This is the main thing. This is your daily message from Chad number 576 and this message is dedicated to birthday twins Matt Conner and Lea Taylor. Happy birthday Matt and Lea!

The story is told in Michael Jordan’s autobiography Driven from Within, about his friend Fred Whitfield. Michael’s whole being is all about loyalty and winning. He really feels that you can’t ride the fence. As you know, the Michael Jordan brand is Nike. Fred is close with Michael and this guy named Ralph. Ralph was a player who had a Puma contract and not a Nike contract. Since Fred and Ralph were friends, Puma would send him a bunch of clothes and shoes and other swag. With Fred being friends with MJ, Nike would do the same thing. So half of Fred’s closet is Puma, half of it is Nike.

Michael and Fred are going to go out one night. Michael comes to Fred’s apartment and says, “Hey, it’s kind of cold, can I borrow one of your jackets?”. “Sure, go to my closet”. Michael goes to Fred’s closet and see everything separated out. Half is full of Puma and half Nike. He’s in there a little longer than necessary Fred said. Michael comes out of Fred’s room with all the Puma stuff. He lays it on the living room floor. He goes into the kitchen, gets a butcher knife, and starts hacking at the pile of Puma gear. He literally took a butcher knife to all Fred’s shoes and clothes, ripping, and cutting. When he’s all done, he picks up every little scrap and walks it down to dumpster. He says, “Hey, dude, call Howard from Nike tomorrow and tell him to replace all this. But don’t ever let me see you in anything other than Nike. You can’t ride the fence”.

Now, brand loyalty is a silly example, but it’s a fun story. Ancient wisdom describes disloyalty as double-minded. A double-minded person is unstable in all their ways. There is this toggling they try to perform. It applies to relationships, time, health, almost every aspect of life. Divided loyaly divides energy. Divided energy dillutes everything.

This is why cheat days with eating doesn’t work for me. I can tell myself I can splurge on Saturday, on the weekend. Then there’s a party on Friday night and my mind says, well it’s basically Saturday. It’s okay. An old Methodist minister, Lynn Harold Hough, said, “The great tragedy of the world today is that we give first-class loyalty to second-class causes, and these second-class causes betray us.” And we give 2nd-class loyalty to 1st-class causes. There is tremedous power being single-minded to your priorities. Double-mindedness will sap your energy. Feeling wobbly? Check your loyalty. Stephen Covey said, “The main thing, is to keep the main thing, the main thing.”