hard work

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Real Freedom May Not Be At The End Of Your Hard Work

Sometimes you work hard to give yourself more freedom later, only to be disappointed when that anticipated freedom becomes available.

freedom

That was my experience the other day. I was trying to finish a talk I was scheduled to give in two days because I didn’t want to have to work on it the next day.

I was tired and wanted some freedom the next day – some time off. I didn’t have plans; I just knew I needed some time to myself.

So I worked at it all day – even when the ideas were flowing more like a frozen lake than a rapidly moving river in the spring. 

I found out late in the afternoon that my evening engagement was cancelled so I just kept on working through the dinner hour. I put my head down and kept writing. In fact, I got on a bit of a roll, and it was then that I determined to finish the talk, no matter what, so that I wouldn’t have to work on it the next day.

The thought of having a free day inspired me to keep going. I didn’t make a list of things I wanted to do; just the idea of being able to do whatever I wanted was so appealing right then.

By 8 pm I had finally finished my talk. It was a huge relief, a weight off my shoulders. 

But I still was not quite finished. 

If I wanted to be really free the next day, there were a couple more things I needed to do. I spent the next twenty minutes putting my power point deck together for my presentation. I then put together the online outline and uploaded it to the server. I printed a copy of my talk and then put my computer copy in a format for my iPad. 

By 9 pm I was done. I left the office tired but feeling really good. I was ready for a full day off.

Life was good; I felt free. I was looking forward to the next day.

The next morning, I started the day with a 7 am hockey game. Then the rest of the day was all mine. 

What do you do when you have a whole day in front of you and you have no responsibilities? 

Well, let me tell you what you do: you make a plan. Right away, immediately, you make a plan so that you use your freedom to give you maximum enjoyment and fulfillment. 

… You don’t do what I did. 

I put absolutely no thought into what I wanted to do. I just had this idea of being free for a day, but I didn’t plan anything for that free time. 

When the end of my day off came, I felt that I had wasted my freedom. I didn’t do anything of consequence because I hadn’t thought of what I might want to do. 

When what you are looking forward to is vast and vague, you will never be happy with the outcome unless you make a concrete plan.

Here’s the thing: The idea of complete bliss and unending tranquility when life is over will not materialize unless you have a plan for it now. Plan now for what you want your future to look like by putting your faith in Jesus Christ and trusting your life and future to Him. Then, when all your work in this life is over, you won’t be disappointed. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Right now how will you go about making your plan for the future? Leave you comments and questions below.

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How To Clean Things Up In No Time

Creating the visual of clean can be as satisfying as actually doing the hard work of cleaning.

For example, your living room is cluttered with things and someone is on his way over to your home for a visit or a meeting. You don’t have the time to clean the living room from top to bottom so you take the clutter and you stash it.

You put those items behind things, underneath things, out of sight. 

Then, just before the visitor arrives, you stand back and admire how neat and tidy everything looks.

You get the same satisfaction you would have if you had taken an hour to put everything away in its proper place. 

I do this with my office. Over the course of a few weeks, paper will start to gather on my desk. 

I don’t know how it happens. It’s a little like how snow starts to fall from the sky. At first it melts quickly and you don’t see it on the ground. But as the snow persists, it starts to accumulate. 

It begins to pile up.  

That’s what happens on my desk. Dealing with all that paper that has accumulated takes a lot of time – sometimes hours. Who has hours for filing and sorting and what not?! 

The downside is that I can’t work with the piles of paper; I keep looking at them. So, from time to time, I simply gather up all the papers and put them on a table in one neat pile.  

Then my office desk looks neat and clean and I can work. It’s fantastic. And I don’t have to spend all that time dealing with each individual piece of paper to give me that feeling. 

Today I cut the grass. At this time of year the dandelions are in full bloom … and we definitely have our fair share of them. 

No, that’s not correct. We have way more than our fair share! 

Curiously, most of those dandelions are on our side of the street. The houses on the other side of the street must have some kind of deal with a weed company. You don’t see the weed guy coming around spraying their lawns but none of them have these lovely spring flowers … certainly not like us!

This morning when I cut the grass, I cut the heads off of every dandelion on our lawn. It was a major killing spree. Then I stood back and looked at how green and even our grass looked. 

I was proud of myself. 

However, I really didn’t do anything to the dandelions. The roots are still there; the leafs are still there … and they will grow right back in their place again. 

But today – right now – looking out my front window, I don’t have any of those little flowery devils.

The one downside to all this is that, although I have immediate satisfaction with my lawn looking so clean, in reality I still have a mess on my hands that will have to be dealt with at some point … which sucks!

Here’s the thing: You can clean up your life in a very superficial way and it will look good to you and to all those around you. But unless you do a deep hard clean, you will always be looking for places to stash things. A deep clean can only be accomplished by dealing with the junk in your life – that is confessing it to God and doing the necessary work to keep it from coming back.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What in your life do you need to do a serious clean of? Post your comments and questions below.

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Make Time To Climb The Stairs

From time to time I republish posts I have written in the past. This is a repost of an article I wrote in April 2013

Does anybody like to climb stairs anymore? Has anybody ever liked to climb stairs? I’m just wondering because it seems like people try to avoid them if they can. 

wwf-cntower-stairclimb

The other day, I was doing a hospital visit and my wife Lily was with me. As we got close to the elevator, she said, “We are not taking the stairs, are we?” I looked at her and replied, “You take the elevator and I’ll meet you on the 6th floor.”  

She answered that she didn’t want to climb the stairs because she was in high heels and a heavy coat. I’ve never climbed stairs in high heels before, but as I recall, my heels don’t normally hit the ground when I climb, so it should be a mute point. 

Lil isn’t a wuss so she took the stairs with me, but she was lagging behind a little. I would chock it up to those darn high heels but her huffing and puffing gave away that she was really just out of stair climbing shape.

For the last year or so I’ve been taking the stairs more often. It’s not because I like climbing stairs; it’s because it helps me get closer to my daily walking goal. And I’ve learned a few things in taking the stairs over the elevator:  

One thing I’ve learned is if you dislike crowds and being in close quarters with people, take the stairs – you’ll have the place to yourself! When I take the stairs at the hospital, 90% of the time I never encounter anyone else. The other 10% I just see hospital staff.  

If you want to sing or whistle while you get to your destination, take the stairs. Not only will no one hear you, the acoustics in the stairwell really make for a rich, full sound!  

If you need some quiet to think, take the stairs. The only sound you will hear is your own heavy breathing as you round the 5th floor.

I’m not petitioning for more people to take the stairs – I like to whistle undisturbed when I climb. I’m just saying there’s more to taking the stairs than giving you a heart attack.

There are some people who like to climb stairs. In Toronto, at the CN Tower, they’ve been running a fundraiser stair climb for 23 years. They get about 6,400 people walking up the 1,776 steps (that’s 144 flights!) every year. 

My daughter has made this climb the last two years, first doing it in just over 17 minutes and this year in under 16 minutes. I get out of breath just linking about it.

For the most part though, multi-floor buildings promote the use of elevators and escalators. The stairwells are usually in out-of-the-way places reserved for emergencies … and then good luck finding them! 

Of course, the older we get, the more we start looking for those elevators. I’ve heard that 70 year olds can spot an elevator at 60 paces, but still not be able to read what button to push without their glasses!  

I figure I’m not there yet, so I better keep using the stairs.

Here’s the thing: We gravitate to what’s fast and easy until that is all we can do. Becoming more like Christ takes time and work. If we’re always looking for the fast and easy, we may never look much like Him.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you do the hard way just to not give in to the easy? Leave your comment below.