Planning

Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

by Andy Wood on August 3, 2011

in Exploring the Possibilities, Five LV Laws, LV Cycle

You probably never knew Lillian Hearst.  But she sent you a gift, and I wanted to share it with you.  It won’t be necessary to send a thank-you note – just pay it forward by sharing her gift with someone else.  Oh, and of course, use the gift yourself.

Lillian lived to be 92 years old.  I was honored to serve for a time as her pastor.  She was highly respected in our community – a “lady of the old school,” with a heart for people and a love for the Lord.

A few days after her funeral, I was visiting at the Magnolia Retirement Center, where Lillian lived.  There someone told me that for as long as they had known her, up until the time of the stroke that ultimately took her life, Mrs. Hearst always had something planned to do the next day.  There was always tomorrow – something to look forward to, something to prepare for, a reason to get out of bed in the morning.  It sounds rather simple, but it struck me as very profound.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons Mrs. Hearst lived so long.

Tomorrow.  What a charming word! [click to continue…]

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Waiting on Your Harvest

by Andy Wood on June 7, 2010

in Enlarging Your Capacity, Five LV Laws, LV Cycle, Principle of Freedom, Protecting Your Investment, Waiting

News flash!  As a culture, we don’t wait well. 

That’s why, in the previous post, I mentioned that it’s easy to get into trouble when we’re in those waiting seasons.  (In theory, of course… not that I have ever actually gotten so impatient that somebody in a uniform decided it was time to have a little chat… but I’m sure you know somebody like that.)

One of the problems we have with waiting is that we don’t know how.  We think of waiting as the kind of thing you do in a bureaucrat’s line or a doctor’s office (now you know why they call them “patients”).

In the Bible, James offers a different idea.  And when I read this during a particularly hard waiting season, it really got my attention: 

“The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains. You too be patient; strengthen your hearts…” (James 5:7-8). 

I happen to live in the middle of the largest contiguous cotton-growing region in the world.  My neighbors know a thing or two about waiting on a harvest.  Their livelihood depends on it.  And believe me, you won’t find a busier bunch. [click to continue…]

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Building a Championship Team: What You Can Learn from the Big Leagues

by Andy Wood on March 23, 2010

in Ability, Allocating Your Resources, Enlarging Your Capacity, Leadership, Life Currency, LV Cycle

The boys of summer are back.  You’ll find them hanging out in Florida and Arizona ballparks, getting those winter cobwebs cleared out, and setting out to prove they’re worth all that money (or should be paid all that money). 

But while it still has to be worked out on the field, and the first word to start the proceedings is still, “Play,” make no mistake about it.  The 2010 version of this game got started as soon as Mark Teixeira caught the last out of the ’09 World Series.  And it was all business.  That game is played by General Managers on telephones and at conference hotels and in corporate offices throughout North America and, in some cases, in island Caribbean nations or the Pacific Rim.

They were about the business of building a team.  And not just for 2010.

Your payroll may be slightly less and your personnel decision may not involve as many people.  But wherever you connect with others to get things done, you or somebody is building a team.  And the decisions you make today can affect the quality of your team(s) for years to come.

Just ask Bobby Cox, who is retiring this year after 50 years in the game.  Cox has the distinction of hiring his own boss as the GM of the Atlanta Braves and “demoting” himself back to the field manager in 1991.  Between him and John Schuerholz, the Braves reeled off 14 consecutive division titles – a feat unmatched in professional sports anywhere.

So what can we learn from the likes of Cox/Schuerholz, or the New York Yankees, who won their 27th World Series title last year? [click to continue…]

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Barney Fife is Alive and Well

by Andy Wood on October 9, 2009

in 100 Words, Photos

sidewalkThis is what government does.

The distant sidewalk:  built to code when the dentists built their exquisite office next door.

The near sidewalk: also built to code two years later on our site.

I’m sure to somebody in an office somewhere, the changes made sense at the time.

I’m also sure that somebody in that office will decide that one of us (probably us) has to fix the problem. 

At our expense, of course.

Multiply this times trillions, and you’ll understand why some people are wary of the Federal government.

Not sure that’s what they meant by “promoting domestic tranquility.”

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The Underground Project

by Andy Wood on September 25, 2009

in Turning Points

PoliceLights2You up for a little side trip?  This one rolls down Memory Lane in a church bus with papered-up windows, wide-eyed teenagers, and me in handcuffs in the back of a police car.  This is the (true) story of what happens when non-planning randomizers like me actually take the time to plan something.  This is the story of The Underground Project.

Once upon a time (hey, I said it was a story), I was a youth pastor in Lumberton, Mississippi.  I was fairly new, and school had just let out for summer.  For the folks at First Baptist Church, that meant one thing:  Vacation Bible School.  And I was expected to have something each night for the youth group.  So I planned to do something unique and special each evening.  Can’t remember which night it was for sure – I think it was Tuesday.  But on the promotional information, I said very little.  I just said come later – at 8:30 – for The Underground Project.

Use your imagination.  Be an energetic teenager in a small, south Mississippi town in the early summer.  You arrive at the church to see a painted sign attached to the chain link fence that says, Closed by Order of the State.  (What’s funny about that is that the old church building actually had a bad flood/mold problem and had been ordered closed within a year or so.)

Ex-pec-tant and excited, you enter the fellowship hall, where you are asked to have a seat and wait for instructions.  Then in groups of 6 or 7, you are invited into a room.  There I explain that I have some important information for you. [click to continue…]

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It Takes a Lot More Than a List of Wishes

by Andy Wood on July 24, 2009

in Executing Your Plan, Five LV Laws, LV Cycle, Principle of Increase

wishful thinking“I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!” -1 Corinthians 9:22-23, The Message

I’ve devoted a lot of time to a life powered by wishful thinking.  With that came a lot of declaring about what I was going to do, and by when.  Those lists I referred to in the last post even contain a pretty crazy collection of audacious plans.  Just one problem.  Some of them are lifetime pursuits, and I still haven’t started the chase.

Setting goals or writing down wish lists is a bit like writing a check.  [click to continue…]

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The Grasshopper’s Dilemma

by Andy Wood on April 17, 2009

in Allocating Your Resources, Consumers, Enlarging Your Capacity, Executing Your Plan, Exploring the Possibilities, Five LV Laws, Following Your Passion, Gamblers, Hoarders, Life Currency, Love, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle, Money, Pleasers, Principle of Abundance, Protecting Your Investment, Waiting

grasshopperThis week a friend sent me a poignant and compelling image that describes what it’s like to live in a climate or with a spirit of fear.  But the image is so strong, I think it describes anybody who feels as though they are in a no-win situation.

I feel like a grasshopper on the ocean hanging onto a leaf.  I cling to the leaf to keep from drowning.  If I eat the leaf to keep from starving, I lose my life preserver, and drown.

I’ll tell you later what he learned in the process.  But can you relate? [click to continue…]

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Vision – More Than Just Hope

by Andy Wood on January 6, 2009

in 100 Words, Exploring the Possibilities, LV Cycle

There’s more to vision than hopeful daydreaming about a desired future.

Yes, vision sees the goal, but it is aware of much more than that.

Vision sees the path from here to there.

Vision recognizes the need for decisive action.  It has a bias toward making the jump.

Vision also recognizes the risks and potential dangers that lurk on all sides, and prepares accordingly for them.

Vision then sees beyond the goal.  It recognizes the larger community, and the visionary’s place in the larger world.

Yes, vision sees the goal.  But true visionaries recognize that success is more than the perfect landing.

(This extraordinary picture of Oberstdorf, Germany as reflected in the goggles of Japanese ski jumper Noriaki Kasai is one of many that can be found here.  PHOTO:  Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach)

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Go Pull Some Weeds or Something

by Andy Wood on September 4, 2008

in LV Cycle, Protecting Your Investment

The LifeVesting Cycle

Stage 1:  Allocate your resources.
Stage 2:  Explore the possibilities
Stage 3:  Follow your passion
Stage 4:  Execute your plan

Stage 5:  Protect Your Investment

Years ago, a Detroit homeowner went to check on his five-bedroom house.

It was gone.

As in, completely removed down to a vacant lot, gone.

Completely baffled, he asked the Detroit Free Press to help him find out what was going on.  A reporter learned that not only was the house gone, but the deed to the empty lot was in someone else’s name.  What had happened?

For starters, several years had passed since the homeowner had left the city without providing a forwarding address.  Moreover, he had failed to make arrangements for someone to keep the property in repair.  So the house was torn down because a city ordinance called for the removal of neighborhood eyesores.

Gives a whole new meaning to “Snooze, you lose,” doesn’t it?

Want to see a farmer laugh?  Tell him you’re going to plant corn or tomatoes or something, take a three-month vacation, and come back to pick your harvest.  Sorry, Mr. Douglas.  It doesn’t work that way, in Hooterville or anywhere else.  Investments of any type require care and cultivation.  Jesus’ story of the sower and the four types of ground show just how rare a harvest really is. The seed that fell on the hard path became birdseed.  The seed that fell on stony ground sprang up rootless.  And the seed that fell among the thorns choked.

Investments – seeds of all types and the environment they’re planted in – require nourishing.  That means breaking up the hard, resistant places, deepening the shallow places, and pulling the weeds.  Did I mention that this was work?  Where every day hurls new surprises and challenges?  But if the harvest is worth it (and you will wonder at times), then the cultivating is worthwhile.

In order to experience the return you want, your investments require your attention, diligence, and adjustments.  Mind if I switch metaphors?  Hebrews 12 talks about the same idea, only it uses the imagery of a marathon race, and you’re the runner.  Based on the imagery in this chapter, here are four ways to protect your investment: [click to continue…]

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You Can’t Plant if You Don’t Have Any Seeds

by Andy Wood on August 30, 2008

in Allocating Your Resources, LV Alter-egos, LV Cycle

I live in an area in which cotton farming is a multi-million-dollar enterprise.  Care to hazard a guess about how much time the farmers here spend stripping or picking cotton?

About two weeks.

Everything that determines their futures for another year comes down to a two-week process.  And yet, it’s what they do during the other 50 weeks of the year that will make or break the success of their harvest.

It’s all about the cycle, and where they are on it.

You may not be a farmer, but you were created to be a harvester of sorts.  God created you with the capacity to envision a better future and a rewarding eternal state. But in most worthwhile pursuits, you don’t have the luxury of microwaving your results in a matter of minutes.  While his medals were earned in a matter of seconds, Michael Phelps didn’t jump into a pool for the first time in June.  His victories were the crowning achievement of his training cycle.

We, too, experience life in a variety of cycles.  The seasons, economic cycles, and generational cycles come to mind.  LifeVesting is no different.  Each of the Laws of LifeVesting operate on cycles of continuous movement.

Don’t think of these as a locked-in sequence of steps; life is wonderfully much messier than that.  Instead, think of the LifeVesting cycle as a flow of activity, moving from one stage to another.  Over the next few days, I’d like to explore these with you. [click to continue…]

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