I’ve come to a place in my life where I believe that I’m really over myself.

I’ve had so many conversations with people, friends, leaders, pastors, counselors, and people on the street about life and living that I’ve come to this conclusion:  I need to pull my head out of my own ass. (Apologies to all my Christian brothers and sisters)

I found this video and thought that I needed to heed it’s invitation.

So, as of today, May 1, I am Fasting from Negativity, in my words, thoughts, and my every day life.

“I am not my own, I am bought with a price, I belong to God. I choose to grow in and put on love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,and self-control.” -Trevor H. Lund

SO…I’m done.  I’m done with the negative thoughts, negative words, negative actions, and the negative self-condemnation.  I’m done with it all.  I know I will stumble, but over the next 40 day, with God’s grace and strength, I will succeed in fasting from negativity.

I am asking for your prayers, your grace, and support.  This is a HUGE undertaking for me.  But I do not walk this path alone…I have the Holy Spirit to guide, Jesus to sustain, God to empower, and people to walk with me.

I WILL do this.  I have to…

“We are all worshipers…of something.  Bur are we spending our lives and filling our days with what matters most?” – Louie Giglio

This is a great book for people who wish to grow a deeper understanding of what true worship really is.  The Air I Breathe is conversation and extremely thought provoking.

It’s also a great resource for a small group study, especially a worship team.  It should also be mandatory reading for all ministers, pastors, and church volunteers!

Quotables:

• “Worship is the activity of the human soul.”
• “Worship should matter to you simply because it matters to God.”
• “I’ve got to keep making sure that what matters most, matters to me.”
• “The things we champion-the values we serve-are not choices made in a vacuum.”
• “There’s a war raging for our worship, and it’s been that way since before there was time.”

Goals and goal setting is not just for the workplace.  We should all have personal, professional, relationship, and even recreational goals.  Goals are benchmarks to work towards.  They are tangible evidence of our hard work and dedication.  We spend our lives achieving, and often failing to achieve, our goals, whether we know it, or not.

Walt Disney said, “A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there. With enough effort, he may achieve it. Or he may find something that is even more rewarding. But in the end, no matter what the outcome, he will know he has been alive.”  And he was absolutely correct.

Without setting some measurable point to work towards, we spend our days, and our lives, meandering from one circumstance to another, not knowing whether we are progressing or retreating.

Without proper goal setting:

• Our work weeks would be a chaotic jumble of deadlines, meetings, phone calls, emails, and conversations.
• Our personal lives would be void of exercise, nutrition, proper rest, or habits, and we would be at the very whim of every text, email, or phone call.
• Our relationships would be stagnant, not moving forward in the appropriate steps of progression.
• Our lives would be a complete mess, and our leadership wouldn’t be as effective as it could be.

How do you set goals?

Goal setting isn’t rocket science, it can be as easy as writing a simple list of 5 things to do during your work day.  It can be a list of books to read through out the year.  It can be signing up for a 5K race and having to train to properly prepare.

But let’s look as some simple, practical ways to set some basic goals for our lives.

The night before your work week begins…

• List out all the appointments you have in your calendar for the coming week. This lets you visually see what your week looks like and you can get an idea of where you need to focus your time to work between the appointment.
• Write out the TOP 10 actions you need to take that week.  You have limited amounts of time, you have certain tasks, phone calls, emails, or projects that need to be completed.  Make you list and complete each task as soon as possible.

Each night before you go to sleep…

• Look at your appoints for the day. You need to know what you coming day looks like, and get an idea where your time needs to be allotted.
• List out the TOP 3 THINGS that MUST be done. You can only truly focus on accomplishing 3-4 projects a day (assuming that you are working a normal 8-10 hour day), so you need to figure out the most important projects for that day to complete.
• List out the Phone Calls, Emails, Conversations you need to have. Knowing who you need to connect with helps you focus your time and energy.  If you need to talk to your I.T. Guy before end of day, you can structure your day to connect with him and not forget it.

Use Task Management Tools

There are great online resources like RememberTheMilk.com, Toodledo.com, and tadalist.com you can use, many for free.  These will help you manage your “to do” lists to help you accomplish your daily, weekly, or monthly goals.  Managing these smaller lists will help you attain your overall goals like time management, project achievement, and they can help you sleep better at night.

Write Out Your Goals

Download this PDF and fill it out.  It’s a very simple, yet profound tool to help you list out your goals for the next weeks, months, years.

There are 6 categories, Personal, Health, Professional, Financial, Relationships, and Community.  There are 10 spots to fill in under each heading.  Take 1 minute per spot and fill it out with a specific goal you want to attain.

There are 6 heading, 10 spots per heading, at a minute per spot, this simple exercise should take about an hour.  You can fill this out by yourself or as a couple.  You can use all 10 spots, or only 3 to 5…it’s up to you, but SET SOME GOALS!

Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts on goals and goal setting, or if these ideas helped!

In every leader’s life, there is always one area that is often referred to as a “black hole,” and that area is the leader’s schedule.  You can start your day with the best of intentions, and be wildly our of control by Noon.  And the simple solution to this is:

Discipline and Submission.

The Discipline to adhere to a set schedule of events that allow you to be the most productive and effective and the Submission to allow the schedule to dictate the minutes of your days.

It’s something that we all struggle with, but those leaders who succeed are those who adhere to a very strict schedule and let it dictate their next moves, and forces them to be ruthless in choosing priorities.

How do I make a schedule?

Simple.  First take a piece of paper and write out all the tasks that need to be done during the day.  Include work outs, email, lunch and dinner, drive time, basically everything you need to do during the day/week to do your job and live your life.

Second, take those tasks and write them out on on a grid.  Make sure to use a pencil, because there WILL be many corrections as you allow for changes and decisions that are better for your productivity.  And when you are done, you should have something that looks like the example on the left.

Next, you should transfer this to an electronic version.  For an Excel Template CLICK HERE.  It should look something like the example on the right.

And finally the hardest part: STICK TO THE SCHEDULE!!  You will notice that I have 3 times a day that I spend reading and responding to email, I also have built in times for social media, that is due to the fact that my business, Worship Media Solutions, needs to have a large online presence to succeed, so I need to invest time in expanding my social network, so I built it in to the schedule.

THINGS TO REMEMBER

1. This schedule may only work for a season. Don’t be afraid to alter it once you’ve given it a few weeks to see how well it works for you.
2. You HAVE to manage your schedule. You’ll be tempted to spend time elsewhere, with phone calls, emails, or bosses pulling you away from the schedule, they are inevitable, but they can be managed with a simple egg timer.  Phone calls should be short and succinct, be proactive and tell people you have a tight schedule, they’ll respect you more for it.
3. Safeguard yourself from yourself. If you have an assistant, co-worker, or friend or spouse that is willing, allow them to hold you accountable to the schedule.  If it’s important to you, they should be more than happy to help you be more productive and successful.
4. Build in personal/family/mental health time. If you have this schedule that runs your days, you SHOULD be able to have more down time with the family or friends.  Allow the schedule to work FOR you, if you know that you are going to be more focused on Monday, you can relax more on Sunday, and spend time doing what you love instead of stressing over your job.

Please let me know if this article was helpful.  Leave me a comment and tell me what ideas and thoughts you have concerning a schedule.