When you think of the name Nobel, what comes to mind? Well, if you're like most people, it's the Nobel Peace Prize. That's the most popular usage of the word Nobel. And that peace prize was named after Alfred Nobel, who actually created it. But that's only the end of the story. I want to give you the backstory to what happened.

When Alfred Nobel was at the his height in business, very successful business leader in Scandinavia. His brother, older brother tragically died. And by mistake, one of the local newspapers wrote Alford's obituary, not his. Can you imagine waking up and reading your own obituary tomorrow? Well, that happened to Alfred and And it shook him because basically the obituary said this, Alfred Nobel made his millions by creating weapons of destruction, destruction for the annihilation of mankind. And it was like someone hit him on the side of the head.

Now, the truth was, he popularized and manufactured distributed explosives, dynamite and other explosives. And that was indeed how he made his his funds. But he had this wake up call on how he would be remembered at the end of his life. And he said, I'm not going to be remembered as a man of destruction. I'm going to be remembered as a man of peace. And so he pivoted, took his resources, his time his energy, thought about it, and created the Nobel Peace Prize.

So today, we know of the name Nobel and his lasting legacy is a man of peace, automatic destruction. Well, because of a wake up call like that, he came to an awareness About a major flaw in his life. The flaw wasn't that he was a good businessman, the flaw was the effect of what he was doing could have negative impacts on the entire world. And he didn't want to leave that as his legacy. So I want to challenge you to do in this particular session that's going to deal with our weaknesses and how you can understand your own personal weaknesses and do an analysis of that is the challenge is for you to think clearly and openly and honestly about the areas that need to change in your life. Now to do that, it means it's gonna take great humility.

And that's the first point. So I want to give you a humility. Test. Think of the last time you were criticized. It may have been today earlier. But think of the last time you were criticized.

What did you think what did you feel what did you say? What did you do? What Criticism due to you. I remember some years ago when I was the president of Cruz campus crusades, graduate schools, we had schools, graduate schools around the world. And I was the president of that, and a first year student came up to me. And he said, Dr. Jetson, can we go out to lunch?

And I said, Well, sure. And over lunch, he said, You know, I just I'm so impressed with you, or you're a fabulous leader and a communicator and you're an eye, you know, you're kind of one of my idols and, and I'm just super impressed. So I picked up the bill and thinking he should be rewarded. And then he said, you know, before we go, can I tell you two more things are kind of personal. And I said, Sure, because I knew he was going to say, of all the leaders I've ever met, you're one of the best, you're one of the greatest. But he didn't say that.

And said, he said, there's two things your life I don't think you're aware of. Remember the JRE window blind spots may two areas you're not aware of that I believe, impede your leadership. And my first response was, well, who do you think you are? I'm the president, you're a first year student. But I, you know, graciously bit my tongue and said, well, that's interesting. Tell me what those things are.

And he went on to tell me, one had to do with how my wife and I were training our children because he'd been in our home for a short period as other new students were for a meal, and he thought were too permissive with the children. And that offended me because that was really an attack on me, I felt in my wife. And then secondly, he talked about an area of leadership of me on the campus. And I was I was livid. I was offended. I was angry.

And as I was leaning forward, to give him the benefit of my insight. It was like the hand of God grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, pulled me back, shook me a couple of times and said, Hey, hey, Jensen. Why are you so surprised someone should see something in your life with which you need to deal? Imagine if he saw everything I see. And I said, Whoa, good point. And I thought, you know, how arrogant is it?

That I could be offended if anyone says anything about me because the reality is, nobody knows how bad I really am. Really, they don't, I don't even know how bad I really am. Now understand, I believe I'm very special and unique, and was created to be a masterpiece. But I also know I'm loaded with soft spots and areas of weakness in my life. And so I finally, you know, thanked him. I said, Let me get some other feedback on this.

I appreciate you bringing it to my attention. And then I said, you know, and thank you for being so courageous and willing to risk what I could do to you to tell me that it was true And then I learned some things out of that process. But the biggest thing I learned was how to deal with criticism. So, my point here is, the beginning place in dealing with your weaknesses is to have the humility to say, hey, yes, I have some great strengths, but I have some also areas of weakness of selfishness in the faith based world would call it sin. But I've got these areas where I'm off target, I'm missing the mark. They can be overt they could be covert, but they're areas of weaknesses that I need to deal with.

So begins with humility. And your response, by the way, always to criticism ought to be instead of shock and anger and reacting or going and hiding and feeling self pity, is to say, as I say, when people criticize me these days I go, That's nothing. Y'all don't know me the way I know me. The point is, and then I say, Hey, I'm a lot worse than this. Because again, nobody can point out how bad I really am. Because I know how you know, out inappropriate my thoughts can be my words can be my actions could be because I have feet of clay like you have.

So we're never going to be perfect, certainly on this side of eternity from my perspective, but we need to keep progressing, getting better and better. It's not about a pretext to perfection. It's about progression, keep remembering that, not a pretext to perfection. But progression starts with humility. The second thing is you need to have a commitment and and develop the competence to grow. So you need to have a commitment in your heart that says, I want to keep growing personally.

And you need to develop the competencies to grow and develop personally. taking this course is a good start. We're dealing with stress, you're developing competencies about dealing with stress. Hopefully as you learn more and more you will grow in your level of commitment, I believe You're already motivated or you wouldn't be in this. But you need to create a commitment and competencies in order to grow and develop that's critical to dealing with your weaknesses because once you identify your weaknesses, you want to work through them. Now, by the way, I am a big believer that we should major on our strengths and see them magnified.

But and and not so much our work weaknesses. For instance, I'm a reasonably a strong, visionary and creative guy and idea printer even more than an entrepreneur, I'm really not good at the management side. So I don't I need to be good enough. But I don't need to constantly work on management if I can get the right people around me to do that, and have the right team to make it work. So we don't need to be developing all of our weaknesses, but the weaknesses we really need to focus on are the character weaknesses and that's universally so I should always be working And growing in the area of my character, or those are those areas where I actually have an aptitude and an interest, perhaps in overall leadership. But I don't have the skill set to get there, or I want to develop people, but I've never been trained how to coach.

Those are the kind of weaknesses you want to grow in and develop. And if you're going to be effective, it's just so critical that you have a commitment and competence to grow, spend time and spend money on your personal growth, because that's foundational to everything else. And then the third thing you need to do in order to deal with your weaknesses is get people around you to give you feedback. That's where the JRE window becomes helpful. And hopefully, by now you've started to ask people, areas in your life where you can grow, seek out feedback, a better people tell you to your face and behind your back. So seek out feedback and try to grow and develop and become the person you need to be and then build a support group and accountability group that is committed to you is a fan of yours.

They can be professional or just personal relationships. But be open and honest with them. Let them be like your personal board of advisors and let them help you grow and develop into the person you need to be. If you can do those three things, you will be dealt well down the road in the area of learning to handle your weaknesses the right way, and developing that aspect of personal affirming. Well, if you can bundle all these things together, we've talked about in this session, you're going to be able to affirm yourself in an ongoing way. My assignment for you now is to finish up whatever worksheets you haven't done in this module.

And then secondly, specifically around these particular issues, I want you to fill out the sheets that we have available for you on dealing with humility. and developing commitment and competency to grow and then developing a support group, an accountability Group, a growth Group, a personal board of advisors. while expanding for to you a little bit later, you can find that information in our resource center. Look forward to see how you keep growing and developing and don't forget, as always, if you're in the Facebook page, and hopefully you are private group, remember we're going to be talking more about these things. We'll be providing more resources, we'll be answering your questions. I'll be doing some direct coaching in that group.

I think it's going to be incredibly helpful because the name of the game remember is developing not just knowledge but habit and habit transformation. Got it. Okay, get going