Tag Archive - motivation

Encouraging Words…

September 9, 2010 in Uncategorized with 4 Comments

"Hope" by Mary Freeman

I was really encouraged by my chat with FeaturedArtist: Mary Freeman last week. Mary uses her art to poignantly impact the lives of people… And I love to hear stories like that…

Stories about God using people are the absolute best kind… The Bible is FULL of these stories. We need them in the church today to encourage others to do the same and to remind us that the stories didn’t just end in the first century…

After I published the interview, Mary sent me a note that expressed her own surprise at the way that I had summed her up…

“I am reading it and saying, ‘This is not me…’ But then I realize it is.  This is what God has been doing… continues to do in my life.”

I think that most people need to hear that what they do has a significant impact… I know I do… When you give from your heart and gifts to serve God, it’s nice to know that the offering is going somewhere…

When you see someone else giving and serving and making an impact, it’s probably a good idea to tell them. The encouragement might come at a critical time in their life… It might inspire them to dig in when they were thinking about giving up. It might confirm to them something that they already knew. It might just help them see their ministry from a different perspective.

I know, without much doubt, that God has called me to encourage and equip artists to use their gifts in ministry… When an artist (in this case, Mary) tells me that they’ve been encouraged, it confirms that calling, inspires me to press on and helps me to recognize what it looks like when I’m walking in my own gifts…

And this is true of everyone who serves… not just artists.

Give encouragement freely… It won’t cost you anything.

Accept praise authentically… It isn’t prideful to recognize the work of God in your own life.

Cultivating Discipline, Part 6: Making Good Decisions…

August 26, 2010 in being christian, leadership with 1 Comment

I knew I should've packed a map...

Good decisions leading to firm commitments are vital to developing discipline… BUT making good decisions requires discipline… This is the circular reality that always seems to bite me on the tush… So, I’ve given it some thought and reading this week and wanted to share with you guys…

Good decisions grow out of a life lived in conversational relationship with God… I can link almost every bad decision that I’ve made in my life to a lack of consistent prayer and Bible study… I have found that practicing this kind of intimacy with God is both energizing and exhausting, but well worth the effort in the face of any significant choice…

I don’t want to sound too mystical, but the truth is that when we saturate our minds with God’s Word and devote our hearts to intimacy with Him, He speaks… Often in an almost audible way (and I wouldn’t totally throw out the possibility of actual audibility either) to the simplest request for guidance…

Poor decisions grow out of a focus that is off of Jesus. So, make sure that your mind and heart are tuned to Him before you leap…

I recently found myself in the position of having already made a bad decision… I’ll tell you about it because it has a happy ending:

About a year ago, I wrote a post about artists helping missionaries tell their stories… After that, I had the opportunity to do a brand development and web presence project for an orphanage in the Philippines. This led to a similar project for the parent-ministry… Which led to an offer to join the administrative team of a small, but internationally-placed missions organization…

Up to that point, I was just using my gifts to serve these missionaries… Suddenly, faced with the decision of whether or not to join the leadership of this significant ministry, I jumped without really taking enough time to consider the decision…

I almost immediately regretted it… It wasn’t the kind of work that I feel called to do… I didn’t really enjoy it and it played to my administrative weaknesses… And it significantly sucked time away from my areas of deepest calling and vocation…

Fortunately, I was not financially bound to the position and I was able to pull-out of the higher administration role and stay connected to the promotional and marketing aspects that originally drew me into the organization…

There have been times in my life that I could not easily opt-out of a decision… I have several of these looming on the horizon… As I look forward to them, I see very clearly a truth that I’ve missed in the past:

Making a bad decision to a long-term commitment is not the end of the world IF you are positioned in close relationship to God so that He can guide you through the process of making the best of the situation… One bad decision doesn’t mean that you’re life is totally derailed… God is much bigger than that… But you may have to take the long road through the dessert to the Promised Land…

Wave encouragingly at the people you meet on that road, we like that…

NEXT in this series: A Sound Mind…

Cultivating Discipline, Part 5: Suck It Up…

August 18, 2010 in being christian, creativity, leadership with 3 Comments

Aw... Poor thing... Suck it up...

The “path of least resistance” is virtually the same as the “road of good intentions”…

Think about this: If you have a goal (let’s say you intend to lose 10 pounds) but you skip the gym every time you come to an obstacle or time conflict, you are never going to reach that goal…

Because all of our worthy aspirations are met with resistance…

I don’t really have an explanation for this, but I have a theory:

Since our best, most worthy goals are designed to improve us or our world, they are likely to run afoul the status quo…

I’ve never made it my goal to gain 10 pounds of fat, unlearn an instrument or narrow my friend-network to something manageable like 2 or 3 people… Those outcomes can happen all by themselves because I am introverted, lazy and tend to medicate with Oreos…

Paul has this to say:

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.     – Paul, The Bible, Philippians 3:13-14

It always makes me smile when I hear Christians talking about “pressing on” or “pressing in” because that’s so 15th century… Modern paraphrase: “Suck it up.”

To conquer the inertia of the-way-things-are, I have to suck it up to reach for the-way-things-could be…

Here’s an example:

I’ve been trying to interview an artist for the site for 3 months. We’ve set appointments and I’ve missed them… sometimes through no fault of my own… but I feel like a schmuck every time it has happened. The temptation to just quietly stop trying is overwhelming to an introvert like me…

But the goal is more important than my insecurity… The prize more appealing than the comfort of retreating into my embarrassment…

So, I suck it up and keep trying…

The payoff is that I’ll have the opportunity to learn from this artist, share his encouragement with you and move closer to my own larger goals…

So, what inner turmoil is holding you back? What does it look like when you “suck it up” and push toward your goals?

NEXT in this series: Cut Yourself Some Slack…

Breaking News: Art Degrees Not Very Lucrative…

August 12, 2010 in creativity with 2 Comments

I think this falls under the category of too-obvious-to-be-news, but Payscale Inc. has issued their list of the 20 worst-paying college degrees… Here’s a link to the CBS MoneyWatch article.

For the record, this is the first animated bling to ever appear on WOP...

And guess what? There are 5 art degrees on the list… For the right-brainers, that’s 25%… Degrees involving children also account for 25% of the list… Ministry studies made 10% of the list in 2 separate categories as well…

I don’t expect that anyone will be surprised… I’m certainly not, since I’m sitting-pretty with a dual major in Religion and Theatre Arts…

My question is: Why do we study art? or theology? or disciplines that involve children? If it’s not for the bling…

I can answer for myself, after six years in a job that was math and engineering focused, life is more than the sum of your net worth and satisfaction is more about passion than about my personal balance sheet.

But I gotta eat and nobody wants to pay me to believe in the power of my dreams…

So, most of us will have to find a way to pay the bills while we work on the artistic pursuits that fuel our passion…

The CBS article ends with this clever dig:

If you’d rather end up with one of the best-paying college degrees, you’ll have to major in something that requires a lot of math classes.

I think if somebody had told me this going in, I’d have picked a more lucrative, third major… Of course, I could’ve been a doctor in the same amount of time…

How about you?

Cultivating Discipline, Part 4: Habit-forming…

August 11, 2010 in being christian, creativity, leadership with 2 Comments

I am a creature-of-habit… There are restaurants where everybody knows my name and that I drink Dr. Pepper… But I’ve found a pattern:

It takes more time and purposefulness to develop a good habit (like going to the gym) than to develop a bad habit (like eating a whole bag of chips in front of the TV)…

Maybe you experience the same struggle: the inertia of the status quo makes forming new, better habits hard… it’s work… and when I’m honest with myself, I don’t really want to do the work…

And here’s the circular logic that I get tangled up in:

Cultivating discipline relies on forming better habits and forming better habits is an exercise in cultivating discipline…

A few tips that I’ve gleaned from the www:

1. The 21-Day Rule… Everybody is different and some research in the UK has indicated that there may even be people who are “habit-resistant,” but the average person will form a new habit by repeating the desired behavior for 21 days.

2. It’s OK to Get Help… There is a reason that Alcoholics Anonymous is successful… It relies heavily on the esprit de corps (“spirit of the group”) to help group members form new habits, relationships and coping skills. Having a workout partner or Bible study group can make forming a new habit more challenging and more fun.

3. Attitude is Everything… Optimistic people are 4 times more likely to achieve their goals. If you are a generally pessimistic person (you will know this is you because you like to describe yourself as “a realist”) then your first goal should be to discipline yourself toward positive thinking. It won’t make your rich, beautiful or thin overnight, but it will open your heart to the possibility of substantial changes.

4. Remind Yourself… If I decide today that I’m going to drink 8 glasses of water everyday, I have got to remember to do it TOMORROW… Forgetting my goals is a real problem… Write it down, tape it to your bathroom mirror, or the fridge, or that bag of Oreos… Re-commit every time you see it… Decide everyday to do it again.

5. Suck it up… Sometimes, you need to just get to work… because nobody pays you to believe in the power of your dreams. Sorry to sound harsh, but some of the most pivotal times in my life have been those moments when someone cared enough to kick me in the butt…

You might find this website helpful: Habit Watcher helps you track your progress toward multiple goals…

What habits are you trying to make? or break? What tools have helped you?

NEXT in this series: Suck It Up…
Page 1 of3123»