Know Your Time

Time is the only inelastic commodity that any of us possess.  We are each allotted 24 hours to the day.  Given the fact that time has an end for all of us, it is priceless and demands we steward it carefully.

Those who make their mark on the universe learn this well, the earlier the better.  I’ve been listening to some outstanding lessons on time management by Brian Tracy.  This material is about a quarter of a century old but is timeless (pardon the pun).  You can drink from the same well here.

A leader advances because he knows his time and that of those with whom he interacts is precious.  So without further ado, here’s some tips that will increase your effectiveness, production and value in the marketplace:

• Arrive early for any appointments.  People will take note quickly that you are a pro, a force in business.  Being fashionably late may be de rigueur for parties and proms but it will destroy you in the marketplace.
• Use early morning hours to get a lot of work done.  Tracy points out that it’s possible to get the work of a typical day done in 3 hours of undisturbed effort.
• Turn off your smart phone.  If it’s important, those trying to get you will leave a message or call back.
• Find gracious ways of economizing or taking leave of people who tend to waste their time as well as yours.  “Hi.  What can I do for you?”  You’re not helping them or yourself by letting them simply drop in to chew the fat when you should be working. Again, this is for business.  Don’t do this with family or friends.
• Keep your workspace organized, free of clutter.
• When making appointments to meet with someone, prepare an agenda on paper, smart phone, PDA or iPad.  Set a definite timeframe for the meeting and announce it ahead of time.  If it’s 30 minutes, end it at 30 minutes and be on your way.  It will speak volumes.
• Write down the contents of phone discussions or meetings.  When meeting with customers, follow up your discussions with an email.  This keeps assumptions crystal clear.  It will save your time and your neck, believe me.
• Remember that really high achievers understand the value of minutes, not just hours.
• When discussing a topic, ask direct and specific questions.  When answering, get to the point.  The only time you should exercise the urge to “Ramble On” is when you’ve got Led Zeppelin’s 2^nd album cued up.

Enough for now.  If you follow these steps diligently, you will see your production increase, your influence grow and your income go north.

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Keys To A Fruitful Environment

Wise leaders tell us that to be successful in life and meet our goals, it is supremely important that we prepare our environment in a way that maximizes our potential to succeed.  Jim Rohn once said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”  The Bible tells us, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” (Proverbs 13:20).   Pretty important, therefore, to choose carefully those who you allow to influence you on a regular basis.

Both positive and negative mindsets tend to be contagious.  I’ve observed that the tendency toward being negative, defeatist and pessimistic is a little more “natural” than the opposite tendency—that is, towards finding the good in life.  This is a by-product of living in a fallen world.  But it does not have to be that way.  It just takes effort.  And it is worth it.

Choose wisely what and whom you associate with.  “Like attracts like.”  This I’ve found to be true.  If I’m angry, sullen, mad at the world and depressed, I tend to attract people just like me—without even trying!  My anger somehow validates them.  And of course such anger usually sounds reasonable, even logical.  Most of the time, it’s simply a cloak hiding some unhealed pain or disappointment.  The anger is just a symptom.  And being angry with the world is a downward spiral and just doesn’t work.  I’ve learned this the hard way.

I’ve found that when my disposition is positive, loving, cheerful and optimistic, I attract people with similar thinking and outlook.

Vineyard owners will tell you that every year or so, they must prune back their vines to ensure a fruitful harvest in the coming season.  This pruning is both painful but necessary.

In our lives and associations we must, at times, prune activities and relationships to be the best we can be.  I don’t mean by this cutting people off but we must be wise about what and whom we give our time to.  Some times we cultivate associations.  Other times we limit them.  It depends on what is ultimately the healthiest thing for both parties.

Newly pruned vines don’t look especially appealing to the eye.   But it is this pruning that brings full, mature and healthy grapes.  And the finest wine.  So it is with us!

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Be All There!

It was martyred missionary Jim Elliot who once said, “Wherever you are, be all there! Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”  If ever there was a human being passionate about living, it was Jim.

We live in an age that is largely characterized by passivity, especially in males.  But passivity is a narcotic none of us can afford to indulge.  The temptation to coast and exert as little effort as possible affects us all.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Lately I’ve been taking steps to slay the passivity dragon.  And it has been refreshing to say the least.  Taking initiative, grabbing life by the horns is a mark of leadership.  In fact, it is one of the hallmarks of really being alive.

I have the guys in mind as I write this though it’s no less true for the fairer sex.  Here are some of the benefits of full engagement with life:

• Those who look to you for leadership, especially your woman, tend to respond much more favorably.  Passivity is a huge turn-off.  Corollary is that taking the wheel and taking charge where you’re called to heats things up.
• Full engagement gives you a sense of accomplishment and self-confidence which can be acquired in few other ways.
• You have the benefit of actually doing something to make life better for others as you lock in.
• You will learn things about whatever area you are pursuing that will evade you if you are only half-hearted in your pursuit.  As my friend Tom likes to say, “If you love something, it will show you its secrets.”  I’ve learned this especially as I hone my musical skills.

Okay—try this in a sustained way.  Use laser-like focus on the key areas of your life.  And just watch what happens!

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Remember Who You Are….

This world has always needed leaders.  Men and women aware of both the time and need into which they were born and live.  The grace to lead well is given to some more than others.  Today, in some ways like no other time that has preceded it, the world is looking for leaders.  Individuals who will show the way.  Who will stand up, even while feeling afraid, and give direction, security, competence and solace.

As I have grown older, I find that I am given strength and grace to lead.  I don’t, however, have grace to cower, shrink away, idle away the hours and live for me.  My agenda.  My plans for a content life without taking those who know me into account.  “My World and Welcome to It” is a fine motto for a ‘60’s TV sitcom.  But it ill becomes a leader, who is supposed to embody–to one degree or another–selflessness.  Sacrifice.  It’s not about me.  Nor about you.

I’ve been struck over and over again by the children’s movie The Lion King.  One scene in particular.  Simba, heir to Mufasa and kingship of the Pride Lands, has run away from his home and sphere after the death of his father.  Afraid.  He takes up a worry-less, footloose-and-fancy-free existence.  Hakuna Matata.  No worries.

But the call of leadership niggles at him.  His father appears to him in a dream and says, “Simba, remember who you are!”  Simba is afraid.  His dad is dead.  His uncle Scar, who killed Mufasa and is now ruling the deteriorating Pride Lands, intimidates him.

With the help of Rafiki, the sage mandrill, Simba gets his mojo back.  He is a leader and has royal blood in him.  He cannot escape the role of destiny except at the peril of those counting on him.

So he returns to the Pride Lands.  There he overthrows the illegitimate ruler, corrupt Uncle Scar.  And assumes his rightful throne upon Pride Rock.

People are counting on you.  And you have what it takes to bring order, peace, direction and security to those who are watching you.  And looking to you.  Remember who you are….

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Got Thumos?

What lights a fire in your heart? What drives you to get out of your comfort zone and set off into the dangerous unknown?  What is that inward power, that energy that gets a man or a woman out of their seats and into action–the kind of action that protects life and brings lasting change and good to society?  Where does that kind of heat come from?

The ancient Greeks had very rich languages and dialects.  Greek is a lot like math with its precision.  Many of us are familiar with the many Greek words for love, one of the most common and oft-misunderstood words we use.  Storge.  Phileo.  Agape.  And, of course, eros.  These words talk about the various manifestations of love.

They also gave us the word thumos.  Doctors and nurses will recognize its kinship with thymus, one of the organs in our immune system.  It is not a common word when used in the world of biblical studies—an area very important to many of us.

Thumos may be described as “an inner fire that motivates action.”  It is used of the soul, but, unlike psuche—from which we get words like “psychology”—it describes the soul with a fire lit under its seat.  It is protective by nature.

I first came into contact with writer Paul Coughlin a few years back.  His book No More Christian Nice Guy radically took apart my idea of virtue, namely, that being nice and being good are not necessarily the same thing.  Jesus is the embodiment of goodness.  But he wasn’t always nice.  And He didn’t always play nicey-nice.  He would get into a lot of trouble today, upsetting the applecart.  Being good, rather than just nice, has a way of doing that.

I’ve been reading another of Coughlin’s books lately.  Unleashing Courageous Faith: The Hidden Power Of A Man’s Soul picks up on the themes introduced in NMCNG.

Thumos is the fire, the motivation that enabled Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to champion civil rights—a fight that ended in his death.  It enabled Martin Luther to challenge a corrupt and ossifying Church with the need of reform.  It enables people to defend those who are bullied.  It is the enables action—change of behaviour—not simply a change in an intellectual position, a modified idea.  To use one of Bill Hybels’s favorite metaphors, it’s what pushes Popeye to say, “That’s alls I can take; I can’t takes it no more.”  Then out comes the spinach, the muscle and the bad guys are put in their place.

So….how’s your thumos level today?

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One Of A Kind

“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” (Henry David Thoreau)

Years ago I read a book by John Eldredge that said, in effect, that the most important battle we will ever fight is the battle for our hearts.

He was on to something.

Human beings are like snowflakes.  While we all have certain commonalities like the marvelous geometry of snowflakes, we are, nevertheless, individuals.  Sui generis.  One of a kind.

We have unique talents, fascinations, propensities, drives, goals and potentialities.  The war for the heart, at least in the realm of sense and society, takes place as we are confronted with the “safe” choice of conformity to expectations of peers and loved ones versus that road less traveled by which we fulfill our unique design and destiny given by God.

You have your own voice and perspective.  There are enough parrots in the world.  There are lots of people you touch daily who want to hear the events of the day through your perspective.  What happens, then, if we play it safe and give the expected response, perspective or party line?  Or put another way, what happens if we are not authentically ourselves by letting self-preservation rather than our values dictate our contribution to those around us?

Step to the music you hear.  Don’t play safe.  Play honest instead.  Integrity is your watchword.  It is what lets you sleep well at night.  Be courageous and be who you were created to be.

And let the chips fall where they may….

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To The Young Skipper

I had been married all of one month in the spring of 1988.  It was then that I hired in as the manager of a full-line bakery here in northern New York.  I was fairly green at the young age of twenty-four.

That first year of reorganizing the bakery was trying and fatiguing.  I learned lots of lessons and made plenty of mistakes.  I was the sole man in charge and my boss, the owner of a chain of bakeries, lived a hundred miles away in the Mohawk Valley.  I saw him rarely.  I was on my own.

One of the early challenges I faced was leading a crew of employees, many of whom were at least ten years older than me.  It was intimidating.  There was plenty of “we didn’t do that when [insert a previous manager] ran this place.”  It goes with the territory.

I was faced with the difficulties of leading with heart, fairness and a strong hand.  I did well some times; other times I blew it.  I would do things differently today, but it is well-known that hindsight is a 20/20 enterprise.

At a mentoring meeting last Spring, we discussed the challenges of being a young leader who has to grasp the nettle and lead—and yes, fire—employees old enough to be our parents.  It is never easy.

What to do then?

The apostle Paul, writing to his young protégé Timothy, commanded him “let no man despise your youth.”  Among other things, that meant that Timothy had been given charge and oversight of a group of people and he was not permitted to duck the responsibility of steering the ship competently and forcefully.

Here are some time-honored principles for leading with distinction:

• Lead by example.  Paul told Timothy to be an example to the people under his charge by the way he lived his life.  You must be the first to do the heavy lifting.  The motto for Israeli officers today is “After me!”  People buy into you and your leadership when you get into the trenches and sweat.  It’s much easier to take directives from a leader with his sleeves rolled up and perspiration on his brow.
• Avoid arrogance like the plague.  Giving people the back of the hand—harsh remarks, constant criticisms with no commendations, sarcasm—will sink the ship and demoralize the troops.  Be humble.
• Treat people old enough to be your parents with deference befitting their age.  Paul told Timothy to treat elders like fathers and mothers.  That makes it much easier when you have to make tough executive choices.
• Don’t apologize for being young.  You got hired to do your job because you demonstrated some level of leadership acumen.  Even if you feel “all at sea” with intimidation, you need not show it.  People respect a man or woman who can make a decision and abide by it.
• Be optimistic and avoid petty shop gossip.  As one of my supervisors counseled me, “In everything you do, be a class act.”

You have the wheel of the ship.  Sail on and prosper!

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Lighten Up!

The best advice I ever received came from an eighty-four year old spitfire named Helen Easterly.  We worked together in the summer of 1987 in northern Ontario near Hudson Bay.  We happened to be part of a team of missionaries bringing the Gospel to a remote region amongst the Cree people.

Grandma Easterly—as she became known to me after she “adopted” me—had terminal cancer at the time.  Yet, she had more energy than gals sixty years her junior as she worked amongst the Cree children.  She had lived an adventurous life ministering all over the world with lots of remarkable ministries.  She was vibrant, humorous and kinetic as she stared death in the face.

Some months later, I was about to get married.  Grandma Easterly sent Kath and I a very nice card with this advice:

“Don’t take yourselves too seriously.  Learn to laugh at yourselves.”

I’ve many besetting sins.  One of them is I tend to be way too serious.  (Kath doesn’t have this problem.) Those who know me well are no doubt chuckling, You’re just now figuring that out?

Easy now.  Some of us are slow.

And thick.

So I thought I’d pass on a few tips to help my friends who trip over the same banana peel:

• Listen to jazz.  Really.  Leonard Bernstein once said, “Jazz is real play.”  When I listen to jazz, I chill out. Always. Music affects the mood more than you can imagine.
• Realize that you alone can’t fix the world.  You’re one in about seven billion inhabitants on this planet.  Do what you can where you can and then let it be.  If everybody just did a little in their own orbits, things would be a lot better in the world.
• Exercise.  Free and legal high.  Endorphins.  You will feel better.  Trust me on this.
• Watch films with Robin Williams in it.  For tougher cases, break out the Three Stooges.
• Read Dilbert.  Just do it.
• Smile.  It’s proven that deliberately smiling makes you feel better, not just those who look at your mug.

Now lighten up!

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Duty: The Badge of Honor

I remember the day President Ronald Reagan was shot.  I was an 11^th grader, just home from school and watched the now-famous footage of the assassination attempt.  Thankfully, no one died though Press Secretary James Brady was left debilitated by the shot he took to his forehead.

I remember seeing a photo montage of the shooting in Newsweek some years later.  In one of the photos, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy (shown in the above photo) was shown jumping in the air, spread-eagle, making as big a target as he could to protect the president.  He too took a bullet.  Why? Because his duty was to lay his life down for the President of the United States.  And he was a man of honor.

Some time ago my wife and I were discussing relationships and interactions.  We hit upon a characteristic of this generation, something to which we—though older—are not immune.  It is the unrealistic drive to have everything now.

Quantum leaps in technological innovation have taken place over the past thirty years or so, especially with the advent of in-home personal computing.  The upside of these advancements has been the ability to do in moments what used to take days, even years.

But there is a downside.

When you live in an instant, microwave, “I-need-this-yesterday” culture, you become habituated internally to getting whatever you want whenever you want it.  Unfortunately life does not work that way.  The best things still take time.

Here are a few sober earmarks of the “microwave” society:

• Debt.  Easy credit has made it possible for people in their teens and twenties to rapidly accumulate lots of stuff that took their grandparents a lifetime of thrift and prudence to purchase.  And with such rapid acquisition comes a mountain of debt, including compounded interest.
• A monstrous sense of entitlement.  An increasingly litigious society with plenty of social programs as fallbacks has helped to produce a generation of employees who often feel like they are unfairly burdened by the demand to work while on the clock.  The result: Personal service is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.  This is a trend.  Thankfully, there are exceptions.
• A disturbing lack of self-control.  We hear often of things being “an emergency” or “urgent.”  But one needs to define the terms carefully.  A cardiac arrest needs to be fixed now.  A plane falling out of the sky needs to be fixed now.  But a teen upset at a parent who says “no” to them does not constitute an emergency.  Nor a thousand other similar “stresses.”

What is the key then to reversing this unhealth?

Duty.

Duty is that sense of personal and corporate responsibility that takes the interest of others and the interest of the group before personal considerations.  It’s not about me.  Or you.

Duty is what has made societies great.  Its abandonment in favor of personal fulfillment—others rights and concerns be damned—is what has eroded the same great societies.  We don’t have to let that happen here.

Duty means that a man who has a wife or children has a sacred obligation to provide for their needs.  And believe me, there is a world of difference between what one needs versus what one wants.

Duty means that an employee gives eight hours work for eight hours pay.  Without an attitude.

Do your duty today.  It is not glamorous but it is a mark of true greatness.

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Are You A Stallion Or A Gelding?

Do you know what gelding is?  It is a stallion that has been neutered.  Stones removed.  Castrated.  Those who raise horses geld stallions for lots of reasons.  One of them is to make the horse more sedate.  Well-behaved.  Easier to manage.

There is one considerable drawback.  Geldings cannot stud.  They are sterile.  Unable to reproduce.  But they’re nicer, I suppose.

In his book The Journey of Desire, John Eldredge recounts an unsuccessful counseling experience he had with a guy named Gary.  Gary was nice.  Well-behaved.  Easy to manage.  His wife was worried because he had no passion for anything.  He was a “nice Christian boy.”  Did all the right things.  But not out of any deep sense of conviction.

A gelding.

Sterile.

Eldredge was unable to help a man who’d lost all drive for anything in life.  A good deal of this hemorrhage of basic testosterone was no doubt rooted in a distorted idea of what the ideal Christian male is.  “Gentle Jesus–meek and mild.”  You get the picture.  Not the type of person who drives thieves from the sanctuary with a whip and uses strong, impolite language with religious bullies.

Passivity, especially in males, is the bane of our age.  It sours marriages.  It produces mediocre job performance.  Is often sedentary and unambitious.  It leaves those who count on us without a leader.

Geldings don’t change the world.  Sorry, but it’s true.

When I read about heroes in history, I find they were possessed with passion for whatever their mission was in life.  Teddy Roosevelt.  King David.  Richard Branson.  Peter.  Even disastrous Jeroboam.  And Jesus Christ.  True, they made mistakes (our Lord excepted).  And when they screwed up, it was a disaster.  But when they triumphed, it made history.

Your wife wants you to be passionate.  So do your kids.  Your friends and colleagues too.

In fact, the whole world wants it.

This is your time to be all there.  Find something—anything—worth doing and do it with all your might.

Suggestions:

• Get out of your chair at night and get moving.  Exercise, do extra work, take on a new project demanding effort and adrenaline.  You don’t want to end up like so many poor souls whom you see at the discount stores, grossly overweight, listless and unhappy.  Too many cheap carbs and time in front of the boob-tube.  It doesn’t have to be you.
• Start a blog.  I did.  This one is sticking and having the net effect of making me get off my duff and practice what I preach to my readers.
• Repeat after me: “I matter.  I can do this.  I am not a nobody.  And the world is counting on me being fully there in whatever I am doing.”  Again, if it isn’t worth doing with all your might, it probably isn’t worth doing.  You be the judge.

You’re called to be a stallion.  Don’t sell yourself short.  Go and produce life!

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