Jon Acuff Quotes

Pastors are starting to get wily. When people tell my friend, 'I'm not being fed,' he replies, 'I'm prefectly happy to spoon feed my one-year-old. But if I'm still spoon-feeding him when he's five, we've got a problem. Here's a fork. Feed yourself.

The problem is that "by now" is a phrase we say to ourselves when we're trying to believe the lie that it's too late to start pursuing our dream.

I want the peace in knowing that is wasn't for lack of hustling that I missed a target for my dream. I want to know that the one thing in my control was under control.

You've got today, and today is all you need to start.

I know it sounds crazy, but people with jobs tend to have more creative freedom than people without.

the best way to crush the discussion, is with a decision.

Joy is an incredible alarm clock. It will wake you up and keep you up and pick you up and gently pull you through a thousand rejections along the way.

The only reason cavemen painted on walls was they didn't have note cards.

Awesome writes great books even if no one is going to read them.

90 percent perfect and shared with the world always changes more lives than 100 percent perfect and stuck in your head.

Instead of chasing "enough," you have to define it. If you chase it, you'll never catch it. Enough is incredibly quick. Much like perfection, it seems to remain out of reach. "As

You used to believe like that too. You used to turn sticks into swords or dirty flip-flops into glass slippers. You climbed trees and made forts and thought being a doctor wasn't out of reach. Nothing was out of reach. Then, somewhere along the way, you lost it.

The other problem with learning a new skill is that it takes forever. How long is forever exactly? Longer than you thought.

You don't need to go back in time to be awesome; you just have to start right now. Regretting that you didn't start earlier is a great distraction from moving on your dream today, and the reality is that today is earlier than tomorrow.

How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, author Michael J. Gelb

That's why I always keep a handful of silver glitter in my pockets. If I get pushed into a conversational corner I throw the glitter into the air, and while the person I'm talking to is distracted, I run away. An additional benefit is that I look like a cool magician, so I've got that going for me.

Billions of people have traveled and continue to travel the other path, and it grows wider every year ... The trouble is that on this wide path, you don't end up at awesome. You just end up at old. This path is called 'average'.

When you keep your day job, all opportunities become surplus propositions rather than deficit remedies. You only have to take the ones that suit your dream best.

God found Gideon in a hole.
He found Joseph in a prison.
He found Daniel in a lion's den.
He has a curious habit of showing up in the midst of trouble, not the absence. Where the world sees failure, God sees future.
Next time you feel unqualified to be used by God remember this, he tends to recruit from the pit, not the pedestal.

Right now, 80 percent of employers Google you before they bring you in for an interview.

As if perhaps joy is acceptable for rare moments on the weekend or surprising glimpses of sunsets while on vacation, but it has no real purpose in the real world.

I know sometimes it's scary to think that you might do the wrong thing. It's terrifying to imagine wasting your "one shot". But let me assure you, nothing you do will be wasted. Every decision you make, every path you take, has the ability to contribute something you need to succeed at your dream.

Success always comes when preparation meets opportunity."4

Fear would have told the Wright brothers not to fly. Fear would have told Rosa Parks to change seats. Fear would have told Steve Jobs that people hate touchscreens.

And then you get some jerk for a boss. And you think, 'I wish God was my boss. That would be awesome. He wouldn't care about my sales sheet. He would care about my soul sheet.' Then you feel a little embarrassed because that was such a low-quality joke.

Ask any honest sage if they were an expert at something the first time they tried it, and they'll giggle and probably give you a caramel.

That's all data is. A gift from yesterday that you receive today to make tomorrow better.

You know who we should fire, that guy who keeps learning how to do his job even better," said no one ever.

I'm with you, networking is miserable. Whenever I find myself at a dinner party where people are networking I immediately focus on the dog, and if the host doesn't have one, I focus on persuading them to get a dog.

I learned a simple lesson about being awesome: always play to the size of your heart, not to the size of your audience. Awesome doesn't let the crowd determine the size of the performance. Awesome gets up for two people or 200. Awesome writes great books even if no one is going to read them. Awesome sweeps the parts of store floors that no foot will ever touch. Awesome can't help itself. Awesome has a huge heart. And that's what it always plays to. The size of the crowd doesn't matter. The applause of the audience doesn't matter.

We - not our company - are responsible for our attitudes. What happens each day at work doesn't get to determine my attitude, I do. Attitude is a decision. And it's a decision we have to make every day, sometimes every hour if that particular day is especially whack.

I don't want you to wake up at sixty-five and realize, 'I spend forty of my best years doing something that just funded my life.

(The truth is that real life-change and the joy of being who you are designed to be always results in selflessness, not selfishness.)

Life is dreamed in big leaps and revealed in small steps.

in a 2013 Gallup survey, 70 percent of Americans said they hated their jobs or felt disengaged.

God is an early bird; satan is a night owl. Everyone knows that.

If I miss a goal, which sometimes happens when you set huge ones, I want the reassurance that I did everything I in my power to make it happen. I want the peace in knowing that it wasn't for lack of hustling that I missed a target for my dream. I want to know that the one thing under my control was under control.

Hustle isn't just doing the things you love all the time. Hustle is doing the things you don't enjoy sometimes to earn the right to do the things you love.

Kids are a crisis. They're a beautiful crisis, but they're a crisis nonetheless.

wild talent and a bad attitude eventually lose to mild talent and a good attitude.

Don't become a jerk. Don't get lazy. Don't get entitled.

We didn't try to force God's hand or do the "I just heard a sermon about David and Goliath so I need to quit my job right this second" leap of faith that's so popular in Christian circles. We took our time with the decision, like another guy in the Bible, named Jesus. He spent thirty years in obscurity before he started his adventure. Often, we're not willing to spend thirty minutes in preparation, never mind thirty years, especially when we come home from a conference and find our day jobs waiting for us on Monday morning. I'm not sure why Christians sometimes think the maturation of our own missions will be radically shorter than that of Jesus. But it happens and in the past I've certainly wanted to take wild, unplanned, possibly-not-inspired-by-God leaps of faith.

The golden watch has become the other end of golden handcuffs. We now look at steady jobs as less of a goal and more of a necessary evil. They aren't fun; they simply fund our lives.

Real-World Example = Don't schedule meetings that demand high creativity on Friday afternoon at 4:00 P.M. People are creatively empty then and their ideas will be too.

Goals you refuse to chase don't disappear - they become ghosts that haunt you. Do you know why strangers rage at each other online and are so quick to be angry and offended these days? Because their passion has no other outlet. When you refuse to deal in joy, you don't quit being emotional; you just funnel all that fury somewhere else. Many a troll was born from the heartache of a goal he dared not finish. Maybe a troll is just someone who lost to perfectionism so many times he gave up on his own goals and decided to tear down someone else's.

What do you do when all the excuses you used to not chase your dream are gone? What do you do then?

You will work harder at something you love than at something you like. You will work harder than you have ever worked when you start chasing a dream. You will hustle and grind and sweat and push and pull. You will get up earlier and go to bed later. But that's okay.

Want a better job right this second? Choose your attitude and adjust your expectations.

I'm not a fan of "finding your purpose." I'm a fan of "living with purpose.

It is seldom indeed that one parts on good terms, because if one were on good terms one would not part. - MARCEL PROUST

Complacency is a slow gas leak, not a bomb blast. Like being robbed by a thief in the night who only steals a penny at a time, we awake to find the days have all gone somewhere. Things

A dream you don't have to fight for isn't a dream - it's a nap. One changes your afternoon. The other changes your world. Keep fighting.

You're just going to be a Starter. The starting line is the only line you completely control.

Not because of my words - those are cheap and untrustworthy. But because of my actions, which are expensive and trustworthy.

They are four words I want you to keep in mind when critic's math gets loud. He wrote, We will miss you.

Age is no longer the primary factor that determines where you are on the map. Life is now less about how old you are and more about when you decide to live.

Learning from those before you is a dying art that can catapult you ahead in the land of Mastering.

The distance between comfortable and comatose is surprisingly short.

Misery loves company, but company often multiplies your misery.

Generosity is always cheaper than greed.

Scars you refuse to hide can become lighthouses that warn other people who are headed to the same rocks you crashed on.

Burn your dream bright. Pursue it with the best of who you are. But don't confuse hustle with burnout. Hustle fills you up. Burnout empties you. Hustle renews your energy. Burnout drains it.

Hustle tries. Then it fails. Then it tries again, because of grit, which is simply being brave when you don't feel like being brave.

More often than not, finding out what you love doing most is about recovering an old love or an inescapable truth that has been silenced for years, even decades. When you come to your dream job, your thing, it is rarely a first encounter. It's usually a reunion.

People are mistaken when they think chasing your dream is a selfish thing to do. As if perhaps being average is an act of humility. As if perhaps wasting the talents you were given is proof that you're a considerate individual.
It's not.