Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 3, 2018 | Men Of Success - Fall 2018: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Session 4

Transcript

October 3, 2018 | Men Of Success - Fall 2018: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Session 4 · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_01: How you doing, Derek?
0:02
SPEAKER_01: Ooh, I'm doing pretty good this morning.
0:05
SPEAKER_01: Me too.
0:05
SPEAKER_01: I like the pears in the uh in the salad here.
0:08
SPEAKER_01: That's pretty good.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: Did you get any of the cookies though?
0:12
SPEAKER_01: I forgot to pick one of the cookies out.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: Did you eat one for me?
0:16
SPEAKER_01: Nope, not yet.
0:18
SPEAKER_01: Maybe afterwards.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: Well, you're vegan, so you don't eat that stuff anyway, right?
0:25
SPEAKER_00: What?
0:28
SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of allergies, but meat products are not one of them.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: I don't think veg well, I guess vegan could affect cookies.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: We should do a poll in the room.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: See who is vegan, who's dairy free, who's gluten-free, who is all the other things.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: Are we good?
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll just do the poll.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: I say let's skip the poll.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to the important stuff.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: I got a ringing in my ear.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Hello.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna move up a little bit.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: Why is that ringing, Sam?
1:10
SPEAKER_01: Is that just me?
1:12
SPEAKER_01: It's probably in my head.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: Does anybody else hear that?
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Is there a ringing?
1:20
SPEAKER_00: Brady says yes.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: Better now.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we're too close.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: Hey, how about Patrick?
1:30
SPEAKER_01: What did I do?
1:31
SPEAKER_01: Spilled all over myself.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: What about Patrick Mahomes, huh?
1:35
SPEAKER_01: Is he something?
1:36
SPEAKER_01: Did anybody see that game?
1:38
SPEAKER_01: On the picture on the left was the most remarkable play.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: You know, they're chasing him out.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: And this is in the comeback in the fourth quarter when they're down 10 points or something.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: It's third down and they're about to get sacked again.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: He was running for his life all day.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: And look how he's passing it with his left hand just before he gets sacked.
1:55
SPEAKER_01: So he gets the he gets the first down on this left-handed sort of shot put.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: Kyber's amazing.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: I think it's probably all those times of practices when you're just messing around throwing the football.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: You're like, let me see if I can throw it left-handed.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: And then you just look terrible, but somehow it gets there.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: That that was it.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: That was it.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: That was it.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: And look at that guy.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: Best quarterback in the league so far this year.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: Young guy.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: So they won a game that they shouldn't have won at Denver.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: Are any of you guys Broncos fans?
2:28
SPEAKER_01: What?
2:29
SPEAKER_00: I see John?
2:31
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that.
2:33
unknown: I was raised in Denver.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, that's right.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: But you haven't disowned them yet.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: So you're still a fan.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: Sorry for your loss this week.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: So who's a Kansas State or KU fan?
2:49
SPEAKER_01: So our uh both our teams, our college teams, are having trouble.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: And uh K-State's playing Baylor, and it may be the last game they have a chance to win this year, except for the KU game.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: And KC is playing ninth-ranked West Virginia, which spanked K-State like 31 to something a few a few weeks ago.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: So KU might win, is what you're saying.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: Is that what you're saying?
3:18
SPEAKER_01: 70% chance.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I pulled this off the web.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: This is the West Virginia having fun with the game this Saturday, beat the Jayhawks.
3:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's not gonna be hard.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: Kansas City has to play a really good defensive team this week.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: Jacksonville's coming into town.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: So that'll be good.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: I'll be interested to see if KC goes 5-0.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: Because you've got, I think at this point in the season, you've got the people who say Kansas City's going to the Super Bowl.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: Is it going to be the best ever?
3:46
SPEAKER_00: And I hope that happens, but we will see.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: Not with the defense.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: They're not going to the Super Bowl with this defense.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be fun to watch them.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: You got the best defense in the league, and one of the worst offenses, that's Jacksonville against the Chiefs, which is like the best offense.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: And oh, is their defense bad or white?
4:04
SPEAKER_01: Have you seen them?
4:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they sort of wave at the Bronco players as they go by.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: So so we're about let's let's talk, uh, let's talk Jesus or let's talk Covey.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: So seven habits.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: Highly effective people.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: Are you guys enjoying this so far going through it?
4:22
SPEAKER_00: You mean the football jokes?
4:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those two.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: Have you guys seen that these these habits or these things that we've talked about so far?
4:31
SPEAKER_00: You can actually see in real life throughout each of the weeks that we've done so far?
4:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's great.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: Last week was be proactive.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: Are you proactive?
4:42
SPEAKER_00: That was a question.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: Did anybody do the challenge?
4:45
SPEAKER_00: Challenge.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: What was the challenge?
4:47
SPEAKER_00: What was the challenge?
4:48
SPEAKER_00: This week we were supposed to.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: Seven-day challenge.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: Seven day challenge.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: And looking for opportunities to be proactive and looking for whether it's in the workplace or at home.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: Proactive means like talk back to your wife, right?
5:02
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's that would be a proactive step.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: Respond.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: Take your life in your hands.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: Today.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: This week, yeah.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: Habit number two, begin with the end in mind.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: And for me, this is one of my favorite chapters in the entire book.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I kind of liked it too.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: But that's because I'm a lot closer to the end than you are.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: Well, you never know.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: You never quite know.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: Remember that famous thing in Alice in Wonderland?
5:34
SPEAKER_01: Would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here?
5:36
SPEAKER_01: That depends a good deal on where you want to go, said the cat.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: I don't much care where, said somebody.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: Then it doesn't matter which way you go, said the cat.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: So begin with the end in mind.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: So let's jump into this.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: At the beginning of the book, how did any of you read the chapter this week or even look at it?
5:54
SPEAKER_01: A couple of you at least looked at the beginning part where he says, you know, the key to one of the keys, a quick key to determining uh where you're going in life is imagine yourself at your own funeral.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: You are dead.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: Weird.
6:08
SPEAKER_01: You're on the outside.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: Morbid.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: And he says, if you carefully consider what you gosh, does that guy look cool or what?
6:16
SPEAKER_01: That bald head?
6:17
SPEAKER_01: If you carefully consider what you want to be, he looks like Tim Collins kind of in 10 years.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: If you care about it.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: Combined with Mr.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: Clean.
6:25
SPEAKER_01: What you want to be said of you in the funeral experience.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: In the funeral experience, who has a funeral experience?
6:36
SPEAKER_01: So, so imagine sitting there, and you know, it's unlikely anybody's gonna stand up and talk about how you know what a nice house you had or what a nice car you had, or how far, you know, how far you went in business or whatever.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: But you know, you're gonna sort of hope that they said something about your character or how you were nice to old ladies or little children or something.
6:58
SPEAKER_01: So um seven habits, begin with the end in mind and think about what you would like people to say at your service.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: That's really convicting for me.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: What's one of the things that you think you would want somebody to say at your service?
7:16
SPEAKER_01: I like him to say that even though he felt like killing Derek a lot of times, he was really nice to him.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: He cut him a lot of slack.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: No, I need to write that down.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: If I have an opportunity, I'll share that.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: I like him to say he was like his wife.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: He was really a nice person.
7:34
SPEAKER_01: No, I'll take it.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: I'll take it.
7:36
SPEAKER_01: Because she is nice.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: I like him to say that I was thoughtful, you know, that I was compassionate.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't you?
7:44
SPEAKER_00: Thoughtful, um, compassionate, kind, helpful.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those types of things.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: Good friend.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: I think it it helps it helps frame the things that we're going to do throughout our life.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: It helps frame our activities when we think about that question.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: I don't want my kids having to work really hard to make stuff up, you know.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, and there's some verses that tie in with this.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: There's a whole psalm, Psalm 90.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: Moses wrote this psalm.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: It's the oldest psalm of the 150.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: Moses wrote it when he was in the wilderness, and there were, you know, two million people.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: God said they were going to die.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: Within 40 years, you figure that out, it means there was a funeral Moses was at every eight minutes.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: And so it's no wonder he wrote a psalm about death.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: And he goes, the years of our life are 70, or even by reason of strength, 80, and yet their span is but toil and trouble.
8:38
SPEAKER_01: They're soon gone, and we fly away.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: So teach us to number our days that we may acquire a heart of wisdom.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: So his point is exactly the same as Covey's, and that is think about the fact you live a short life, funeral's coming.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: So think about that.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: Think about how short your life is.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: I I was gonna do that.
8:58
SPEAKER_01: I was gonna go, okay, if I live to 870, how many days do I have left?
9:03
SPEAKER_01: The problem is I could count them on like two hands.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: So I decided I'm going for 80.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: And uh, but there's just not that many days left, you know, for me.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: Now, for you, if you live to be 80, you got a lot of days left.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: But I make it's really important to begin with the end in mind.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: So uh, you want to take us into this next section?
9:24
SPEAKER_01: So he said, he goes, like, we begin with the end in mind all the time, it's part of our life.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: And and he says something really weird.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: I had to read it three times.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: All things are created twice.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Tell us about that.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: That was an interesting thing that he said.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: All things are created twice.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: And like you, I had to read it a couple times and figure out, okay, what is he talking about?
9:47
SPEAKER_00: But what he does is he he mentions that for the things that happen in our life, there's actually two creations for those things.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: So the first creation is we've got to think about it.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: So there's the mental aspect, there's the idea of it, there's the the theory of it, the thought of it, the the blueprints or the plans that are that are drawn out.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: And then the second creation is the actuality of it or the reality of it, the the physical creation of it.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: So if you think of a house, you create the blueprints first.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: You have this idea, and then it goes down on paper, but it doesn't turn into the house until you do the second creative process, and that's the actual physical building of it.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: You can think of a cake or writing a paper.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: The finished product can't be there until the thought or the idea is there first.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, all things are created twice, first mentally, then physically.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: The key to creativity is to begin with the end in mind, with a vision and a blueprint of the desired result.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: And this is, I think this is pretty clear to all of us, but it's interesting how he breaks it down into these two categories, these two types of creation.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: And so he goes on to say that when we think about having the end in mind, when we think about beginning with the end in mind, yes, we need to have, we we ultimately need to have a picture of that ending.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: We need to be able to see it, we need to be able to visualize it, to have it in our minds.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: And he breaks it down a little bit later in the chapter into essentially the difference in what he calls the difference between leadership and management.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: And he says that most endeavors that fail fail with the first creation.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: So he's saying most reasons that things fail, whether it's a business or a marriage or a project or a paper or whatever it is, it fails because it wasn't thought out to begin with.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't thought out well at the beginning.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: The things weren't accounted for.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: All the processes weren't considered along the way before we just started doing stuff to make something happen because we didn't have an exact picture of what we wanted that thing to look like.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: He says leadership is the first, management is the second.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, management is doing things right, and he he quotes, management is doing things right, but leadership is doing the right things.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: And he he talks about peak performers.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: And peak performers, especially when it comes to athletics.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: So whether it's you know the Usain bolts of the world in sprinting, or whether it's bobsledding, or whether it's the Chiefs and Mahomes and football, or whoever the peak performer happens to be, what the research found was oftentimes these people who are at the absolute top of their game, the top of their class or their sport, these people are those who visualize that winning outcome.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: They visualize, before it ever takes place, going through the different plays or the difficult scenarios.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: And I remember at Wabash, one of the things that I think it was my second or third year there in playing football, our coach had this kind of psychologist mind guy come in and he spent some time with our team and he talked about visualization.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: And when we would go on away trips, he would have people all in the conference room, probably bigger than this.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: You can imagine, you know, 70 or 80 guys, all the huge football players just laying on the floor with this like weird doo-doo-doo doo music going.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: And the whole point was he was guiding us through this visualization thing to help us prepare for the game.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: And when we were doing that, in my mind I thought, this is the dumbest thing.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: Why are we sitting here laying down?
14:07
SPEAKER_00: If I'm going to take a nap, I could do this in my bed, and it would be a lot more comfortable than laying here on the floor.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: And so showing my ignorance of not realizing the importance of visualizing this ahead of time.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: And one of the great examples, and this is probably, honestly for me, one of my favorite Bible stories in all of Scripture, is in Exodus 18.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: And if you remember, you've got Moses, and then you've got his father-in-law, Jethro.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: And we see Exodus 18, 21, and Moses has been, he's the key leader over all of all the Israelites, and he's the one who's deciding everything.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: Whenever anybody has disputes, they go to him.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: And he's he's like, he's the only guy.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: And so you can imagine these thousands and thousands of people just going up to him, hey, we've got this problem, can you help us?
15:06
SPEAKER_00: Hey, we got this problem, can you help us?
15:08
SPEAKER_00: And he would stand there and go and go and go until either he was tired or until the people just got tired of waiting.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: And his father-in-law Jethro comes and says, Hey, I've got an idea.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: I've got a a what Covey would call a leadership thing or a first creation thing.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you equip some other guys, build up some other leaders so they can be people who are helping to decide some of these disputes and issues and things like that, and put them over thousands and tens of thousands and fifties and put them over all these people.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: And he says, but select capable men from all the people, men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain, and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: And so you've got the leadership side of, hey, here's the idea, here's the vision, here's the thing that we can visualize before it actually happens.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: And then we see a little bit later, Moses says, Yes, this is good.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: I think God's good with this, we're gonna do it, and he does it, and it helps.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: So that's the second, that's the management side of Moses implementing the idea that Jethro had.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: And so we can use this in our lives too.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: If we want to change in something, visualize it.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what do we want?
16:30
SPEAKER_00: Get the proper input.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: And then the second step is here's the management side, here's the action side.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: But now, now bringing that, okay, so so if you take, say, Bill Belichick, who does this maybe better than anyone in NFL football, so that this last week the 3-0 Miami Dolphins come in and the front page of the Miami newspaper this last week, which I read, you know, said this is gonna be the first time in 12 years we've we've beaten New England in New England.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: We're far better than they are, we're in a top five defense, et cetera.
16:59
SPEAKER_01: We're three-and-o, they're one-and-one, or whatever.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: And they go in, and Bill Belichick, having just one week to sort of envision how to handle them, absolutely slaughters them 28 to nothing or something.
17:11
SPEAKER_01: So, but that's dealing with situations outside yourself, the Jethro Moses situation.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: But this chapter is about yourself living with the end in mind.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: So, how do you sort of he uses this interesting word called rescripting, and how do you combine these two ideas of uh leadership as well as, you know, how how do you get yourself to sort of become a better leader?
17:39
SPEAKER_01: You know, he uses this some this word like, okay, you need to sort of do the leadership thing, swirl it around in your own head, and re-script.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: What does he mean by that?
17:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he talks about this rescripting thing, and I I really connected with this thought.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: How'd you like this picture I found?
17:56
SPEAKER_01: Anybody else read Harry Potter?
17:58
SPEAKER_01: You know, I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:01
SPEAKER_01: Dumbledore and the yeah, you guys are not up on the on the on the quality literature of the age, so sorry.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: But anyway.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm not either.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, so these are thoughts that are he's rescripting his head.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we've got this rescripting thing, and basically what he's saying is the way that you've experienced life so far, the things that you've seen, whether it's by your environment or your parents or things that you're predisposed to, those don't have to be the ways that you react.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: And those don't have to be the way that you see every situation.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: And so, an example of that for me, of intentionally having to rescript, is when I was growing up, a lot of times when asked to do something, my answer was typically yes.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: And so, if I got asked to do a favor for somebody, the answer was yes.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: If I got asked to join this certain club or be part of this team, the answer was yes.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I've had to rescript in my mind or visualize, look at differently, is that you can't say yes to everything that everybody asks you all the time.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: If you do, you're not gonna be focused on anything and you're gonna be running ragged and spreading yourself way too thin.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: And so for me, one of those I one of the thoughts of rescripting is even though I've grown up kind of basically being a yes man or wanting to please people often, I can't continue to function that way if I want a healthy rhythm of life, if I want to be effective in certain areas and certain things that I'm doing.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: So it's an it's a way of reframing, rethinking, despite everything that you've been maybe taught or exposed to growing up.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's so funny.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: I had no idea you're gonna say this, but I grew up the opposite of you, and I was a no person, okay, out of fear, even when I was a young pastor here.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: I said no to the Lions Club with the asked me to speak.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: I said no to the Chamber of Commerce, I said no to speaking elsewhere, I said no to everybody, partly, you know, really out of fear, although I told myself, well, I need to really focus on Topeka Bible Church.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: And then I, you know, something happened.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: I was convicted by this, and I realized I needed to move over before knowing you, so you come this direction.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: I had this moment, a sort of conversion moment in life in life, where fearfully I came to God.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: I said, God, from the for the rest of my life, I'm gonna turn into a yes person.
20:34
SPEAKER_01: I need a reason to say no.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: I need to allow you to use me, even though I'm afraid to do it.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: So I moved this direction and you move this direction.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that sound?
20:44
SPEAKER_00: But I think maybe one of the things, one of the things that you said was you did it, you said no out of, or you didn't want to say yes out of fear for whatever's going to happen.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: And I did the same thing.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: I would be afraid to say no because of fear of what people would think, and then we kind of come at it from different ends.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: I was fearing failure.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: So, okay, so so you sort of get where we're going here.
21:09
SPEAKER_01: End in mind, decide what you want to be, what you want people to say about you at your funeral, and this will be your best definition of success.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: And really, he combines this then with this whole business idea of leadership versus management, leadership being an envisioning.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: So start envisioning things.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you'll need to re-script the script that's in your head about who you are and what you want to do in life.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: And then he tells a really practical way of forcing yourself to do this.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: He says, write your own personal mission statement.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: I know it's gonna sound hokey to you, but hang with me for a minute.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: So a personal mission statement is just something where it can be short, it can be long, where you go, this one just simply says to find happiness, fulfillment, and see you, John.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: And sorry to have offended you.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: I know where you're going.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: Yep, you're going where.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: Bill Belichick.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: To find happiness, fulfillment, and value in living all here.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: Lead a God-centered life, et cetera, et cetera.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: Now, uh, I'm going to zip over like several pages in the chapter.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: And he says, a real key to this is identify what your center is.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: And around the circle, you can't see the small words, but these little things family, money, work, possessions, pleasure, friends, enemies, church, self, spouse.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: So he says, if you find people who put like their children at the center of their life, that really works in the short term.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: People go, oh, they love their children so much.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: But he said, that will warp the rest of your life.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: You will live your life, unfortunately, as a servant of your children and not become the success you could be.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: Same with if work or if money is at the center of life says you need to ask yourself, thinking of your funeral and so forth, what do you want people to know about you when you die that was at the center of your life?
23:07
SPEAKER_01: Now, as a Christian, he doesn't say this as a Christian, you and I know that we ought to do all to the glory of God, that God should be at the center of our life.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: But see how all these things start flowing together?
23:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: Write your own mission statement, decide what you really want to be the most important, and then write out what do I want to become in life?
23:28
SPEAKER_01: Who do I want to be?
23:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: I think that's great.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: And I'll come back to that later.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: And do doing everything for the glory of God, where God is the center.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure you guys have all heard the right brain, left brain stuff before.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: Theory about where these differ how these different areas of the brain activate different parts for us.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: So the left brain, I think left brain, logical side, right brain is the more creative side, emotional, coming up with things like that.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm typically a more left-brained person.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: And I think of probably Jason, actually.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: I kind of view him as a person who is way more right-brained than me, way more creative than I am.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: And so he's somebody that I look to for inspiration on the creativity side, on that side.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: And so what he said, what Covey's saying in the book is that we actually need both sides of the brain to be activated in order to effectively visualize well, in order to effectively see beyond our circ our current circumstances, so that if we want to envision a better future, if we want to envision something different, that we can, and often it's going to take some kind of priming of the pump for our right brain, because most of us are typically left brain people.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we get preoccupied with the details and with the facts and the numbers and so forth.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, in the he has a quote, and he says, lead, ultimately he's saying, lead from the right and manage from the left.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: When a person has access to both the intuitive, creative, and visual right brain and the analytical, logical, verbal left brain, then the whole brain is working.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: And this tool is best suited to the reality of what life is, because life is not just not just logical, it is also emotional.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: And so we need the emotional side, we need the creative side, but we also need the logical side, we need the step-by-step instructions, we need the technical writer guys to be combined with the creative design guys.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: And we need both of those parts to be activated in our minds.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: Because oftentimes what happens is if we decide, I'm just logical, I'm just structures, I'm just systems, I don't really need the emotional, I don't really need the creative.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: What happens is we actually start to lose our ability to envision something different.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: We lose our ability to imagine a different way than we're currently doing things, or a different way than we currently are.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: Then you become a Moses and you're working super long hours, but you're really not, you know, you're really not changing the world.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: You're just trying to, you know, dog paddle and keep your head above water because you're so occupied with all the details of your family life, your work life, money, and so forth.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: Really interesting.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: One of the interesting things from the chapter was, and we can tie it back to a book that we did the the previous year.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: We remember when we talked about the whirlwind, all the things that we have to do on a daily basis.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes when we get stuck in left brain mode or we get stuck in management mode and not into the leadership, not into the visionary side of things, is we just end up doing all of these different tasks and putting out fires here and here and here and here.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: Instead of taking time to step out of that whirlwind, so we can lead effectively, so we can envision a different future, so that way we can cast some type of vision, even if it's just for ourselves, that we can actually accomplish rather than being stuck in the whirlwind of gotta respond to this email and do this thing and cut this board and make this meal and do this thing and put the kids down to bed and do the tasks of the day.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: So um here's why we like the chapter so much.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: It brings all these disparate elements in and then it combines them.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: So then he he goes back to the personal mission statement and he ties the whole thing together.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: He says, he says, sure in your mission statement, start.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: He says, for instance, uh, there's a you you can write a mission statement.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: I mean, even this morning as you're sitting here, uh uh one way he says, by the way, or you can do it in five minutes.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: Just get online, find a bunch of quotes that you really like, and simply list those and combine them, and you can have a mission statement.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna want to tweak it.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: But here's a really good method called the brain dump.
28:17
SPEAKER_01: He says, just speed write your mission statement for 15 minutes.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: Don't edit, don't worry about what comes out, get all your ideas on paper, then take another 15 minutes to sort of tweak it.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's that's things like okay, at home I want to be a great father and a great husband.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: I want to be known as someone who really uh, or I want to be as a husband, I want to be known as someone who, even though I've been married 20 years, I still came up with creative ways to show my wife romance.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, stuff like that would be a personal mission statement.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: But he's concluding this chapter by saying, if you really want to flesh this out, start thinking about all of your roles and goals, your role as a husband, as a father, as a worker, as a Christian, and so forth, and then start listing goals underneath each of them, and you come up with a mission statement that's fleshed out for daily life.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: Answer the questions: what are the goals that you have for each of your roles as a worker, as a husband, as a Christian, as a Christian leader, whatever?
29:13
SPEAKER_01: Did you discover roles you didn't previously think about?
29:16
SPEAKER_01: How did your priorities line up in reality with what you wrote?
29:20
SPEAKER_01: So I've I've got like a six-page mission statement.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: I was forced to do it.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
29:26
SPEAKER_01: Wait last time.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: Is this this is it?
29:28
SPEAKER_01: This is on a typewriter?
29:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, shut up.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: So it's an abacus or something, I don't know.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, so years ago, you know, they said, do this before you graduate from seminaries as a requirement for graduating from seminary.
29:41
SPEAKER_01: Mark had to do it too.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: Mark and I were in the same school, and it was forced.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: And so page after page, you know, I came up with, you know, on the first one, you know, first statement was was uh uh my goal then was uh or my objective to be to be to have a spiritual life.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: What kind of a spiritual life?
29:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, to be increasingly conformed into the image of Jesus Christ.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: And under that, my goals to spend time in personal devotions, specific standards.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: How many minutes a day to do that?
30:08
SPEAKER_01: How do I read devotional books?
30:11
SPEAKER_01: How much time do I spend in prayer each day?
30:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it went into exhausting detail.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: Scripture memory, uh, walking uh according to the Holy Spirit, what will I do?
30:20
SPEAKER_01: And the next objective was how do I develop an intellectual life?
30:24
SPEAKER_01: How many books will I be reading each month?
30:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, what am I gonna do to keep intellectual?
30:29
SPEAKER_01: Third objective to keep physically fit, my physical life.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: How much, how many times am I gonna play basketball each week?
30:34
SPEAKER_01: I've got it all written down here.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: How many times am I, you know, and run?
30:38
SPEAKER_01: So that's what he's saying at the end.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: Fit the rest of your goals and details, figure out who you want to be, and then develop your mission statement.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: Start out really quick, start out sloppy, but really think about this.
30:51
SPEAKER_01: And and and you, you know, I like the verse you came up with that you felt sort of summarize this chapter.
30:57
SPEAKER_01: Would you read it for us?
30:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but one thing I do, and this is this Paul writing in Philippians, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: So he's he's pressing on towards that heavenward goal.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: He has something out in the future that he hasn't currently fully experienced or realized yet, but that's his target.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's going for.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: And it's it sums up the chapter.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: If we don't have that thing, then we're not going to be running towards anything.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of times you get together in small groups and you discuss stuff that's fun, like Brett Kavanaugh and you know how the world's going to hell or whatever.
31:37
SPEAKER_01: But I think you can have a good discussion today if you first maybe just remember, think about your funeral thing and ask, just share.
31:47
SPEAKER_01: What are one or two things you would like to have said about you?
31:51
SPEAKER_01: And two, think of someone that you know who has money or their children or work at the center of their life.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: How have you seen that keeping them from being all that they really could be?
32:03
SPEAKER_01: Right?
32:04
SPEAKER_01: Number three, are you predominantly right or left brained?
32:08
SPEAKER_01: And I hope there's a right brain, one right brain person at each table.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: That that would be about it, because it's only like one out of five of us.
32:15
SPEAKER_01: Most of us are like mathematicians, we remember football scores, but we're not really good at getting back and visioning.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: So are you predominantly right or left brain?
32:24
SPEAKER_01: Do you deliberately try to be more balanced?
32:27
SPEAKER_01: And if so, how?
32:29
SPEAKER_01: Number four, have you ever written a personal mission statement?
32:32
SPEAKER_01: What keeps you from doing so?
32:33
SPEAKER_01: So maybe walk through some of these questions, and I think you can have a really profitable discussion.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's pray.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: God, thank you that we get to come together this morning and eat a great breakfast.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh, thank you for Steve and Tom who prepared that for us.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: And thank you for beginning with the end in mind and how this is actually a biblical principle that we see in Paul.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: Help us to begin with the end in mind and in everything that we're doing, and to be intentional and to keep you at the center of our lives.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: Amen.