Core Values
If you are going to accomplish anything important in life then you must identify your core values that will determine all of your priorities and goals for your personal life or the organization you lead. If you are a church then here are some values that you might consider.
Authentic—We believe the role of the church is to help represent the biblical truth about God to the world.
Relevant—That truth is to be shared so that people can apply it every day in their real world
Significance—Every person is important and we want them to find value and meaning in life through a relationship with Jesus Christ
Transformation—We want to help everyone grow in that relationship with Christ so they can reach their own unique potential
Community—Connecting with other people in genuine relationships is where personal fulfillment is found
Involvement—Moving beyond ourselves and serving others is what produces lasting contentment
Missional—Every day we can change the world one person at a time through meeting their needs and sharing our story about what Christ has done in our lives
Sweat the Small Stuff
We all love the great Bible story of David killing the giant Goliath. There are many incredible truths in the several chapters that are dedicated to this event.
The most significant one for me is that if we take care of the seemingly little responsibilities in our lives God has a way of taking care of the major ones. The reason David had no fear of this monster of a man is because with God’s help he had already killed a lion and a bear.
All major public victories that everyone sees are preceded by the smaller private ones when no one is watching. The other side of the same truth is sadly all major public failures occur because of a series of small compromises that seemed so unimportant at the time.
If you don’t think this is true just ask Eliot Spitzer or John Edwards and they will be glad to share with you how quickly this can happen. How could these highly intelligent, powerful and dynamic leaders let this happen to themselves and most of all to their families? Someone has well said an unguarded strength is a double weakness.
Sweat the small stuff and the big stuff will take care of itself.
Personal Mission Statement
Filed under: Core Values, Life Balance, Personal Development
All of us have become proficient at doing all the major components of the business plan at work. We know how to define goals, create plans, execute priorities and evaluate success.
However, very few of us use these same disciplines to help lead our personal lives. Research shows that approximately 95% of us have never written out our personal goals in life, but of the 5% who have, 95% have achieved them.
Steven Covey popularized the phrase Personal Mission Statement in his bestselling book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He makes the point that ultimately all professional success flows out of our ability to lead ourselves first.
Every day we must say no to something because there is simply too much to do when you include the personal, family, career and civic responsibilities of our lives. If we do not take the time to define what we want our legacy to be for the people and things we care about the most they will by default usually end up on the no list.
What the annual plan does for your corporate productivity and performance your personal mission statement will do for the rest of your life. It will help define the core values for you personally and your family and set realistic goals with strategies that will help you to write your own script for the totality of your entire life.
It should never be acceptable to succeed in one area of our lives only to fail in all the others. Take the time to write down what is personally and professionally important to you in this life because in the end that is all that will really matter.
Security and Significance Part III
Filed under: Family Ministry, Marriage, Personal Development
God has designed us so that the most important needs in our lives can only be met through Him. His next priority is for us to be in a relationship with our spouse that reflects Christ unconditional love for the church and His willing submission to the will of the Father.
The trap I mentioned in the last post is that we can move our faith to the top of the list of personal priorities but we can substitute church for Christ. Church in many ways is just like the emotional support we get from our career.
We can serve in an important role and gain significance through our responsibilities and tremendous encouragement from all the people we help. Although these are certainly good things the danger of religion taking the place of a relationship is always emotionally seductive.
Even with faith at the top of the list and family in second place there are dangers there as well. When husbands and wives do not place their personal relationship above all other people and the pain of rejection starts hurting both parties they move their remaining emotional energy to the children.
After all doing what is best for the children is a worthy goal and it brings great emotional significance. It can be easy to justify hanging in a bad marriage “for the sake of the children.”
There is only one major problem, it will never work. The most loving thing a parent can ever do for a child is to love God in a passionate real way and love their spouse with grace and humility.
Other people and other things can never give us what only God can provide unconditional love and lasting significance. Beyond that the single most important relationship that we have in this life is with our spouse. Church and children can be dangerous temporary substitutes but they too will leave us empty in the end.
Security and Significance Part II
Filed under: Family Ministry, Marriage, Personal Development
The need to be unconditionally loved and to know that our lives have value and meaning are fundamental to every person on the planet. We all must have these needs met to some degree and therefore we will keep searching until we find some measure of fulfillment.
We start out in life with our family being the major source of love, protection and encouragement. When we are in high school and even through our twenties a transition takes place and the two major sources of meeting these needs are now fun and friends. That is why being a part of some community moves to the top of most young adult’s agenda and they will pay any price to be accepted.
By the time we reach our late twenties we have to start thinking about the future and a career. For many people the success and emotional support that is offered through work moves this provider to the top of the list.
Family moves back into the list when we get married and eventually start having children of our own. We even now feel the need to get back in church again so that our children can get what they need as well.
Faith and Family surely will be the answer to meeting our deepest emotional needs for security and significance. Actually, they can become the biggest trap because even though they are good things they can keep you from the best.
Security and Significance
Filed under: Family Ministry, Marriage, Personal Development
The two major things that all people are searching for in life are security and significance. Security is the understanding that I am unconditionally loved and significance means that my life has value and meaning.
Most of the time we are searching for both of these needs in all of the wrong places. We try to find unconditional love in human relationships that all inevitably fail us to some degree and cause pain.
Then we look to our career, church and children to give us the meaning and validation in life that we so desperately need. Here again although all of these are quote good things and can give us some degree of significance they to in the end leave us wanting more.
All human relationships are important and being successful in every area of our lives should be our goal. However, the major truth here we are missing is that we can never look to other people or things to give us what only God can provide.
When our relationship with God is first and His mission for our life is the ultimate measure of our success then all other relationships and endeavors play a secondary role and become complimentary and not primary.
Then when the pain, failure and rejection come in this life they can always be measured against the grace and peace that only God can give. The assurance that He will never leave us and nothing can separate us from His love gives us the courage to risk living life to the fullest.
In the end He is enough.
Significance
Filed under: Core Values, Life Balance, Personal Development
We all need to ask ourselves what we really want out of life. For many it is success and all the outward benefits and rewards that come from achievement in the corporate culture of our day.
I will never forget an interview that I saw with Tom Brady after he had won his last Super Bowl. After he talked about all the fame and fortune he had achieved, he then made the following statement, “there has to be more to life than this.”
There is and it is called significance which is all about adding value to other people. I have talked with a lot of people near the very end of their lives.
The common denominator for all of these conversations is that when it is all said and done all that really matters is have we made a difference in the lives of other people.
Today if we are not careful we are in danger of reducing all of our important relationships down to a few words on voice mail, or a picture attachment to an email.
Can someone be professionally successful and realize personal significance at the same time? Absolutely.
Everyone who has accomplished both has come to the critical understanding that professional success is only the means to the end of having personal significance through helping other people.
Reaching Your Potential
From a personal standpoint one of the things I love doing is hiking. A hiker is somewhere between a camper and an adventure racer.
One of the great advantages of living in the Atlanta area for ten years is the close proximity to the Appalachian trail in the north Georgia mountains.
My favorite hiking story is about a great one day hike in the Alps. If you start early in the morning you can reach the summit and get back to the car before dark.
About half way up the mountain is this incredibly beautiful rest house where everyone eats a great lunch. The owner of the rest house has noticed an interesting pattern over the years. When everyone reaches the rest house they are all excited about reaching their goal of the summit.
They warm themselves by the fire and about half way through lunch somebody inevitably speaks out what many people are thinking. Ii think I will just stay here while you finish the climb and you can pick me up on the way back down. At that moment everyone must the make decision to stay or go.
For all those who stay the first few hours are incredible. They sit by the fire and tell mountain climbing stories about other great mountain climbers from the past. They may even reminisce about some of their great climbing experiences in the past.
By early afternoon the mood dramatically changes in the room and everyone becomes silent. One by one they make their way over to this huge window in the back of the lodge and they stand there and stare at the summit.
For you see it is at this painful moment that they realize they have settled for second best in their lives.
Someone has well said, “The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”
Family Matters
Filed under: Core Values, Family Ministry, Life Balance, Marriage, Personal Development
I have never known a successful leader who did not know how to establish goals, develop plans, execute priorities and finally evaluate success in their career. The old saying about goals is true, if you cannot measure them, then they really don’t matter.
However, tragically for most people that is exactly what happens to them in their personal lives. They say this part is ultimately the most important but they never take the time to write down what they want their legacy to be for the people that matter the most.
Because the personal does not get the priority of the professional the family usually ends up with the leftovers. Leftover time, passion, affection and energy.
I have know people who can make million dollar decisions at work without blinking but by the time they get home they do not have enough emotional energy to decide if they want hamburgers or soup for dinner. They have been nice to other people all day, co-workers, suppliers and customers only to come home and be so fried they have to retreat to the T.V. because they have nothing left for spouse or children.
Someone has well said that the person who cannot see the ultimate always becomes a slave to the immediate. Meaningful relationships with family and bottom line professional results are not mutually exclusive but you must be willing to pay personal leadership price to have both.
Character
Simply put everything you eventually accomplish in life will be based upon you personal leadership DNA. What you do is based upon who you are.
Someone has well said: ability may get you to the top but it takes character to keep you there. If you do not believe that then just ask the former governor of New York.
I had to learn the importance of this lesson very early in my career. I changed jobs four times in five years right out of college because I did not realize that the major problem was not the company I was working for or the supervisor that I had, the problem was me.
All I did was move from company to company and take all of my unresolved character problems with me expecting different results. I learned the hard way that if you are consistently failing where you are there is no real reason to believe that you will be successful somewhere else.
However, if you learn how to be successful where you are regardless of your circumstances and become an A Player then there is every reason to believe that you can be successful anywhere.