’re as good as you’ll ever
be. Nothing else I tell you will matter if you don’t change your grip.”
I wanted to improve in golf more than I wanted to cling to my old habits, so I
made the change. As awkward as it was at first, as unsuccessful as I was at first,
as clumsy as the new grip felt at first, I made the change. I practiced and
practiced until I could hit the ball with the new grip as well as I had with my old
baseball-style grip. And then I began to hit the ball even better.
Years later, I’m still hitting the ball with the proper grip, and I’m still in love
with the game. I’ve won fifteen amateur tournaments, and I hope to win more.
If you truly want to unlock the potential for greatness that lies within you, you
are going to have to make some changes in the way you think. Perhaps the first
change needs to be in the way you think about personal greatness.
EMBRACE YOUR OWN GREATNESS
A friend of mine said to me, “You know, I’m not sure about your idea of
personal greatness. It sort of makes me feel uncomfortable to tell someone that I
think I can be great.”
“Really?” I said. “You know, I knew your father, and in some ways, he was the
father I never really had. How do you evaluate your dad? How do you rate him
when it comes to being great?”
“Oh, Dad was a great man. No doubt about it! I learned so many things from
him,” he replied.
“What about our mutual friend John? You and I have enjoyed his friendship for
many years. What about him?” I asked.
“Oh, he has been a great friend to me,” he said. “I think he’s a great guy.”
“Well, if these people are great in your eyes, don’t you believe you can be great
in the eyes of others?”
I watched his face closely as I asked this question. It was as if a light went on.
Personal greatness is not about your believing that you can achieve superiority
over others. It’s not about developing a proud attitude. It’s not about being better
than other people.
Personal greatness is about your becoming foundationally great and great in the
eyes of others so that one thing might happen—they might be influenced to be
more than they would be without you in their lives.
We seem to use the term great all the time. We talk about great friends and the
great times we share with them. We talk about the great teachers we have had
over the years and how they influenced our lives. We talk about great pastors we
have had, great courses we have taken, great books we have read, great movies
we have seen, great songs we have heard, great things we have experienced, and
great lessons we have learned.
The idea of greatness is common to us, and we use it to describe people and
things that have had a positive influence on our lives. However, most of us don’t
use the term great to describe ourselves.
In my nearly three decades of being in business and working with all types of
people, I have learned that many, if not most, people believe deep down inside
that they can be great. There is a still, small voice telling them that they can be
someone special. It’s the inner greatness—the inner desire to be one’s very best
—that is at the heart of personal greatness.
Personal greatness has nothing to do with being exceptionally intelligent, rich,
famous, or politically successful. It’s about being a person who exerts positive
influence on others. Personal greatness is a matter of unlocking your potential
and using your potential in such a way that it overflows into other people’s lives
to generate a positive result.
This book presents three basic laws of personal greatness, seven guiding
principles that are absolutely necessary for you to embrace if you are to unlock
your potential, and ten powerful keys that can help you release your potential
and turn it into positive influence. Together, these laws, principles, and keys
present the way to achieve your very own expression of personal greatness.
I invite you to the adventure.
I invite you to take a step toward the day when other people will call you great
because of the wonderful things you have helped unlock in their lives.
THE 3 BASIC LAWS OF PERSONAL GREATNESS
