Category: Leadership

Make Life Better

“If you’re not making someone else’s life better, then you’re wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other lives better.”

― Will Smith

Serve one another

Are we Serving?

Most of us had heard the term Servant Leadership. If you haven’t, the basic idea is that good leadership requires that you aim to meet the needs of the people that you want to follow you. So instead of dictating to people, you walk alongside them. What we miss is that this idea should be a part of our whole lives and not just in the workforce. We should all be serving, so I want to tell you a story. This isn’t my story, but I thought it was a good story to share.

During this past year, I’ve had three instances of car trouble: a blowout on a freeway, a bunch of blown fuses and an out-of-gas situation. They all happened while I was driving other people’s cars, which for some reason makes it worse on an emotional level. And on a practical level as well, (what with the fact that I carry things like a jack and extra fuses in my own car, and know enough not to park on a steep incline with less than a gallon of fuel.)

Each time, when these things happened, I was disgusted with the way people didn’t bother to help. I was stuck on the side of the freeway hoping my friend’s roadside service would show, just watching tow trucks cruise past me. The people at the gas stations where I asked for a gas can told me that they couldn’t lend them out “for safety reasons,” but that I could buy a really crappy one-gallon can, with no cap, for $15. It was enough to make me say stuff like “this country is going to hell in a handbasket,” which I actually said.

But you know who came to my rescue all three times? Immigrants. Mexican immigrants. None of them spoke any English.

One of those guys stopped to help me with the blowout even though he had his whole family of four in tow. I was on the side of the road for close to three hours with my friend’s big Jeep. I put signs in the windows, big signs that said, “NEED A JACK,” and offered money. Nothing. Right as I was about to give up and start hitchhiking, a van pulled over, and the guy bounced out.

He sized up the situation and called for his daughter, who spoke English. He conveyed through her that he had a jack but that it was too small for the Jeep, so we would need to brace it. Then he got a saw from the van and cut a section out of a big log on the side of the road. We rolled it over, put his jack on top and we were in business.

I started taking the wheel off, and then, if you can believe it, I broke his tire iron. It was one of those collapsible ones, and I wasn’t careful, and I snapped the head clean off. Darn.

No worries: he ran to the van and handed it to his wife, and she was gone in a flash down the road to buy a new tire iron. She was back in 15 minutes. We finished the job with a little sweat and cussing (the log started to give), and I was a very happy man.

The two of us were filthy and sweaty. His wife produced a large water jug for us to wash our hands in. I tried to put a 20 in the man’s hand, but he wouldn’t take it, so instead, I went up to the van and gave it to his wife as quietly as I could. I thanked them up one side and down the other. I asked the little girl where they lived, thinking maybe I’d send them a gift for being so awesome. She said they lived in Mexico. They were in Oregon so Mommy and Daddy could pick cherries for the next few weeks. Then they were going to pick peaches, then go back home.

After I said my goodbyes and started walking back to the Jeep, the girl called out and asked if I’d had lunch. When I told her no, she ran up and handed me a tamale.

This family, undoubtedly poorer than just about everyone else on that stretch of highway, working on a seasonal basis where time is money, took a couple of hours out of their day to help a strange guy on the side of the road while people in tow trucks were just passing him by.

But we weren’t done yet. I thanked them again and walked back to my car and opened the foil on the tamale (I was starving by this point), and what did I find inside? My $20 bill! I whirled around and ran to the van and the guy rolled down his window. He saw the $20 in my hand and just started shaking his head no. All I could think to say was, “Por favor, por favor, por favor,” with my hands out. The guy just smiled and, with what looked like great concentration, said in English: “Today you, tomorrow me.”

Then he rolled up his window and drove away, with his daughter waving to me from the back. I sat in my car eating the best tamale I’ve ever had, and I just started to cry. It had been a rough year; nothing seemed to break my way. This was so out of left field I just couldn’t handle it.

In the several months since then, I’ve changed a couple of tires, given a few rides to gas stations and once drove 50 miles out of my way to get a girl to an airport. I won’t accept money. But every time I’m able to help, I feel as if I’m putting something in the bank. (This is a story called Today You, Tomorrow Me. Found at https://www.kindspring.org/story/view.php?sid=25237).

 

This month we’re going to talk about serving. Serving our families, our spouses and those that are most important to us. 

 

Discussion Question:

What have you done to serve someone lately?

 

How Habits Are Formed

“You can be overwhelmed by every small setback in life, or you can be energized by the possibilities they bring.” Caroline Leaf

 

This month has been a month of looking at our habits to see the impact that they are having on our lives and where we are heading. We’ve looked at why habits are important and how to change our habits Can Habits Change?, both are important to changing the course of our lives. Now let’s look at how we can form new habits.

I’m not a trained physiologist, and if you want a more scientific take on habits, then the only place I can point you to is Google. I can tell you what I’ve done to help me develop habits and what hasn’t worked.
Let me start with my morning this morning as an example of what hasn’t worked. I have a morning routine that I try to keep every day. It helps me accomplish some of the more important things that I want to do.

This morning, however, what ended up happening was I sat down at my computer and just stared at the screen. I didn’t meditate or read my daily Bible reading plan. What did I do? I watched a couple of superhero shows, ate some cereal and then decided I would try to start my morning routine about an hour or so later than I wanted to. It really just made me feel bad because I didn’t have a good reason for slacking and it just pushed me further back than I wanted to.

So what has worked for me? Let me give you what I have learned and what has helped me to form new habits.


1. Establish the goal


A new habit won’t last if you don’t know what the end goal is. For me, a part of my morning routine is reading my daily Bible plan and also writing 500 words. My end goal for both of these are things that I want to accomplish this year. With my daily Bible reading, the goal I have is to read through the Bible in a year. Writing 500 words every day will help me reach my goal of publishing two books this year and reaching more people with my blog.


2. Don’t dwell on the mistakes

I’ve probably had more days than I would like to admit about messing up my morning routine or missing it all together. However, I don’t beat myself up over it. I try to tackle some of the things throughout the day, but I make sure not to beat myself up over it. If anything I push it aside and try again the next day.


3. Reward Yourself

Too many times in developing a new habit we want to wait until we’ve reach the goal or the end until we reward ourselves. For me, I like to set rewards along the way. Rewards along the way reinforce the habit I’m trying to develop. That’s what it is all about. Solidifying the habit is the goal.

Hopefully these things help you and you don’t beat yourself up if you have a misstep. Tomorrow is another day and another opportunity.



Discussion Question:
What habit are you trying to develop?

 

Can Habits Change?

Have you ever wondered why you keep doing the same thing over and over. It feels like you’re in this place where it seems as if life has you in this continuous loop. Something good will happen and then something from your past keeps coming back into the picture. Or the time that you decide that you’re going to start a new diet is when a co-worker decides to bring in sweets into work. Then it seems like we have to restart our diet all over again.


So can we change our habits? Are we stuck they way we are? The simple answer is that yes we can change our habits! No, we’re not stuck being the same person forever. We can grow and change, but it’s up to us on how to do it.

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Here are a couple of ways that we can develop the habits we desire and move in a different direction.
Habits are like paved roads in our minds and actions. We do things a certain way because at some point we paved a way in our mind of how it should be accomplished. That paved road became easier and easier the more we traveled it. Developing a new habit isn’t tearing up the old road, but it is laying a road that we need to travel instead of the old road. This is why sometimes we can fall back into old habits and ways of thinking.


1. Identify the Cues


There is usually something that triggers a habit. When it comes to bad habits it can be stress, or an environment that will bring certain feelings and then the habit. Your alarm going off in the morning may be triggering you to hit the snooze button.


2. Disrupt the Cue


Once we are able to identify the Cue, then we can change the triggers. With our example of the snooze button. If we’re hitting the snooze when the alarm goes off, then to disrupt the cue, we would move the alarm clack to the other side of the room. Actually having to get up out of the bed and walk across the floor disrupts the cue.


3. Replace the Cue


Ripping up the old road is a lot harder than paving a new one. Basically it is easier to replace a bad habit than it is to completely stop a bad a habit. The new habit will interfere with the old habit and stop us from going into autopilot.


4. Forgive Yourself

 

The whole process of starting a new habit takes time. We can be our hardest critics, so forgive yourself when there is a slip up. The entire process of changing a bad habit is not an easy one. Know that there will be hiccups along the way. Just don’t allow the hiccups to stop you.


Discussion Question:

What habits do you want to change?