Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
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A flying slipper, a stunned crowd, and a roar of laughter—sometimes the moment we dread most becomes the moment everyone remembers with joy. We share a short, vivid story from a fourth-grade stage where a costume mishap flipped embarrassment into delight, and we draw out the deeper promise that setbacks can be turning points when we meet them with honesty and courage. What begins as a funny memory opens into a practical guide for navigating your own “oh no” moments with a steadier heart.
Whether that looks like laughter, apology, or patience, you’ll feel ready to move with purpose instead of hiding. Press play for five minutes of clarity, warmth, and courage—and if this helped you start right today, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs a lift, and leave a quick review so more people can find the show.
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mack. I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great five-minute start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back, relax, and let me help you start your day right. Good morning everybody. I hope your week is off to a really great start. And today I'm going to help it become even better because I have a wonderful story here for you this morning. A story from Neil Gordon. The sit back, relax, and listen. When I was in the fourth grade, I was cast as King Louis, the orangutan in my class production of The Jungle Book. My role featured the song and Dance Number, I Wanna Be Like You. Throughout the rehearsal process, I threw myself into my number week after week. My fourth grade teacher gave me free reign and as a result I choreographed a pretty literal interpretation of the song's lyrics. When I got to the point of the song that declared myself the jungle VIP, I actually spelled out those letters. I vigorously shook my head up and down, and I sang You see it's true. It really didn't matter that I wasn't very creative in my interpretation. None of that was as significant as the extravagant amount of energy I committed to the dance off I did with the girl playing Mowgli after I was done with the lyrics. I threw myself all over the stage. I kicked my legs every which way. What I lacked in nuance, I more than made up for with zeal. But then we got to opening day. We were to perform in front of about half of the elementary school, and it was the first time that we wore all of our costumes. I wore an oversized brown shirt stuffed with newspaper, a wig, and a mask with a big hole to show my face, brown tights and big furry gorilla slippers. I began my number with my lame choreography, and the audience began laughing right away. But when it got to the dance off, I started kicking my legs every which way as I always had, and then my left gorilla slipper fell off my foot. It landed unceremoniously on the floor between the stage and the audience, and I had the fourth grade equivalent of an oh no moment. But a split second later, I simply reared back my right foot and hurled the other slipper off as hard as I could. It sailed halfway back across the auditorium. Everyone went berserk. The response to the flying slipper was so positive that I deliberately kicked my slippers off for every performance thereafter. When the first graders and the kindergartners sent us cards made out of construction paper, a number of them wrote about how much they liked it when the orangutan kicked off his slippers. Since then I've come to realize that sometimes the greatest catastrophes are the greatest opportunities for success. It's a fun story, isn't it? But the message is truly significant and important for us as well. That God is able to take what we view as our catastrophes and turn them into our greatest opportunities. Psalm 30 verses eleven and twelve says, You have turned my morning into joyful dancing. You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy, that I might sing praises to you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will forever give you thanks. Our God loves us so much, and He is powerful enough to turn even our catastrophes into something that can make a huge difference in your life and in the lives of the people around you. We have never gone too far for God to be able to bring something good out of what has happened. We serve a God who specializes in the turnaround, making something good out of a catastrophe. I don't know what you're facing today, or if you've been through something that you feel has been a catastrophe and you don't know how to get past it or beyond it. Let me just encourage you today. God is with you, and he can and will turn it around if you trust him and let him lead you. Have a great day, my friends. We will talk again tomorrow. Thank you for joining us today, and I invite you to join us every Monday to Friday right here at Starting Right with Danny Mack.
