Success Questions Pt 2

Posted April 6, 2009 by Chris
Categories: Awareness, Belief, Context, Creativity, Goals, Influence, Life

Take the next thirty seconds and answer the following question:

“What are the 3 most important goals you have for your life right now?”

Don’t spend more time qualifying your answers. Like the last post, write down what comes from your gut – your center. When you answer quickly you may even surprise yourself with your answers. When you let the answers come out unfiltered, an authentic view of yourself and knowledge of your real wants and desires will come out. The key is to always remember that there are no wrong answers.

Some will think that if they write down Money or Influence as goals that somehow thoses things are “bad”. The real truth is that money and influence are things that can produce positive good results if used correctly.

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True Success In Life

Posted March 30, 2009 by Chris
Categories: Awareness, Creativity, Influence, Life

Over the last few weeks I’ve gone through some notebooks that I’ve written in the past. Like every experience and truism we find in life, the next few blog posts have come from a variety of sources in the past. They area series of questions that, if answered honestly, can greatly benefit your life. Some will seem like no-brainers, but despite a desire to skip over and not participate in an exercise, press ahead and asnswer the questions and act on the answers. My hope is that you benefit from the time you spend in honest evaluation of you real wants and desires.

Remember there are no wrong answers.

The first question is:

“What are the 5 things that you value the most in life?”

 Answer in sixty seconds quickly. Put down your gut answers, because those are the most truthful to who you are.

Whatever you wrote out as your five top values can change in the next few months or years, but for now it will give some direction and purpose and help answer some of the “Why?” questions in your life.

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What We See, We Believe

Posted March 25, 2009 by Chris
Categories: Awareness, Belief, Context, Life

“Seeing is Believing” We’ve all heard that quote before, but what does it mean, and how does it impact our own lives. What we spend time looking at has an effect on what we allow into our belief system. What we look at also has an effect on the strength of our current beliefs. I’m not talking about negative aspects. We are familiar with those. What we are not familiar with is the positive influences that can happen because of what we chose to gaze at.

Whether we chose to spend time looking at a sunrise, sunset or a mist rising over a large field in the early morning. These images impact our attitudes during the day and our remembrances of the day in the future. Choosing to look at something that lifts us up inside can have a direct influence on the successes or failures we experience during the day.

Take time and chose to look at something beautiful. See how it effects and changes your perspective and to that end, your life.

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Momentary Silence

Posted March 17, 2009 by Chris
Categories: Awareness, Centering Prayer, Creativity, People, religion

A lot has been said about centering prayer, a unique Christian form of prayer. Some people just say that it’s meditation, or some way to allow Eastern ideas into the Western way of Christianity. One quick point of information is that Christianity itself is an Eastern religion. Picking up from roots in Judaism, Christianity has at its core many concepts that definitely have a flavor of other religious practices and forms.

The major idea is to look at what the practice seeks to do. Not what it looks like or what someone else has said about it. Centering prayer seeks to connect the individual with an aspect of God’s personality that is similar to the awareness of God’s “everywhereness” and “nowhereness” that Moses felt as he saw the back part of God when God walked by. It is both a seeking and a desire to experience God in a new and old way.

Many who have practiced centering prayer find a complexity of the new and familiar surrounding them as they move toward God in stillness and quiet. For me, it is a Momentary Silence within the ebb and flow of sound that comprise each and every wonderful day created for us to revel in by our Creator.

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Be like Water

Posted March 9, 2009 by Chris
Categories: Awareness, Belief, Life, peace

I know that there are several proverbs and sayings from the Far East that concern themselves with water. I’m certain that this paraphrase has been influenced by many of them.

“Be like water – even with heavy rain though the surface is rippled and disturbed, the deep part stays untouched and still. As soon as the rain ceases, the ripples dissipate and the surface is again flat and still.”

The point to this quote is that when the circumstances of life cause ripples, or in many cases waves, on the surface of our lives, it is the stillness of our center that gives us the ability to quickly come back to a peace and “ripple free” life. Focus more time, effort and energy on the place within yourself. When that inner place is tended to, any circumstance will distill away to stillness.

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Mine to Do

Posted March 4, 2009 by Chris
Categories: Awareness, Belief, Context, Creativity, Influence, Leadership, Life

Toward the end of his life, St. Francis told his fellow brothers, “I have done what is mine to do; may Christ teach you yours”. This quote has had a profound impact on the direction and fulfillment of my life. Often we find ourselves invested in the lives of others. We are wrapped up, litteraly, in the affairs of others. So much so that we let our own lives cruise along without much personal attention to our own direction.

When we are allowed into the lives of others it is easy to find the pull of “fixing” and “helping” them irressistible. We love projects, and people can be the best projects out there; especially when they step back and let us do the work for them. Many times we can see instant gratification when counsel is taken and is a success.

The problem with this relationship is that it easily evolves into a dependant existence and often results in some sloppy care given to yourself because you are “helping” someone else. It may seem hard, but your life is the only one you can truly control, and the only one you are responsible for. Caring for your own life and path is the greatest thing you can do for yourself and for those who you find yourself connected to.

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The Golden Rule?

Posted February 26, 2009 by Chris
Categories: Awareness, Belief, Creativity, Influence, Life, Rhythm

The scriptures teach us to “do unto others as we would have them do to us”, but often we end up experiencing people doing to us what we expect them to do to us. Depending on our outlook and attitude, we can expect and experience negative things or positive things. Like it or not, we are the authors of our own lives. Many will not want to accept this, mostly this is due to an unwillingness to accept responsibility for our lives. It is much easier to let someone else determine our lives that to do the hard work and direct our own paths.

If some other worldly force is pulling and prodding me in whatever direction it wants to, then  – success or failure – it’s not my fault. The end result is just marked down to as being “supposed to happen”. The truth is that life itself is difficult and requires hard work from us. Our response should be to pu;; ourselves up from our bootstraps and live life to its fullness, not wimp out and let “whatever will be…..be.”

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Iconoclasts

Posted February 21, 2009 by Chris
Categories: Awareness, Belief, Context, Creativity, Cultural Ideas, Influence, Life

The book, Iconoclast, by Gregory Berns, is an incredible amalgam of information concerning both the brain and the action centers of the individual. Dr. Berns describes an iconoclast as someone who “does something that others say can’t be done”. What follows is a listing of different people who have done just that.

One of the positive aspects to this book is its delivery of technical information in a way that is accessible to anyone. Distilled down into themes we all know such as perception and fear, he makes distinctions about the imagination and mindset that separate the ordinary and the free-thinkers that define the term “Iconoclast”.

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Tribes – Take the Follow

Posted February 16, 2009 by Chris
Categories: Awareness, Creativity, Influence, Leadership, Life

I wrote a post on this topic previously and deleted it, thinking it was the right thing to do. I folded to a skewed opinion of another person and shouldn’t have.  I now know that it was a mistake to delete it. The key in leadership – both individual and corporate – is not to make decisions rashly and based on emotion. The basic concept in this section from the incredible book from Seth Godin, Tribes, is that there comes a time in leadership when, if your vision becomes cloudy, you must step aside and let those who are assured of direction lead.

When a leader is unwilling to let go of the reins of leading when their own direction is in doubt, a flag should go up and be acted upon by those within the organization. Not acting will only serve to cripple the organization. Without solid leadership, the leader only serves to move the organization more quickly in a direction neither he nor the ones he leads are aware of.

Great leaders know when to move on within the organization. Great leaders also know when they have reached the boundary of ability and can no longer adequately lead and move on outside the organization. When a great leader cannot let go, that leader sinks in both further ablilty and continued influence.

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Systems vs. Sytematic Theology

Posted February 11, 2009 by Chris
Categories: Awareness, Belief, Books I'm Reading, Context, Creativity, Cultural Ideas, Life, religion

One of the greatest changes that I see in the future of the church is a shift from a systematic approach to theology to a more inclusive holistic Systems approach. The integration of so many differing systems into our daily environments will eventually warrant a change in the direction of the theological approach of most churches. Whereas in the past we have been somewhat satisfied with compartmentalizing differing aspects of theological interest.

We have been content to “zero in” on faith, grace, salvation, righteousness, etc. exclusively. Now there will be decidedly all-encompassing approach that will examine how these all are related to one another and dependant on each other. As the strings that connect shift, so does the related change in the tension between each area. What is exciting about all of this is that it brings a new dynamic to the conversation(s) concerning every issue that was previously looked at in exclusivity.

Systems Theology will seek to bring more of a solid foundation to much of the weaker present offering of “new church”. I’m reading a book now about the changes and shifts in cultures as different paradigms take shape. This is a key concept as we look both where we’ve come from and where we’re going.

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