Lumpkin & Associates

04/25/2026

04/15/2026

Imagine your life—or a project, a team, even your mindset—as a bicycle moving down a long road.

The rear wheel is your power. It’s where the force lives: your habits, discipline, effort, and consistency. Every push on the pedals turns that wheel. It doesn’t care much about where you’re going—it just converts energy into motion. If the rear wheel stops turning, the bicycle doesn’t move, no matter how clear your direction is. This is your engine: the daily grind, the quiet work, the repetition that builds momentum.

The front wheel is your guidance. It’s your vision, your decisions, your sense of direction. With a slight turn, it determines whether you stay on course, veer off, or crash into something. It doesn’t generate power—it interprets intention. Without it, all the force from the rear wheel becomes dangerous, even chaotic. You might be moving fast, but not meaningfully.

Now here’s the crucial part: balance emerges from the interaction between the two.
• Too much rear-wheel power with no front-wheel guidance? You spin hard and fast… straight into trouble.
• Too much front-wheel correction with no rear-wheel drive? You wobble in place, overthinking, never really moving.
• When both work together, the bike stabilizes. Motion itself creates balance.

There’s also a subtle truth:
At very low speeds, balance is difficult—you feel shaky, uncertain. But once the rear wheel builds enough momentum, the front wheel’s small adjustments become smooth and effective. Clarity becomes easier once you’re already in motion.

So the metaphor becomes a principle:
• Rear wheel = ex*****on, effort, consistency
• Front wheel = vision, direction, judgment
• Balance = progress in motion

And the rider? That’s you—the one deciding when to push harder, when to steer, and when to trust the rhythm of both working together.

11/27/2025

PRAYER FROM LINCOLN

AT THANKSGIVING

SO, we must think anew,

And act anew.

We must disenthrall ourselves.

We are not enemies,

But friends.

We must not be enemies.

We cannot separate.

There is no line, straight or crooked,

Upon which to divide.

We cannot escape history.

No personal significance, or insignificance,

Can spare one or another of us.

The mystic chords of memory

Will yet swell the chorus of union

To every living heart

And hearthstone,

And again touch

The better angels of our nature

11/11/2025

SIX COMMON REASONS PEOPLE HATE THEIR JOB:

Toxic work environment
Bad management
Lack of work-life balance
Bad pay
Lack of opportunity for advancement
Lack of purpose

07/27/2025

"Often injustice lies in what you aren't doing, not only in what you are doing."
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations , 9.5

06/27/2025

International HQ !!!

05/03/2025

“Those who receive the bare theories immediately want to spew them, as an upset stomach does its food. First digest your theories and you won’t throw them up. Otherwise they will be raw, spoiled, and not nourishing. After you’ve digested them, show us the changes in your reasoned choices, just like the shoulders of gymnasts display their diet and training, and as the craft of artisans show in what they’ve learned.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.21.1–3”

― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living: Featuring new translations of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius

02/12/2025

https://allthatsinteresting.com/alabama-native-american-canal

"It speaks to the sophistication and ingenuity of Indigenous societies in the Southeast who have contemporary descendant communities."