813 Live Intentionally

WRITE YOUR STORY. Everyone has a story. You do. I do. Your life will be recorded. The question is, is your story the one that you want to be told? We often let other people write our pages instead of taking the pen and doing it ourselves. If you want your life to be a masterpiece, you’re going to have to live intentionally. For this Five Minute Friday, I revisited a conversation I had with John Maxwell where he shared the gift that inspired him to live an intentional life. John C. Maxwell is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, coach, and speaker who has sold more than 25 million books in fifty languages. In 2014 he was identified as the #1 leader in business by the American Management Association and the most influential leadership expert in the world by Business Insider and Inc. magazine. The recipient of the Mother Teresa Prize for Global Peace and Leadership from the Luminary Leadership Network, Dr. Maxwell speaks each year to Fortune 500 companies, presidents of nations, and many of the world's top business leaders. John says that in order to live intentionally, you have to bridge the gap between knowing and doing. You have to take your good intentions and act them out. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:10Lewis Howes?

  Let me introduce you to today's guest. He is an incredible human being. His name is John C. Maxwell. He's a number one New York Times bestselling author, coach, and speaker who has sold more than 25 million books in 50 languages. And in 2014, he was identified as the number one leader in business by the American Management Association and the most influential leadership expert in the world by Business Insider and Inc. Magazine. He's also been voted the top leadership professional in the world on LeadershipGurus.net for six consecutive years. He's trained more than 5 million leaders. In 2015, he reached the milestone of having trained leaders from

• 0:51Lewis Howes?

  every country in the world. He is the recipient of the Mother Teresa Prize for Global Peace and Leadership from the Luminary Leadership Network, and he speaks each year to Fortune 500 companies, presidents of nations, and many of the world's top business leaders.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Most people don't lead their life, they accept their life.

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Will you say that again?

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Because they, most people don't lead their life, they accept their life. And if you lead your life, you're intentional. If you accept your life, you're letting someone else determine your life for you. And yet 99% of people get up every day and they say, well, I hope something good happens to me. I hope something wonderful is good, you know. But they're not intentional. And so I wrote the book to say, okay, here's what's beautiful. Every person can be intentional. And here's what I mean by that. If somebody said, John, I want to be, I really want to be successful. I want to be significant in my life. And I really want to, I really want to make my life matter. What do I need? What's the quickest, easiest way to do that? I would just look at it and say, you have to become intentional.

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  And what does it mean for you to be intentional?

• 2:01Speaker 01

  But it means that I do this on purpose. I choose to take action on what I already feel. And you see, the greatest gap in life is the gap between knowing and doing.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Most people don't lack knowledge of success that keeps them from success. They just don't do it. An intentional living means I take my good intentions and I act them out. You know, and, and, and the word intentional means, it means, um, it means deliberate. It means consistent, it means willful. I mean, deliberate means I do this on purpose, consistent means I do it on purpose all the time, willful means it's a choice I have made for myself, I will do this. And in the book I talk about, this is how, this is how you live an intentional life and this is how you begin to add value to people. But, you know, those are, let me tell you a story. And this is probably the most important thing I want to share because this is what happened

• 2:58Speaker 01

  to me is why I wrote the book and what I want to happen to the readers of this book. I, I was in my twenties and my assistant, she was my secretary, but she, for Christmas she gave me a book and I unwrapped the book and, and the title was The Greatest Story Ever Told. And I loved to read and I said, boy, thank you, this is gonna be a great book. I mean, my gosh, the greatest story ever told, are you kidding me? And I, I mean, before I even opened the book, I'm already thinking, what's the greatest story ever told? And, and, you know, here we go. And, and I opened the book and much to my surprise, the pages are blank. Hmm. And Eileen Beavers up in the, up in the corner of that, of that first blank page wrote these words, "Ji, in your life just before you. Fill these pages.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Kind deeds, matters of your heart, things that matter. Live a life of significance." And I'm telling you, Louis, I said, okay, I got this. I, I, I'm not gonna read my life, I'm gonna write my life. I'm, I'm not gonna be passive about this, I'm not gonna, well, I'm not gonna let somebody else write a story, I'm gonna write my own story. And I literally took that book with the blank pages and I started writing, just thoughts that I had and, and, and it wasn't my first book, but it was really my, it was, it was when I began to say, I'm gonna become the author of my life. That... Totally changed me. It, it, that day I woke up and I, I, I said to myself, my life is going to be recorded. That is the question.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  The question is, am I going to control that life? Am I going to be intentional with that life so that it really matters? Am I going to make every day my masterpiece? So when I wrote this book, Intentional Living, I start off in the first chapter, I talk about, everybody has a story. You have a story, Lewis, I have a story. Everybody has a story. That's not the question, you have a story. The question is, is it the story that you really want for your life? It was, it, it, it, the only way it's going to be the story you really want for your life is you don't, you don't have to write it. You can't let someone else write this story. And so I challenge people throughout the book, go begin doing acts of significance. Yes, and significance is about others. So be intentional, do something intentionally every day for others.