Two Great Resources for Figuring Out What to Do With Your Life

Aug 5, 2016 | Reviews, The Good Word

In my most recent couple of posts, I’ve shared a bit about the wisdom that comes from numbering your days, and about Four Ways To Hear from God once you’ve numbered those days and then want to start figuring out what the heck to do with them. I hope you’ve been encouraged by these posts, because truly friends, this is what we have. These are the days and we don’t know how many we’ll get! It’s scary deep that simple old saying:

If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.

Along with numbering our days and digging deeper into the heart of God to find the things He created us to do, I want to make the most of this opportunity (while I might have you thinking these deep thoughts) to share a couple of practical resources with you. These have impacted me in a significant way, in helping me recognize both the limitations of my time on Earth, and the possibilities.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us… {Hebrews 12:1}

Perhaps it goes without saying, but let me still say it: any other practical resource is no substitution for running after the heart of God and asking Him to lead you personally toward the destiny He has for you. With that being said, I believe there is a place for practical resources, like books that can help us think these things through and better understand deep and important concepts about the race we’re running. Even though C.S. Lewis (for example) died before I was born, he still remains a part of the Great Cloud of Witnesses that has formed and informed my faith, and ultimately drawn me closer to Jesus.

Simply put, the pen is mightier than the sword… and I am mighty grateful for it!

I’ll just mention a couple of favorite books in this post, but I’m sure more will follow in the days ahead. First…

Leading on Empty by Wayne Cordeiro

I hope you’ll answer no to this question, but have you ever arrived at a season in your life where you felt like you were completely spent in every way possible, and if something didn’t give, you weren’t going to be able to survive another day? Well, years ago, Wayne Cordeiro hit that wall and just kept on running… for quite a while. He eventually found himself on a curb weeping uncontrollably when he’d gone out for a jog before a speaking engagement. His journey through complete burn out and full-on depression, which he describes as a “three-year odyssey” changed his understanding of life, his core values, his goals and even his understanding of his calling.

In Leading on Empty, Cordeiro recounts this journey, with illustrations (you know I love my word-picture analogies) that have stuck with me since when I first read it six or seven years ago. The most important insight I gained from this book was the ability to look at the balls that I’ll juggle over the course of my lifetime, and to recognize which ones will bounce if I drop them, and which ones will break. As a daughter or a wife, a mother and a Christian, there are roles that only you can fill, positions that only you can hold. It is essential for you to understand which roles those are.

My thoughts? Learning to recognize what’s breakable is perhaps THE MOST important part of the process of numbering your days and gaining understanding about what on earth you’re here for.

Living Forward by Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy

If you want someone to tell you exactly how to start figuring out your primary goals, how to “triage” the different dreams and responsibilities you have for your life, and what to do once you think you’ve got those priorities figured out, this book is FOR YOU. I think this is the most practical, step by step approach to “Life Planning” I have ever read or even heard of. This quote sums up why I was challenged to take the concept of Life Planning seriously:

Most people spend more time planning a one-week vacation than identifying the outcomes they want to see in the major areas of their lives. Is it any surprise when life doesn’t turn out the way we want? {Hyatt and Harkavy, Living Forward}

What kind of parent do you want to be? What kind of co-worker or boss? What kind of husband or wife? What practical goals can you set to make sure you’re moving in the right direction? Living Forward is full of VERY practical wisdom to help you systematically plan how to achieve the goals you might set for yourself in every role in life you choose to take on.

My thoughts? You are MUCH more likely to achieve your goals — no matter what category of life they fall into — if you have a plan in place to help you take practical steps toward crossing those finish lines. 

Another favorite quote I’ve mentioned here before, from Michael Hyatt, is that “A goal without a date is a dream.” If you are not taking any steps toward turning your goals into reality, they are truly just dreams. If you’re okay with that, then okay — but if you want to do something about it, this book will help you figure what that something out to be.

I have followed Michael Hyatt and been grateful for his practical, instructional guidance for a long time now, and when he advertised that he and Daniel Harkavy were looking for a group of folks to preview Living Forward, join the Launch Team and give feedback on their personal experience with the book, I jumped at the opportunity to grab a free copy and dig in. I was not disappointed.

What It All Boils Down To

There are probably thousands of books on the shelves that offer to help you figure out where the heck you want to go and how you’re going to get there. What Color Is Your Parachute? has sold some ten million copies and has a 2017 version coming out this month. The Purpose Driven Life has been translated into 85 languages and named the “bestselling non-fiction hardback book” in history.

We all struggle to decide what to do with our lives at one point or another — don’t be afraid to look for help, because that is an excellent way to take a step toward figuring things out.

If you read the stats on career changes, it seems people are struggling more than ever to find the things that make them come alive, and to focus in on what’s most important (which by necessity means choosing to say “this, that and the other are NOT as important.”)

Keep counting your days and giving thanks, and seeking a heart of wisdom from Jesus. But don’t be afraid to employ additional resources to help you figure out how to get to the places you believe God wants you to be.

I’d like to share (from personal experience) a bit about the danger of trying to do it all soon.

In the meantime, keep asking, praying and planning! I’d love to hear from you — do you have any questions about what I’ve shared above, or have you read a book that has helped form your future? Please join this conversation in the comments!

xCC

On Being Mortal and Living Well

Jul 29, 2016 | Reviews, The Good Word

You know what’s not really a fun topic of conversation? Death. That’s probably at the top of the uncomfortable discussions list, right?

But, you know what’s really an important topic of conversation? Death. Sometimes it belongs at the top of the list of conversations that need to happen.

At the recommendation of my awesome sister (who is part of the team launching this great website – check out some of her great workouts here!) I recently read Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. In it, Gawande discusses the differences between the ways that humans spent their final years, weeks and hours a hundred years ago, with how we spend them today in western society. He also contrasts the methods of care most prevalent for the elderly in the United States at present with alternative options and the types of care the elderly (including his own grandparents) were/are likely to receive in his parents’ homeland, India.

In the book, Gawande describes the way his grandfather was treated in the last few decades of his life. He lived well past 100 and was cared for by his extended family in a way that allowed him to continue to live the life he loved until his death.

“He was surrounded and supported by family at all times, and he was revered—not in spite of his age but because of it. He was consulted on all important matters—marriages, land disputes, business decisions—and occupied a place of high honor in the family. When we ate, we served him first.” {Atul Gawande, Being Mortal}

I think I stopped reading for a moment at this point, just to ponder how radically different care for the aging — and respect for the aging — is today. The elderly seem more often the target of jokes than the recipients of respect in our society.

An important part of the premise of Being Mortal is that as modern medicine has advanced, we have become less able to come to terms with death, even when it’s knocking on the door. And, clearly related to this is that fact that today we’re more likely to “overact” to attempt to fight and stave off death with medical acts of heroism, which might actually do more harm than good. But our “overacting” can actually hasten death, completely change the experience of a person’s last days on earth, and reduce the time a person has to gain closure with loved ones and find a sense of peace before they pass on.

While Gawande isn’t writing from a Christian perspective, he is writing with the idea that there are greater and lesser ways for a person to spend their final years, and their final days on Earth.

So. Death. Is this something Christians ought to spend time thinking about?

“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12

As Gawande interwove his research with the stories of a few lives and deaths he’d encountered personally and professionally, I began to see emerging three important questions we would all do well to consider when it comes to numbering our days:

1. How do my loved ones want to be cared for as they age?
2. How do I want to be cared for, especially if there are circumstances which mean I might not be able to communicate my wishes?
3. What am I going to do with the days I have between now and then?

I decided to do a little math (ya know, just for fun) and see how many days I might have left… and laugh at me because you know I’m a homeschooling parent, I made a funny little error. I was feeling generous and first said, “Okay, let’s say I live to be 85,” and without thinking I multiplied 85 by 365. That would give me 31,025 days right? Except I forgot to subtract the nearly 35 years I’ve already lived. Once I subtracted those 35 years and gave myself the 50, I realized I only have 18,250 left. That kind of seemed like a lot… but then, after looking at that grand total of 31 thousand something… it kind of didn’t.

In the most literal sense, taking a moment to “number our days” and think about how many days we might have left can really bring into perspective the idea that we aren’t going to live forever, and if we want to do something more than just trundle along and let life happen, we probably need to get our heads in the game and start making some decisions.

Michael Hyatt recently challenged my heart (or maybe even called my bluff?) by saying:

A goal without a date is a dream.

What he meant by that was that if you have ideas in your head of things you want to accomplish, but you’re not taking the time to make the necessary plans to see those goals accomplished, you’re really just dreaming. If you’re okay with having dreams but not putting your feet on the floor to see them happen, well, that’s fine — but don’t be surprised if life doesn’t hand you your dream and ask if you want fries with that next week.

I’m really grateful that I’m not the first Mom ever to have more than a kid or two. And about three years (and I think two kids) ago, I was visiting a friend of mine who had five kids at the time. She was a little further down the road than me in the homeschooling journey, and she was definitely further down the road in the parenting journey, and since I have more admiration and respect for her than you could fit in a backpack, I was busy making mental notes throughout our bit of time together.

As I watched her gently balancing a baby, an upset toddler moment or two, a few things that needed to be put away, and the little pile of this and that that had been swept but not delivered to the rubbish bin yet, this one sentence stuck out above everything else as something I felt I needed to write down and remember:

We can basically only do one thing a day.

What she meant by that was that with her five kids in tow, they weren’t going to be going to the library and the pool and stopping by Grandma’s and running to the grocery store. If they went to the library, that was probably the only adventure for that day. If they went to church on Sunday, they’d probably be home afterwards for the rest of the day, or just be out and about in their own neighborhood.

I thought long and hard about those words, and as two kids became three, and three became four, I began to see the wisdom in this slower pace. We could be running from this camp to that pool to this practice to that play date all summer long. But I’ve noticed whenever I try to squeeze more into a day than just one thing, I’m not exactly the Mommy I want to be to my kids. I’m not exactly patient. I’m not exactly relaxed. I’m not exactly peaceful. And the kids? Well, you know that old saying about them being mirrors? Truth.

When I drag my kids from this to that to the other in the name of “full” I end up feeling like the day has, in some strange way, also been empty. I never really got a chance to connect with each of their hearts. We never rubbed shoulders side by side on the couch reading a book, or got into more than a brief logistical conversation. The kids develop little “behavioral patterns” — but I’m so bent on doing the things, that that main thing — training them up in the way they should go — becomes a sort of side thing that I hope to be able to do when we’re not so dang busy. When I don’t speak to the patterns, they become habits. The kids’ patterns… and mine.

So, I’m recognizing this is the deal for this season of my life: based on the current nap schedule, and the idea that we will perhaps do one thing most days, my personal achievements are not likely to stretch far past one thing on any given day.

Besides your normal day to day responsibilities — whether it’s laundry or bookkeeping or bum-wiping or meal-cooking or teaching or homeschooling or all of the above — the time that you have is limited, and the quality time that you can devote to the things that seem like the big things? It’s probably even smaller than you think. Not just the number of days you have left — but the numbers of hours you have inside of those days for doing those big things.

What an irony to stumble upon: when I try to do less things, I seem to get more done. The right more. The good more.

And this is where I’ll leave you with a challenge. Take a minute to number your days. And perhaps even check out Being Mortal at the library or grab it on Amazon.

If you find yourself thinking, “Heck! I’ve got a lot to do and not much time to get it done!” don’t freak out. Come back for my next post, where I’d love to share a resource or two with you for turning those dreams into goals. And figuring out which goals are the best ones to begin with.

To you precious and incredible readers who’ve taken the 2016 Reader Survey — thank you again and again. It has been a gift to my soul. I hope to keep writing to bless your hearts. And if you haven’t but want to? Click here.

With Love…

xCC

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