Courage of Convictions

Sometimes it seems difficult to pursuit dreams when the shadows of the past darken your vision.  Sometimes the vision of success is interrupted by the immediate blur from the smoke of the fires we attempt to put out hourly.  Sometimes our vision, our energy, our enthusiasm becomes dark by the many adjustments you make to again remain on your path to successful endeavors.

The past can only affect your vision of the future if you are continuing to look behind you.  The smoke clears as we gain clarity on our commitment to our successful objectives by focusing on the most important activity to accomplish at the moment for the ultimate accomplishment of our vision.  Our vision, our energy, our enthusiasm increases like the strength of a marathon runner who is constantly adjusting to the conditions of his path, when we continue to find the opportunity in the challenge, the celebration of the next step, and the fuel to be excited about our new level of achievement.

Our challenge is to consistently fuel the hope, the commitment, and the next step with the clarity of our purpose.  As God blesses us with the next step, let’s be grateful for the stress that we are challenged with for we will grow stronger in faith, in patience, and in abundance.

Failure would only be in having no enthusiasm to take the next step.

Crawl with no fear.  Walk upright with confidence and clarity.  Run with all the enthusiasm that God has bestowed in you with full expectation of winning your race.

Author —-         Trent Fortner

When looking for answers you have to ask good questions?  When making your journey to success you have to continually draw your map to make sure the vision that you have is current and accurate.

It is imperative that we have an open mind to new realities and not have a world view that we stubbornly waste precious time fighting to excuse.

M. Scott Peck says it better than I.  Enjoy.

Dedication to Reality

Excerpt from ‘The Road Less Traveled’ – M. Scott Peck

….The third tool of discipline or technique of dealing with the pain of problem solving, which must be continually be employed if our lives are to be healthy and our spirits are to grow, is dedication to the truth. Superficially, this should be obvious, For truth is reality. That which is false is unreal. The more clearly we see the reality of the world, the better equipped we are to deal with the world. The less clearly we see the reality of the world – the more our minds are befuddled by falsehood, misperceptions and illusions – the less able we will be to determine correct courses of action and make wise decisions. Our view of reality is like a map with which to navigate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are, and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.

While this is obvious, it is something that most people to a greater or lesser degree choose to ignore. They ignore it because our route to reality is not easy. First of all, we are not born with maps; we have to make them, and the making requires effort. The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be. But many do not want to make this effort. Some stop making it by the end of adolescence. Their maps are small and sketchy, their views of the world narrow and misleading. By the end of middle age most people have given up the effort. They feel certain that their maps are complete and their Weltanschauung (worldview) is correct (indeed even sacrosanct), and they are no longer interested in new information. It is as if they are tired. Only a relative and fortunate few continue until the moment of death exploring the mystery of reality, ever enlarging and refining and redefining their understanding of the world and what is true.

But the biggest problem of map-making is not that we have to start from scratch, but that if our maps are to be accurate we have to continually revise them. The world itself is constantly changing. Glaciers come, glaciers go. Cultures come, cultures go. There is too little technology, there is too much technology. Even more dramatically, the vantage point from which we view the world is constantly and quite rapidly changing. When we are children we are dependent, powerless. As adults we may be powerful. Yet in illness or an infirm old age we may become powerless and dependent again. When we have children to care for, the world looks different from when we have none; when we are raising infants, the world seems different from when we are raising adolescents. When we are poor, the world looks different from when we are rich. We are daily bombarded with new information as to the nature of reality. If we are to incorporate this information, we must continually revise our maps, and sometimes when enough new information has accumulated, we must make very major revisions. The process of making revisions, particularly major revisions, is painful, sometimes excruciatingly painful. And herein lies the major source of many of the ills of mankind.

What happens when one has striven long and hard to develop a working view of the world, a seemingly useful, workable map, and then is confronted with new information suggesting that that view is wrong and the map needs to be largely redrawn? The painful effort required seems frightening, almost overwhelming. What we do more often than not, and usually unconsciously, is to ignore the new information. Often this act of ignoring is much more than passive. We may denounce the new information as false, dangerous, heretical, the work of the devil. We may actually crusade against it, and even attempt to manipulate the world so as to make it conform to our view of reality. Rather than try to change the map, an individual may try to destroy the new reality. Sadly, such a person may expend much more energy ultimately in defending an outmoded view of the world, than would have been required to revise and correct it in the first place.

- M. Scott Peck

In my twenty plus years as an entrepreneur working on my own schedule, I have found the most difficulty for any entrepreneur to be the issue of “time management”. Today, I am absolutely sure that managing time is an impossible task!

Let me explain. There are exactly 24 hours in each day that we are blessed to live. You can break this down in any measurement tool you want, but there is only 24 hours. I have yet to find one person on this earth who can “make time stand still”, or actually stop the day’s clock.

There are two critical points to acknowledge on this topic:

1) you can do nothing to change how much time you have today

2) you are not guaranteed another day

If these two points are the focus of your calendaring for a successful balance and profits, or success, then it becomes clear that you must focus on managing the activities not the time, and prioritizing those activities for the results that are most important.

What are the most important things to you? I do not know what is important to you, but I have learned through much trial and error that you always schedule what is really most important to you no matter what you verbalize. For any schedule to reflect balance and priorities, I have found it most beneficial to break it down to only four areas of life: faith, family, fitness, finance.

Faith: for you to grow and mature in your faith, you must spend time in the activities of study, prayer, meditation, and praise. Scheduling this activity first allows you to have your day full of positive, affirming, confident concentration that allows you to release the rest of the day to your god for his guidance and protection. Most of us work this in when time allows finding only that you are falling asleep in the middle of that prayer at bed time.

Family: for you to enjoy time with family and not be distracted by work (finance) items during this special time, it is important to put your family time as a priority. What classes, ballgames, recitals, practices, meals, date nights, hobby times do you need to include? If you are in charge of your activities then this should be scheduled first and work time next. Many of you at this point are struggling with a faith issue and wonder what is left to produce an income. Your family will greatly enjoy time that you spend with them when they know you have no guilt about the time you share. Prioritization of your activities is crucial in managing your emotional state as well.

Finance: the area of finance is what describes your activities to create an income for your family. As an entrepreneur it is vital that you have a routine that is predictable, accountable, and productive. When you break down the hours you will work and what activities are to fill those hours consistently then you will notice a dramatic improvement in your accountability to family, self, and clients. A sample of activities on my calendar that has worked best for me is attached. You will want to adapt the activities to your own business regimen, but it is very important to stay accountable to this schedule with everyone so that you are not ever in a reactionary state. Once you move from a proactive state to a reactionary state you have lost all control of your business.

Fitness: if you are not scheduling your fitness routine for exercise, eating, and sleeping, then you are in another reactionary state and have little to no control over your other activities. You cannot take care of anyone else, or anything else if you are not in good physical and mental shape. Again, this area, like the priority of faith, gets put on the back burner for most people. It is another vital area of your life. The great news is that if you participate in at least thirty minutes a day of physical fitness activity, other than running to the refrigerator for that last bowl of ice cream before bed, that you will improve the quality of your life tremendously.

A few other tips to help the success of managing your activities for balance and profits:

1) If you have a tendency to hit the snooze button on your alarm clock, then move your clock to a place you have to physically get out of bed to turn it off. Also, change the name of your “alarm” clock to “opportunity, or blessings” clock. This will help you jump out to enjoy the day.

2) Whatever you can do the night before to prepare for the next day do it. Set your coffee maker the night before to be ready when you get up. Have your faith based material opened and ready for you when you jump out of bed. Have your clothes laid-out, meals planned and packed, and all briefcases/ backpacks ready then night before.

3) When you get home for family time, make it family time. Do not take any calls from work. Turn your cell phones, blackberries, etc. Off until the next scheduled event. Be proactive. What good does it do to go on a date with your wife and be on your blackberry throughout the date? She may not enjoy interrupting the date with your phone. Be careful you may end up sleeping on the couch with your phone…Relax – no guilt of not working during this time.

4) The best idea is to be proactive so that you are not always rushing to your next event and remain behind on all schedules. Have complete integrity on your schedule. Keep appointment times to a specific time limit. Know what you are going to accomplish in advance. Make sure that you are accountable to your family for that time, they have hobbies too!

Remember, you have no guarantee for tomorrow, so make every moment count!