Tag: communication

Respond, Don’t React

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 51 — The 7-40 Challenge

February 25, 2026

Zig Ziglar once made a distinction that I think about more than I probably should. He said there’s a difference between responding and reacting. If you go to the doctor and they give you a medicine and ask you to come back in a few days, you want to hear them say, “Your body is responding to the treatment.” That means it’s working. If they say your body is reacting to the treatment, that means something’s gone wrong and they need to try something else.

Responding means something thoughtful is happening. Reacting means something unplanned is happening. A response flows from something pre-programmed inside of you. A reaction is something that happens in a moment.

I’ve been on both sides of this more times than I’d like to admit.

Over 27 years of marriage, there have been plenty of moments where my wife has said something, and I heard it wrong. Not because she said it wrong, but because I skipped the step where I consider context, intention, and the fact that this is a person who loves me and has been proving it for nearly three decades. Instead of processing what she actually meant, I jumped to how it made me feel. And then we had to spend the next thirty minutes untangling a reaction that never needed to happen in the first place.

Even with the people we love most, we sometimes forget to use who they are as a filter. We forget to give them the benefit of the doubt — that maybe they’re having a bad day, or maybe they just said something in a way that hit us sideways. A response gives them that grace. A reaction doesn’t.

On the other end, I had a moment at work not long ago where someone from a different department walked into my office and essentially started unloading on me. They were upset. Really upset. But I knew they weren’t mad at me. I knew I wasn’t even the reason they were venting. So I smiled. I kept asking questions. I let the storm blow over. And when it was done, I offered to help fix the problem going forward.

Had I matched energy for energy, nothing productive would have come out of that conversation. Just two frustrated people making each other worse. But something was pre-programmed in me that kicked in before the reaction could: I’m not going to let other people dictate how I act. I choose to show kindness. I choose reserve.

Now, a moment of honesty. I owe my bride the same. For the times I haven’t my darling, I ask for your forgiveness.

That’s what responding looks like. It’s not weakness. It’s not letting people walk on you. It is not assuming the worst and starting from that place. It’s having something already built inside you that catches the moment before it spirals.

Which brings me to something I’ve noticed 51 days into this challenge. The daily habit structure hasn’t necessarily made me better at handling unexpected problems. But it has made me better at keeping focus when problems show up. Good days or bad days, there’s a certain set of things I’ve committed to getting done. And I just do them. If something throws me off, I adjust the plan — but it’s because I planned the adjustment, not because I panicked.

Yesterday was a good example. I sat down, read some current events, and felt the weight of the world land on me. The kind of weight that makes your own goals feel small. My agency felt like it was shrinking. And the resistance — the part of your brain that’s always looking for a reason to stop — grabbed onto that feeling and tried to run with it.

But instead of spiraling, I was able to name it. I could identify what I was feeling and why. I could remind myself that aside from being the person I’m supposed to be, there’s not a ton I can do to affect the greater world. I have to control what I can control, be an inspiration to the people around me, and leave the rest to God.

That’s a response. A reaction would have been closing the laptop, skipping the creative hour, and telling myself none of this matters anyway.

So if you’re someone who feels stuck in reactive mode — where everything feels urgent, every problem is a crisis, every headline sends you spinning — here’s what I’d ask you: What can you actually do today to make your situation better? Not the world’s situation. Yours. What to-do list can you write right now that moves you toward something that matters to you?

I think what a lot of people forget in our current crisis culture is that we’re human. We have basic needs. And one of them is a sense of accomplishment — the feeling that we can do something and do it well. When we lean into excellence, when we focus on working through the things we can actually control, we give ourselves less room to react and more room to respond.

And yes, my faith is all over this. My belief in God, my relationship with Jesus, my daily Bible reading — they ground me in something bigger than the world around me. Bigger than current events. In my view, there’s nothing bigger than my God. And when I take that perspective and look at the problems around me, I don’t see political sides or cultural battles. I see people who are hurting. People who need help. People to serve.

That’s the filter. That’s the pre-programming. And it changes what you see when the storm walks through your door.

Day 43: The Factory Worker Inside You

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 3
Tuesday, February 17, 2026

I’m still working through Seth Godin’s Linchpin, and tonight I want to talk about something that might make you uncomfortable.

There’s a factory worker living inside you. And if you’re not careful, he’ll run the show.

The System That Built Us

Godin makes the case — and he wrote this back in 2010 — that the industrial revolution didn’t just build factories. It built an education system designed to feed them. Sit down. Follow instructions. Get good grades. Go to college. Get a job. Do what you’re told. Collect a paycheck.

The highest value of that system wasn’t innovation. It wasn’t creativity. It was compliance. The goal was to produce people who could do a job for a day’s wage and not have to think.

And for a long time, that system worked. For the factories, anyway.

But here’s the thing Godin saw coming sixteen years ago: that era is over. And if it was over in 2010, it is buried in 2026. The rise of AI, the speed of change in the marketplace, the sheer volume of information and tools available — all of it demands something the factory model never taught us.

Applied creativity.

The Moment You Start Phoning It In

I know the factory worker mindset from the inside. During my days working in an insurance office, I felt it pulling at me constantly. When your contribution doesn’t seem to matter, when you’re not making progress, when the environment is draining — it is incredibly easy to just phone it in. Go through the motions. Clock in, clock out, repeat.

I think we all have moments like that. Seasons where the path of least resistance is to stop caring and just do the minimum.

I started breaking out of it when I realized something simple but powerful: my level of effort actually moved the needle. When I brought energy and intention to my work, things changed. When I phoned it in, they didn’t. The results were directly connected to the investment.

That’s not a complicated idea. But it’s one most people ignore.

The Rogue in the Cubicle

Here’s what I’ve learned about myself over the years. I am a creative free spirit living in a corporate, data-ordered world. Those two things don’t always get along.

I have to turn on music to keep my brain engaged. I have to move. I have to conceptualize problems in different ways just to stay satisfied — not because I’m difficult, but because that’s how I’m wired. And honestly, that creative wiring is exactly what makes me good at what I do.

Because if we look at things the same way every time, we never solve problems. We just keep describing them. New solutions require new ideas, and new ideas come from people who refuse to think inside the factory lines.

That rebellious streak? It’s not a flaw. It’s the linchpin quality Godin is talking about.

AI and the New Frontier

This is even more real for me right now as I learn to work with AI tools. The way I see it, AI is the ultimate amplifier of applied creativity — but only if you know how to use it.

I’ve been learning how to iterate: ask questions, get feedback, supply my critiques, apply my business knowledge, layer in my creativity, get more feedback, and iterate again. The process works. But it only works if you bring something to the table.

And here’s what I’ve noticed: the quality of the answer depends entirely on the quality of the question. If you’re not clear about what you need, the tool won’t save you. You have to understand what you’re working with — the sophistication of the model, the way you communicate and express yourself — so that the response fits the context of what you’re actually trying to accomplish.

In other words, AI doesn’t replace thinking. It rewards it.

The factory workers of 2026 are the people who will ask a machine to do their thinking for them and accept whatever comes back. The linchpins are the ones who will use these tools to multiply what they already bring — their creativity, their experience, their judgment.

Which One Are You?

So tonight I’ll leave you with this.

Are you a factory worker or a linchpin? Are you phoning it in — going through the motions at work, at home, in your health, in your relationships? Are you following the old model: sit down, follow instructions, don’t make waves, collect your check?

Or is there a rogue inside you that knows you were built for more?

Because here’s the truth: in today’s world, nobody is coming to hand you a better life. The era of doing what you’re told and being rewarded for it is over. If you are not taking the initiative to drive your own success forward — to learn new tools, to think creatively, to bring something to the table that nobody else can — then you are falling behind. Right now. Today.

Not tomorrow. Not next quarter. Now.

The people who thrive in 2026 and beyond won’t be the ones who followed orders the best. They’ll be the ones who refused to stop thinking, refused to stop growing, and took ownership of where they’re headed.

So if you haven’t started, start now. Not when you’re ready. Not when conditions are perfect. Now.

Day 43 of 280. Be the linchpin.

Day 42: Everything Is Connected

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 2
Monday, February 16, 2026

I’ve been reading Linchpin by Seth Godin again, and it’s stirring things up. But tonight’s post isn’t about Linchpin. It’s about something that book keeps pointing me back to — a thought I’ve been carrying for years.

Everything is connected.

A Hospital Bed and a Fish Bone Diagram

In 2018, I was lying in a hospital bed going through chemotherapy for the second time. A 13-centimeter tumor. Four one-week hospital stays. I didn’t know how much damage the cancer had done. I didn’t know how long I had.

A few friends from work would come visit and keep me up on the projects we had going. And because I didn’t have a whole lot else to think about, I started processing — really processing — how our business workflows actually worked. Where data originated. How it matured through systems and the activities of people. How something that started at the beginning of a process was eventually consumed by somebody at the end who had no idea where it came from. It just magically appeared.

Lying there, I could see it like a fish bone diagram. One thread of data with dozens of offshoots — different teams, different efforts, different parts of the business process. And I could see how the busted processes, the workarounds, the bull crap people had to do just to keep things straight — it all became very apparent.

That clarity has stayed with me. As a data professional, I try to share it with anyone who will listen: if we understand the overall business workflow, we can pass out the pieces, identify the problem areas, and start making things better. That’s true in any business, any organization, anywhere people work together.

But here’s the thing. That principle doesn’t stop at the office door.

The Insurance Company

I actually made the connection about life being connected even before the hospital bed.

In the mid-2000s, I worked at an insurance company where I was miserable every day. The owner smoked four to six cigars a day ten feet from my desk. Profanity filled the air. Morale was rock bottom.

And I realized something that changed my trajectory: I couldn’t be angry at work and healthy at home. It invariably carried over. My frustration at the office became tension with my family, and that was not a sustainable position.

I had to start working on myself personally — not because I loved the job, but because I knew that everything was connected. If one part of my life was poisoned, the rest would suffer.

Fast-forward a few years. I was working on my master’s degree, thriving in an academic setting where I had previously been a mediocre student. And I realized the difference wasn’t intelligence. It was devotion to the process of getting better — and being the same engaged, enthusiastic person in my whole life, not just pieces of it.

When I stopped compartmentalizing, everything changed.

The Kobe Bryant Principle

I heard a story about Kobe Bryant that stuck with me. Kobe deliberately studied the referee’s handbook — every rule, every call, every technicality. Not because he wanted to argue calls. Because he wanted to master the environment he was operating in.

If he wanted a specific foul called, he knew what action to take. He knew how to get timeouts. He knew how to stop the clock. He used the rules of the game to his advantage — not by breaking them, but by understanding them so deeply that he could stretch them.

That’s what excellence looks like. It’s not just knowing the rules. It’s knowing how to apply them so you can accomplish what you need to accomplish while still taking care of the people around you.

Kobe demanded that kind of mastery from himself. And he rose above almost every player who’s ever played the game because of it.

The Real Question

Seth Godin wrote Linchpin in 2010, and he was already pointing out that the industrial age — where the highest value of the education system was producing factory workers who would do a job for a day’s wage and not have to think — was over. That we had entered an era of applied creativity.

That is even more true today. The market is changing. AI is reshaping everything. The people who will thrive are the ones who see the connections, who understand the whole system, who refuse to compartmentalize their lives into disconnected pieces.

So here’s what I’d say to you tonight.

If you feel like two separate people between work and home. If you feel like two separate people between groups of friends. If how you feel in your mind doesn’t match how you act on the outside — you need to have a frank conversation with yourself.

The way God created us is to be whole. Engaged and excellent in all the areas of our lives — not fragmented, not compartmentalized, not running different versions of ourselves depending on who’s watching.

Everything is connected. Your health affects your work. Your work affects your family. Your family affects your purpose. Your purpose affects everything.

The data taught me that in a hospital bed. Life has been confirming it ever since.

Day 42 of 280. Everything is connected.

Day 12: More Than Just Checking Boxes (Why This Challenge Is Emotional)

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

I’m in the Emotional chapter of “Made to Stick” this morning, and something caught my attention.

The Heath brothers tell a story about a soldier cook. He had retired, but when offered an opportunity to cook for soldiers in Iraq, he jumped at the post. When asked about his job, he didn’t say “I prepare food.” He said: “My job is morale.”

He understood something deeper than the task list. Yes, he cooked meals. But his real job was building the strength soldiers needed to keep fighting, to survive, to stay mentally sharp in war.

That hit me hard. Because the 7-40 Challenge can’t just be about checking boxes.

The Real Job

Bible study. Exercise. Reading. Water. Calories. Gratitude. Creative work.

Seven habits. Forty days. Repeated seven times.

On the surface, that’s what I’m doing. But here’s the truth: my job is to be living proof that change is possible.

I was made to help people. To make their lives better, easier, more purposeful. I feel that call deep inside me—the need to take care of people, to build them up, to show them what’s possible.

But I can’t do that and ignore myself.

I have to fill my cup so I can fill others.

Why This Is Emotional for Me

This isn’t self-improvement for self-improvement’s sake. If the goal were just about me, it would be much too small.

I’m doing this because:

My family needs me healthy and strong. Fewer illnesses means less stress on my wife. More energy means I can be active, do the home improvement projects we love, spend time doing whatever activities we choose. Better mood means better interactions with everyone around me.

My son needs to see this. Not hear about transformation someday—watch it happen in real time. So when life gets hard for him, he knows it’s possible to choose differently.

The 1,000 people I want to impact need proof. By clearly defining the transformation I’m undergoing and letting people watch it play out in real time, I’m demonstrating the courage they need to name their own transformation—which may be completely different than mine. But watching mine unfold might inspire them to face theirs.

The Ripple Effect

When I’m healthy, strong, and energized, my world improves. And everything my world touches improves.

My marriage gets stronger. My parenting gets more present. My work gets sharper. My ability to help others grows exponentially.

That’s not narcissism. That’s stewardship.

I can’t pour from an empty cup. And at times over the past twenty+ years, I’ve run on fumes, talking about “someday” while my cup stayed empty.

Not anymore.

Motivation and Movement

The soldier cook understood: his real job was giving soldiers the strength to keep fighting.

My real job? Giving people stuck in “someday” mode the courage to actually move. To break from routine’s gravity. To start now instead of waiting for perfect.

And I can only do that if I’m doing it myself.

Day 12. Twelve perfect days behind me. Not because I’m special, but because the mission is bigger than me.

Day 12 Scorecard: ✅ Bible study ✅ Exercise (Workout B – back, biceps, legs) ✅ Reading (Made to Stick – Emotional chapter) ✅ Water ✅ Calories ✅ Gratitude ✅ Creative hour

The best time to fill your cup? Now. Not for yourself alone. For everyone who needs you at your best.

My job isn’t just the habits.

It’s to be living proof that change is possible.

See you tomorrow for Day 13.

Gratitude Sunday: My Mom and George Bailey

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

One of my favorite Christmas movies is It’s a Wonderful Life.

When I was younger, I liked it because an angel comes down and helps a guy get through a hard time. You get to see his whole story unfold and figure out who he really is. I didn’t see the deep significance as a young person watching this movie for the first time.

As I’ve gotten older, George Bailey’s story has become far too familiar.

I see it in life all around me. People—many wonderful people—don’t realize the good they do. They don’t understand how their influence has shaped the world around them far more than they know.

One person I can see this to be true about is my mother.

A Life of Selfless Love

My mother is one of the most selfless, wonderful people I have ever met or had the pleasure to know. She is kind and caring and deeply concerned with the well-being of others.

This flows from her relationship with God, which has been solid for as long as I can remember. She loves Jesus dearly. And because of that, she has consistently, over the years, shown people God’s love in countless ways.

I’ve seen her stop in the grocery store and share God with people or stop and pray with them just because she knew they needed it. I’ve seen her give of herself and run herself ragged to make sure that the people she served and the people she loved were taken care of.

But I’m going to tell this story from my perspective, from what I’ve seen in my own life.

Songs and Stories in the Early ’80s

My mother, in the early ’80s, started telling me stories about Jesus. She would sing songs and read the Bible with me. She was very involved in making sure that I knew that Jesus loved me—and also building me up to be a confident and strong young man.

She was consistent in her love.

I reminded her the other day that she’s the reason I know Jesus, just as she’s the reason many other people in this world know Jesus as well. She’s the reason people have found hope when they didn’t have any. She’s the reason people have found kindness when they most needed it.

She has been God’s love to people repeatedly throughout her life.

And just like George Bailey, I don’t think she understands just how far her influence has gone.

The Billy Graham Question

It makes me think.

If I asked you, “Do you know who Billy Graham is?” most of us—whether we are Christians or not—have heard the name. We know he was a very famous minister. We know that he touched countless lives with the love of God and with the message of God’s salvation.

But if I asked you, “What was the name of the man who introduced Billy Graham to Jesus?” I don’t think many of us would know who that is.

You never know the effect you have on someone’s life. You never know the influence. You never know the good that you do. You’ll never see the full picture.

But that shouldn’t stop you from doing good.

My Gratitude

So to say the least, I’m grateful for my mother.

I’m grateful for the way she’s loved me and taken care of me. Even though it’s been many, many years since I’ve lived in their home, she still loves me and prays for me to this day like I’m her baby boy.

Her influence on me has been outstanding.

And I can only imagine the influence she’s had on others—the people whose names I’ll never know, whose stories I’ll never hear, whose lives were changed because she stopped in a grocery store or prayed with someone who was hurting or sang songs about Jesus to a little boy in the early ’80s.

She’ll never know how far her influence has gone.

But I do know this: I wouldn’t be here without her. I wouldn’t know Jesus without her. I wouldn’t be attempting this 7-40 Challenge without the foundation she helped build in my life.

So thank you, Mom.

For being God’s love when I needed it most.

For never giving up on me.

For showing me what it looks like to live a life of purpose.

You’re far more influential than you know.

And I’m forever grateful.

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