Tag: needverse

167 – Winning Is Wearisome Work

The troubles and struggles along the pathway to any victory ought be expected. Unfortunately many of the world’s mentors skip this lesson with their pupils. Athletic coaches talk about it, but institutional establishments paint a very different and false picture—that diligent homework makes friends and a shoe-in financial statement. But, that’s just propagandist brainwashing for institutions to make obedient minions, rewarding them with frictionless perks.

Real victory is bloody, sweaty, and teary. Consider the trailblazers and pioneers of the Wild West. Anything new, fresh, and growing will cut into the wild and untame. Anyone who does new, fresh, and growing work will adapt one’s tastes to find comfort and familiarity in the fray.

Institutions and establishments, by contrast, sterilize their environments before entering. If the masses allow—and sometimes they do—institutions will raze the jungle, mill the logs into poles, and plunge them back into the ground like a field of giant toothpicks where trees once stood, labeling it a “better” forest to explore. But, nature is organic and spontaneous.

Each tree, each grass and moss and bird and critter thrive uniquely—differently yet in kind. Life sprawls with ordered chaos having a purpose necessary to biological progress. That life is strong and powerful, able to overcome… whatever—even a forest fire, even nuclear fallout. Consider the environment around Chernobyl.

The bumpy, irregular path of real life makes us tired. Enemies return flack when the good guys make progress. Wisdom tells us this is normal. But, institutions see the unique irregularities of life as a nuisance and it makes them depressed. Thus, institutions and their teachers pass on their depression to their pupils—to their minions. To hear any institutional culture speak of life is disheartening. It has neither spunk nor spark, completely deflated and complacent.

“It’s so hard,” they say. “I don’t know how I’ll make it, but I’ll keep going a little longer. This life isn’t easy, full of trouble.” For the so-called “godly” institutions, they inject “institutional hope”—”God will come help me some day and rescue me from this depressing existence.” Such is lifeless Institutionalism.

Know this truth and thrive: Winners are not weary as victims, but as victors.

166 – The Holistically Holistic Life

In life, we learn and grow, choose and become. One single human life contains an equilibrium to itself, made up of whatever morals we held, skills we learned, self-control we gained, strength we grew, knowledge we discovered, truth we accepted, friends we earned, enemies we notarized, fruits we yielded, gratitude we gave, and beauty we beheld.

Skill, hard work, learning, and stewardship are some pieces of a much larger ecosystem. All of the components of a healthy life can never be exhausted or listed since living life includes searching out what it means to live. Knowledge becomes outdated or added to. Stuff we gain from good stewardship decays and blows away in the wind. But, things like character and virtue matter eternally. From hard work and stewardship, we cannot help but gain good character and godly virtue because good character and godly virtue both require and lead to hard work and fruitful stewardship. But, the actual work and stewardship themselves are mere means to the greater ends of enjoyment and godliness that last into the next life.

Don’t sacrifice or overemphasize any one aspect of a well-rounded life over another. Like stones in an archway, every component is important. The ongoing quest is to identify all of the parts of your life that matter to your journey of today and remember them all throughout the day.

Remembering everything to remember is a near-impossible task. As ever-growing humans, our lives are prone to disproportion. Never think that you have arrived at perfect balance of the juggling act of life’s many values because the moment you become perfect, your purpose in life is expired and it’s time to pass on. God makes sure that we each die when we become as perfect as we will ever be—either by becoming nearly perfect or by refusing to.

We can never measure the impact or value of our own lives. You might help a million souls see the light or you might mentor only one child who does. Which is greater—the world-changer or his mentor—is for Eternity to decide. Gauge your life’s value, not by what you see in this lifetime, but by values transcending into Eternity.

165 – Listen to Talent

As a car owner, it can be frustrating listening to a mechanic explaining your car’s engine problem. Remember, he’s giving you a tuition-free education. He could just charge you money or lie to you. When he shares his knowledge, you should be thankful. The more you know about your car, the better condition you can keep it in and the less likely a bad mechanic is to do you dirty.

As a business owner, you may contract, hire, or both, when it comes to specialized talent. Those talented people will want to talk to you and share their expertise. Don’t respond with a faux pas.

A Rush Limbaugh caller once said, “I mean, if someone gives you a box from Tiffany’s, you say, ‘Thank you.'”

It’s not about being rich or smart or educated or wanting to be a geek or being materialistic. The polite, kind thing to do when someone gives you a compliment is to, quite simply, be thankful. If nothing else, it’s back to mom putting drawings on the refrigerator. But, when you’re paying the person who wants to throw in something extra to boot, you might want to display that artwork under glass.

Whether you think like an investor, deal-maker, employer, or simply a friend, it should count as at least three red flags when someone disrespects the opinion of hired talent. It might be a worthy HR tactic to stall job applicants with a janitor babbling on about why he mops the floor the way he does, just to see which applicants care and which get irritated—and the janitor is the actual guy giving the interview.

I actually do that kind of stuff when I visit a potential sourcing factory for the first time. I throw out my “crazy guy strategy ideas”—in part, never all—to let the factory owner filter himself. If he rejects my idea, then it won’t work out when I order 100k pc anyway, and, on record, he was the one who rejected me. So, he can’t complain when I’m ordering, literally, from the factory across the street.

Rambling talent could save you big money. Never stop learning, especially from your own hired help.

162 – Change Yourself First

Don’t badger people about their need to change. It’s best if you just live your life wisely. That will inspire others in some way, thus offering the best chance that others will choose to change.

You don’t want people to change to whatever things you dictate for them, to become the image you make them into. You will be much happier with friends who gladly live out their own empowered lives. Having real, genuine relationships requires that you accept people as they are.

Give tips, such as brushing teeth (a bigger problem outside the West, but just for example). But, tips are not any attempt to fundamentally change someone’s bad habits or hygiene. People always grow and change.

Change comes by inspiration. We change into whomever we need to in order to pursue what captivates us. So, rather than “changing” others, change yourself; become captivating just by existing, without explanation. Be an inspiration by example. Improve your own habits. Get better at whatever you want other people to do. When we perceive that we want something to change in someone else, that’s Life’s way of showing us what to change about ourselves. Once you truly, fully, all-out, no-stops change yourself into top-grade material, you won’t even care to consider changing others. You’ll find “changing others” was just a distraction from the most important person to give a talk to: the one in the mirror.

The tongue gets everyone into a lot of trouble no matter how old we get. The best way to rein it in is to focus: Manage your own life. Then you will be comfortable with one-word answers, whether you give the answer or whether someone gives the answer to you. You won’t spill your beans when someone asks an inflammatory question or hurtles accusation. You won’t need to lie or feel guilty. You’ll easily speak only what helps, rebuking no more than necessary, never complaining, focusing on the helpful difference you can make.

If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything. Change yourself first. Talk about what you’ve done and the changes you’ve made yourself. Everything else is superfluous. Change is contagious and it starts with changing oneself.

161 – Presume Healthy Ambition

You’ll make your entire experience with others better if you presume that everyone has some healthy ambition. People want to be good at things. People don’t want to try and fail; they want to try and succeed. So, when someone makes a mistake, they would probably love a quick, concise, light-hearted demonstration.

Show others how to do the thing they don’t know to do. Give the missing component on a circuit board. Give the correct programming syntax for reference. Don’t lecture or persuade, just offer.

God gave horses incredible legs—no one can resist the urge to use legs that incredible. Every dog is endowed by its Creator with an inalienable smelling machine, some call it a “nose”. Who wouldn’t want to use such an inalienable smelling machine to smell everything a thousand times!? Likewise, humans have a will and opposable thumbs. We’re like walking computers that want to master whatever is around us.

Do yourself a favor: Presume as much about others.

When someone messes up, there’s no need for rebuke nor give a sales pitch to do better. In those moments that we feel lazy or lax on our duties, we don’t need to be hassled toward success—we need to be reminded that this is also worth succeeding with. Sometimes we feel like giving up, never because we are “quitters” at our core, but because don’t see any feasible way forward.

When someone is discouraged, just show them a path, point to any tunnel with a light at the end. That’s what we’re all looking for anyway. And, if you ever find someone who can’t see any light at the end of any tunnel, maybe you can be that light—not only with your words, but with proof of the results from your own journeys. It’s excellent encouragement to receive just a few words from someone who has done something telling you that you can do it also.

Make sure you have the results in your life so your encouragements are meaningful. Then you’ll always have a place in this world. After all, everyone has some level of ambition and thus needs a little light for the journey to guide and empower.

159 – Why God is Good to Let Bad Things Happen

“If God is good, why does He let bad things happen?” This is the age old question called “the problem of evil”, more specifically said, “If God is all powerful and good, then why does evil exist? Something must give.” The cheating, easy, faulty answer is that “God is all powerful, but not all knowing” and other lazy solutions that diminish God. The better and shorter answer is not that God is “less” than we think of Him, but God is more than we think of Him. God is not “good”; God is “Holy”, ultra-good, and thus remains ultra-good without evil harming Him or His ultra-good plans.

Dealing with this question is essential to understanding the Biblical-Christian worldview. Part of the Biblical-Christian worldview and “the problem of evil” both relate to “redemption”, that moral rules are not sticks to beat others with in the public square; moral rules guide us to happiness and when we stray away from those good, helpful morals, we come back to them in love and friendship. That concept of “the good path”—stay on the path, return if you wander off—is the essence of Biblical-Christianity and the reason God is good because He allows bad things to happen.

God is the God of Means—He works through others. Jesus did miracles giving the fishermen many fish, but the fishermen still had to let down their nets as Jesus told them. Jesus fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish—but the people had to pass the food around. Peter walked on water, but he first had to step out of the boat. God does miracles that we can’t, but He always—always, every time, no exception—does His work in a way that we have some ownership, responsibility, and participation in the results.

Sometimes life is hard because winning is tiring work. Other times jealous people are cruel. But, in everything, we have some ownership—of the bad so we can learn something and the good so we aren’t immoral to enjoy the results. That is good and that requires letting bad things happen. So, God doesn’t put an end to evil because ending evil is our responsibility.

157 – The Novice Connoisseur

Take some time to discuss colognes or attend a coffee tasting class. Watch some videos about difference in clothing fashion or ask a potter about different methods of working with clay. You don’t need to become an expert, just learn enough to appreciate people who are.

Of course, you need to have your own areas of expertise; excel beyond novice at those things. But, some awareness of other skills and arts will help you respect your fellow man. This is what it means to “never stop learning”. Continued learning fuels a life of mutual respect.

Two topics often overlooked are politics and Bible. Both of these are prone to “noob” mistakes. Everyone can read the Bible and vote in America, so everyone has an opinion about them, but these topics also require due diligence before understanding them.

Every opinion is equally allowable, but not equally guaranteed to work. You need a good reason for any opinion you have other than that “you just have an opinion”.

The Bible is literature, so grab some books on “Bible Hermeneutics”, Church history, and theology. JM Boice is good for theology. CS Lewis is good for deep thinking. Queen Elizabeth had a lot to do with Western Church history as well as politics. Read the US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Mayflower Compact, and review other writings and history from early colonial America. Do a little homework in Bible and politics before being too opinionated about whatever first thought comes to your mind.

The Pilgrims introduced the Bible to America. The result was an economy injected with crafts and arts. Studying craftsmanship of that industrial effect grants a fuller understanding of what it means to be good at anything. But, don’t stop there. There’s always another art or skill to learn.

Go to craft shows and ask people how they made their stuff. Ask a competent friend to do some home or car maintenance with you. Ask some downtown local shop owners why their businesses succeeded; their answers might surprise you. These three are for all people: Bible, politics, and craftsmanship. They each require diligence. Make sure you appreciate and respect that, not just in yourself, but also in others.