⏱️ millionaireME Minute: Follow the Praise

Good morning.

It’s Sunday, September 21st, 2025.

There are 101 days left in the year.

In college, I had the greatest writing professor one could ever ask for—Reynolds Price. An A.B. Duke and Rhodes Scholar, Faulkner Award winner, and arguably one of the finest Southern voices of his era.

To my amazement, I was the first student to ask if I could do an independent study of his work. Maybe smarter students, already familiar with his bard-like cadence (especially when he read Milton aloud), knew better.

Let me confess something: I’d had more than a few papers returned to me bloodied with red ink over typos and grammar. But I’d never had one come back with the note Reynolds Price once scrawled in the margin: “I stop here, defeated.”

My crime? Misusing the word lie. He later told me no professor worth his salt should let a student graduate without knowing the difference between the transitive lay and the intransitive lie. To this day, I’ve never forgotten it.

But the real lesson came later. I was with him in Asheville, North Carolina, where he was giving a reading of his novel The Tongues of Angels. An audience member asked:

“Professor Price, how did you decide to become a writer?”

His answer was simple, elegant, and life-changing:

“I simply followed the praise.”

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The Takeaway

That phrase has been echoing in my mind ever since. In wealth, wellness, and life itself, you and I are constantly faced with two questions:

1. Where are you receiving consistent unsolicited praise? Not the perfunctory kind, but the type that people can’t help but give you—because in that arena, you shine.

2. Where would a teacher or coach worth their salt stop you, defeated? Where are you committing a crime against your craft, your health, or your wealth that must be addressed before you go one step further?

These aren’t little questions. They’re the big ones. They shape what you accomplish, how you contribute, and the kind of legacy you leave.

So I ask you:

👉 What praise should you follow?

👉 What correction must you finally make?

If you feel so bold, share your answers in the comments—not only to help yourself clarify, but also to let an old man know you read and appreciate posts like this.

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millionaireME | Happy • Healthy • Wealthy • Wise

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