Jolt! (23 page)

3.
Start to pray
. Praying isn't hard; it's simply talking to God. You don't have to use big words, fancy religious terms, or religious lingo. Simply talk to him as you would a friend. Share your challenges, your frustrations, and your dreams. You can pray while you drive a car, sit at your desk, or mow the lawn. Prayer is something that shouldn't be saved for “official” religious events—it's something that can happen anytime and anyplace. Prayer is your opportunity to connect to a power far greater than us. Make the connection, and then learn to listen.

4.
Take your faith seriously
. Real faith is not about candles, pretty jewelry, and stained glass windows. People of faith created the university system, built orphanages, started great libraries, encouraged learning, birthed hospitals, and every day help millions devastated by hurricanes, famines, and disasters of all kinds. When you realize that your life has meaning, you suddenly have a reason to live a life of purpose. One of our greatest desires is to live a life of significance, and we want to make a genuine difference in the world.

Jolt your preconceived notions about God. Faith affects us at the core of our being, and that's why it is so instrumental to our personal change. A hundred years from now it won't matter so much that you increased quarterly profits, doubled sales, lost weight, or bought a lake house. What will matter is what you left behind in the lives of people. If we want to change the world, we have to start by changing our spiritual outlook.

We don't have all the answers, but we are connected to a God who does.

REVIEW
Jolt Your Heart

Consider the importance of personal cheerleaders, accountability partners, changing perspective, and your relationship with God.

1. Find your own personal cheerleaders. Who could motivate you to greater levels of excellence?

2. If you're struggling with a particular personal challenge, list potential accountability partners. Begin interviewing people you believe would be good partners in sharing dreams and in holding each other accountable. Or find someone who will agree to hold you accountable.

3. What can I do to change my perception? How can I increase my personal value to others through the use of positive perception?

4. How can I . . .

• increase my potential through better thinking?

• maximize my gifts and skills through strategic thinking?

• multiply my options through creative thinking?

• overcome defeat and obstacles through real positive thinking?

• experience success through long-range thinking?

Make a commitment today to deepening your relationship with God. Find areas where you can immediately grow, such as attending church, meeting with a study group, taking a class, reading books on the subject, and so on.

JOLT
YOUR
FUTURE

» JOLT #21
ELIMINATE DESTRUCTIVE
DISTRACTIONS
Releasing Negative Baggage

Keep your mind off the things you don't want by keeping it on the things you do want.
—W. CLEMENT STONE, MOTIVATIONAL EXPERT

Sometimes you have to let go to see if there was anything worth holding on to.
—ANONYMOUS

W
e live in a culture of distraction. Everywhere we turn, we are bombarded by the noise of radio and television, mobile phones, computers, social networking, and music and video players—not to mention video screens in gas pumps and elevators and more.

It occurred to me some time ago that there are few places in the United States where you can't receive a wireless signal of some type—either a satellite signal, a radio or TV station, a cell phone transmission, or a wireless computer connection. We are bathed in frequencies, signals, and transmissions.

It's not much better with our personal schedules. Remember when children used to actually play? Now kids are scheduled from dawn to dusk—school, soccer practice, music practice, church youth groups, and more. The term “soccer mom” has become almost synonymous with suburban living.

At the office we have seminars, workshops, meetings, focus groups, team gatherings—there is rarely a time when we have a moment to ourselves.

And can we talk about social networking for a minute? Yes, in many cases it's very convenient, but people popping up on your computer screen all day wanting to talk may be the single biggest distraction in offices today. It's become the number one messaging source for younger people—far more than e-mail. But there's no question that if you don't turn that thing off occasionally, it can drain hours at a time.

In his remarkable book
The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters
, Peter Block said:

It is entirely possible to spend our days engaged in activities that work well for us and achieve our objectives, and still wonder whether we are really making a difference in the world. My premise is that this culture, and we as members of it, have yielded too easily to what is doable and practical and popular. In the process, we have sacrificed the pursuit of what is in our hearts. We find ourselves giving in to our doubts, and settling for what we know how to do, or can soon learn how to do, instead of pursuing what most matters to us and living with the adventure and anxiety that this requires. (1)

We live days and nights filled with activities that are ultimately unfulfilling. We have crammed our lives with to-do lists and yet aren't accomplishing our dreams. We have goals but no great victory.

Much of this comes from the power of distractions—things that fill our time but leave us empty and cold. They give us the immediate feeling of accomplishment but keep us from experiencing authentic change.

In the book
Good to Great
, author Jim Collins wrote: “The real path to greatness, it turns out, requires simplicity and diligence. It requires clarity, not instant illumination. It demands each of us to focus on what is vital and to eliminate all of the extraneous distractions.”

» MOST OF US LIVE UNDER THE BONDAGE OF THE URGENT.

We have phone calls to return, appointments to reach, goals to achieve, meetings to get to, e-mails to answer, and reports to finish. Our days are filled with an unrelenting barrage of everything—all of which seems so important at the time. I have this “thing” about my e-mail in-box. There's a little voice inside me that says, “You have to deal with every e-mail in your in-box by 5 p.m.” No matter how trivial, I'll push aside writing a book, developing a great idea, or working on a significant project, just to get that e-mail cleared off. Because it's in front of me, it seems like something I just
have
to finish.

This chapter is about spending less time on what we perceive to be urgent and more time on what really matters.

Let that thought sink in for a moment.

Most of the “urgent” things in our lives are really what other people consider important. Someone wants us to return his phone call, make an appointment, or respond to an e-mail. Look around you at this moment. Are most of the things that are crushing your life really that urgent to you, or are they things that
other people
consider urgent? I finally noticed that when I don't deal with all my e-mails, the world doesn't come to an end. In fact, I recently had a computer malfunction and lost my e-mails from the two previous days. Gone, deleted, erased, rubbed out, cancelled, obliterated, disappeared.

I was horrified. I was in the middle of a couple of big projects and had no idea who those e-mails were from or what they were about. Who did I need to get back to? What should I do? I had no idea.

I started shaking. I needed a “fix” for my e-mail habit.

But guess what? A day went by, and then another, and then another. Nothing happened. Not dealing with those e-mails had no impact at all. My world didn't come crashing down, and my career didn't end.

I realized those e-mails were “urgent” but not important.

Since that time, I've literally reevaluated my life based on that principle. I've made a concerted effort to eliminate as many distractions as possible in order to focus more effectively on what's really important in my life.

How do we eliminate the real distractions?

First of all, understand which distractions do the most damage in your life. Distractions come in all shapes and sizes, from leisure activities like watching football on television, to personal issues from your past, to immediate challenges that disturb your life and pull vital resources and time away from what's really important.

ELIMINATE DISTRACTIONS FROM YOUR PAST THROUGH FORGIVENESS

Over the years, I've heard thousands of protests.

“But Phil—you just don't know what my father did to me.”
“When my partner sold my business, I lost everything.”
“I can never forgive that offense—it's just too great.”
“As long as she never acknowledges fault, I can never forgive.”
“It's just too difficult because the hurt goes too deep.”

There is nothing that cannot be forgiven. Forgiveness is the only real beginning to complete healing of yourself or a relationship. Keep in mind these important principles:

Forgiveness does not make what happened right.

By forgiving someone, you're not saying that what was done to you never happened or wasn't wrong. Evil is evil. When people are betrayed, wronged, or hurt in any way, the act of forgiveness doesn't make what happened right or as though it never happened. What happened is still wrong. You've just made the decision to not let it gain control of your life. You are taking back your future and attempting to restore the relationship.

If the other person refuses to acknowledge what happened, or refuses to acknowledge that it was wrong, it still can and should be forgiven. Forgiveness doesn't depend on the other person; it depends on you.

Forgiveness matters, even if the offending party refuses to admit guilt.

I know a woman who experienced horrible sexual abuse by her father for years. Because of an illness, her mother had grown weak, and, as a result, her father began preying on her for sexual gratification. Not only was it a devastating experience that continued until her teenage years, but since that time, her father has refused to admit guilt. In fact, part of her difficulty finding healing from the abuse is her father's refusal to acknowledge that it happened at all. After finally running away from home, the woman went through a series of failed marriages, and it wasn't until she experienced a spiritual transformation that she began the long road to healing from the years of abuse and neglect.

In the process of her healing, she realized that she needed to forgive her father. In spite of his refusal to take responsibility for those years of horrible cruelty, she made the difficult decision to forgive him. He continues to act as if nothing happened, but in spite of his refusal to face the truth, she has found freedom in her ability to forgive.

Don't wait for the other person to acknowledge guilt or admit wrongdoing. In fact, when you forgive some people, they'll despise you even more. But by forgiving them, you're letting the pain and hurt go and moving forward with your life. Some people have waited their entire lives for another person to admit he or she was wrong, but by doing so, they've placed their future in someone else's hands.

» IF YOU DON'T TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR OWN LIFE, YOU'LL ALWAYS BE AT THE MERCY OF SOMEONE ELSE WHO WILL.

Forgiveness can be a powerful tool in healing a relationship.

Many people can never fully face the truth without someone opening the door of forgiveness. Perhaps they don't feel worthy, or perhaps they understand that what they did was wrong but don't have the courage to step forward to ask to be forgiven. Your acting first opens that door and allows them to reach out and find mercy and understanding.

Forgiveness is easier when you realize that we all need to be forgiven.

The fact is, all of us have made mistakes, hurt people, and done stupid things in our lives, and few of us can claim the moral high ground in relationships. When you have difficulty forgiving someone, just look back at things you've done that need forgiveness, and suddenly the offense against you starts to look a little more forgivable.

More than with any other religious tradition, the core of Christianity is about forgiveness. Because God has forgiven us, we are called to forgive other people. Whatever faith tradition you might be from—or no tradition at all—we can learn something from this powerful Christian principle. Because God desired a relationship with us so strongly, he was willing to allow Jesus to die on a cross as the sacrifice that would bridge the gap and heal the rift. A holy God died in order that we might be forgiven. It's the most powerful story in history, and the lesson has transformed millions of lives.

We have been forgiven, and therefore, we have the ability to forgive.

Learn to forgive yourself.

Are you carrying the baggage of blunders from your past? Have you hurt someone, acted without thinking, or damaged a relationship? Perhaps you can't even contact that person anymore and carry the burden of that terrible mistake. I talked with a man who had cheated a friend in business early in his career, and his friend had died in the intervening years. The man desperately wanted to be forgiven for his mistake, but with his old friend having died, he had nowhere to turn. He had to learn to forgive himself and move on with his life.

Don't let the pain of your past eat at you like a cancer. No matter what you've done or whom you've hurt, true healing and wholeness can never begin without the first step toward forgiveness.

The power of forgiveness can transform your life and eliminate the most painful, difficult, and challenging distractions you will ever face.

ELIMINATE DISTRACTIONS FROM YOUR PRESENT THROUGH COMMITMENT

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes . . . but no plans.
—PETER DRUCKER, BUSINESS STRATEGIST AND WRITER