Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week, a look at what or who we should be worshipping.

Reflection

Faith is not a passive thing. It is an act of directed attention — a choice, made consciously or not, about what we deem worthy of our trust, our time, and our admiration. That choice has consequences.

When we invest our faith in things of genuine substance, such as people of demonstrated character, institutions with ethical foundations, ideas that have weathered scrutiny and stand the test of time, we tend to build something durable. When we invest carelessly, drawn by spectacle or by the intoxicating promise of power, we tend to find ourselves holding something that was never as solid as it appeared.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

Today, I’d like to invite you to try to listen more and talk less.

Reflection

When were in a room with other people — particularly someone upon whom we’re trying to make a good impression — we tend to talk too much. It may be from anxiety, insecurity, or some other gnawing emotion, but the result is the same: an unfettered flow of logorrhea.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

Today, a word about planning and sharing.

Reflection

There is an old military maxim, often attributed to Eisenhower, that no plan survives first contact with the enemy — and it is frequently used to excuse the absence of one. But Eisenhower himself never meant it that way. His point was that the act of planning is what matters. The rigorous thinking-through of contingencies, the alignment of purpose, the shared understanding of what we are trying to accomplish.

The plan is not a script; it is a shared map.

What leaders too often forget is that the map must be shared. A plan locked in one person’s head is not a plan — it is a wish. The communication of a plan is not a courtesy or an administrative burden; it is the completion of the plan itself. When people understand not just what they are to do, but why, and where their piece fits into the whole, they become capable of adapting intelligently when conditions change.

They exercise judgment in your direction rather than waiting for instruction. This is the difference between an organization that moves and one that merely responds.

Quote

“The most important thing is having a plan and communicating the plan.”

— Alan Mulally, in conversation, 2018

Image

On the night of December 25–26, 1776, General George Washington crossed the ice-choked Delaware River with 2,400 men to strike the Hessian garrison at Trenton at dawn. The operation had been planned meticulously and communicated only to those who needed to know. The men pulled on their cloth-wrapped oars in silence and darkness. They succeeded because every man knew his role, trusted his officers, and understood the objective.

Leutze’s painting romanticizes the moment — Washington did not actually stand in the bow — but it captures something true: purposeful, forward motion, into the dark, with a plan.

There’s so much to learn,

P.S. I’m available to speak to your team about the Working Together© practices and principles that helped turn Ford around; they apply to teams of all sizes.

Contact Scott's management for inquiries

Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week, try asking yourself: Am I truly committed or merely just interested?

Reflection

• When you are committed, you find a way. When you are interested, you find an excuse.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week, why we choose good and love over evil and hate.

Reflection

Aristotle argued in the Nicomachean Ethics that humans are, by nature, oriented toward eudaimonia — flourishing, well-being, the good life. Not pleasure alone. Not power. Good.

He didn’t say this naively; he wrote in a world fraught with war, plague, and slavery. He said it because he observed something persistent and stubborn in human behavior: we keep trying to build, to connect, to repair.

Marcus Aurelius, writing in his imperial purple while managing a crumbling empire, returned again and again in his Meditations to a single discipline: assume the best of others, at least as a starting point.

Believing in good is not the same as believing everything is fine. It is a choice about where to place one’s attention — and that choice has consequences. Psychologists call this orientation dispositional optimism, and the research is unambiguous: people who hold it are healthier, more resilient, and more likely to act in ways that make the world incrementally better. The belief is generative. Cynicism is a closed loop; hope is an open one.

Choosing to believe in good is not sentiment. It is strategy. It is leadership.

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Further reading:

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week: a reminder to not let ourselves fall into despair when things seem insurmountable.

Reflection

Every day, it seems like there is something in the news to distract us and throw us into a swirling cauldron of anger or hopelessness — sensational headlines and outrageous behavior designed to hook us emotionally. It’s a lot.

If anything, such Horrible Things ought to remind us what truly matters and what we can focus on instead.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal (a wonderful gift!) I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week, as we chart a course for what we’ll accomplish in 2026, we reflect on what success really means.

Reflection

It is all too easy to ascribe success to external measures and data points. But those are just nodes that can be checked off as achievements.

We ought to be measuring our success more deeply — in ways that can be felt as well as seen, based on how we affect hearts and minds rather than balance sheets and asset classes.

In the December 11, 1905 edition of the Emporia Gazette, Bessie Stanley wrote a column titled “Success Is Service,” part of which reads:

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal (a wonderful gift!) I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

In this edition, we pause to reflect on what really matters: how we treat ourselves, which determines how we show up for others.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week, a gentle reminder that your beliefs and values ought to power your decisions.

Reflection

What are you focusing on doing and improving in your life? What are you chasing?

It is all too easy to lose ourselves in the latest trends and get swept up by the things that others place value on.

The question is: who are you and what timeless values do you hold dear? The journey to aligning your actions with your values is a journey of coming home to yourself:

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

Reflection

As Thanksgiving approaches, consider this: gratitude isn’t something we feel once; it’s something we practice over and over.

It’s easy to think of Thanksgiving as a moment of thankfulness. A meal, a toast, maybe a brief reflection on the good things. But gratitude is something bigger and sturdier than that.

Gratitude is a stewardship — a recognition that what we enjoy today exists because countless others came before us and cared enough to build something worth passing on.

These are gifts we didn’t earn but are responsible for preserving. Thankfulness responds to a moment. Gratitude responds to a legacy.

So this year, I’m thinking about gratitude less as a warm feeling and more as a daily discipline. A way of moving through the world with open eyes, an open hand, and an open heart.

A few ideas for this Thanksgiving:

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week, a reminder that sometimes it pays to keep it brief.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

These days, it seems like we need a reminder as to the definition of a gentleman. In this case, we take it not as a gender-specific word, but as a broader term indicating the definition of a decent person.

Because decency is always in season.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

Sometimes, all it takes for success and ambition to bloom is to witness and understand the magic in the humdrum, daily occurrences, objects, and actions that are largely ignored.

We ignite the extraordinary by making the ordinary come alive.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and a painting to contemplate.

The reflection in today’s Sunday Journal is one that reminds us of the power of focusing on quietly doing work that we can be truly proud of: living with purpose and creating a life that feels good.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and a painting to contemplate.

In connection with this week’s essay that cautioned us to take care before constantly posting online (“Listen to the Silence”), we may harbor some regret about the way we’ve reacted or treated others, when we would have been better off saying nothing.

This edition of Sunday Journal connects regrets and wrongs with reflection and growth.

Reflection

How often do you look back at your past behavior or words and cringe at how you may have acted or spoke?

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and a painting to contemplate.

Reflections

• We live in a world dominated by words and opinions.

• Dominate the listening rather than the talking.

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Welcome back to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition of Sunday Journal contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and a painting to contemplate.

In a world beset by uncertainty, where data breaches and weather outbreaks — as certain as death and taxes — portend personal and societal-altering paths of destruction, it is heartening to find something we can control.

If we allow ourselves, so much of our time can be spent worrying about that which is beyond our control.

Instead, embrace the power you have.

Reflection

Nine things that hold great power:

1. Rest

2. Kindness

3. Meditation

4. Vulnerability

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Welcome back to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

As always, we have three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and a painting to bring serenity.

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Welcome back to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

This week’s edition tackles the subject of etiquette and politeness — why they matter, particularly in today’s less-than-polite environment.

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Welcome back to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves.

This week’s edition has advice on how to interact with your children, but it can just as easily apply to how leaders should interact with employees as well. Or just general advice on being a decent human being.

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