by Andy Wood on February 22, 2016
in Allocating Your Resources, Five LV Laws, Hoarders, Leadership, Life Currency, Love, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Principle of Increase, Turning Points
The day was cold.
Cold and foggy.
Cold and foggy and damp and dreary and what in God’s name was I doing out in it?
Walking, that’s what.
Walking and praying.
Praying and walking.
And I didn’t care about how cold or foggy it was because on this day I was desperate and yearning for an audience with – and a word from – God.
Anyway, I had a jacket.
It was one of the last times that I walked the 20-acre boundary of the church I had planted. And on this day the cold heaviness of the West Texas air was only exceeded by the cold heaviness in my spirit.
I got about halfway down the fence row, asking the Lord to speak to my heart. I so desperately wanted to hear His voice.
What I heard instead was the honking of the geese overhead.
Listening for God, I could only hear the dissonant, grating sound of geese. Can you relate?
Looking up, there was no way to see them, the fog was so heavy and low-hanging. But I could sure hear them.
I laughed to myself because of a recent conversation I’d had with my wife. She hates the sound of geese.
Eventually I did see them in the mist – surprisingly lower than I had imagined. And they were dealing with the same fog I was dealing with. Nevertheless, they flew in perfect formation, in a straight line.
And that’s how the Lord spoke. [click to continue…]
Hello, this is Carl.
Hi Carl. A mutual friend gave me your card. Is this a good time to talk?
Sure. How can I help?
Well, I’m not sure if you can. The card says “Criticism Coach.”
Yep. That’s me.
I gotta be honest. I’ve never heard of a criticism coach.
Neither had I until the day I decided the world needed one.
So you just sort of made this up?
Well, I formalized the idea a couple of years ago. But I’ve been criticoaching for years.
Criticoaching?
Yeah, that’s my shorthand term for it. I did make that up.
What is a Criticism Coach?
So at the risk of asking a dumb question, what’s a criticism coach? [click to continue…]
Imagine with me.
You’re an actor, and your dream is to land a role on the Ultimate Stage – a place where your talent can be on display for the entire world to sit up and take notice. A role that can lead to even bigger and better things. You don’t have to be the star. You just want to be able to show your star power.
The script: Interesting. It’s a modern retelling of a famous scene from the Bible – the time when Jesus fed about 4,000 people with seven loaves of bread and a few fish.
You’ve been summoned to a callback audition and informed you have a spot in the play. That’s all you know.
Can you imagine the excitement? The anticipation you’re feeling? This is what you have dreamed for, wished for, prayed for, and endured a lot of questions and unhelpful go-be-a-teacher suggestions for.
You. Are. Going. To. Broadway. [click to continue…]
The late Luciano Pavarotti holds the Guiness World Record for the most curtain calls by a singer or actor – a staggering 165. Together with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, he sang in the biggest-selling classical record of all time.
When Pavarotti sang, no one sang along. They would sit breathlessly, passively, allowing themselves to be carried away by the extraordinary power of the tenor’s voice.
“Excellent” hardly conveys the talent the world lost on September 6, 2007.
Garth Brooks is the greatest-selling albums artist in the U.S. since 1991 and the second-best-selling solo artist of all time in the U.S. His concerts literally sell out in 15 minutes. And when he takes the stage he takes his audience with him.
When Garth Brooks sings, if you don’t sing along you look a little strange. Take it from experience, if you don’t know all the words you’ll act like you do.
Excellent? Oh my yes, in a completely different way. [click to continue…]
In his book The Noticer, Andy Andrews offers this riddle:
Five seagulls are sitting on a dock. One of them decides to fly away. How many seagulls are left?
Answer: Five. Deciding to fly away and actually flying away are two very different things.
I don’t know who decided that the road to hell needed paving, but whoever it was picked some pretty good material. There will always be plenty of good intentions for people to talk about, and even satisfy themselves that having the intention is enough work for today. The problem is, they never get around to actually doing anything about the intention.
They were very sincere. But a lack of action made them sincerely wrong. [click to continue…]
You lose the right to privacy when you fail to be ordinary.
If you stand out, you’d better be ready to stand up.
Spectacular successes and epic face-plants invite public scrutiny…
Divided opinions…
Loose-lipped speculation…
And endless reminders that people like you…
Or don’t.
The alternative? [click to continue…]
What are you good at? I mean, really good? When people ask you about your strengths, what are your boilerplate answers?
Now, the dreaded weaknesses. What are those things you repeatedly tell people or God or yourself that you need to work on and improve?
Now I’m sure as soon as you read those questions, the ready answers showed up. And at some point you’ve probably had the tug-of-war about which you should work on – do you leverage your strengths or work on your weaknesses?
Uh huh.
Now take both of those mental lists and set them aside for a minute. Let’s boldly go where no one dares to go…
Let’s talk about your mediocre middle.
See, none of us are awesome at everything, and none of us is terrible at everything. A significant part of your life falls somewhere in the middle. And because it isn’t all that remarkable, you just don’t give it that much attention.
Too bad, since that’s where most of us live most of our lives. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on January 11, 2016
in Enlarging Your Capacity, Five LV Laws, Hoarders, Insight, Life Currency, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, LV Stories, Money, Principle of Increase, Time
I’m not a hoarder. Really. But I do accumulate. A lot. And that applies to just about every zone of my world.
Quick check:
- There are currently 15,993 email messages in my inbox. But that’s OK – only 7,108 of them are unread.
- When my next-door neighbor moved out a couple of months ago, she had a whole bunch of pretty good stuff she was literally giving away – said take anything I wanted. So I did. Now it’s all in my garage, and one day I’ll get around to figuring out what all I got.
- Right now I’m wearing a t-shirt I got in 2003. It’s still hole-less and relatively stainless, so it stays in the rotation, which now occupies two big drawers because one wouldn’t hold them.
- Oh, and books. Way back in the day I kept up with exactly how many I had. Suffice it to say, I lost count. Now, counting ebooks, I have three libraries in three locations. And one of my New Year’s resolutions, if I had any (which I don’t) is to actually try to read some of them.
- I have a to-do list that’s as long as your arm, but if you asked me to do something, I would most likely say yes if it were in my capacity to do it.
I could go on, but I fear that some of you who are really organized or efficient are starting to get hives, and I don’t want to cause you to stumble.
The point to all this is that I have a huge “front door” when it comes to gathering up things to do, be, and have and a naturally disorganized, balls-in-the-air approach to managing all of it.
Until I have to. Last week I had to. [click to continue…]
For the last several years I have replaced the idea of New Year’s Resolutions with a focus on one single idea – my one word to help frame the kind of direction I sense the Lord leading me to steer my life toward in the coming year. Previous ideas for My One Word have included Finish, Lean, and One. What’s interesting is that those ideas are still, to one degree or another, relevant and a part of my soul’s DNA.
Last year the theme was Advance! You can read more about that here. And let me just say, advance I did! On three fronts in particular, 2015 represented major moves forward, mostly in areas of ministry and career development.
One really good thing that arose out of that has been the establishment of LifeVesting International – a mission organization designed to mobilize the church to multiply the Church. We are launching our first series of trips this year to Thailand, and I am thrilled to see where that is going.
May I just say, however, that by the end of the year, I was about advanced out. Frankly, I started the year not nearly as enthusiastic about the One Word idea as I had in previous years. And in terms of what the One Word would actually be, there was nothing really compelling or inspiring.
I thought about the word “READ” because every year at this time I get inspired to read more.
That deafening sound you hear of silence… or crickets… yeah, that’s about how much enthusiasm and passion that idea generated.
But to this point – a few days into January – there was nothing compelling.
And that may actually be the point. [click to continue…]
Believe it or not, the time will come…
the realization will dawn…
your heart will rest
Because for the first time in a long time,
perhaps the first time ever,
you will know that your waiting is done.
But there you will discover another kind of waiting –
one of attending…
loving focus…
adoring and serving.
And then more than ever, it will be worth the wait. [click to continue…]