January has already been an interesting month for me, although not for the reasons I ever expected. Normally January of every year is consumed with activities related to resolution-making and goal-setting and then trying to keep those oft ill-fated resolutions and goals. In that regard, this January has been no exception. But in today’s world of unrest, it’s been impossible, I imagine, for even the most self-absorbed individuals to ignore happenings out in the world and maintain a completely inward focus. Try though we might, our focus continues to be drawn outward. And, I’d have to say, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But, sadly, some of what’s attracting our attention is very bad indeed.
I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m referring to the tragic earthquake in Haiti, the indiscriminate devastation, the horrendous loss of life, the woefully inadequate medical and humanitarian response, the continuing disintegration of a country and its people, and the prospect of continued suffering and death. Yes, there’s no denying, this is a very, very bad situation that’s consuming a great deal of our thoughts and energies.
But that’s not exactly what I’m talking about.
So, maybe you think, if I’m not talking about that attention-grabber, perhaps I’m referring to something else. Maybe you think I’m referring to the two wars on foreign soil in which we continue to sacrifice young American men and women. It’s true, most of us are directly touched by this situation. I have a brother-in-law preparing to return to Iraq in just days, leaving behind a nine- and fifteen-year-old son to worry about what the rest of their lives might be like, God forbid, without a father. And we have a young man from our church who’s on the frontlines in Afghanistan. I read his Facebook entries, and, although I can literally hear this war shaping him into a man with each passing day, I can still hear the hopes and fears of a boy. Relatively speaking, he is just a boy, really. Only a little more than a year out of high school, and now he is protecting me and my freedom? I understand that’s just the way it works. But, I’m sorry, as far as I’m concerned, the fact that we live in a world where that is just the way it works is something I consider very, very bad.
Nevertheless, when I say in this blog that there are very bad situations in the world that are drawing an inordinate amount of our attention, that’s not even what I’m referring to.
Okay, I’ll give you one last chance. If I’m not talking about a devastating earthquake or never-ending wars and rumors of wars, maybe you think I’m referring to this divisive presidency we now have. Not that every other presidency we’ve ever had in this country hasn’t eventually grown into an increasingly divisive situation, but, with the exception of anti-war demonstrations, this is the first time in my lifetime that I can recall actual public demonstrations, innocuously named “Tea Parties,” although there was no tea and, if you ask me, it wasn’t much of a party. And let’s not forget the near brawls when various congressmen and senators conducted district meetings regarding new healthcare legislation. Given those scenes and the visceral emotions displayed, I know how dangerous it is for me to even get near the subject of politics, so please graciously accept my admission to you here and now that I simply hate partisan politics. And it’s not just politics. I hate partisan anything. The irrational, ugly, and sometimes downright mean-spirited behavior we’ve seen lately, especially when it comes to taxes and healthcare, in my humble opinion, is not how an effective democracy would operate. To me, it’s a very, very bad situation in our country today.
However, that’s also not exactly what I’m referring to when I say there are bad situations getting too much attention…but it’s getting close. It’s a good segue. Let me illustrate the point I want to make today with another story.
My sister’s husband (the one who’s going to Iraq and is as red-white-and-blue-blooded American Republican as they come) drives over one-hundred miles round-trip from their home to Fort Campbell every day, and recently decided to purchase a Honda Hybrid in order to save on gas and money. Shortly thereafter, my nine-year-old nephew’s best friend, Tyler, came over to play. Upon returning home, Tyler, who has been my nephew’s BFF since kindergarten, stared up at his mom with a deer-in-the-headlights look in his eyes and said, “Mom, I’m not sure I can be Dane’s friend anymore!”
“What on earth are you talking about, Tyler?” inquired his shocked mom, who is also one of my sister’s closest friends.
“I’m not sure I can be friends with him,” he explained, “because his dad is a Democrat!”
“A Democrat!” she exclaimed, “He’s not a Democrat! What makes you think he’s a Democrat?”
“Well,” he said, “because he drives a hybrid!”
Okay, excuse me for just a second while I get this off my chest….oh, puh-leeeeze! This child is nine-years-old! Don’t get me wrong, I love his mother. She’s a wonderful first-grade teacher, plus she’s a hoot to be around and just an all-around wonderful person. So I’m not throwing stones at her. But do we really think this is okay…for even our children—the few left among us that we could once point to as being the last humans who were completely accepting and loving of all—to have become partisan?! Where are they learning this behavior, if not from us?
But then, should we really expect anything else? When we have a so-called spiritual leader spouting off in the national and international media that the Haitians brought this earthquake on themselves…that somehow they deserved it…thus turning this tragedy into another partisan issue.
We have a so-called republican leader saying that our president is only pretending to care about the Haitians, because it will make him look good, and urging people not to help him by contributing aid…thus turning our nation’s efforts to help a suffering people into yet another partisan issue.
And what I think is probably worst of all is that one side of the partisan divide has now laid claim to Christianity and morality. It seems to have snuck up on us, but now we’re into it up to our necks—Republicans have claimed ownership of faith. If you’re not Republican, well, I hope you like warm weather because I hear it’s pretty hot in hell.
Stop and think, people! What are we doing? Faith is now a partisan issue in this country. War is a partisan issue. Healthcare is partisan. What kind of car you drive is partisan. Even my nine-year-old nephew’s friends has become a partisan issue. There is absolutely nothing left in this country on which we have not drawn the battle lines. And we’re ruining our children.
Do you need more proof? Here’s another story, coming, ironically, from Tyler’s mom.
She has a little boy in her first-grade class named Wesley. Slight, frail, and freckle-faced, his pale-skin is even more distinct in contrast to his shiny red hair. Wesley is a sweet and, what you might call, nervous child. He’s the type, she explains, who, if he even suspects he might have done something wrong, will just come and confess it, trembling and stuttering all the while…too scared to confess, but too scared not to. This week we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day. So, knowing this Monday off from school was approaching, Wesley’s teacher decided to teach her first-graders about the reasons we now recognize this man with a national holiday. On the preceding Friday, she gathered the children, read to them about MLK, explained that they would not be coming to school on Monday because we would be celebrating the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, and then dismissed them to play. Within minutes, she looked up to see nervous little Wesley walking sheepishly toward her desk.
Wringing his hands, his eyes darting all around as if trying to avoid making direct contact with hers, Wesley stammered, “Uh, uh, Miss Terry, uh, I was just wondering, uh, should I just come to school on Monday?”
Surprised, she responded, “Why, no, Wesley! I just explained to you that you don’t come to school on Monday because we’ll be celebrating MLK Day.”
“Uh, yeah, uh, yeah, I know, Miss Terry. I, I know that’s what you said, but, uh, well, uh, in my family, uh, well, uh, well, we don’t actually celebrate that holiday.” He suddenly spit out the final phrase like jerking a band-aid from a wound.
“So…should I just come on to school, Miss Terry?”
It was all she could do to keep from laughing as she tried to further explain.
I’ll admit I laughed, too, at both the story about her nine-year-old son’s reaction to my brother-in-law’s hybrid and her student Wesley’s reaction to the Martin Luther King holiday. But when I stop to reflect on why these types of situations are occurring with our children, it’s no laughing matter. I can’t even begin to imagine what that six-year-old little boy had heard in his house that made him afraid to go home and tell his parents that he was not going to school on Monday because he was celebrating Martin Luther King! In our country, we have gone so far as to even take a human being who sacrificed his life for the fair treatment of others—much like Jesus Christ who gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone—and that, too, we have made into a partisan issue.
Can we please just stop the madness? I’m tired of being afraid that the wrong person will find out and railroad or ostracize me for my politics or my faith…a faith, which, just so you know, is the guiding principle and the foundation for every single position, decision, or action I take…a faith that calls for unconditional love, acceptance, mercy, grace, compassion, and forgiveness…a faith that is open to all. No matter how hard people in our country try to make my faith a partisan issue, it is not one. And, if we’d all just come to our senses, neither would anything else be.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
2010 Resolutions
It’s New Year’s Resolution time. So, like many of you, I’m beginning 2010 with some resolutions of my own.
In fact, for the second year now, I’ve been trying to abide, not just by an annual list of resolutions, but by a ten-year strategy with annually updated implementation plans.
No, I’m not kidding, and I realize that means most of you are saying right now, “I could not live with that woman.” But my husband is a planner, too, so he loves it. Just as it is an excellent tool in a business environment, or in a coaching relationship, this approach has also been an excellent tool for getting the two of us aligned on priorities. Plus, because we jointly agreed on those priorities, it’s something we each can use to gently reign in the other, if or when we begin to wander off on a tangent. It’s an approach I wholeheartedly endorse and use often in my leadership coaching.
And, given the year of global economic recession we’ve just weathered, it should come as no surprise that my plan contains some financial goals and resolutions.
However, I’ve discovered a large caution that needs to be issued along with this approach. And, I’ll admit it’s been a very humbling realization, because I’ve learned it the hard way. I made this mistake myself. So let me see if I can use my own new understanding to help you.
As I said, my list of resolutions contains some financial items. To be honest, I'm sad to say I can trace every item on my list back to money, which has been part of my new humbling understanding. Most of my plan involved ways to get more money and what to do with that money once I got my hands on it. You might wonder, “what’s wrong with that?” Here’s what’s wrong with that.
Money is the number one competitor for our hearts. It promises security, freedom, power and significance. But how much more of this recession must we endure before every last one of us learns that it can’t truly deliver any of those desirables. There should not have been any confusion in my mind about this.
While I was still in college, in the mid 1980s, I worked full-time at night in a large consumer electronics manufacturing facility. For my senior advanced management class, for the majority of my final grade I had to write a thesis. Because of my excellent access and firsthand knowledge, I decided to make it a comparison between the theories we were learning about in school and the actual practices in my company. So I scheduled and began conducting interviews of every senior executive, mid-level manager, and front-line supervisor who would talk to me. And one of the obvious questions I would ask was, “What is the company’s mission?” I never expected the answer I received. Across the board, without a single deviation, the response was, “To make money.”
In a desire to remain respectful, I tried to hide my shock. But even as a 21-year-old college student, I knew there was something wrong with that answer. I’m not even sure if I knew exactly why at that point. I simply knew that in school we’d read about meaningful and significant mission statements espoused by some of the world’s greatest companies, and this one paled in comparison. The missions of the companies we’d studied transcended something as superficial as making money. Instead they had a depth that would engage people on a visceral level, whether the promise of money was there or not. And yet the money did follow as a result of their efforts to achieve their meaningful mission.
That factory, which had been in operation for over thirty years when I went to work there, was milked dry and sold in less than ten years after the time of my study, and within another five years it was closed down completely. I wasn’t smart enough or prophetic enough to realize it when I was conducting those interviews, but that time period had actually been the beginning of the end.
I learned this lesson then but, somewhere along the line, I lost sight of it. If our only goal is making money, whatever the endeavor, it cannot be sustained nor will it ever satisfy.
Ecclesiastes 5:10, written by the wise (and extremely wealthy) King Solomon, says, “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.”
When I’m coaching a client and attempting to help him or her clarify their goals, I always try to get them to think beyond money. I’ve even been bold enough on occasion to caution, “When it becomes about just the money, it’s the beginning of the end,” a conclusion, no doubt, I bring with me from my experiences with that now-closed manufacturing facility.
But why should that surprise me? After all, I did begin this article confessing that my goals are heavily laced with financial implications and that I, myself, have fallen into this same trap. And isn’t that what we’re taught? We want the freedom to work according to our own preferences, so we set goals to apply our money toward getting out of debt and paying off our house. We want long-term security, so we set goals related to our insurance and investment portfolio and we put money away for retirement. We want significance, so we set goals for where we want to live and in what kind of house, what kind of car we want to drive, what kind of toys we want, and we start trying to figure out ways to get money for all that. Inevitably, this leads us to realize that our current income won’t provide it, so we have to set corresponding goals to get a bigger and better job. And once we’re in that better place of employment, we recognize it’s a lot more enjoyable for those who have power, so we want some of that, too. But that takes money…for more education…for better clothes to look the part…and country club memberships to rub elbows with the right people…and so on. And before we know it, even though we never had any negative intentions, nevertheless, it has become all about the money.
When we live a life in this manner, just as with that factory I described, it can become the beginning of the end…the end of meaning…the end of passion…the end of purpose. There has to be more to life than making money, if we’re to be fulfilled.
“Now, wait one minute,” some of you might be thinking, “If I make more money, I can help more people. I can be more charitable and make more of a difference in the world.”
That may be true for some of you; but, on the average, statistics indicate that will not be the outcome. Research shows the average American annually gives 3.1% of their income to charity, not even close to the minimum 10% taught in all types of Protestant and Catholic churches alike. But your argument is that, as our income increases, so does our giving. Well, guess again. This same research shows that so-called wealthy Americans above the $250,000 per year income level give only .07% to charity…less than 1%! In fact, the most charitable Americans are those who live below the poverty level but give 5.2% of their annual income to charity. So much for any theory that getting more makes us more giving.
Money is the number one competitor for our hearts. The more we have the more we want. Its pursuit requires our heart, our energies, our time, our passion, our lives. But its superficial promises are empty. The wholehearted pursuit of it will leave us milked dry and worn out. And we will still never be satisfied. It will never be enough. You don’t have to be operating on the scale of a Bernie Madoff to, nevertheless, lose perspective and fall into this trap.
This has been a hard lesson for me because, I’ll confess to you, I lost sight of it this last year. I began to see the world through that “Mo’ Money” filter. I’ve realized I wasn’t setting goals and pursuing them according to my passion and purpose. I was more worried about the money.
Maybe you have been, too. And maybe it’s excusable, given the financial woes that most everyone has experienced during the last year. But I don’t think that gives us permission to continue blindly down that path. Instead, I think it’s time for a wake-up call.
Let’s be careful in 2010 to not make our lives all about the money. Let’s make this a year of meaning, and passion, and purpose. Money enough will follow.
In fact, for the second year now, I’ve been trying to abide, not just by an annual list of resolutions, but by a ten-year strategy with annually updated implementation plans.
No, I’m not kidding, and I realize that means most of you are saying right now, “I could not live with that woman.” But my husband is a planner, too, so he loves it. Just as it is an excellent tool in a business environment, or in a coaching relationship, this approach has also been an excellent tool for getting the two of us aligned on priorities. Plus, because we jointly agreed on those priorities, it’s something we each can use to gently reign in the other, if or when we begin to wander off on a tangent. It’s an approach I wholeheartedly endorse and use often in my leadership coaching.
And, given the year of global economic recession we’ve just weathered, it should come as no surprise that my plan contains some financial goals and resolutions.
However, I’ve discovered a large caution that needs to be issued along with this approach. And, I’ll admit it’s been a very humbling realization, because I’ve learned it the hard way. I made this mistake myself. So let me see if I can use my own new understanding to help you.
As I said, my list of resolutions contains some financial items. To be honest, I'm sad to say I can trace every item on my list back to money, which has been part of my new humbling understanding. Most of my plan involved ways to get more money and what to do with that money once I got my hands on it. You might wonder, “what’s wrong with that?” Here’s what’s wrong with that.
Money is the number one competitor for our hearts. It promises security, freedom, power and significance. But how much more of this recession must we endure before every last one of us learns that it can’t truly deliver any of those desirables. There should not have been any confusion in my mind about this.
While I was still in college, in the mid 1980s, I worked full-time at night in a large consumer electronics manufacturing facility. For my senior advanced management class, for the majority of my final grade I had to write a thesis. Because of my excellent access and firsthand knowledge, I decided to make it a comparison between the theories we were learning about in school and the actual practices in my company. So I scheduled and began conducting interviews of every senior executive, mid-level manager, and front-line supervisor who would talk to me. And one of the obvious questions I would ask was, “What is the company’s mission?” I never expected the answer I received. Across the board, without a single deviation, the response was, “To make money.”
In a desire to remain respectful, I tried to hide my shock. But even as a 21-year-old college student, I knew there was something wrong with that answer. I’m not even sure if I knew exactly why at that point. I simply knew that in school we’d read about meaningful and significant mission statements espoused by some of the world’s greatest companies, and this one paled in comparison. The missions of the companies we’d studied transcended something as superficial as making money. Instead they had a depth that would engage people on a visceral level, whether the promise of money was there or not. And yet the money did follow as a result of their efforts to achieve their meaningful mission.
That factory, which had been in operation for over thirty years when I went to work there, was milked dry and sold in less than ten years after the time of my study, and within another five years it was closed down completely. I wasn’t smart enough or prophetic enough to realize it when I was conducting those interviews, but that time period had actually been the beginning of the end.
I learned this lesson then but, somewhere along the line, I lost sight of it. If our only goal is making money, whatever the endeavor, it cannot be sustained nor will it ever satisfy.
Ecclesiastes 5:10, written by the wise (and extremely wealthy) King Solomon, says, “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.”
When I’m coaching a client and attempting to help him or her clarify their goals, I always try to get them to think beyond money. I’ve even been bold enough on occasion to caution, “When it becomes about just the money, it’s the beginning of the end,” a conclusion, no doubt, I bring with me from my experiences with that now-closed manufacturing facility.
But why should that surprise me? After all, I did begin this article confessing that my goals are heavily laced with financial implications and that I, myself, have fallen into this same trap. And isn’t that what we’re taught? We want the freedom to work according to our own preferences, so we set goals to apply our money toward getting out of debt and paying off our house. We want long-term security, so we set goals related to our insurance and investment portfolio and we put money away for retirement. We want significance, so we set goals for where we want to live and in what kind of house, what kind of car we want to drive, what kind of toys we want, and we start trying to figure out ways to get money for all that. Inevitably, this leads us to realize that our current income won’t provide it, so we have to set corresponding goals to get a bigger and better job. And once we’re in that better place of employment, we recognize it’s a lot more enjoyable for those who have power, so we want some of that, too. But that takes money…for more education…for better clothes to look the part…and country club memberships to rub elbows with the right people…and so on. And before we know it, even though we never had any negative intentions, nevertheless, it has become all about the money.
When we live a life in this manner, just as with that factory I described, it can become the beginning of the end…the end of meaning…the end of passion…the end of purpose. There has to be more to life than making money, if we’re to be fulfilled.
“Now, wait one minute,” some of you might be thinking, “If I make more money, I can help more people. I can be more charitable and make more of a difference in the world.”
That may be true for some of you; but, on the average, statistics indicate that will not be the outcome. Research shows the average American annually gives 3.1% of their income to charity, not even close to the minimum 10% taught in all types of Protestant and Catholic churches alike. But your argument is that, as our income increases, so does our giving. Well, guess again. This same research shows that so-called wealthy Americans above the $250,000 per year income level give only .07% to charity…less than 1%! In fact, the most charitable Americans are those who live below the poverty level but give 5.2% of their annual income to charity. So much for any theory that getting more makes us more giving.
Money is the number one competitor for our hearts. The more we have the more we want. Its pursuit requires our heart, our energies, our time, our passion, our lives. But its superficial promises are empty. The wholehearted pursuit of it will leave us milked dry and worn out. And we will still never be satisfied. It will never be enough. You don’t have to be operating on the scale of a Bernie Madoff to, nevertheless, lose perspective and fall into this trap.
This has been a hard lesson for me because, I’ll confess to you, I lost sight of it this last year. I began to see the world through that “Mo’ Money” filter. I’ve realized I wasn’t setting goals and pursuing them according to my passion and purpose. I was more worried about the money.
Maybe you have been, too. And maybe it’s excusable, given the financial woes that most everyone has experienced during the last year. But I don’t think that gives us permission to continue blindly down that path. Instead, I think it’s time for a wake-up call.
Let’s be careful in 2010 to not make our lives all about the money. Let’s make this a year of meaning, and passion, and purpose. Money enough will follow.
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