"Do you know who you’re helping?"

Click here to listen to Dr. Joey tell his story!

A friend lives in a retirement community. Now when I say "friend," please understand that I’ve never actually met her face-to-face. She listens to life with you and me everyday through our website at www.ListentoLife.org and we email one another regularly.

She tells me she’s not physically as active as she once was, but I assure her that while I’m much younger, I’m not as active either. And then I get an email from her recently. It seems she shares Listen to Life on the Internet with a friend of hers. She sends me a forward of her friend’s email with this heading—"This is another life you have touched. [Mary] just lost her son to suicide." In the forward, [Mary] tells something of the pain she’s experiencing and how Listen to Life helps her through it.

I’ll most likely never meet [Mary] either and while I’m humbled by her strength gained from these stories, it’s really not about me helping her. It’s about my friend sharing the stories that God gives me.

Amazing who you can help when you give God all the credit, isn’t it?

Discover more great stories like this one!

"Is it really all good?"

Click here to listen to Dr. Joey tell his story!

I was talking with a guy who’s on one of our teams about certain sayings like "It’s all good." He said, "You know, life’s not all good all the time. Life is tough sometimes. What if your brother’s in jail? Or, your mother’s in Iraq? Or, your father has cancer? That’s not all good, is it?"

"No," I said. "I can’t see how that’s all good. Especially when you’re helpless to change any of it."

"Exactly," he said. "So what’s all good about it?"

"Well, maybe the saying isn’t so much about the external state of things. Maybe it’s more about your attitude and that’s something you can control," I said.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

And I told him, "I heard Paul Harvey say once, ‘I have never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.’ Maybe ‘It’s all good’ is about being an optimist, believing against belief, hoping against hope that somehow God is still in charge of the universe and it’s all going to turn out okay. After all," I told him, "pessimism paralyzes. Optimism optimizes."

Is your life all good? Listen to it and make a life with God’s help today.

Discover more great stories like this one!

"When were you last transplanted?"

Click here to listen to Dr. Joey tell his story!

I recently was gone for a week, coaching some groups about how to listen to life and make a life, not just a living. During this week, my wife came up to my office and kidnapped one of my plants. We call it a spider plant.

This spider plant was unusually large because I had taken good care of it. So my wife takes this huge spider plant out of its pot, and divides it into not one or two, but five spider plants. She repots all of them into five separate pots, and waters and feeds them well.

So I come back to my office and notice that the plant is gone and been replaced by a smaller one. I ask what happened and she tells me, "Well, before long, your plant will be as large as the previous one. And now I have two on the front porch, one to give to a friend, one to put in the kitchen, and another is going in a room yet to be determined."

What I quickly realized is that sometimes you have to be repotted before you can grow. God made you to grow, and that means you require transplanting every now and then. So repot and grow as God made you to as you make a life.

Discover more great stories like this one!

"What’s a number anyway?"

Click here to listen to Dr. Joey tell his story!

My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary one month ago today. I sat down with my dad before the dinner party started and asked him, "So what does it feel like to be married for fifty years?"

He said, "You’re married 25, almost 26 years. What does that feel like?"

I said, "Well, it happened far quicker than I thought it would."

"Fifty years feels that way, too," he said.

"It’s really nice to have 26 years of experiences with the same person because we can tell stories to each other, remembering when, and revel in the memories. I don’t think you can replace that," I said.

"Fifty years feels that way, too," he said.

"And we share a lot of joy and pride in our daughters," I said.

"Your mom and I feel that way about you and your brother," he said. "And here’s my point: 50 is just a number that means you’ve enjoyed more of the good stuff of life." When he said that, I got it.

Don’t see your number of years through chronological eyes. Listen to your life years for the good stuff you enjoy while making a life, not just a living.

To discover how you can Stay Married for 50 years and longer, go to www.StayMarriedForever.org.

Discover more great stories like this one!

"How’s it been going since we last talked?"

Click here to listen to Dr. Joey tell his story!

I was coaching a client recently and began by asking, "Well, how’s it been going since we last talked?" She launched into a litany of things gone wrong—"This is wrong," "That is wrong," and "This and that are wrong."

So I followed up with questions like, "Well, why is that?" and "Is there anything you can do about it?" and we went through her entire list of a good life gone bad.

Pretty soon she said, "I think I know where you’re going. The only thing I can change here is how I look at all of these situations, isn’t it?"

"Sure sounds that way to me," I said. "Change your thoughts and you change your world."

When I said that her voice brightened as she said, "Will you help me put together a plan to change my thoughts?"

"We just started," I said.

When you listen to life, you discover that some things just don’t turn out the way you want. But you can change your thoughts and change your world with God’s help when you make a life, not just a living.

Discover more great stories like this one!