Posted by
Stakeholder on Thursday, October 12, 2006 12:25:00 PM
Greetings... this is my first blog, hopefully it will spark thinking, insight and a informational exchange that will bring added ingredients of life to our Culture. So here's to Life...may we be lifegivers to it!
Look around you…in many communities, churches, ministries/organizations, even in fast growing companies, you'll find friends, family even colleagues who have given up. They're disillusioned, disengaged, even cynical. Somewhere along the line, they were disappointed by dumb decisions, passed over for key promotions or raises, or just beaten down by banging their heads against life’s wall day after day. Asking these folks to commit to any kind of meaningful transformation seems like a waste of time. The psychology of change confirms, the odds of making lasting changes are almost always against us -- even when our very lives are at stake. That troubling fact only underscores the difficulty of altering the culture or direction of any enterprise populated by thousands of different people with different agendas.
Truth is, as John W. Gardner once pointed out in his interesting book Self-Renewal, we construct our own prisons and often serve as our own jail keepers. We have to face the fact that most men and women out there in the world of life and work are more stale than they know, more bored than they care to admit.
Yet we know how crucial it is to advance, to change, to grow, to discover and to know what Apostle Paul talks about all the time and then what Jesus said that He came to give life more abundant than anything else. I am dedicated to the belief that change (transformation) is at the core of our human fulfillment and it is the sustainable fruit that lasts in life. When a person's internal clock is frozen in time, when he or she has given up on growing, learning, being transformed that person has lost one of the most precious gifts of a well-lived life. And if people or organizations can't change, they will sadly die.
We can talk forever about strategy, structure, process, and culture which is helpful. But more than anything, life’s struggle is about change/transformation. Your life, marriage, family, ministry, business, so your life has to be lived in the ability to stay fresh and vital. It all will depend on the ability to change the core of who we are to the perfect will of the Father, then the behavior of ourselves and other people with impact the world with real life.
So how do we shift the odds in our favor? Here's what I think a transformed life has to teach us:
- Real change isn't motivated by either crisis or fear. The best inspiration comes from leaders who can create compelling living visions of the future. Your faith core determines your vision. Jesus gave us some of the best inspiration that I can think of, read John’s story and Jesus’ word recorded there.
- Small, gradual changes rarely lead to transformation. Radical, sweeping changes are riskier but often more effective, because they quickly yield benefits visible to everyone most of all to you. So go on be transformed by the renewing of your mind to a new pattern, go on! Within a ministry, company you need to have a change group that leads the way to communicate the change. Then you as a leader inspire and infuse the change group with the vision of the future, then change can happen with celebration not rebellion.
- Narratives, not always just facts, guide our thinking. Data on declining marriages, family crisis points, churches, company sales, the market share or quality problems won't get people to change what they do. Rather, appeals rooted in life giving emotion are what best inspire people to alter course mixed with factual outcomes of change and results of those that don’t. Find creative people who are living it to speak it to others, CD's, books and last but not least YOU yes you are a life-giving story to mentor others!
- That quest for a real life is the most compelling reason for change. Life is a process of self-discovery in light of eternity, an adventure with some unpredictable turns in life situations in which we find ourselves and yet we don’t fear evil because we aren’t alone in our journey. Our potentialities are not just intellectual gifts but the full range of one's capacities for learning, sensing, wondering, understanding, loving, and aspiring.
I can think of no better reason not to give up, not to run down like an unwound clock. We’re transformed, we grow, and we truly live. The worst of all fears is the fear of living, so LIVE overcome have resolute courage to do so. Then tell the narrative of how you overcame that fear to LIVE life to inspire our fellow travelers. As Christians we really can do all things through Jesus who is the author of life and so we can have our lives full and overflowing! "We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage", T.R. Roosevelt once said, can that be true of us as people of Faith, I deeply hope so!