What if?

What if you lost your job? What if your career went away? What if you lost your friends? What if you lost your family? What if you lost all that you have, but you? What would you have? Now, I know the idea of losing everything is not a pleasant one. In fact, it is more than not pleasant. It is clearly depressing. However, it does cause you to stop and think. How is your relationship with you?

While our relationship with others is clearly important, your relationship with you is even more important. In fact, you are the only person in the world you can know will not go away. I mean when you go away it is all over anyway. So, how positive and healthy is your relationship with you?

Begin with how you talk to yourself. You can know about the health of a relationship by listening to how people talk to one another. The same can be said for your relationship with you. Would you want to hang around with people who talk to you the way you talk to you? Most people I meet are their own worse enemy. I find myself talking pretty lousy to myself sometimes. The interesting thing is that you can control the way you treat you. You can't control or change others but you can manage your relationship with yourself.

How about the way you treat you? How much rest and sleep do you give you? What are you putting into your body? How much weight are you lugging around? How supportive of your heart are you? How flexible are you helping yourself to be? How strong are you? How about your environment?

Here is the point. It is time to get serious about your relationship with yourself. You are going to be hanging around you for a long time. So, here are some suggestions. Start talking positively to yourself. Build yourself up. Make sure your environment is healthy for you. Clean it up if you need to. Eat less, probably. Don't make yourself carry around more than you need. Exercise your body. Strengthen and create greater flexibility for yourself. Work at giving yourself a chance to sleep well. Turn off the computer or television earlier. Prepare to sleep. You need it. Breathe deeply more.

Loving yourself is a prerequisite to loving anyone else. My Coach tells me to "love God first and then love my neighbor as I love myself." I emphasized that last part for you. By loving yourself more, you will actually be investing in your relationship with all of those important people in your life. It really makes sense when you think about it. Do well, my friends!
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Inevitability

I once read an article by Charles Swindoll that really caught my attention. It was entitled "Stop the Revolving Door". In the article, he chronicled the rise and fall of civilizations from the Babylonian Empire to the Athenian Republic. The article suggests that there is historical evidence to suggest that there is a certain "inevitability" to the ultimate decline of human efforts. The evidence is compelling. Here is the course of decline Swindoll quoted in his article:

From bondage to spiritual faith

From spiritual faith to great courage

From great courage to strength

From strength to liberty

From liberty to abundance

From abundance to leisure

From leisure to selfishness

From selfishness to complacency

From complacency to apathy

From apathy to dependency

From dependency to weakness

From weakness back to bondage

As I read this description of human decline, I couldn't help but be taken by the sense of inevitability in the flow. Yet, I wondered if it really has to happen this way. Isn't there room for something distinctively contrary to this commentary upon history? Swindoll's article concludes with a plea for individuals to take up the challenge and he suggests, rightly I believe, that it is only through the power of personal response that the tide can be turned.

So, I want to issue a challenge to those who have ears to hear and who will take up the challenge of writing new history into the future. What if we moved ...

From bondage to spiritual faith

From spiritual faith to great thankfulness

From great thankfulness to personal humility

From personal humility to spiritual discipline

From spiritual discipline to personal blessings

From personal blessings to blessing others

From blessing others to greater abundance

From greater abundance to greater thanksgiving

From greater thanksgiving to greater faith

From greater faith to greater humility

From greater humility to greater spiritual discipline

From greater spiritual discipline to greater blessings

From greater blessings to greater blessings for others ...

Why couldn't that be the way the story goes? I just believe it could work that way. I think the key lies in staying anchored in a humility that only faith can produce. Arrogance will forever be our fall. And yet, it is not our inevitable conclusion. We have seen it lived differently before and for over two thousand years we have been invited to follow His lead. I for one believe His way to be the answer to the this question of inevitability history seems to demand. I personally choose to follow His lead. Do well, my friends. Our future depends upon it!

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The Power of Confusion

Conflict is an unpopular word. In speaking to audiences across the country, when I ask them how they handle conflict the inevitable response is, "We avoid it." People hate conflict. At least in our part of the world they hate it. The Chinese culture on the other hand has a different take on the word. In fact, to them, the synonym for conflict is opportunity. So, what do we do with this piece of confusion. If we follow the Chinese line of thought then it seems that we are actually repelled by opportunity. How does that make sense?

The truth is we hate what conflict represents and requires. We have created a culture where inconvenience and discomfort are avoided at all cost. We take pills to avoid the experience and escape the discomfort of pain. While that might be a wise course in acute and exceptional situations, it is not wise for those that are chronic. Furthermore, there are clearly times when pain itself is a great teacher and needs to be experienced.

We change relationships to avoid the discomfort of building them. Once we figure out that other people think differently than we do and might want to respond differently, we see it as a problem. In fact, diversity is a concept that has been legislated in this country in order to be experienced. Instead of seeing it as our greatest strength, we see it as a discomfort and an inconvenience that needs to be our right to avoid.

We build lifestyles around the need to avoid inconvenience. Many times we go into great debt to put ourselves in convenient places. We buy cars and houses and services to keep from having to embrace life's challenges. So, what is wrong with that you might ask. Only that somewhere in the escape of it all we have lost a vision for great value and opportunity.

Anything of real value emerges through the fire of conflict. It is forged. It is something that insists upon discomfort and inconvenience. What it creates, however, is more than worth the effort. Think about it. Relationships are nothing more than mere acquaintances until you live and work through conflict together. Jobs are only jobs until they are experienced as opportunity in life to grow and develop. Once you have successfully graduated from conflict's experience you will have built something that can last for a lifetime.

Living in challenging situations is not all bad. Many times the experience itself is worth it. Many people pay a lot of money and spend a lot of time looking for wilderness experiences and challenging situations. They have become a great value for which we are willing to pay for someone else to create for us. We yearn for opportunity to experience real life.

So, take some time and think about the things you might be working hard to avoid. It might just be that the great opportunity you seek is within your reach. Stop running from it. Reach through it. Do well, my friends

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Freedom?

This past week, we celebrated freedom. I wonder what everyone was thinking. It really is a matter of perspective, isn’t it? For the person who escaped to this country from the tyranny of dictatorship and worse, freedom represents liberation in a dramatic sense. To the person who escaped from a physically or an emotionally abusive relationship then freedom means release from the nightmare of control and domination. To the person who has been set free from the harsh reality of financial debt then the sense of release is palpable. And on, and on, the freedom stories could go.


But, what is freedom in its purest form? It seems to me that freedom in its purest form is “opportunity”. Freedom really is the “opportunity to choose”. Certainly, when my choice limits, inhibits, or eliminates someone else’s opportunity to choose then issues are raised. Laws have to be created to protect the innocent in those cases. It is so easy for government itself to move beyond protection into inhibition, if not interference, with regard to freedom.


The question for me, however, involves my relationship to freedom. How committed am I to keeping freedom alive in my world? It is vital for me to remember that I have the responsibility to the people in my world to stand for freedom in giving them the best opportunity to choose in their lives. I also need to recognize that I need to work hard to keep that same freedom alive in my own life. Freedom without discipline is just bondage in disguise. I wrote that a long time ago. It would do me well to remember it. How about you?

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The Evolution of Life

The word evolution has most often been used in reference to a specific theory concerning the beginning of life on this earth. In reality, the word evolution by definition speaks simply to the nature of change. While I don't embrace the word evolution as an explanation for the creation of the world, I do respect and embrace change as a reality in life. It has implications both personally and professionally.

If you ask any group of people what they think about change, the majority will quickly say they don't like it. They often will say they resist it. Unfortunately, change is not something that can be resisted. It is our reality. People change. Markets change. Companies change. Churches change. Countries change. The challenge we have as human beings is to keep ourselves ready and fit for engaging it.

The first suggestion I would make is to not become dependent upon the status quo. Simply do not let yourself become contingent upon the way things are presently. The only thing you can know for sure is that things will change. People will make choices that disappoint you. Companies will do the same. The evolution of life will take things in new directions. Stay constantly prepared to reinvent yourself. It doesn't mean you should become cynical about relationships in life. It simply means you must stay interdependently related to people and their groups and not inordinately dependent upon them.

The second suggestion I would make is to stay in a state of purposed development. What you know today or what you think you know today could be totally irrelevant tomorrow. What works for you today may not work for you tomorrow. Learning is the energy essential to navigating the flow of evolution. When the world begins to shift around you, what you have actively learned in life will determine how successfully you create your next chapter of life.

Finally, I suggest you continue developing relationships. Relationship development works in tandem with learning in today's world. Seizing each day as an opportunity to meet people who could be a dynamic part of your life is vital. The reality of attrition in life alone insists upon it.

So, don't resist evolution. It is your reality. It really is a gift. Nothing stays the same even though it may not seem that way at times. Everyday represents the birth of new life. Choose to engage it. Do it on purpose!

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