The Little Red Book of Wisdom offers time-tested principles for professional and personal fulfillment. In the book, Mark DeMoss gathers insights for living wisely from history, Scripture, and a lifetime of listening. The result is a handy, accessible book that gives readers a new way to enjoy lasting success in the work world and beyond. Topics include finding and keeping your focus in life, building a winning corporate culture, and setting aside time for good thinking.

The Little Red Book of Wisdom

By Mark DeMoss

Thomas Nelson

Copyright © 2007 Mark DeMoss
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7852-2168-5

Contents

Preface.................................................................................................................xvPart One: Wisdom for Your Professional Life1. A Matter of Death and Life Life is brief............................................................................12. Stay Under the Umbrella Finding and keeping your focus in life......................................................73. Tackle Something So Difficult You'll Never Want to Do It Again Getting out of your comfort zone.....................154. The Amazing Power of Understatement Under-promise, over-deliver.....................................................225. Work Less, Think More Good thinking requires some effort............................................................306. Buy Some Stamps Reclaiming the lost art of letter writing...........................................................367. Technology Isn't Everything Learning to use it wisely...............................................................478. Honesty Can Be Costly But telling the truth is always good business.................................................569. Good People Are Everything; Money Isn't Building a winning corporate culture........................................6210. Everyone's in PR Are you practicing it poorly or well?.............................................................7011. And Another Thing ... A few more thoughts..........................................................................76Part Two: Wisdom for Your Personal Life12. God Owns It All A wise perspective on things.......................................................................8513. The Wisdom of Firsts The first hour, the first day, the first dime.................................................9114. A Turtle on a Fencepost Appreciating how you got where you are.....................................................9815. There Are No Degrees of Integrity You either have it or you don't..................................................10416. A Proverb a Day Wisdom for every aspect of your life, in one short book............................................11317. The Wisdom of Age Seek out older people............................................................................12018. Shut Up and Listen Learn to listen more than you speak.............................................................13019. The Best Defense ... Is a Good Defense Why I won't ride alone with another woman...................................13520. Anticipate Deathbed Regrets Take steps now to avoid regrets later in life..........................................14221. Here's to Not Drinking at All Wisdom and alcohol-a good mix?.......................................................14822. And Another Thing ... A few more thoughts..........................................................................15423. The Wisest Decision Anyone Can Make Answering the "And then what?" question........................................160About the Author........................................................................................................169

Chapter One

A MATTER OF DEATH AND LIFE

No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow. Euripides

During the summer before my senior year in high school, I spent only a few days at home because my father had encouraged me to take a job with the Southwestern Company selling books door-to-door. My dad was my hero, and I agreed to the work unaware that it would mean thirteen-hour days for eight straight weeks with no breaks to see my family.

I hated being away from home. I hated that the time with Southwestern didn't allow me to join my parents and six brothers and sisters on vacation in the Caribbean. My father and I spoke each weekend by phone-he took great interest in my progress-but nothing could substitute for being with him.

I was back home that Friday in late August, just before classes started for my senior year, when he and I met for lunch at the headquarters of National Liberty Corporation, the life insurance company he had founded and led to considerable success. I was always so proud to be his son when I walked through the beautiful corporate headquarters by his side. That day we talked about my plans for college and possibly for business later on.

The next day, Saturday, September 1, 1979, an ambulance sped to our home where my father had been playing tennis with three other men. One of them had rushed up to the house to make the emergency call. I didn't think to worry. Lots of men fall out of breath during exercise. Dad was fifty-three and in the prime of life. He'd be back home in a few hours with a heart prescription and doctors' orders to take it easy.

Instead my mother and brothers and sisters and I gathered in the emergency room of the Bryn Mawr Hospital and listened to a doctor softly say, "I'm sorry. We did all we could." My father was dead. My hero was gone. At age forty, his wife was a widow with seven children between ages eight and twenty-one. Certainly I had known people who had died during my still-young life; but death was supposed to happen to older people, in other families.

Shortly after we returned home from the hospital that day, my mother found a piece of paper on my father's nightstand. He was a prolific note-taker, never without pad and pen. In my mind, I can still see in his handwriting the words from the Ninetieth Psalm: "So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom."

Arthur S. DeMoss was the wisest man I knew. Now he was in heaven, less surprised by his departure, I suspect, than we were. I still miss him. He never saw me play college football. His place was vacant when I married the most wonderful girl in the world. He missed greeting his first grandchildren. When I started a business, he wasn't there to advise me-though I had more counsel from him than I realized at the time, which is a large reason for my writing this book.

* * *

Seven years after my father's death, in the spring of 1986, I was working for Rev. Jerry Falwell and attending a conference at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. We had just settled into our rooms when a call came from home telling me that my twenty-two-year-old brother, David, had been in a car accident and was in serious condition. Jerry and I checked out, flew to Philadelphia, and drove straight to the hospital at the University of Pennsylvania.

My kid brother, a wiry go-getter with a remarkable knack for making friends, just home for the summer before his final year at Liberty University, lay comatose next to a row of blinking and beeping machines. His doctors talked with us, and our friend Rev. Falwell prayed with us. Eventually we walked out of the hospital and across the street to the hotel where we would stay for the next several days. On June 6, 1986, David Arthur DeMoss joined our father in heaven.

After my father died, I somehow believed that early death would pass over the rest of my family. Why I thought that, I don't know: actuarial tables, common odds, maybe-certainly not the Bible because, if anything, it underscores life's brevity.

As I write this, I am a handful of years from the age my father was at his death and twice my brother's age when he died. The math in my head is unavoidable. I have a...