Saturday, October 25, 2008

Discipline--The Overview

I have been thinking about how to become more disciplined. I seem to do well at some things for a while, and it gives me traction, but then I seem to get stuck at some point and fail to make progress.

The other day I was reading Axioms by Bill Hybels, and he encouraged leaders not to be decieved by incrementalism. He said that incremental change often means no real change in the long run. Furthermore, he encouraged wholesale, exponential steps of growth. He was talking about this in relation to working with churches. I have been thinking about this in terms of life stuff.

Here are some of my observations:

  • When I try to get disciplined in one area of my life (time management), I usually thought it was better to give myself slack in another area of my life (diet, finances, spiritual disciplines, goal setting and acheivement). What I have come to understand is that it may be better to get disciplined in all areas of my life at the same time. Thus...wholesale life change instead of incremental change. The problem is I have already had a lot of life change this year.......
  • At the same time, little changes can make a big difference. They have to be small committed changes, not half-hearted, put your toe in the water changes though
  • I need effective accountability structures to make life changes. I have tried this in some areas of my life. My accountability people in some recent ventures have not done well at keeping me accountatble. Other times the people are total jerks and I do not want to be around them.

Just some thinking I am doing.

2 comments:

Erin said...

Maybe I can back up one step more. While it feels like you're trying to incorporate a lot of different changes at the same time, perhaps it would look different if it were framed differently.

I'll give you an example. One of my goals this year was to be more intentional in creation care. What it has ended up looking like has included becoming vegetarian, being really efficient with recycling, not buying what I didn't need... and then trying to buy local or fair trade, not driving my car in town if I could walk or ride my bike... and other stuff I can't think of right now. But my point is, if I had set out with that list of things to do at the beginning of the year, I wouldn't have gotten very far. I know myself. I would have been overwhelmed in details. But by becoming more aware as I went, by holding lots of different things up in prayer and asking if I was really honouring God by doing this (or doing it this way), I found that change happened in a very incremental, organic, lasting way.

I know it doesn't work the same for everyone. But I really find something powerful in having a framing story to go back to.

I don't know what your framing story might be. Maybe it's something as simple as being as intentional as possible in how you spend your time and money. You might find that by remembering the "why", the "how" becomes easier.

reliv4life said...

I do like how wilsonian put it. I know in my own life it seems as I change in one area, the other things I need to work on begin to become more apparent. I think beginning small and taking small steps gets everything moving in the right direction. Sometimes the change is small and seeing it everyday keeps us from noticing how far we have come. Sometimes it is good to look back and see how far we have come instead of focusing always on how far we have to go. Just my thoughts.

Book Review of Little Prayers for Ordinary Days by Katy Bowser Hutson, Flo Paris Oaks, and Tish Harrison Warren and illustrated by Liita Forsyth

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