When I was a child…

Posted on September 8, 2017 by Joel Smith

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” 1Co 13:11

Have you ever met anyone that is a full fledged grown up in age, but has not been able to put ways of childhood behind them, someone stuck in time, paralyzed, lost in the world? Of course you have. They are everywhere. If you haven’t, you likely are that person. I was.

I remember when I became a man. It wasn’t when I turned 18. It wasn’t when I moved out, or paid rent on my own for the first time. It wasn’t even when I got my first real job, or had my first long term relationship.

When I was 23 years old I remember how I viewed the world in great detail. I had been burned, had a serious attitude toward life and justified it vigorously.

There were three principles that were most important to me.

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Take what you can get.
You can only really trust yourself, everyone else will always let you down.
It’s my life, I will live it how I want! Get off my back!

These three principles became my hiding place in my early adulthood. They gave me direction (pleasure seeking), protected me from harm (other people) and made me the king of my world (It’s all about Me). I was a pretty good thinker so I was able to stave off any threat that came along with my witt and ability to argue. My guards were up and I was a self-preservation machine. My artistic and deceptive skills allowed me to create a ficade of my life. I wore whatever mask I needed at the time, and became what I needed, to get what I wanted. Reality was something to mold, twist and make a slave out of. Perception was reality, and deception was the way to change reality.

The Crash

And then it all caught up to me at once. My nightmare fantasy world came crashing down in a pile of rubble. Like waking up from a dream or experiencing sight for the first time, I realized that the earth didn’t really revolve around me. It was the greatest most painful loss, and at the same time the biggest sense of relief.

I took a long hard honest look at my life for the first time ever. I was ambarrassed and ashamed of the blindspots that everyone else already knew. I was the last to find out. I had been exposed.

I confronted myself, and here is what I discovered were the values I had come to embrace:

I must let nothing be my fault as to remain blameless.
I must allow myself a way out of any situation in case it gets difficult.
I must hold everyone accountable for how they have hurt me.
I must expect all those who have caused my problems to pay for their actions.
I must be strong and not show any weakness.
I must be in control of the situation, or be controlled by the situation.
I must convince everyone of my impressiveness so they will respect me.
I must expect grace for my actions, and justice for everyone elses.
I must hide my flaws so no one can criticize or look down on me.
I must not think about my problems or acknowledge they exist, then they won’t.

I realized that I was eating and drinking and being marry to avoid committing to anything. Committment requires responsibility. I didn’t trust anyone, because that would mean I needed to be a person that could be trusted, and trustworthiness required responsibility. I was living life how I wanted because I didn’t want to be held accountable. Accountability requires responsibility. I was avoiding responsibility in most every way.

My worldview was leading me astray. It was causing me to be a person I desparately didn’t want to be. Somehow it was all backwards. The Apostle Paul writes in “Rom 7:15 “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”

I realized that the worldview that I had embraced, that I thought was serving me, was actually waging war against my soul. It became clear to me that seeking to serve my own needs left all my needs unmet. Placing myself as the center of the universe led to me being on the outside looking in.

It was that day that I put the ways of childhood behind me, I became a man. I was about to begin a brand new life of adulthood.

Because Jesus Christ took 100% responsibility for my sin, I was able to became 100% responsible for my life. Not only my actions and bahavior, but also my thoughts and emotions. No longer was I going to allow my circumstances to control my thoughts and keep me in emotional imaturity. For the first time it wasn’t about self-preservation, pride or impressiveness.

I discovered a different set of principles to live by:

I must make no excuses for my actions, thoughts and sins.
I must embrace reality (truth) and live by it, rather than distorting it.
I must committ myself fully to people and responsibilities given to me.
I must forgive everyone who hurt me and expect nothing in return.
I must be transparent and humble. For when I am weak, I am strong.
I must be responsible for only what I can control, and patient with what I cannot control.
I must earn respect through putting others needs before my own.
I must expose my sin, purge it from my life and experience freedom.
I must live fully accountable for my actions.
I must face my fears and perservere through the obsticles holding me back.
I must surrender in order to have victory.

Give me a call, let’s chat. 319.930.1045

Are you Awareness driven, or Focus driven?

Posted on July 19, 2017 by Joel Smith

It’s important that we don’t get so caught up in where we are going that we forget where we are. It is equally important that we don’t get caught up in where we are that we forget about where we are going.

Are you Awareness driven, or Focus driven?

Sometimes we think of awareness and focus as being very similar. In fact they are opposites, and both are necessary. One is centralized or concentrated, the other outwardly distributed.

Awareness and focus are both important factors in our success. It would be great if we all had a natural balance of the two, but we don’t. That puts us at odds with each other, or does it?

The Brain

The human brain is an incredible creation, but one thing it doesn’t do so well is see the big picture and see the details at the same time. We all have a tendency toward one, or the other, but not both. The eye can only focus on one thing at a time. It can roam around taking smaller snapshots of information from all over, in a broad sense, or it can stay focused in the same area to get a deeper understanding of what it is looking at.

People tend to see that way too, but we also learn to grow, socialize and communicate similarly. We are always seeking to expand our awareness of what is around us, or deepen our understanding of what is in front of us. Awareness driven people like to take complex ideas and simplify them to help ‘the many’ gain awareness and understanding. Focused driven people like to add more details for a deeper level of understanding for ‘the few’ to gleem insight.

We all do both at times, but lean one way most of the time. Some people become a jack of all trades and master of none, yet others may be able to play Mozart, but struggle to tie their shoes.

Puzzles

Imagine a scenario where two individuals were asked to put ten puzzles together, and they only have one hour to finish. These puzzles are not extremely difficult but not likely to be completed in a single hour by the average person.

An awareness driven person may approach this task in a much different manner than a focus driven person. He would look at the task; determine that finishing the project is the most important desired result. After all they were given an hour TO FINISH! He quickly figures out that there is 60 minutes to work with, ten puzzles so that gives him approximately six minutes for each puzzle. After 60 minutes or so he has all ten mostly completed but none of them fully completed. He walks away fairly satisfied knowing that all ten puzzles look pretty good. He can still recognize the intended pictures from the boxes even though there are several gaps. “Git r done!”

The focus driven person takes a different approach. She takes a good look at the picture on the box of the first puzzle to know what the outcome needs to look like. She begins putting the puzzle together making sure she uses the pattern of corners first, edges second and then looks for identifiable patterns. She carefully searches for the right piece, finds it then puts it in its rightful place. With 20 minutes left, anxiety increases, she picks up her pace and pushes through completing 3 more puzzles before she runs out of time. She looks at her six completed puzzles and is quite pleased. She got six out of ten puzzles fully completed exactly as the boxes suggest. “If you are not going to do it right, don’t do it at all”, she thinks.

Opposing Perspectives

What if each of their work is shown to the other to observe and comment on? You can guess the criticism that may come from those evaluations as they view each other’s work from a different lens. “You didn’t even start four of them!”, “Well you didn’t finish any of them!”

In the leadership world we find these seemingly opposing perspectives play out all the time. Some people value efficiency; some are high on details and accuracy. Some find satisfaction in covering more ground and others by covering better ground. Some put a high value on time or relationships. Others put a higher value on money or influence, while yet others seek excellence or strategy.

Humility

We can cause a disconnect when we fail to appreciate other people’s perspective, or if we believe that our way of thinking is more viable than others. By nature we all tend to think this way sometimes. It takes intentional effort, and humility to consider that others may have something specific to offer that we don’t (Cain and Abel). It also takes humility to accept that our perspective may be inferior compared to another.

“It takes intentional effort, and humility to consider that others may have something to offer that we don’t. It also takes humility to accept that our perspective may be inferior compared to another.”

One Body with Many Members

1Co 12:14-18 NIV Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.

When we choose to see awareness and focus not just as opposing views, but also as complimentary views, we may learn that we actually CANNOT get along WITHOUT each other. We complete each other. Unless we come to this awareness we will never understand the importance of interdependence and the beauty of productive, relational and spiritual harmony, as God intended it to be.

Are You Struggling at Work?

Posted on April 27, 2017 by Joel Smith

Emotional Distress in the Workplace

Have you ever found yourself stuck in your job feeling like you have come to the end of a dead-end street, or stuck on a long winding road? Have you wondered if there really is something greater around the bend that is worth striving for? One of the most common reasons that we find ourselves feeling this way is due to emotional distress.

On an upcoming Wise Work Radio program Tom Noteboom and I will be exploring the question What Keeps People from Advancing in the Workplace?

Can you relate to any of the following symptoms of emotional distress? If so, there is hope for you.

Symptoms of Emotional Distress

Anxiety or restlessness
Depression, feelings of sadness, emptiness or hopelessness
Anger, bitterness, irritability or frustration
Guilt, or feelings of worthlessness or failure
Feeling overwhelmed or lost
Loss of interest or energy
Loneliness and isolation.

When we experience physical pain in the body we naturally tend to think that something is happening to us that is un-necessary and wrong. We don’t always see value in the experience or see what may be coming next. It is easy to become distressed about our pain, but not so easy to learn from it or appreciate its value.

Guardrails

Emotional pain is much like physical pain. It points out that something is not as it should be. Emotional pain is like a guardrail that says, if you keep going this direction you are going to experience even greater pain.

Andy Stanley says “Guardrails protect us from what lurks on the other side. The danger zone… Personal guardrails are boundaries you establish on the safe side of damaging decisions that protect you from the danger ahead. They’re meant to set off warning bells over seemingly little things…little things that can lead to big, messy consequences.”

Bumping up against a guardrail is painful, but not as destructive as pushing beyond them. It should be a sign that your current path needs to change to avoid greater harm. We need to establish emotional guardrails to keep our distress from leading us into more difficult situations down the road.

Distress Affects Others

If you are struggling with emotional distress in your place of work, others around you likely notice your struggles. It can be very difficult to meet the challenges required to grow and advance in your career when you have internal obstacles that are working against you, and sometimes unknowingly against others. It’s even harder if you don’t want to believe your struggles are indeed internal (your own doing) and not due to your circumstances, or other people holding you back.

Emotional distress increases when responsibility is avoided. It’s your responsibility to find the solution to your distress, not your right to embrace it, or for others to be responsible for it. Face it, Embrace it, Replace it!

So, Where is the Hope?

Mat 11:28-30 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Come To Me…

If you are struggling with anxiety, depression, anger or guilt you know what it means to be weary and burdened. You may feel like there is no rest for your soul, like something is missing, buy you cannot quite put your finger on it.

Jesus challenges us to a call to action by telling us to “come to me, all you who are weary and burdened…”. He is not as interested in removing all your discomfort, as he is addressing the heart issue. He wants to give you what is missing so you can find a lighter burden in your work.

Take My Yoke

The second challenge that Jesus calls us to in to “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…”. Jesus isn’t saying that if you acknowledge him he will simply take away all your burdens. He is saying if you join him on his journey, you will take on a different burden with him that will lead to restfulness.

Everyone Loves a Three-step Process…

So, what does it look like to come to Jesus and take his yoke?

Luke 9:23-24 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”

Jesus address’s the solution to our emotional distress.

Deny yourself – Let go of any unrealistic, self-focused plans you have for yourself.
Take up your cross daily – Stop fighting the wrong battle, and join Him in the good fight.
Follow Jesus – Learn from the greatest person who ever walked this earth. The one who died for you!

Emotional distress is the natural consequence when someone walks through life with intention to “save their life”. What are you willing to lose to find it?

Principles vs. Values

Posted on April 11, 2017 by Joel Smith

The 3 Little Pigs

Remember the story of the Three Little Pigs? One built his house out of straw, one with sticks and the last with bricks. They all three had good intentions for the most part, although to varying degrees. The difference was not necessarily in their intentions, but in the foundational quality of the material. This is true not only in the material world, but also in the cognitive world. Our thoughts and what we believe to be true, will determine if our house will fall or remain standing in the face of the Big Bad Wolf. Ideas have consequences.

Principles vs. Values

What are Principles? Principles are guiding truths that apply to all people in all places over all of time. It doesn’t matter if you believe in them or not, you will trip over them if you don’t realize their existence. Principles are often very inconvenient to those who want to live life on our own terms and very convenient for those who wish to navigate per reality.

What are Values? Values are preferred beliefs that support principles. Values are subjective and do not apply to all people in all places over all time and vary from person to person or amongst cultures. Values are the methods that help you achieve a higher cause.

Example: The Principle of Generosity is true and plays out consistently over time (see list below); however different people value different methods in expressing their generosity. Some give of their money, some give of their time and effort, others encourage and support and yet others defend or protect. These are all Values that people hold that are important to them and are for supporting the Principle of Generosity.

When principles are absent, values can operate on their own (not necessarily well) without the foundational support of principles. In the absence of principles, we value whatever meets our own needs. Discovering these important principles is important to developing a foundation for future strength and significance for everyone who wishes to lead a fruitful life.

Why We Tell the Truth?

Integrity and honesty are both principles that are generally the foundation to why most honest people tell the truth. People who value integrity and honesty tend to tell the truth not only when it is convenient to them, but even when it is not convenient to them. The Principle is more important than their individual needs. They realize the long-term benefit of integrity and honesty for the benefit to others, also for their own best interests.

Telling the truth is not actually a principle, rather a value. Telling a lie, embellishing and other forms of deception are also values. If they help your cause (right or wrong) they have value (to you). They both support what is most important to you, so if you are NOT a person of Integrity and are more interested in your own wellbeing, telling the truth sometimes suits your self-interest. If this is the case, telling a carefully crafted lie may seem to suit your self-interest as well. If you do not hold the principle of respecting other people’s boundaries (property) you may hold theft as a value that you use from time to time to get what you need. Noble principles are the anchor for all noble values. Self-centerness is also the anchor for all self-serving values.

The House on the Rock

²⁴“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. ²⁶And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. ²⁷And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” Mat 7:24-27 ESV

Stand For Something!:

Many people in our country fail to stand for anything significant. As generations pass fewer Americans engage in principle based thinking. We don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, or project our standard onto others in fear that we will appear intolerant or politically incorrect. Tolerance and acceptance are very noble qualities, but when taken to extremes they can cloud our perspective leading us to compromise what we all know to be true. We need to be strong and stand for proven principles even when it means causing others to stumble or discomfort for ourselves.

Many managers, leaders and parents fail to stand their ground and promote proven reality based principles. We often struggle with the confidence to stand up and express our allegiance to any higher principles, because we view principles and value the same. We see them as personal (subjective) rather than foundational (objective). In other words, we give our personal values the prestigeous title of a principle, when it is no such thing. It is just a supporting cast member at best, useful only to a bigger purpose. And without purpose, your values are useless.

The result is a culture of floating standards (values) and a crop of managers, potential leaders and parents with little feeling of authority. We often feel powerless because we have not taken ownership of foundational truths or a commitment to defend them. Even when given full authority, we fail to feel empowered due to our self-imposed limitations and fears.

Application:

Most Americans believe in principles to some degree, but too often fail to take ownership and stand up for them because they don’t believe in a true Creator.
If you have an opinion (Value) ask yourself what universal principle it is attached to. If you cannot come up with one, you may need to do some self-discovery.
When finding, ourselves fighting against life principles, we end up shipwrecked, running against the wind or trying to paddle upstream.
When we stand upon these very principles and hold onto them and live in harmony with them, we find footing and begin to stand firm on a solid foundation.

Build your house out of BRICKS!

A Few Questions About Tolerance.

Posted on December 30, 2016 by Joel Smith

The Tolerance Myth?

What is it that we should tolerate?
Should we tolerate someone else’s version of Good?
Should we tolerate someone else’s version of Good, even when we believe it to be Evil?
Who should we tolerate? Everyone?
Should we tolerate those who don’t tolerate Evil?
Should we tolerate those who DO tolerate Evil?
Should we tolerate those who don’t tolerate others?
If indeed I don’t tolerate those who don’t tolerate others, does that make me intolerant? Have I become what I despise?
If I DO tolerate those who don’t tolerate others, am I just reinforcing their intolerance by tolerating it?
If it does make me intolerant, should I expect others to tolerate me in my intolerance?
Should I even tolerate myself?

Do you see the insanity in this? Just admit it, everyone is intolerant, EVERYONE! Some just don’t like it pointed at them.

Grace trumps tolerance every time. Show grace and respect others but don’t value their opinion over truth.

Be strong and stand up for truth, don’t hide behind tolerance to avoid offending someone, or being offended.

Truth is offensive to those who don’t believe it, and loved by those who do.

Tolerance is good when it’s used as a lubricant to get along in spite of different beliefs, but it’s not to be used to make any or all beliefs equally valid. They are not, otherwise no one would ever be wrong, misunderstood, mistaken about anything.

Refuse to tolerate anything but truth, no matter what it costs you. Then have the wisdom to know when to speak and when not to.

Be patient with those with differing opinions and give grace to those who are offensive to you. If you don’t believe there is a source of universal truth, you just haven’t found it yet, or don’t want to.

Intelligent feedback only, I won’t tolerate stupidity. JK…no really, put your big boy pants on. Don’t come to this table if you can’t tolerate this message.

…Then Ask Someone Who Knows

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Joel Smith

In May I posted a blog titled …Then Don’t Do That – A Glance at the Art of Sowing and Reaping. It explores why we do things we know we ought not do, even when we understand the consequences. We talked about how knowing the right thing, or best thing to do isn’t always enough. We need to strip ourselves of all the obstacles that cause us to make excuses and wrong decisions and get to a place of self-transparency (oh, I like that term, I should have used that in the other blog).

But what about those times when the best option isn’t clear? Maybe it’s not enough to know that you need to lose a few lbs, or confront someone about something, or get to some things you’ve been putting off. Maybe you have some understanding of the situation, but you have come to the end of your expertise and just don’t know what the next steps should look like. What do you do? Do you do nothing, or run away? Do you guess and hope? Do you fake it so no one else can see you are clueless?

If you are stuck in a complicated situation and don’t know what to do or how to proceed …Then Ask Someone Who Knows. There is a good chance that someone in your life or even someone not yet in your life has experienced something similar to what you going through and could shed some light on the situation for you.

“If you are stuck in a complicated situation and don’t know what to do or how to proceed …Then Ask Someone Who Knows”

So why, when we find ourselves in difficult situation, do we try to solve many of our own problems ourselves? Why are we so hesitant to seek out advice? These are the questions we will try to tackle in this blog.

Other peoples Blind-spots

Ever notice how clearly we can see other people problems? We spend some time with friends or relatives and after we think “They should really hire a financial adviser” or “see someone” about this or that. You listen to people give you reasons and excuses for doing the things they do and in your head you can’t understand how they could be so dense or what they could possibly be thinking. To you and many others around them the solution is so clear. You wonder why they can’t see what everyone else can see. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how many people tell them something, they just can’t see it because it is a blind-spot, like the back of your head or the place you can’t see from the drivers seat because the mirror is limited and the windows are not 360 degrees.

Your Blind-spot

Well, that person with the big blind-spot is you! It’s also me, and everyone else. We all take our turn being that person, some of us more than others. You see we are all born with a huge blind-spot. Our eyes were created pointing away from us and not toward us. We need something outside of ourselves like a mirror to see what we cannot naturally see in ourselves. We can never completely get rid of our blind-spot, but over time, through many failures and accomplishments and careful instruction we can gain a much clearer perspective on just how much we need other peoples input in our lives.

It is true that generally other people can see your situation from clearer more objective position when provided the facts. Their eyes are pointed toward you. Unlike you they are more able to take personal feelings, prejudices, historical bias’s out of your equation, just because they are not you.

We need others input but we do need to be careful to who we trust with advice. Some people seek out advice, but the problem is that they may be asking the wrong person. When you hang out with fools, the advice you get is going to be foolish.

The Fool

A fool is a person who makes decisions without thinking through the consequences. They typically live their life from one moment to another gratifying their desires with instant solutions doing whatever feels natural to them in the moment. They usually have a wake of broken relationships and lost opportunities following them that they have failed to learn from. It’s one thing to have a history of failed experiences and relational strife, but to continue the same foolish patterns over and over is indeed what defines us as a fool.

“When you hang out with fools the advice you get is going to be foolish.”

When you put a bunch of foolish people in the same environment or community, like crabs in a bucket they pull each other down and keep each other from succeeding feeding the foolish behavior. Most of us grew up with fools all around us. We bought into so many of these foolish ideas without even knowing. Until something from outside comes in to shed some light we will continue to move through life at the bottom of the bucket being held down by people just like us. It doesn’t have to be that way.

The Wise

To be wise means to give careful thought to your ways, to base your thought on knowledge and good judgement. Wisdom doesn’t come by simply thinking right. It comes from experience. There has never been a wise person who did not fail many times over. Wisdom comes from understanding adversity and adversity can only be understood from experiencing failure and learning from it rather than repeating it.
Wisdom is all around us if we just look. Sometimes we get so caught up in dwelling on the problems in life we fail to see the answers staring right at us.

“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Building Blocks

For every skyscraper or bridge, how many had to fall down before they got it right? The complexity of a modern airplane or automobile is incredible. The engineers didn’t start from scratch, they stood on the shoulders of the great engineers that came before them. They learned what they knew, then took it one step farther. Modern medicine is learning more and more every day about how the body works. They do it by sharing information in Medical Journals and shared research. They learn from the ones that came before them.

I think sometimes we try to reinvent the wheel in our own lives. We get into difficult situations and don’t know what to do so like a pioneer we start trying to figure it out on our own. Sometimes when we can’t figure it out we lose motivation, quit and nothing gets any better. We move forward clinging to a fixed mindset that keeps us in the bottom of the barrel. We need to tap into other resources to maximize our success.

Stuck in your own head

I remember particularly when I was young when I was faced with a stressful situation or a dilemma I didn’t know how to handle I would begin to internalize the problem. I would be at school or work and a stressful problem would monopolize my thoughts and I would find myself zoning out when I was suppose to be focusing. I would sometimes be oblivious to what was going on outside of my head and be fixed on the problem. If someone had offended me my mind began racing trying to put it all together in my brain in such a way that I somehow would escape blame or responsibility. I would have entire conversations in my head about how I was getting the short end of the stick or what I was going to say to my offender or accuser. Sometimes I would just think about how bad the situation is or imaging how bad it will get and how helpless I felt. I think I would get a little obsessed with the moment and allow it to consume me. I was stuck in my own head.

Escape your head!

Here is what I realized about those times. My thoughts were all focused on the problem and not the solution. They were limited to the worries and negative thoughts inside my skull and failed to address the solution which was outside my skull. Over time I learned that in order to be solution minded I needed to get out of my head and into other peoples head. By other peoples head I mean find out what they know, what they have experienced and how they overcame obstacles. Sometimes just getting a fresh perspective was energizing and helpful.

“Over time I learned that in order to be solution minded I needed to get out of my head and into other peoples head”

When I was the center of my own world I could not escape this self-serving perspective that was going on inside my head. It was all I knew or could know. When I was removed from the center my universe and was rightly replaced by God as the center of my universe a whole new world of knowledge and perspective opened up to me. I found truth was outside of my own head and much bigger than I ever imagined. I no longer had to figure out or decide or determine how the world worked on my own. My skull no longer provided the boundaries to my problem solving arena. An age of discovery opened up to me.

The beginning of wisdom is realizing what you do not know. It is coming to the end of your own head and learning how to see the world through the eyes of others and God. Wisdom grows when you see the world and your life through the lenses of scripture and other people and how they see you. When this happens, your knowledge base and experiences to draw from are greatly multiplied and begin to build on each other on a much greater level than the old self-reliant model of thinking.

Be a receiver

If you want to expand your capacity for knowledge and wisdom, tap into other peoples brains and gather from their experiences. Ask someone who knows. Get connected to wise people. This, I believe is the secret to personal growth.

“For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” 1 Cor 4:7 NIV

“Not in My World”

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Joel Smith

Recently my family took a vacation to Colorado. My 11 year old daughter Jordyn brought her good friend with her. It was a terrific vacation and we got to see nature at its best. I also got to observe first hand a great illustration of human nature at its best. I have to share.

The Storm

One evening while relaxing at our hotel, it began raining and thundering. The two kids were excited about the weather and wanted to sit outside the hotel room and watch the storm. The windows were open and I could clearly hear their conversation. After a little while, I overheard them talking about lightning, and thunder. They were debating whether light or sound travels faster. Her friend was telling Jordyn that if you hear thunder and begin counting you can estimate how far away it struck the ground by the amount of time it takes to see the lightning. I think we have all heard that as kids but the details were slightly different. Jordyn explained to her that light actually travels faster than sound and that the lightning happens first, then the thunder. Her response was very funny and made me laugh. She said “not in my world”. This took my daughter by surprise as she wasn’t sure if her friend was serious or just joking with her. If she would have said, “I disagree”, or “that’s not what I learned” she wouldn’t have been surprised so much. She soon found out that her friend was serious. She continued, “It’s just your opinion that light is faster, I believe that sound is faster, it’s just an opinion.” I heard Jordyn say “What?! It’s not an opinion, it’s a fact! It’s science and everybody knows that. They teach us that in school.” Her friend replied “In my world sound can be faster, and in your world light can be faster.” Jordyn said “Wait, what? I don’t have my own world, we live in the same world and this is just the way it is for both of us.”

“In my world sound can be faster, and in your world light can be faster.”

Proud Daddy

I have to admit, hearing this come from my daughter’s mouth was a very proud moment for me as a father. It was at that moment that I knew that Jordyn at the age of 11 understood the concept of absolute truth. That is pretty remarkable for a young child. Most adults in our current culture don’t have this clear of an understanding of truth. Unfortunately the idea of a personal world (relativism) is actually embraced more than absolute truth in this day and age. On the surface her idea concerning her personal world seems harmless and at this age it may be, but what happens when she grows up with this same concept directing her decision making process, or what if this truly becomes her discernment compass? She will have no solid foundation or reference point for establishing what is real. There will be no organized shelving in the mind to organize ideas, and no way to sort out good thoughts from bad thoughts. It will be like building your house on the sand.

Objective Truth (Universal Fact)

If you have spent much time talking with people that continue to experience repeated personal crisis in their relationships, struggle with truthfulness or have bounce back and forth between polarizing extremes you know how irrational people can be when stuck in their own world ignoring objective reality. If you don’t know anyone like that, you may be one of them.

The simplest definition of reality is the way things really are, apart from any person’s opinion or perspective. It’s our external existence that we share with everyone else regardless of what we think or know in our own mind. This is also called objective truth.

“…reality is the way things really are, apart from any person’s opinion or perspective”.

An example of objective truth; “McDonalds is the largest restaurant chain in the world”. This is not true because it lines up with my subjective opinion; it’s true because it lines up with reality or objective truth even if someone else doesn’t believe that to be true.

Subjective Truth (Personal Opinion)

There is another kind of truth called subjective truth. This kind of truth is personalized. It doesn’t necessarily live in the common area with other people nor does it need to agree with anyone else. An example of subjective truth would be If I were to say “Papa Murphys pizza is my favorite food in the whole world”. If I truly believe that and make that proclamation, it is true, regardless of what anyone else thinks. After all it is true that I think that. However, once I cross the line of subjectivity and make a universal statement and say “Papa Murphy’s is the best food in the whole world, period!” I now am treading into crowded waters stepping on other people’s toes, valuing my opinion above others. I have just opened up the floodgates for all of those non-pizza lovers to disagree with me and tell me I am wrong. I may even hear them quote statistics about food consumption or surveys about food preference showing me that I am wrong.

These are two seemingly similar statements with entirely different meanings and connotations. It’s like saying “in my world, Papa Murphy’s pizza is the best and no one can tell me otherwise about my world”. True, but if I make that proclamation and apply it to the whole world, I am saying everyone else is wrong. I then just look biased and ignorant and people will start to devalue my opinions. To make a statement like that I need to make sure it is objectively true and not just my personal subjective opinion otherwise I should rephrase my statement to qualify it as my opinion.

We need to be sure what we say is being applied correctly to the proper kind of truth. Other people aren’t going to live in your world, so if you want to connect with people you are going to need to enter the common world, otherwise known as reality. In our business we call it pulling your head out of the cheese. It’s seeing the world from a larger common picture and not just projecting our immediate subjective experiences onto the whole world.

6 Blind men and an elephant

There is a pretty popular illustration about 6 blind men and an elephant that depicts this idea pretty well. It is about 6 blind men all touching an elephant giving their opinion of what an elephant is. The first blind man touches the elephant’s massive leg and says “In my world, an elephant is like a tall cedar tree. That is what an elephant is.” The second blind man touches the elephant’s ear and says “In my world, an elephant is like a big fan. That is what an elephant is.” The third touches the elephants tusk and says “it’s like a sharp spear. That is what an elephant is.” The forth touches the tail and say’s “an elephant is a rope”, the fifth touches the trunk, “an elephant is a big hose” and the sixth touches the elephants side and says “An elephant is just a big soft wall, in my world”.

The elephant represents reality as a whole as we the readers see it objectively because we know the whole story and are not limited by lack of sight. Each part of the elephant represents one of the blind men’s individual, subjective experiences. If each of these blind men all really believe their observations and that the truth is limited to just what they personally observed, they are missing a much bigger picture of what an elephant is. How much more are we capable of missing the truth about our world if we just limit our opinion of truth to what we have experienced or choose to believe?

In this illustration the blind men are blind to the bigger picture and this is the core of their limitation. In our world, we are blind to the big picture as well. The different is the 6 blind men are not choosing to be blind. Sometimes we are capable of seeing the big picture but our pride or lack of vision keeps us choosing to stay in the dark. Ignorance is bliss.

I can think of so many times in my life when I hold onto a stubborn opinion or belief that I refuse to let go of not because I am truly blind or limited in my ability to understand, but choose to look the other way in favor of what I want to believe. I choose my blindness. Sometimes I do this because I have something to lose by opening my eyes, and other times I just don’t want to find out or admit I was wrong. Because I know this about myself, I am able to identify this tendency much sooner than I did when I was younger.

Entitlement vs. Responsibility

One of the most irresponsible clichés I have heard is “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion”. It’s not that it’s not a true statement, but what most people mean when they say this is that everyone should have the right to say what they think without anyone disagreeing with them or telling them they are wrong. One opinion is just as valid or equally correct as another. When applying this to subjective truth, it is 100% correct. I don’t have the right to tell someone what their favorite food is, and no one can tell me that Papa Murphy’s pizza is not my favorite.

When discussing objective truth or common reality we are not entitled to determine individually what is true. It is our responsibility to discover individually and corporately what is true and lines up with reality. Science (in its purest form) is a tool that helps us do this very well, until someone pulls it into their own personal world and uses it to prove that an elephant is just a rope (Evolution vs. Creation).

“we are not entitled to determine individually what is true. It is our responsibility to discover individually and corporately what is true and lines up with reality”.

When we seek to discover truth we line our thinking with reality , we remove obsticles that hinder true understanding. When we bypass reality and grab ahold of truth as we want to see it we are taking a very costly shortcut that robs us of credibility and integrity. We show ourselves to be foolish.

Perception is not always reality

You have probably heard the statement “perception is reality”. This is just not true. You are welcome to your own opinion on the color of my house of which you may or may not have seen, but your opinion can not be more correct than the actual color of the house. Your opinion of my tan house being blue doesn’t make it blue, or any less tan. If I say its one color and you say it’s another, we can’t both be right, nor do we both have the right to claim equal correctness.

The law of non-contradiction says A cannot equal none-A. Light cannot be faster than sound, and sound faster than light in the same setting. One or the otherz has to be true. Perception, on the other hand can vary greatly. Everyone has the right to be wrong if they choose, or even if they don’t choose, and can only be right if it lines up with reality, not just because they say so or believe so. What good is being right if it’s just pretend?

“What good is being right if it’s just pretend?”

Self Deception

If you are stuck in your own world you may find it very challenging to connect with others with any depth. When commitment to common truth is compromised, getting on the same page will prove difficult. You will find yourself at odds with people or isolated from people because of your inability to connect or feel a common bond. You may become a fault finder, live above accountability, and easily irritated when others point out objective truth to you. You may make excuses for your shortcomings or blame others for your miscues, because they are not miscues in your world. It’s much easier to adjust, stretch, or omit the truth when you are not grounded, than it is to face reality. This is what adults do when they grow up in their own separate world. The steaks are much higher as adults than when it was when we were kids.

If it seems like you are always swimming upstream or running into the wind, if your relationships always self destruct and people continue to let you down, it may be time for you to examine your personal world. It may be that you are so engrossed in your world that reality is passing you by going the other direction. It could be that your house is built on sand instead of a rock.

Alignment

People who align their minds and live according to reality rather than try to change or claim their own reality tend to live more at peace with themselves, and others. Truth seekers live in harmony with other truth seekers. It’s a beautiful thing to be part of a group of people seeking to learn more about the world we share, to learn more about each other and what makes us tick. Unity and harmony can only be achieved by individuals moving and growing in unison going the same direction. The individuals cannot individually determine that direction based on their own world. They will all have different perceptions.

Truth is what provides the vision that gives all of us something to march toward. It provides a common purpose that connects us and moves us to do something for a bigger cause than simply having a better personal world.

When we step out of our own personal world, our blinders begin to come off and we start to see reality in all its glory. Our own personal wellbeing doesn’t seem as important to defend. Community and connectedness becomes more of a priority. Take a look at this community of people. They left their own personal worlds behind to live for a bigger reality.

Community

Act 2:42-47 …and they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

“And all who believed were together and had all things in common”

Act 4:11-12 This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Act 4:32-37 …now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

“…but they had everything in common”

You can’t have community without having reality in common. We can’t make up our own way. If you are one who believes what you want to believe, lives by your own standards and on your own terms (in your own world), pull your head out of your “own world” and join the community of truth seekers. I dare you! You thought I was going to say “butt” didn’t you?