Let us suppose for just a moment that you could get to the mountaintop of success all by yourself. You have worked very hard and finally you have made it. You have reached the peak. Your success is secure. You have won the trophy. Something is not right though. It is too quiet. Where is all the clapping? Where are all the cheers? You look around and discover that you are all alone. Where is everybody? Then you remember you succeeded by yourself. All of a sudden your joy turns to sorrow. Your head falls, your shoulders slump. It wasn't supposed to be like this. This was supposed to be the best day of your life. As a tear rolls down your face, you throw the trophy off the mountaintop. You watch it descend to the valley. When it impacts it breaks into a thousand pieces just like your spirit.

My friend, what fun would success be without people to share it with? We need people and they need us. The great wonderful fact is that we can't reach the mountaintop of success all by ourselves. Only with people will we be truly successful. We help them succeed and they help us. It is a team effort and that is great. This article is about building your team. It is all about relationships. We are going to talk about different relationships and how to build them successfully.

If we are going to build better relationships then we need to learn how to love people. In his fantastic book Power of the Plus Factor, Norman Vincent Peale tells a touching story of shared sacrifice and commitment. It was a wonderful day on the west coast. On a beach near San Francisco, two San Francisco State College freshmen decided to go for a swim. Shirley O'Neill and Albert Kogler flung themselves into the refreshing surf. Al took the lead. The two freshmen swam out about fifty yards to calm water and then began floating lazily in the California sun. Little did they know that they were being watched. Being sensed is more like it. One of nature's most dangerous creatures was stalking its prey. A great white shark was moving in for the kill.

All of a sudden, Shirley heard a scream. Al was being pulled down by something. His head reappeared caked with blood. Al yelled in agony, "Get away, Shirley! Get away! It's a shark!" Al didn't want her help. If sacrificing himself would save her then it was worth it.

Shirley was paralyzed with fear and shock. Al's words rung in her ears. After what seemed like an eternity, she turned toward shore and began swimming for her life. But then she stopped. She couldn't leave her friend. She had to help him...if she could.

The water was full of red blood. She reached for Al's hand and then pulled back in terror. His arm had been ripped from his body. She wrapped her arm around Al's chest. He was alive. Shirley began kicking her feet and stroking with her free arm. The two friends began the slow journey toward shore. Would the shark return? Would it bring its friends? Shirley was getting tired. Al's body seemed to get heavier every second. But she would not let go. She would not leave her friend.

Finally, Shirley could touch bottom. At this point, she was exhausted. She could go no farther. She tried to scream for help. All that came out of her mouth was a weak yelp. Nobody would be able to hear that. Miraculously, Joe Intersonine was fishing some distance down the beach. His eyes for some reason turned. He could hardly believe his eyes. Joe began running toward Shirley and Al. He then flung his cast like a cowboy with his rope. The line perfectly landed beside Shirley and Al. Shirley wrapped it around her waist and Joe reeled them into safety.

By this time, many people saw the trouble and ran to help. They laid Al on the beach and put a blanket on top of him. Being a devoted Christian, Shirley asked if she could baptize him. Al had never had any use for religion but at this moment his heart softened. He nodded "yes" to Shirley. Shirley ran to the water and gathered some in her swimming cap and baptized Al. Al was taken to the hospital and died two hours later.

Many of us will never be in a situation to sacrifice our lives for someone else like Shirley and Al. But that doesn't mean we don't sacrifice our lives. If our motive and desire is to put other people before our self then we do sacrifice our self. Sacrifice is a necessary ingredient of loving people.

The Ancient Writer told us that, "Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged." Chick Moorman tells a story of when he was 11 years old. Chick loved baseball. I mean he LOVED baseball. He slept, ate, drank, dreamed, played, etc...baseball.

The 1956 Little League season was about to begin. The smell of the game was everywhere. The aroma of the leather gloves, the dirt of the infield under your feet, the feel of the cool grass in the outfield. Chick could hardly wait to begin. This was going to be a great season. He just knew it.

The teams were selected. Chick went to his team while Gordon went to his. Gordon wasn't a baseball junkie like Chick. In fact, he wasn't good at all. Gordon just wanted to belong to something. Quietly, Chick was glad Gordon wasn't on his team. You see, every player had to play at least half of every game. With Gordon on the other team, Chick thought it gave his team that much better of a chance.

The season had just been two weeks long of practice when Gordon quit. The truth is Gordon was bullied into leaving the team. Gordon's coach had two of his better players take Gordon into the woods to talk with him. They basically told Gordon to get out of here and not come back. Gordon was crushed.

When Chick heard the news, he got mad. Chick went to his father who also happened to be his coach. Chick told him the whole story. Chick figured his dad would go to the officials and have Gordon reinstated to his team. But his dad did something totally unexpected. He made Gordon a member of his team. That is not what Chick wanted at all. He wanted Gordon in the league but not on his team. Their chances of winning just went down a notch.

When it came to baseball skills, Gordon didn't have a good season. But when it came to life, joy, and fun; Gordon, Chick, and the team had a great season. Chick said he learned a lot of baseball from his coach that year but the most important thing he learned was from his dad who taught him how to live....with a kind heart.

Another goal of successful relationships has got to be in the area of making a difference. Theresa Peterson tells a wonderful story of how relationships do make a difference. Abbie Knight was a very lonely depressed ninth grader. She missed her old eighth grade days. The high school was so big and intimidating. All Abbie wanted was a real friend. Not the ones who act like they are your friends so they can cheat off of you. She was tired of being used. The problem was Abbie had trouble making friends. She was very shy and didn't know what to do.

Abbie's parents were very concerned about their little girl. Something that just added to the flame of Abbie's depression was that her parents were divorced. Her parents tried everything they could think of to help Abbie. They bought her the current fads to help her fit in but nothing seemed to help. Abbie just seemed to keep drifting farther and farther away from them and the world.

Abbie began thinking of suicide. She was so lonely. She felt that it didn't matter if she lived or died. Who would care? Who would notice? These types of questions plagued her mind.

That next year, Abbie joined a Christian youth group at a local church in hopes of making friends. On the surface, the group adopted Abbie with open arms but under the skin they really weren't interested in outsiders becoming part of their group. So much for love.

Abbie decided that she would do it; she was going to end her life. Her parents were going to be at a party on Christmas Eve. She would be alone. That was going to be the night she would end it all.

Abbie had it all planned. She left the house. In her mind, she had the image of a bridge. The bridge she would jump off of that night. Before walking to the bridge, Abbie stopped by the mailbox. She thought it would be proper to leave a note for her parents. When she opened the mailbox, she saw a bunch of Christmas mail. She began to thumb through them. There was some from neighbors, one from her Grandparents...but then...something got her attention. There was one addressed to...her.

Abbie ripped open the letter as fast as she could. It was from Wesley Hill from the youth group at church. Wesley apologized for not talking to her sooner. He explained that his parents were in the process of a divorce. He said he hoped she would be able to answer some of his questions. This next part really got Abbie's attention. Wesley wrote, "I think we could become friends and help each other. See you at Youth Group on Sunday!" Friends. Somebody wanted to be her friend. Abbie ran into the house and immediately called her new friend.

The Ancient Writer said, "Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance." Relationships do make a difference in our lives. Love is the key. Love is the motivation. Love is the answer.

Action Point: Think about a person that you love. Hold their picture in your mind. How can you show them your love? How can you put your love in action towards them? Now, go out there and do it!

Excerpted and Adapted from the soon to be published Unleashing The Champion Within Success Manual by Mark Bowser. To reserve your copy for $49.00, please Empowering Enterprises, Inc. at info@MarkBowser.com







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Before beginning, I'd like to thank my friend Ed Rowell. His research and thoughts played a major role in this study.

On May 21, 2004, Americans celebrated the beginning of perhaps the most amazing journey in American history. Two hundred years prior, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left St. Louis, Missouri at 3:30 in the afternoon heading upstream on the Missouri River.

Their expedition, dubbed the Corps of Discovery, had been commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to find the mythical "Northwest Passage," an all-water trade route across the continent to the Pacific Ocean that explorers had searched for almost 300 years. At stake was the fur trade, the continent's most easy exploitable natural resource.

Lewis and Clark had never seen the Pacific Ocean, nor did they have an accurate sense of how far west the continent stretched. Once they were a few days west of St. Lewis, their opportunities for communication with home were nonexistent.

When they returned to St. Louis down the same river, they'd covered more than 8,000 miles and been gone for 28 months. Long feared dead, they came home as national heroes. Even today, their journey overland across the continent is among the most courageous journeys ever conceived and attempted.

Along the way they were to develop an accurate map of the Missouri River basin, record all available information about natural history and geology, and report on and begin building relationships with native tribes they encountered.

They discovered 120 new species of animals and 178 new species of plants. They were the first Europeans to cross the Continental Divide. They were the first to see herds of buffalo, numbering in the thousands, grazing on the largest grassland in the world, and they were the first white men that most of the tribes they met had ever seen.

One of the most remarkable accomplishments is that in spite of the brutal grind of moving people, boats and tons of gear upstream, serious accidents, life-threatening weather, and less than peaceful contact with some of the continent's earliest residents, the Corps of Discovery experienced just one casualty.

It was a grand journey that still inspires and awes after two hundred years. But there are no great journeys without great leadership. And the journey across the American Continent is a case study in leading where no one has gone before.

Without trust, the journey is over before it begins.

When asked to lead the expedition, Meriwether Lewis immediately contacted a man that he had served under in the army, William Clark. Lewis was a self-aware man, and he recognized that Clark's strengths would counter each of his own weaknesses. Four years older, Clark had a strong leadership resume, having served as a company commander. He was a popular, tough, and a fearless woodsman. Clark had been raised in Kentucky, was an accomplished river explorer who was usually with the fleet. Lewis, on the other hand, was of Virginia aristocracy, having lived much of his life among the educated, successful gentry of the day. Lewis loved to walk and was often out front, days ahead, scouting out the route. And when it came time to buy horses to get across the mountains, he knew a good animal when he saw it. Lewis was the camp doctor, Clark the camp counselor.

Most importantly, Clark offered a stability that Lewis was unable to give. Lewis suffered, as his father had, from a "melancholic spirit," or "depressions of the mind." Most modern scholars look at the evidence and believe that he was bi-polar, or manic-depressive. The journey gave him reason to shove back the darkness, and his ability to keep going is a testimony to his sheer strength and will.

Lewis' offer to Clark was to be an equal leader in every conceivable way, including rank and pay. Because the army bureaucracy refused to recognize a co-commander, Clark did not receive his promised captain's commission. The two leaders never mentioned it to the men, and for the next seven years, only Lewis, Clark, and Jefferson, and a clerk or two at the War Department knew the truth. When asked as an old man to describe their relationship, Clark replied, "Equal in every point of view."

"Most of all, Lewis knew that Clark was competent to the task, that his word was his bond, and that his back was steel. And Clark knew the same about Lewis. Their trust in each other was complete, even before they took the first step west together. How this closeness came about cannot be known in any detail, but that it clearly was a long time before the expeditionÑthat cannot be doubted."

Our true self-awareness forces us to place trust in others.

Lewis knew his limitations, and he sought a leader with abilities to complement his strengths and weaknesses. In selecting Clark, Lewis showed maturity in realizing he could not lead the way alone. In allowing Clark equal rank and an equal share of the credit, Lewis demonstrated remarkable security.

Competence is essential if trust is to be continued.

Lewis and Clark had differing skills, but each was a greatly talented man. From their diaries, it is obvious that as the journey progressed, their trust in each other deepened. They had a sense of great security because of the mutual confidence they placed in each other. Trust is not unfounded. Trust must be built upon competence.

Trust is strengthened when trust is proven

The two officers would have one opportunity after another in which they literally put their lives into the hands of others on the expedition. Surmounting each challenge, their trust increased as they proved their merit.

The highest level of trust is expressed in obedience and submission, even when there is a lack of understanding or agreement. At one point on the journey, the explorers came to two rivers and had to decide which one was the Missouri River. Lewis and Clark's choice went against the general consensus of their men. Even while disagreeing, the men were willing to trust the judgment of their leadership. The submission of the team at such a critical juncture demonstrates their absolute faith in their leaders.

The reward of trust is an intimate relationship that few ever experience.

There is an intimacy when proven by time and experience and competence, that only people that have gone through that trusting experience ever realize. The attitude of the men displayed their intimacy: "they would triumph together or they would die together".

"This article is used by permission from Dr. John C. Maxwell's free monthly e-newsletter 'Leadership Wired' available at www.MaximumImpact.com."

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