Promises We Make
Filed under: Core Values, Family Ministry, Personal Development
This is the seventh in a series of ten posts on promises we should be willing to make to the people that matter the most in our lives. A promise goes beyond a mere commitment to do something it carries the clear expectation that we are going to pay the price to do what we said we would do.
The first promise was I will sincerely listen to what you have to say. Really listening to someone without a personal agenda communicates to them that they have value in your life and that you sincerely care.
The second promise was I will always tell you the truth. Without this there can be no basis of trust, just ask Elizabeth Edwards how painful that can be.
The third promise is I will apologize when I am wrong. When someone sincerely and genuinely apologizes we know two things. They are willing to humble themselves and they want to restore their relationship with us because we still matter to them.
The forth promise is I will forgive you when you hurt me. There can be no lasting peace in any relationship without the power of forgiveness. This is even more critical when someone has come to us and sincerely apologized they are asking without saying it will you please forgive me.
The fifth promise is I will live with hope and believe the best. Relationships are messy and there are always going to be times when people do or say things that upset us. It is at that precise moment that we have a critical choice to make about how we process what we are hearing. The bottom line is we will either choose to believe the best about the other person or we will assume the worst.
The sixth promise is I will not manipulate change in you. This deals with our core motivation when we interact with other people. If our goal in sharing with this person is to only tell them what they are doing wrong and why they should be the one to change then we are manipulating.
The seventh promise is I will always love you no matter what. This lets the other person know that our love for them is not based on what they do or how they act but who they are as a person.
It in the truest sense it is unconditional love based on grace given and not performance earned. This gives people the freedom to fail in their relationship with us without the fear of total rejection on our part because of some mistake they have made.
It is impossible to love someone in this way unless you have first received this kind of love yourself. Once you have experience God’s love you have the capacity to pass it own to others. You cannot give to someone else what you have not first received yourself.
Work-Life Balance
Filed under: Core Values, Family Ministry, Life Balance, Marriage, Personal Development
If there has ever been a day when the demands of work and home have been greater I am not aware of it. The sheer pace of life today leaves us emotionally and physically worn out and feeling empty at the end of most days.
Technology keeps us connected all the time and people in the workplace culture almost demand that we stay available 24-7. Our families are all running on the same high speed treadmill that produces stress in every area of our lives.
There are several key principles that must be in place if you want to create margin for the people and priorities that you care about the most:
1. Lead Yourself First—it is impossible to successfully help lead other people at work or in the home if you are not able to accomplish what is most important in your own life. You should set specific goals in the areas of health, personal development and faith with the necessary time allotment to make sure they get done.
2. Prioritize Your Family Next—at the end of your life it will not matter how much professional success you have had if you consistently neglected your role as a spouse and parent. There are no guarantees that time alone will produce a great marriage and character driven children but without it there is a high probability that both areas could fail.
3. Choose Right Career—most organizations are looking for people who will perform and improve their bottom line. However there is a growing awareness that if you want to attract and keep the best people you have to give some deference to work-life balance. The key is you have to be outstanding at what you do and you have to be in a culture that will reward that effort by giving you more time off and not more projects to accomplish.
4. Develop Life Plan—it never ceases to amaze me that some of the most effective leaders in the corporate arena do not practice any of the leadership disciplines that made them successful in their home and personal life. The can lead multi-million dollar projects from start to finish at work but not take more than 30 minutes to plan the annual family vacation.
When you develop a total life plan with goals and strategies for everything personal, private and public you just assumed the C.E.O. leadership role for your whole life. You will never have a more important job.
Love & Respect
There have been a lot of great marriage books written over the last twenty years. The Marriage Builder by Larry Crabb is probably the best based on how our individual needs for security and significance impact our relationship with our spouse.
Love & Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs is extremely good from the standpoint of giving a simple foundational framework for the major role that each partner needs to play in the marriage. Then the book gives lots of practical applications and illustrations on how to live this out in real world.
He writes that the husband should love his wife by:
1. Closeness—she wants you to be close
2. Openness—she wants you to open up to her
3. Understanding—don’t try to fix her; just listen
4. Peacemaking—she wants you to say, “I’m Sorry”
5. Loyalty—she needs to know you’re committed
6. Esteem—she wants you to honor and cherish her
The wife should respect her husband by:
1. Conquest—appreciate his desire to work and achieve
2. Hierarchy—appreciate his desire to protect and provide
3. Authority—appreciate his desire to serve and to lead
4. Insight—appreciate his desire to analyze and counsel
5. Relationship—appreciate his desire for shoulder-to-shoulder friendship
6. Sexuality—appreciate his desire for sexual intimacy
One of the very helpful points that he continues to make throughout the book is just because our needs make us so different that does not make either of us wrong. When we assume the best about our spouse’s motives then we can give them the benefit of the doubt when they fall short of giving us what we want and need.
Promises We Make
Filed under: Core Values, Family Ministry, Personal Development
This is the sixth in a series of ten posts on promises we should be willing to make to the people that matter the most in our lives. A promise goes beyond a mere commitment to do something it carries the clear expectation that we are going to pay the price to do what we said we would do.
The first promise was I will sincerely listen to what you have to say. Really listening to someone without a personal agenda communicates to them that they have value in your life and that you sincerely care.
The second promise was I will always tell you the truth. Without this there can be no basis of trust, just ask Elizabeth Edwards how painful that can be.
The third promise is I will apologize when I am wrong. When someone sincerely and genuinely apologizes we know two things. They are willing to humble themselves and they want to restore their relationship with us because we still matter to them.
The forth promise is I will forgive you when you hurt me. There can be no lasting peace in any relationship without the power of forgiveness. This is even more critical when someone has come to us and sincerely apologized they are asking without saying it will you please forgive me.
The fifth promise is I will live with hope and believe the best. Relationships are messy and there are always going to be times when people do or say things that upset us. It is at that precise moment that we have a critical choice to make about how we process what we are hearing. The bottom line is we will either choose to believe the best about the other person or we will assume the worst.
The sixth promise is I will not manipulate change in you. This deals with our core motivation when we interact with other people. If our goal in sharing with this person is to only tell them what they are doing wrong and why they should be the one to change then we are manipulating.
We must first assume personal responsibility for whatever percentage of the problem is our responsibility by admitting it and giving a sincere apology. Then and only then are we ready to talk to the person about what they did in a way that will really try to help them to move forward as well.
It is very easy to see what other people are doing wrong and sometimes almost impossible to see the blind spots in our own lives. When people first see our humility then they will be open to our advice.
Six Ways To Make Emotional Deposits
Filed under: Family Ministry, Leadership Callling, Marriage, Parenting, Personal Development, Servant Leader
We are all familiar with the metaphor of making emotional deposits and taking withdrawals from another person both personally and professionally. When you end up taking more than you give to another person you end up with a negative balance and believe me there are serious fees and late charges involved.
Stephen Covey in his great book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People gives us six ways that we can make sure we are making deposits on a consistent basis with another person:
1. Understanding the Individual—really seeking to understand another person is probably one of the most important deposits you can make, and it is the key to every other deposit. You simply don’t know what constitutes a deposit to another person until you understand that individual.
2. Attending to the Little Things—the little kindnesses and courtesies are so important. Small discourtesies, little unkindness’s, little forms of disrespect make large withdrawals. In relationships, the little things are the big things.
3. Keeping Commitments—keeping a commitment or a promise is a major deposit; breaking one is a major withdrawal. In fact, there’s probably not a more massive withdrawal than to make a promise that’s important to someone and then not to come through.
4. Clarifying Expectations—the cause of almost all relationship difficulties is rooted in conflicting or ambiguous expectations around roles and goals. That’s why it’s so important whenever you come into a new situation to get all the expectations out on the table.
5. Showing Personal Integrity—personal integrity generates trust and is the basis of many different kinds of deposits. One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present because that builds trust with those who are.
6. Apologizing Sincerely When You Make a Withdrawal—when we make withdrawals from the Emotional Bank Account, we need to apologize and we need to do in sincerely. Great deposits come in the sincere words we share with the people we have hurt.
Promises We Make
Filed under: Core Values, Family Ministry, Personal Development
This is the fifth in a series of ten posts on promises we should be willing to make to the people that matter the most in our lives. A promise goes beyond a mere commitment to do something it carries the clear expectation that we are going to pay the price to do what we said we would do.
The first promise was I will sincerely listen to what you have to say. Really listening to someone without a personal agenda communicates to them that they have value in your life and that you sincerely care.
The second promise was I will always tell you the truth. Without this there can be no basis of trust, just ask Elizabeth Edwards how painful that can be.
The third promise is I will apologize when I am wrong. When someone sincerely and genuinely apologizes we know two things. They are willing to humble themselves and they want to restore their relationship with us because we still matter to them.
The forth promise is I will forgive you when you hurt me. There can be no lasting peace in any relationship without the power of forgiveness. This is even more critical when someone has come to us and sincerely apologized they are asking without saying it will you please forgive me.
The fifth promise is I will live with hope and believe the best. Relationships are messy and there are always going to be times when people do or say things that upset us. It is at that precise moment that we have a critical choice to make about how we process what we are hearing.
The motive behind the message a person is communicating is extremely important. Most of the time it will not be immediately apparent what their motive is but every time we bring our own presuppositions and expectations into each conversation.
The bottom line is we will either choose to believe the best about the other person or we will assume the worst. When we assume the worst we will walk away hurt or even bitter. When we assume the best regardless of what they say and how upset they are we can give them a pass because we trust their heart.
Resolving Conflict
Filed under: Family Ministry, Leadership Callling, Marriage, Parenting, Personal Development, Servant Leader
All of us at some point in time will have conflict and disagreements with someone else either in our personal lives or professionally at work. These situations can be painful at times but seeking resolution is the only way to maintain positive momentum in your life.
There are at least three critical steps that you must take if you want to restore the relationship and move forward in your own life.
1. Own Your Part—In every disagreement there are always two sides to the story. I have never known a situation where there was not some responsibility for the problem with both parties. If we think the other party is the major offender then we tend to wait for them to make the first move. Instead we need to take whatever percentage of the problem is ours even if it’s minor and do what we need to do to admit it and ask for forgiveness regardless of what the other person does.
2. Talk Person Privately—Most of the time when we are having problems with another person we tend to go to other people first and complain or try to find emotional support. What we should do is go privately to the person who offended us first and tell them in a respectful way why we are offended and give them a chance to respond. When we are talking about someone else to another person rather than talking to them the situation will only get worse.
3. Give Benefit Of Doubt—When we sense that a conversation is not going well and we can tell it may hurt us we have a decision to make. We can either assume the worst about the other person’s motives or we can believe the best. Many times if we can give them the benefit of the doubt at this critical moment then even though it may still hurt there will be no lasting damage because we give them a pass because we trust their heart.
Promises We Make
Filed under: Core Values, Family Ministry, Personal Development
This is the forth in a series of ten posts on promises we should be willing to make to the people that matter the most in our lives. A promise goes beyond a mere commitment to do something it carries the clear expectation that we are going to pay the price to do what we said we would do.
The first promise was I will sincerely listen to what you have to say. Really listening to someone without a personal agenda communicates to them that they have value in your life and that you sincerely care.
The second promise was I will always tell you the truth. Without this there can be no basis of trust, just ask Elizabeth Edwards how painful that can be.
The third promise is I will apologize when I am wrong. When someone sincerely and genuinely apologizes we know two things. They are willing to humble themselves and they want to restore their relationship with us because we still matter to them.
The forth promise is I will forgive you when you hurt me. There can be no lasting peace in any relationship without the power of forgiveness. This is even more critical when someone has come to us and sincerely apologized they are asking without saying it will you please forgive me?
Forgiveness does not mean that we have the ability to forget what has happened to us but it does mean that we no longer hold that offense against the other person. This will allow us to learn from the past and not force us to continue to live in it will all its negative memories.
The key thing about giving someone else forgiveness is that you must first have received it yourself. You may only see your percentage of the responsibility at twenty percent but you must assume responsibility to seek forgiveness for your part before you can move on and release the other person.
This is a promise worth making to the people you care about the most in your life.
The Importance of Knowing Life Purpose
Filed under: Core Values, Family Ministry, Leadership Callling, Life Balance, Marriage, Personal Development, Time Management
In a day when our calendars are beyond full and yet our lives seem to be empty something has gone wrong. We in many cases have assumed because we are busy the things we are doing must be important.
We clearly have shifted the focus from being as a person to doing and what we are able to accomplish. Technology has helped us in many cases simply to do the wrong things faster.
The great paradoxes of our time have been summed up well by the Dalai Lama:
“We have more conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees, but less sense…more knowledge but less judgment.
More experts, but more problems.
More medicines, but less healthiness.
We have been all the way to the moon and back but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.
We build more computers to hold more information that produce more copies than ever before, but have less communication.
We have become long on quantity, but short on quality.
These are the times of fast foods but weak digestion.
It is a time when there is much in the window but nothing in the room.”
For many of us we have been living the script for our lives that were given to us by someone else; parents, peers, friends or the culture we live in. The time has come for us to have the courage to say no and the passion to write our own.
Creating Margin
Filed under: Family Ministry, Leadership Callling, Life Balance, Marriage, Parenting, Personal Development, Time Management
A simple definition of margin is the space between our load and our limits. It is the opposite of overload because you will have something in reserve for a time when you will need it.
Richard Swenson wrote an incredible book entitled Margin to help us learn how to restore emotional, physical, financial and time reserves to our overscheduled lives. Of all these important areas he believes everything must start with our emotional energy.
Every day we only have so much emotional energy to give to our family, work, friends and other people. Most of these people are making withdrawals from our emotional bank accounts and if we are not careful we become overdrawn with nothing left to give.
We must start each day knowing our emotional balance and then set limits on those people and things that will tend to drain us to the point of experiencing the pain of being overwhelmed. He lists several things that can restore your emotional energy:
1. Cultivate Social Supports
2. Reconcile Relationships
3. Serve One Another
4. Rest
5. Laugh
6. Offer Thanks
7. Grant Grace
8. Be Rich in Faith
9. Hold Fast Hope
10. Envision a Better Future
Some of the emotional drainers in life cannot be avoided but when you build in things that make deposits then you can routinely within your day monitor your balance and make the necessary adjustments to maintain margin.
We must find ways in this wired world we live in to have peace of mind so that we have something left to give to the people that matter the most.
Dan Greer
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