Reality Reflection: Time to Dream

When things end all too often we’re at odds with life. We ask ourselves “what do we do now?” and “what’s next?” and we don’t have an answer. I’ve got several clients and friends who are going through “endings” in their lives, that something big is changing for them. But an ending doesn’t always mean that there’s nothing coming next, often it just means that you’re closing the book on one chapter of your life and another chapter is waiting to be written. As I was thinking about this I was reminded how important it is to see life as a journey.

Journeys aren’t made up of one part, they’re made up of stretches and seasons, of moving from place to place until the final destination (death) has been reached. The journey doesn’t end because you reach an age or an accomplishment, because your relationship failed, because the business you worked for closed, or because you faced and conquered a scary sickness, that’s only the end of that part of the journey, which is why it’s so important to keep the bigger picture in mind at all times. It’s also a great reason to remember to do your best to balance life and keep your life as inclusive of all things and people that matter to you, rather than letting yourself get tunnel vision on one aspect.

The other thing I was reminded about was how important it is to dream throughout our lives. We can get so wrapped up in things that we forget what it’s like to have passion and dreams. I’m not (just) talking pipe dreams and dreams of retiring to our own private island, I’m talking about the realistic ones like being in a long-term happy and healthy relationship or raising kids or making a difference in the world in a way that’s personal to you. Those are dreams that we should be having all the time and working on all the time, because life is richer and more fulfilling when we’re able to dream dreams and live those dreams.

Of course there’s no guarantee that you’ll be really ready for an ending when it arrives or whatever the next part of the journey includes, but being open to the movements of life and being willing to work with the challenges and opportunities that come your way will help you be better prepared and better able to work through whatever your next chapter includes. And at the very least, at every stage of the journey you can believe that life will remain just as good as it is or that it can get better as you move on. What about you? Where is life taking you right now and are you prepared for the changes that are coming, or maybe even excited about those changes?

Honest, Simple Victories

The other day I learned something about a writer many of us were exposed to as children: Beatrix Potter. I can still remember being fascinated by the stories she wrote and how she gave her characters personality, and of course listening to her stories read on cassette tape while doing summer vacations with the family. I was always more interested in the stories she wrote about characters other than Peter Rabbit, although of course I knew his story.

But beyond writing and illustrating, she was also a conservationist, scientist and entrepreneur, something that likely happened only because she was born into an upper-middle-class household and given a good education. We’ll never know what stories other contemporaries of Beatrix Potter could have come up with if they had the access to internet and computers that we do these days, and we’re quite fortunate to have the number of stories from Beatrix and others like Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, not to mention all of the other important cultural works we do. They may not seem as exciting as some of the contemporary mysteries, thrillers and romance novels that we have today (or the stories told through movies and TV), they gave many children including myself an incredible imagination and desire to read and explore what the written word had to offer.

As a writer I know that a big portion of the joy of words and stories is personal. I love sitting down at my keyboard and having the opportunity to write. Part of the pleasure does come from the challenge of working from one little spark and turning it into something that tells a story or shares a lesson. But another part of the joy is found in the opportunity to hopefully share a different perspective with someone, or being able to inspire someone to live or explore life a little more, or giving someone something to smile or think about that takes them away from whatever is going on in their life.

And that’s one of the great things about victories: as much as victories are and should be personal, often they’re something good, positive, kind or helpful we do for or because of others. Some may say that it’s a rather silly victory to write stories (whether for kids or adults), but silly or not, it’s something many people greatly appreciate (to the tune of over $25 billion in 2019 in the US alone) and I don’t ever see that changing. So don’t judge the next victory you think about making on whether it will be something that will immediately impact the world in a positive and life-transforming way, few victories are ever that big nor do they need to be.

“If I have done anything, even a little, to help small children enjoy honest, simple pleasures, I have done a bit of good.” Beatrix Potter

A Starting Point for Leadership

Something I talk about on my family and business blog frequently is leadership. It’s so crucial to both success and business, and technically it’s what parents are doing when they’re being responsible for raising the next generation, so of course we’re going to talk about it frequently. But we don’t talk about it much on this blog, at least not from the perspective of talking about leadership. Usually we’re looking at people who are key figures from the Bible like Moses or Noah or David who actually did a whole lot of leading throughout their lives, but they did a lot of other things and are known for tons of other things, so their leadership qualities or capabilities tend to fade to the background.

As I was thinking about everything going on in the world right now from health concerns to environmental challenges to political interactions to sports competitions, it’s easy to see that there are so many opportunities to be a leader in the world and to set an example for someone else or even just to do the right thing. But it’s also possible to be selfish and only focused on what you can gain or what you want and not the impact of your life on the future. And one of the hardest things is sticking to your beliefs, policies, and standards and not caving to peer pressure or society.

One of the best examples of staying true to the high standard God has for people of faith and being a leader is Daniel. You probably know him because of a little interaction he had with a den of lions (he was thrown to them and God saved him overnight from being eaten in Daniel 6). But he’s also known for having a healthy diet and lots of prayer time. Within a short time of being in captivity Daniel was one of a few who stood out for being healthier and wiser than many of the other captives, which earned him the ear of the king. Why? Because as it says in Daniel 6:4b: “He was faithful, always responsible, and completely trustworthy.”

I’d say that’s a great place for anyone who wants to be a leader to start. Yes, there’s a lot more to it than that, but if you consistently work to be faithful, responsible and trustworthy, soon your circle of influence will grow and when opportunities appear you’ll be a go-to choice. And maybe more important than that, you’ll be able to look back on your life proud of how you’ve lived, the decisions you’ve made, and the relationships you invested in, even if you don’t do anything like conquer a kingdom, go into space, cure cancer or make world peace happen. What type of leader are you working to become?

Reality Reflection: Truth and Lies

There’s been a ton of talk about lies since 2020 started. From political ones to pandemic ones, everyone seems to think there are lies being told about different things, and it’s really hard to know how much truth there is to be found in what people are saying. It also hurts to see the division that has resulted from people believing or disbelieving what’s being told. It amazes me that in this day and age we’re able to so easily confuse and divide everyone with information and so able to hide whatever the real truth is so that it can’t be discovered.

On some level I do agree with the argument that our lives would cease to exist as we know them if we didn’t have lying as part of our cultures, that there are some “white lies” that aren’t truly harmful, or not meant to be harmful, and they can help us keep the peace or give us something to say when we don’t know or don’t care or don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. It’s not always the best course of action, think about all the times we’ve lied to our doctors and said “everything’s fine” because we haven’t felt comfortable talking about stuff, or done the same at work or with our significant other because we weren’t ready or comfortable talking about something, or even with our kids because we didn’t wan them to worry. And in each of these situations we have some kind of reason or explanation we can give as to why we’ve lied or not told the [whole] truth.

But the questions I keep coming back to are what is the truth in all of this, why aren’t people telling the truth, which people are telling the truth (is anyone telling the truth), and what is so important that people are lying about this stuff? Because there has to be truth and there has to be lies mixed in all of this, I don’t think it’s just truth or just lies that we’ve been hearing. I do know that sometimes it takes time to get to the truth, just the other day I saw a headline about a 1980’s murder that they finally had a suspect and enough proof to arrest that person, so I know that sometimes it takes time to get to the bottom of things. But like many others I wish that that passing time didn’t do as much damage as it does when the truth is unknown. It hurts people to not know the truth, it causes the divide between people to grow the longer the lies and truth are not made clear, and it makes it a ton harder to even consider a future we can all agree on.

The next time you think about lying or think about passing on some information, take a second to think about what you’re about to say and make sure that if you’re passing on information it’s the truth and not a pile of unsubstantiated lies that just sound scary or will incite panic.

Belonging to the Team

Do you believe that asking for help is a sign of strength? It’s true that sometimes when someone asks you to do something it means that they’re too lazy or they don’t care enough to do it themselves, but usually there’s a good reason that someone asked you to do something. For example you may ask your partner to do a specific chore around the house because you really dislike it and you are happy to do many of the other chores that need to be done (making it fair and no one is doing all the work). Or you may ask someone to do something because they’re much more qualified or experienced in a topic than you are. And of course there are times that you have a need for a team or partner to get something done and rather than pretend you can do it yourself or fake or struggle your way through or let it take two or three times the amount of time it should, you ask for help.

Even back in Genesis God has always shown that He wants us to go through life together. Sometimes together does mean something physical or tangible, but it also can mean that we’re here to support each other emotionally too (on a side note and for a conversation a different day, I don’t think God would talk about emotions like love and peace in the Bible as much as He does if He didn’t have emotions and didn’t think our emotions were important). I know how challenging it can be for some of us to work together with our differences, but I believe we have much more in common than we do that’s different usually. And we’d learn to work together better if we did it more often with fewer feelings of helplessness and incompetency on our part or fear that others will judge us for asking for help, and accepting that it’s our biggest and most important job on earth to help each other.

There are tons of examples of how people work together, and one of the most classic is in sports. Could you imagine if the goalie or the quarterback or the kicker or the pitcher or the catcher didn’t show up for a game? And the other positions on the field or in the game are just as important even if they’re not always recognized as such. True team players don’t decide they’re going to not play for a game, they always show up and try whether they’re the most well-known person on the team or not.

We don’t have a choice whether we belong to the human team or not, but we do have a choice in whether or not we participate. For all of the times we want God to help us, maybe we should remember that He wants us to help others just as much, and we shouldn’t see it as a burden but rather as an opportunity to be there for our fellow man.

“We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.” Romans 12:5b

Reality Reflection: Choose Your Own Life

One of my favorite things about summer as a kid, besides the warm weather and lack of early morning school time, was the unlimited reading time. For some reason there’s just something so natural and connected as reading in the summer, whether you do it on vacation, by the pool/ocean, in the hammock, when you’re supposed to be sleeping, in the car if you don’t get carsick, on the deck or patio, or just about anywhere. Since I read so much as a kid/teen I was always running out of (mostly) age appropriate stuff to read from my library and from the other local libraries, and I was intrigued by the series, so one summer I tried a couple of those ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books. And it turns out that I’m not a fan. I really like my happy endings (or cliffhanger that leads into another book that has a happy ending), and I always go into a book with the belief (and hope) that the author knows what they’re doing and I’ll be satisfied with how the story ends up.

Of course, I’ve certainly read a number of books I haven’t liked or haven’t been able to finish, but there’s something very different about reading a book where the choice you make ends up killing the main character (and everyone else) or coming to a ho-hum finish. I love the adventure of not knowing how a story will end or what twists and turns will happen before the ending arrives, but as I said, I don’t like when there’s not a happy ending, and to know that I was kind of responsible for it being an unhappy ending really frustrated me. Needless to say I read a couple of them and never again.

Another reason why I didn’t enjoy these books was because of how many responsible decisions we need to make in our regular day-to-day lives, and reading time should be for adventure or enjoyment (and occasionally for learning). But these books are a good illustration for our lives, showing not only the ways you can screw up your life, but also remind you that when you make good, smart and educated decisions, you’ll often end up with a really great result. You don’t always have the ability to choose that you’ll have a victory at the end of the current journey you’re on, but when you finish that journey you’ll be able to start in on a new one and hopefully in that journey you’ll make better choices, have better connections or even just get lucky. And if you know that something isn’t going the way you thought it would, make a new choice! You don’t usually have to finish out the story with the choice you made, you can change course in the middle of your journey.

Don’t Dwell on Your Mistakes

“Don’t dwell on your mistakes.” It’s a great bit of advice that I think all of us have heard from time to time, but almost impossible to follow. Why? Because we’re really good at thinking and considering and contemplating, which can absolutely be a good thing, but can really hold us back when we get stuck dwelling on a mistake. I’ve talked before about how important it can be to know what you did wrong, but there’s a difference between evaluating and dwelling. And yes, sometimes it’s our ability to go over and over and over something that is actually what gives us the breakthrough we’ve been looking for.

But dwelling on our mistakes isn’t productive because it’s kicking ourselves over and over. Rarely does it help our confidence, victories, successes, or relationships when we’re busy berating ourselves. Because the fact is everyone messes up from time to time. Not every hit results in a base, run or homerun. We shouldn’t celebrate our failures, but do we need to go so far as kicking ourselves? The question really has to do with if the kick-in-the-butt we give ourselves is going to help us be more committed to doing better the next time, or if it’s just going to needlessly hurt us.

As we get into our last years, most of us will have at least a couple of things we regret or big screw-ups that we wished we didn’t remember. These hard lessons are part of life, but we can and should of course do everything we can to avoid them or make the fall-out as minimal as possible. One of the best things we can do to not consistently get into the habit of dwelling is to consistently pep-talk ourselves, listen to positive speeches, read positive and inspiring stories, be in relationships with people who lift us up, and do our very best to have a positive outlook on life. And if you find yourself consistently dwelling on mistakes, there’s a really good chance that there are other areas of your life that could use some picking up, shaping up, and changing up also.

Victories are often a question of choices, and failures and mistakes are no different. Will you choose to let yourself be dragged really far down by a mistake, or will you choose to get up and dust yourself off and learn from your mistake as you move forward? As the old sayings go: ‘you have to get back on the horse sometime’ and “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise” (Philippians 4:8). Choose to celebrate your victories, not dwell on your mistakes.

The Challenge of Making Choices

I’ve been thinking a lot about the choices people make lately. Sometimes it feels like there really aren’t a lot of options to choose from, that you have to follow the choices others have made in your circle or in your life. Sometimes you let your fear make snap judgements that lead you down very risky pathways. Sometimes you do run out of time or options and have to make a decision from a couple of options that don’t really thrill you or bring you joy, and for a while you have to accept that option. And sometimes it can be hard to get out of the option that you felt you had to choose because you’re scared or can’t find the motivation to do so. I know many of the men and women who end up in jail or dead end up there because they didn’t feel they had good, elevating options and they chose dangerous pathways that are difficult to come back from.

Because of sin there have always been people who chose the short-term, not-considerate-of-others, or easy-but-not-caring options, and there always will be. But most people would choose the better options if they were available and feasible for their situation. Part of the issue is that even with the wonders of the internet people don’t know about all of the options available to them, or how doable it might be to move in that new direction. Another part of the issue is that some people genuinely don’t care about others, so they are only concerned with the impact the choices they make may have on themselves (if even that). It makes them hard to love, and hard for those of us who do usually or always care about others to understand them.

I think the first thing that has to happen is for people to really understand how the choices they make can impact others both directly and through the ripple effect. Rarely does the choice you make have little or no impact on someone else, whether today and where you are or years down the line and in another part of the world. And one of the ways we do our best to fix this is setting a good example for others to follow. Sometimes you’ll have to do some destruction and tearing down (like Jesus did at the temple in Matthew 21) before you can start building up something good, but usually when you choose to live with compassion, love, a commitment to the truth, and commitment to choosing the higher path whenever possible in your daily life, you’ll set a positive example for others to see and follow. And as it turns out, living with love and compassion and consideration is not just good for others, you’ll enjoy life more as well. And sometimes, what looked to be a difficult choice, is really a very easy choice to make when you’re committed to living to a higher standard like Jesus set.

“For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.” Galatians 5:13

Reality Reflection: Expiration Dates, Discontinued Products and Shopping Disappointments

Have you seen the articles that have popped up recently about how arbitrary or inaccurate or not helpful the expiration dates are on products? Apparently it’s like trying to use “blue” to describe all the different shades of blue found in things like the sky and the sea and the ponds and eyes and flowers and in space. Sure it works fine as a blanket descriptor, but when you want to talk details, it doesn’t work so well. So the color people went ahead and specified that we’ve got sky blue, cornflower blue, cerulean blue, and navy blue and so many other blues (have I mentioned that I love blue?!). But back to expiration dates, I think we do need them so I wish companies would do a more honest job of labeling their products.

In line with expiration dates, I’m also puzzling over the topic of discontinued products. Why do companies choose to discontinue products? The obvious answer seems to be the lack of interest, or insufficient interest. But when you’ve seen that product sell out time and again, you have to wonder if there’s something else behind that decision to not make it anymore. Sometimes I know companies want to move in a new direction and they don’t have the resources to keep making all of their products (or offering all of their services), and they have to decide which product to stop making even if it sells well (mostly because they hope the new product will sell better).

Along with products that sell out time and again, these are just a few of the little frustrations and disappointments that we have to navigate both as part of life and as we get older. Whether you struggle to buy a home because you’re constantly outbid, or go to store after store to try to get things on your child’s back-to-school or Christmas lists, or feel like you always get the second best because you’re never able get there soon enough, or it seems like no company in your price range ever caters to your preferences or offers anything of decent quality, sometimes you just give in to the need to have a bit of a pity party. But as I’ve seen over the past few weeks with Christmas in July items, if enough people speak up, sometimes change does happen.

So maybe the lesson is that we need to speak up more consistently and more clearly. Or maybe the lesson for all of us is to be more open and flexible with our needs, desires, preferences and purchases. Or maybe the lesson is that it’s OK to find the world unfair from time to time, because quite frankly it is, as long as we accept that after our pity party we then need to work on accepting change and growth and maybe even be excited about something new.

Looking Under Rocks

When was the last time you turned over any rocks? Do you remember being a kid and going out to the park or the pond or just your (or a friend’s) backyard and picking up rocks to see what was under them? Of course you wanted to turn over the bigger ones so that there was a better chance of something being under there, but sometimes you got lucky with the smaller ones and a bunch of little bugs would run in a whole bunch of directions. It was almost a tie between being excited about watching them run and discovering what was under the rock. Every so often as an adult I see a rock and I wonder what might be hiding under it and think about bending down to pick it up, but as the one who’s responsible for removing or killing 99% of the bugs that find their way into my home, I prefer to spend as little other time as possible dealing with bugs.

Even as a kid I knew there was always a chance that under the rock would be something besides pillbugs and earthworms, something I didn’t want to see like a whole ant farm or something with pinchers. But those events were few and far between, so the risks were lower and depending on the day it was more likely I’d find nothing than something scary. So turning over rocks was a relatively risk-free way to explore and push my boundaries a little bit.

Even as an adult, I’m still intrigued by the idea of turning over rocks. But these days we do less turning over of physical rocks and instead we turn over concepts, ideas and information in hopes of making connections or taking steps towards success or victory. Just do a simple internet search on your topic and in seconds you’re presented with a whole bunch of little rocks you can turn over and hopefully get lots of insights into your subject, although sometimes they’re not helpful or interesting. But not finding something under a rock didn’t deter us as kids and shouldn’t deter us as adults, if anything we should be more aware of how sometimes it takes a bit of time and effort to find the “good stuff” and when we remember the sensation of finding something interesting under a rock, it should motivate us to keep looking because we can experience a similar sensation of victory when we find the knowledge or connections we seek today. Have you looked under a rock lately?