Money

Eight Ways to Rebuild Your Gaps

by Andy Wood on October 28, 2008

in Ability, Allocating Your Resources, Consumers, Enlarging Your Capacity, Insight, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Money, Pleasers, Time

Here’s a little exercise we actually take worship service time to practice occasionally.  Follow the instructions carefully (yes, I mean I want you to actually do this):

  • Take a deep breath
  • Let out half of it.
  • Hold
  • Smile
  • Repeat the following out loud, in a calm soothing voice:

“No.”

Repeat this exercise regularly, just for practice, and as needed in live game situations.

Not, “No because…”

Not, “Maybe later…”

Not, “Let me pray about it…”

Certainly not, “See if you can find somebody else, and if you can’t, I’ll see what I can do.”

Learning to graciously, kindly refuse is one of eight steps to building or rebuilding margin in your life.  Margin has to do with creating gaps – cushions of time, money, energy, or spiritual strength that act as living shock absorbers for those who have them.

Imagine how it could revolutionize your attitude, relationships, productivity, and health if the next time somebody says, “Got a minute?” you actually do! [click to continue…]

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How to Burn Yourself Out in Three Quick and Easy Steps

by Andy Wood on October 27, 2008

in Ability, Consumers, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, Money, Pleasers, Time

We pass a word around our office that my associate once used to describe me, and it stuck:  Crispy.

He used it a few years ago when he and our office manager decided they’d seen enough of me in the state I was in and informed me that I was taking my wife on an R & R trip to the mountains.  My reservations had been made, and they weren’t taking “no” for an answer.

I hope to God you have somebody who looks out for you like that.  I wasn’t aware of how emotionally and physically fried I was.  The sad truth about stress, crispiness, and burnout is that often others see their effects on us before we do.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve been crispy, and it probably won’t be the last.  But there’s a further step that can be devastating.  Burnout, in a clinical sense, means you have completely exhausted every form of energy necessary to continue.  More than just losing interest (“I’m sort of burned out on jazz these days”), I’m talking about those times people go to their wells and find them completely dry.  Times when people shock those who know them best by walking away from relationships, careers, or wisdom.

“Stress makes people stupid,” a management consultant once told Daniel Goldman. Burnout reveals it to the world.

So how do people get in such a state – past stress, past crispy, all the way to emotionally nuked?  Let me suggest three quick and easy recipes for complete emotional, mental, or spiritual exhaustion: [click to continue…]

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The Leaking Economy

by Andy Wood on October 1, 2008

in Allocating Your Resources, Consumers, Five LV Laws, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Money, Principle of Eternity

What do you do when you’ve done what you know to do, and what you know to do isn’t working this time?  How do you explain the fact that time-tested methods for producing results, solving problems, and getting ahead just aren’t working this time?  How do you plug the leaks in your economic life?

Questions like these are front and center among politicians, economists, investors, and families these days.

The problem isn’t a shortage of solutions.  The problem is that that the solutions we know are supposed to work aren’t working.

We’re like a wad of sailors on a stormy sea, who keep running to opposite sides of a ship to steady it in the waves – while all the while, the hull is leaking.  I’ve seen it at kitchen tables; I’ve seen it at capital buildings.  Everything we do to steady the ship just draws in more water, and sailing has turned to bailing.

I wonder if anybody is asking – really asking – God.

(Aw, what does HE know?)

Plenty, it would appear.  This isn’t the first time politicians and businesspeople confronted a leaky economy. [click to continue…]

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Seven Keys to Standing When the Nations are Shaking

by Andy Wood on September 25, 2008

in Consumers, Five LV Laws, Life Currency, Love, LV Alter-egos, Money, Principle of Abundance, Principle of Freedom

This site is nearly a year old, and I have never written a post I am more serious or urgent about.

There are times when our spirits and/or minds are unusually drawn in certain directions.  Ideas and concepts leap off the pages of the Bible.  Words or names get planted in our consciousness and never seem to go away.  These times, I believe, are no coincidence.  They are times in which the Holy Spirit is bringing grounded biblical truth to bear on current experience.

Simply put, He’s speaking.

I don’t have experiences like this tremendously often, which makes the times I do have them all the more compelling.  What I am about to share grew out of such a time.

As I mentioned earlier , I believe we are entering a season that for many people will be a season of restoration and change worldwide.

We are also living in tense, fearful days.  I called a banker friend yesterday and asked him, in the words of an old Randy Stonehill song, if we should go back to trading seashells and just admit we’re broke.  (He was encouraging.  But then, he’s a banker.)

I also spoke about this Sunday (Listen Here) that these are days in which anything that can be shaken will be.  God is shaking the wealth of the nations.  People are afraid.

How do we stand strong when we’re living somewhere between the faith and the fear?  How can we be in a place where we see the joy beyond what we endure?  How can we allow the Holy Spirit to shake the barnacles off of us and prepare us for a “latter glory” that will come?  How can we be lights in a world of confusion and darkness?

Sparing you the details of how I got there, there are seven things we must do, and do quickly: [click to continue…]

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The One Question that Determines Your Freedom or Bondage

by Andy Wood on August 13, 2008

in Five LV Laws, Life Currency, Money, Principle of Freedom

So how’d the reaping go yesterday?  How many times did you find yourself “serving” or servicing a decision you had made days, weeks or months earlier?  OR, how many times did you find yourself being served by the good consequences of a decision?

I just got an email about yet another family that has been ripped apart because of a series of addictive choices by a husband/father.  That makes five I’ve dealt with the last couple of weeks.  The hopeful news is, this man’s past does not dictate his future.  But it certainly has determined his present.

Meanwhile, in “Finantasy Land,” you don’t hear much talk about financial freedom these days.  Other than economic politics, about the only thing you hear is, “Hey, good news!  They’re having a sale at the gas station.  Unleaded is down to $3.56 a gallon!”  But I digress….

Wouldn’t it be good to know that you could simply, decisively establish a course that will add value to your future, either here, there, or in the air?  What if there was a way to cut through the clutter and confusion, the knee-jerk pleasure seeking and sidewalk philosophy, and find a True North – a pathway that actually leads to a future of freedom?

There may be.
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The Estate Sale

by Andy Wood on July 11, 2008

in Consumers, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, Money

Estate SaleI have eye-opening experiences in odd places.  I want to tell you about one that took place a few years ago at a house on 80th Street in Lubbock, a few houses away from where we used to live.  Our former neighbors were having an estate sale, and I have to confess, I’m a sucker.  So I strolled down to take it all in.  The sale was professionally managed, well organized, and quite thorough.  They were selling what appeared to be everything that wasn’t bolted to the walls or floor.

Like most estate sales, this was a trip back in time.  And somewhere amid the 8-track tapes, 70s-era stereo, and the costume jewelry, it happened.  Somewhere in my own mind, I was standing in the middle of my own estate sale.  Watching crowds of strangers pick over my treasures that, over the years, I had spent tens of thousands of dollars on.  Seeing them bargain with somebody over curtains or books or something – for dimes on the dollar, of course.  “Dear God,” I half-exclaimed and half-prayed, “tell me there’s more to my life than old stuff to be bartered over!”

As I continued to wander through the house, I could identify with the fun and excitement of this family as they had purchased that new appliance, received that special Christmas gift, or took advantage of those today-only prices and sales.  In so many ways, this was a typical American family.  Nice house.  Nice stuff, albeit touched by time.  And now all of it was being left behind.

It’s bad etiquette, I suppose, to actually ask about the people whose possessions we’re pilfering through.  Are they still living?  Do they have family?  Could I be standing next to their daughter or niece?  But I couldn’t help but wonder.  As I stood in what once was their home, I felt sure I was looking at a poor reflection of who these people really were.

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Oh, Those Golden Lippers

by Andy Wood on July 10, 2008

in Consumers, Five LV Laws, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, Money, Principle of Abundance, Tense Truths

RollsTense Truth:  God has established clearly-defined principles of life management that can make me prosper, and my tomorrow better than today.  Yet for his own good purposes, God will allow me to suffer in order to further the gospel, transform my character, and mature my faith. Regardless of the what the circumstances of the moment suggest, God is for me, and will reward faithfulness, to some degree in this life, and to a much greater degree in the next.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Mention the word “prosperity” to American Evangelical Christians and you’ll get one of two responses.  The first is a kind of entranced smile – a brightened countenance very similar to the sheer delight we used to see from people at an Amway meeting.

The second is that uncomfortable, “what do you mean by that?” kind of look, suggesting that money is the world’s curse, and that people who have it must be materialistic swine or should somehow apologize or feel guilty.

So which are you?  “Amen?”  Or “Oh me?”  Or maybe, like me, you vacillate from one to the other.

The challenge with all this is that the Bible categorically promises success to people who live according to principles or laws that God has established.  “Everything he does will prosper,” the psalmist said in Psalm 1.  And check out those blessings mentioned by Moses in Deuteronomy.

That said, the Bible also deals with the apparent contradiction of that – the prosperity of the wicked.  Those mirroring psalms – 37 and 73 – both deal with that.  The wicked does have his day, the psalmist concludes, but God has a way of sorting things out in the end, when it matters most.

Meanwhile, in the New Testament, Jesus didn’t promise a life without tribulation.  On the contrary, He said we would have it, despite what people uniquely in America sometimes promise.  Our rewards are presented mostly as heavenly, post-life promises.  But even in places, such as here, there is the declaration that God has obligated Himself to meet all our needs.

So which is it?  Suffering in this age, followed by our eternal treasure in heaven?  Or timeless principles that work in the age to come, but also may be claimed, believed, and acted on here?

Yes.

Does God want you and me to be rich?

[click to continue…]

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Lord of the Money Storm

by Andy Wood on May 28, 2008

in Life Currency, Money

Sailing Ship 4Imagine being the captain of a historic sailing ship – a master of commerce and an expert in trade throughout the Mediterranean.  You live to taste the salt in the air, to roam from port to port, from culture to culture, bringing value, goods, and trade to each.  You perform a greatly-needed service, and your work is honorable. 

And, let’s just assume that you’re greatly blessed and good at what you do.  Your business has prospered as you have prospered others. 

And, while we’re assuming, let’s just assume that you recognize the source of all your blessings, and seek to live gratefully and humbly before your Creator.

Too bad.

Storm’s coming anyway.

[click to continue…]

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From Hoarder to LifeVestor

by Andy Wood on May 16, 2008

in Five LV Laws, Hoarders, Life Currency, Love, LV Alter-egos, Money, Principle of Increase, Time

Hoarding MoneyHoarding’s back. 

I’m sure it never went away, but it’s been back in the news over the last month.  Banks are hoarding money.  People worldwide are hoarding rice.  Myanmar officials and residents are warned about hoarding aid.

People are scared, and when they’re scared, they hoard.  OR, somebody else hoards and looks to make a killing off the really scared people.

In a previous post, I mentioned that there are four alter-egos to LifeVestors – consumers, hoarders, gamblers, and codependents.  Hoarders are the most unique of these.  While consumers live as if there is no tomorrow, hoarders live as if there is a tomorrow, and wherever/whatever it is, it’s gonna be ticked off.  Hard.  Terrible.  And we have to plan for it today.

It’s one thing for literally starving people to make sure they have something to eat for the next few days.  It’s another to live with a spirit of fear, even while you’re being wonderfully blessed.

It’s one thing to save and invest for retirement or a rainy day.  It’s another thing to create an ongoing bunker mentality based on fear of the future.

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Laughing at the Future

by Andy Wood on April 23, 2008

in Allocating Your Resources, Consumers, Enlarging Your Capacity, Executing Your Plan, Five LV Laws, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Money, Principle of Increase, Time

LaughterI mentioned in my previous post that it’s possible to live in such a way that laughs at the future. Just so we’re clear, we’re in “life hack” territory.  We’re talking about what to do with your money, your time, your relationships, your attitudes, and your spirit.

Look at this biblical description:

“She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future.” (Proverbs 31:25)

What is it about this woman that put her in a place where she wasn’t wringing her hands every time somebody predicted the end of life as we know it?

1.  Establish trust in those who know you best.

“Her husband can trust her, and she will greatly enrich his life. She brings him good, not harm,all the days of her life” (v. 11-12, NLT).

For years I assumed that her husband trusted her in a moral sense, but this is much deeper.  This man trusted her with his business, his family, and his money.  She had earned his trust.  How?  By adding value to his life.

By doing a little more, being faithful to tasks assigned, or by keeping the trust of those who know you best, you create a compelling future.  Take it from somebody who has both earned and betrayed trust:  it takes months and years to earn trust, and you can destroy it – and your confidence in the future – in a matter of minutes.

2.  Buy like an investor, not like a consumer.

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