Personal Growth

Cause It To Happen

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My wife and I just got back from a week-long trip to Boston.  We went with some friends to explore the town and learn more about ta place none of us had ever spent much time, but that all of us were eager to visit.

What always strikes me when we go on a trip or adventure is how it would never have occurred without some prior planning and forethought.  Think about it, you can have an adventure in mind, but without taking the steps to cause it to happen, it will remain an unfulfilled dream.  Our action is what transforms a dream into reality.

How cool that in order for much of our dreams to be realized, we simply need to put forth the effort required to bring them about.  The other side of that coin is that it is sad that we are often the ones standing in the way of our dreams, simply because we fail to take action.

What adventure are you dreaming of?  Take steps today to begin causing the dreams you have to happen.  Your future self will thank you for the memories

Trust

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Have you ever heard anyone say, “I don’t trust anyone!”?  Have you ever said that yourself?  That comment makes me laugh, because each one of us puts our trust into others more than we realize.

For example, we trust that:

  • Cooks and staff at the restaurants we eat in are observing the proper health and safety procedures related to food storage, handling, and preparation
  • Letter carriers will deliver a correspondence you drop in the mail in an accurate and timely fashion
  • Gas pumps actually pump the type and grade of gasoline listed on the pump, versus diesel, water, or some liquid other that what the pump says.
  • Other drivers will stop when a traffic light is red, go when it’s green, and drive the proper direction in traffic, rather than just going whichever direction in whichever lane they feel like.

In all these examples, and hundreds of other daily scenarios, we are counting on others to be trustworthy.  This thought reminds me that others are expecting us to be trustworthy as well.  Let’s live in a way that the trust others have in us is well-placed.

Reconnecting

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On June 11th, I wrote a post titled, “Simply Reconnecting”.  At the end of the post, I mentioned that I was going to reconnect with my friend Dave.  Well, a couple of days ago, we got together for a visit.  We met at 3:30 in the afternoon and we didn’t say “good bye”, until just before 10:00 PM.  The time flew by. 

I hadn’t seen Dave for 6 years, but as soon as we sat down, we picked up right where we left off.  It was so much fun to reconnect and catch up on what we’ve each been up to.  At one point, Dave was talking about how much he enjoys observing someone who is excellent at what they do, regardless of their occupation.  At that point, I thought to myself, “That’s why I like Dave.  He’s my kind of person”.

If you have a friend you’ve been meaning to get in touch with, I’d recommend you do that immediately.  While there’s nothing to be gained by waiting, there is tremendous blessing in connecting today.

On Apologizes

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This week, I had an interaction with someone where I could have behaved better than I did. What I knew I needed to do was offer an apology. Here’s the thing, when we know we need to make an apology: we can come up with all sorts of reasons not to.

It’s no different for me either. In fact, I was running through several reasons why I didn’t need to make the apology. My lame excused ranged from, “They probably don’t even remember the incident” to “I’ve got other things I need to be doing” to every other excuse in between. I told you they were lame.

In the end, I made the apology before my workday started. I decided it was, indeed, important and needed to be done. The person who I apologized to was gracious and said that they appreciated it.

All that to say, if you owe someone an apology, make it. Don’t wait, or put it off, or think of reasons to keep from doing it, because the person you owe the apology to deserves it.

Knowing and Doing

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One of my favorite books in the Bible is James.  What I love most about it is that it is filled with hard-hitting, non-sugar-coated truth.  My favorite verse in this book is   1:22 where the author states, “Don’t merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says”.  This is a verse I often read as if James was speaking these words directly to me.

It’s easy to gain knowledge about how we SHOULD be behaving.  It’s quite another thing to take the knowledge we gain, and parlay it into action.  What good does it do to gain a bunch of knowledge that is beneficial to us, yet fail to put that knowledge into action?  If we spend a significant period of time (months, years, decades, a lifetime) we’ll wind up being nothing more than a bunch of over-educated under-achievers. 

Here’s a good question for all of us:  Is there some knowledge that I have that I need to put into action in order to see positive results?  If the answer is, “Yes” (which I’m sure it is for most of us), then take a small step today to begin putting that knowledge into action.  Because there’s a big difference between knowing and doing.  Knowing = knowledge.  Doing = results.

Gratitude For The Skill Of Others

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We just had the opener for our garage door replaced, and I’m so grateful to the person who came out and installed it for us.

I’m not the handiest guy in the world.  Don’t get me wrong, there are some things I’m really good at, but installing stuff, like a garage door opener, is not one of them.  That’s why I’m grateful for the skills of others, and their willingness to offer those skills, be it in the market place, or out of their own generosity.

It reminds me that each of us have skills that we can offer others.  The skills we have may not seem like much to us, but to those who don’t have those skills, they’re valuable.  Therefore, since we all rely on the skills of others (when our skill level falls short) we should be willing to offer the skills we have to others. 

It’s a great way to thank those who have offered their skills to help us.

There’s A Story There

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It’s easy to look at a situation and think we have all the facts necessary to make a snap judgement.  Whether it’s a homeless person on the street with a sign asking for money, or certain behavior or opinion we don’t agree with, it amazes me how quickly we can go from observation to judgement, without realizing that there’s a story there.

No matter who you’re looking at, there is a story behind the person that brought them to where they are at that moment.  This story could have been written over years or decades, or maybe even over a few minutes.  These stories can be tragic or triumphant.  They can be unbelievable or even quite ordinary.  Peoples’ stories are as unique and varied as the people they are about.

The thing to remember, especially when we start feeling judgmental, is that we usually don’t know the whole story that shape the people we see.  We think we do, but in reality, we are often just mentally filling in the blanks.  That said, it reminds me that perhaps in place of judgement toward others, we would do better to offer grace and remember that we likely don’t know the whole story.

Leaving Room

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I have been teaching an adult Sunday School class at our church for about 15 years, and each class is a highlight of my week.  One of my favorite attributes of the class is the participation by the attendees.  It’s less of a lecture/lesson format than it is a guided discussion.  I really enjoy this format because it leaves room for the unexpected to occur.

By the “unexpected”, I mean that our discussion and study has options as to where it goes.  As I prepare each week, I look at the section of Scripture we’ll be studying, and I put together a flow of some interesting points for us to discuss.  I do this instead of writing out a word-for-word lecture/lesson, because a written-out lesson would make it hard pursue people’s questions or thoughts they have in the moment that are relevant to our discussion.  If I have a written out word-for-word lecture that I feel I must follow, then I take out any room to explore a thought that’s not in my lesson. 

That would be a shame, because very often in class, someone has a thought or question that takes us in a direction that I had not planned to go, but that deepens our understanding of the Scripture we were looking at.  If I was insistent on tightly defining every lesson, we would have missed out on so many rich and meaningful discussions that have deepened our understanding of Scripture.

Are there areas in your life that could use a little less control in order to leave some room for unexpected pleasant surprises to occur?  Consider that question the next time you’re planning an event or having a conversation with someone. 

It’s good to have a plan, but it’s also good to leave room along the way for the unexpected.

Simply Reconnecting

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In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had some really nice encounters with friends I haven’t seen in a few years.  It reminds me how quick time goes and how easy it is to lose touch with someone.  It also reminds me that it’s also easy to reconnect.

My friend Bob, that I used to work with several years ago, reached out via email earlier this week to see if my email address was still good and what I was up to.  Per Bob’s suggestion, we’ll be meeting up for lunch next week to reconnect and catch up.  I really admire Bob’s initiative to simply send an email suggest going to lunch.  I’m so grateful that he did, and I can’t wait to see him.

Bob’s initiative got me thinking who I should reach out to and reconnect.  Perhaps his initiative has you thinking about a friend you’ve lost touch with that you can reconnect with too.  I encourage you to do like Bob did and simply send an email or make a phone call and reconnect.

I’ll be following Bob’s lead and texting my friend Dave after I submit this post.  It will be good to reconnect with him too.