Focus on changing one thing

When I was a pastor a young mother came to me with numerous problems that were causing a lot of difficulty. She described some of them to me and admitted she often felt overwhelmed by all the negative things that were going on in her life. She was confused about how to do anything to change her situation.

I asked her if she ever watched Star Wars movies. She admitted she did. I asked if she remembered when a ship would jump into hyperspace and how the movie would show all the stars flying past them at high rates of speed. She remembered that. I asked if that was how her problems seemed to her, that they were all flying towards her at one time, and as she tried to deal with them she felt overwhelmed. She stared at me and responded that was exactly how she felt. I explained that is why she felt so overwhelmed. It was impossible to deal with each of them at the same time. What she needed to do was to address one of them and deal with it before she moved on to another one.

In this blog I write about about choices and the need we sometimes have to make different choices to improve our lives. But, what do we do if there are many areas in our life that are causing us problems. We have to do what I explained to that mother. We have to take one at a time and put our primary focus on making choices that will improve that aspect of our lives.

You may wonder how we know which one to address first. There are two schools of thought. One is to deal with the one that seems easiest to resolve. Success in that area of your life will give you a sense of accomplishment and motivation to attack other areas. The second approach is to deal with the one that will give you the greatest overall success. Which one of your problems, if you resolved it, would provide you with the greatest benefit? Perhaps that is the one with which to be begin.

I can’t tell you which approach to take because I don’t know your situation. You do, so this is a decision you need to make for yourself. You may want to bring in other persons you trust to help you make that decision. That might be a friend, your minister, a counselor or a coach. As I have shared in this blog before, I have coached a number of people who were dealing with issues in their lives. If you think I might be able to help you sort through this, I do have room for a few coaching clients.

What you don’t want to do is to allow your problems to keep attacking you and doing nothing about it. That choice won’t make the positive changes in your life that you are seeking. Choose to do nothing, and those problems will only get worse. Choose to make the necessary changes to eliminate those problems, and your life will improve in that area. Remember . . .choices have consequences.

Dreams without action are useless

Whose name comes to mind when I say "Dreamer?" Chances are you know people who spend much of their time dreaming about things they want to do or things that need to be changed, but they never take any action to do either. I have worked with a number of churches to help them identify a new vision for ministry, but many of them never did anything after they developed their vision statement. It went into a folder on someone's computer and was never heard from again. What a waste of energy and effort!

Visions and dreams are important. They help give an organization or individual focus. It keeps them future-oriented, but only if they actually take action on the dream. Navel-gazers seldom accomplish much. At some point, action has to be taken or the dreaming is just an exercise in futility.

The first step in seeing your dreams become reality is to identify the steps you have to take to achieve them. For instance, let's say your dream is become the top salesperson in your company. What are the steps you have to take to achieve that dream?

First, you need to know how much in sales the current top salesperson does annually. If you are going to be the top salesperson you need to know the figure you have to meet to achieve that.

Second, you need to know the ratio between sales calls and actual sales and the average sales per customer. For instance, if your company averages a sale for every five sales calls and the average sale is $1,000.00 then you know that you need to make five calls to sell $1,000.00 of your product or service. How many of those $1K sales do you need to be the top salesperson? Take that number and multiply it times 5, and that's how many sales calls you need to make.

You also want to consider how you might improve that $1,000.00 average sale. What if you could increase your average to $1,500.00? If so, fewer calls will accomplish your goal, or if you keep the same number of sales calls but increase the average sale, you will really be the top salesperson. What added benefits or upsales will help you increase your average? Identify those and you are well on your way to achieving your dream.

This same format works regardless of what your dream might be. It's a matter of breaking your dream down into bite-size pieces that become more manageable. Doing this doesn't make it seem as scary or impossible to achieve.

But, none of this matters if you are not willing to do the hard work required of achieving those bite-sized pieces. You have to get boots on the ground, work the phones, make the cold calls, study the assignments, sacrifice and be committed to doing just a little bit more than the next person. After all, the next person is average, and you don't want to be average. You want to be the top producer. Achieving your dream may require you to make just one more call before you go home each day. Sometimes just a little extra effort enables you to see your dreams fulfilled.

Like everything else in life, the choice is yours. Do you want to see your dream fulfilled badly enough that you will take the action required to accomplish it?

What are your priorities today?

One of the most important choices we make is what we will do each day of our lives. You may think that decision has already been made for you. You will get up, go to work, do whatever until you go to bed, and then you'll get up and repeat. That is what too many lives look like. However, even accounting for the hours you are working, you still have a lot of time each day to do with as you please.

Time is like money. You can either spend it or invest it. Spending time is just that. We do things, but at the end of the day we have little show for it. We've been busy, but we haven't accomplished much. The other alternative is that we invest time. By investing time I mean that we do things that truly matter. Those are the things that reflect the priorities we have established for our lives.

So many of us really don't have any real priorities for our lives. There's nothing we really want to accomplish so we spend each day going through the motions looking forward to Friday and the weekend we'll be away from work. That's not much of a way to live 50-60 years of our lives.

Before I retired I set certain goals each year that I wanted to achieve over the next few months to the next few years, and I determined that each day I would work on at least one of those goals. Some were rather aggressive that required a lot of focus and commitment on my part. Others were less aggressive and were things that could be accomplished fairly quickly and easily. But, they all kept me focused and gave me purpose. I could not afford to waste time if I wanted to accomplish the goals I had set. Those goals formed my priorities for living each day of my life.

Those goals gave me the focus I needed to earn two graduate degrees and publish eight books. They enabled me to get out of debt and save towards retirement. Those goals reminded me of the important of spending more time with my family setting aside date nights each week with my wife and taking vacations together. In short, that goal-setting is what allowed me to accomplish much of what I've done in my life.

There are a number of things you have to do to live out the priorities you have set for you life. Perhaps the most important one is that you have to control your calendar. If you don't own your calendar, someone else will, and their priorities for your life won't be the same you have. I made sure my priorities found their way into my daily calendar before opening it up to anyone else. That meant our weekly date night was written into the calendar weeks in advance so I could tell anyone who wanted to meet with me at that time that I already had a previous appointment. When working on my educational goals I set aside time in my calendar for reading as a great deal of reading was required for every class. Every goal was programmed into the calendar, and each of them were tracked on a daily basis to ensure that I was not falling into a bad habit of spending time instead of investing it.

So, what are your priorities today? Are they priorities you have set for yourself or are you trying to fit your life into everyone else's demands and priorities? Is it your priority to work on your goals for the day, or are you going to help everyone achieve their goals? You get to choose that every day, but, like all choices, there will be consequences.