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Christian Apologetic
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Make things
happen, Achieve
Personal Significance, X-Out the Negatives,
Internalize Right
Principles, March to
a Mission, Integrate
All of Life, Zero
in on Caring for People, Energize
Internally, Realign
Rigorously, Stay the
Course
[What is Success] [What
it Means to Succeed] [Build
Success in All Life Areas]
[Champion Positive Impact] [Success
Depends on What We Do with Ourselves]
I have also chosen a somewhat lesser known work which also expounds
upon the idea of a closely examined life, but rather than the seven rather
disparate "habits" discussed elsewhere in Stephen Covey's, 7 Habits of Highly
Effective People, this work tries to frame all of life into an easily
remembered acronym - "Maximizers." Each of the letters in this acronym
stand for a word which describes this paradigm of life. Similar to
7 Habits, Maximizers is based upon spiritual principles. Although
not necessarily Christian, Maximizers principles are certainly Christian
oriented and I believe can be adopted into a Christian's closely observed life. Also, the Maximizers book contains numerous self-evaluation
exercises which should help incorporation of these principles into your
lifestyle which will, I believe, help us all to be better Christians and better
people, while achieving what the author terms, "authentic success."
Everybody wants to be successful. Yet few people really have a concrete idea in their mind as
to what success is to them. The
concept of success in any individual has been developed and conditioned over
many years by the media, your family upbringing, your peers and so ships, and
your various experiences. Some
people have an idea that success might relate to money, position, influence, or
perhaps the one who has the most toys at the end of their life wines. Usually there are five concepts of success: power,
prosperity, position, prestige, and pleasure.
Let us examine each of these individually.
Power. Many consider the acquisition of power
to be the defining characteristic of success.
Certainly Hitler had a live power, but most people would not consider
Hitler as being a defining character of success.
Or, consider the stories that Wall Street provides. Many of the successful business people have enormous power,
but they have this power at the expense of broken marriages and failing
families. Indeed, the command
philosophy is that if you are going to succeed in business than you have to
forfeit success in other areas of life. However,
I don't think that is correct. A
truly successful person does not have to sacrifice his or her family.
Prosperity. Certainly materialism is a major
problem today. Yet processing
things and having money are not in of themselves wrong.
Is only when we become preoccupied with the sayings that we begin to miss
the true purpose in meaning of life. The
Jan. 28, 1960 issue of The Washington Post records a letter from John Steinbeck
to add Les Stevenson. Steinbeck
wrote, "a strange species we are. We
can stand anything God and nature throw at us save only plenty.
If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would
have it on its knees: miserable, greedy, and sick."
Position. Some people believe that position
defines success. That is, the more
important you are the more successful you are by definition.
Certainly however, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcus had prominent positions in
the world. Yet most people would
agree that they do not exemplify success. A
United States Congressman had displayed on his bulletin board many of the hate
letters written against him. Underneath
these letters was a quotation from the Bible: "Woe to you when all men
speak well of you.”
This great man had enough humility and wisdom to know that
a responsible position inevitably carries with its substantial criticism, both
fair and unfair. Therefore,
position alone isn't a worthy measurement for success.
Prestige. What about prestige, being known and
well-recognized? Many people who
have it can tell you that prestige can be very fleeting indeed.
Baseball star Pete Rose was a man of prestige and one moment and man of
infamous notoriety the next. Prestige
is certainly no guarantee of success. In
fact, many people who have prestige received an equal or greater amount of
denigration. Think about what the
tabloids due to the "beautiful people." They portray them in the worst possible light in order to
sell their newspapers. Is that
success?
Pleasure. “The
rule of life is to make business a pleasure and pleasure are only business”,
said Aaron Burr. That amply conveys
the rampant entity of pleasure seeking in our day in nature.
Widespread as the desire for pleasure is, and as well documented in our
day and age in particular books such as Through
The Culture Of Narcissism, there's nothing knew about it.
It's simply a form of Eden. SIG
and as a philosophical worldview in which the experience in appreciation of
pleasure are the highest goals. This
worldview has been around since literally the beginning of time. For example, Aristippus (435-356 B.C.) whose motto was,
"eat, drink, and be married, for tomorrow you die" could also fit the
pleasure workers of the '90s, even though he was one of the earliest known
advocates of the philosophy of Eden isn't.
To be a hedonistic is to make a god out of pleasure.
Rabbi Harold Kushner shares this illustration of a woman in
his congregation who escaped the bad marriage and seemed to all concerned to be
happy ending control of her life, contends with her singleness and freedom.
But in a personal counseling meeting with the Rabbi, she confided,
"I know people and the need-the parties, the
vacations, the freedom for responsibility.
I wish I could make them understand how much I envy them.
I wish I could tell them how soon it all gets to be dull and
repetitious, until you find yourself doing things you really don't want to do,
just not to be doing the same thing all over again, and how quickly I would
trade all of this for the sound the car door closing and familiar steps coming
up the stairs at night."
Building a life around cells focused pleasure is simply not
satisfying in the long run.
You can easily see the problems that develop.
People put all their eggs in one basket to chase power, prosperity,
pleasure, prestige, or pleasure to find success.
But once they have it, they realize that they haven't succeeded in all in
the most significant areas of their lives.
Glenn Bland, in his book Success, provides the best
example I know of the importance of priorities. He tells other meeting in 1923 of some other world's most
successful finance years. These
financial giants ruled the world of money: Charles Schwab, president of the
largest steel company in America; Samuel Insull, president of the largest
utility company, Howard Hopson, president of the largest gas company, Arthur
Cutten, the great wheat speculator; Richard Whitney, president of the New York
Stock Exchange; Albert Hall, Secretary of the Interior in President Harding's
cabinet; Jesse Livermore, the great "bear" on Wall Street; Ivan
Krueger, head of the world's greatest monopoly, and Leon Fraser, president of
the bank of international settlements.
These men were the movers and shakers, the kind of people
that many envy and wish to be like. Yet
something went terribly wrong with these men lives, for 25 years later.
- Charles
Schwab went bankrupt
- Sanyo
and soul died in a foreign land, penniless and a fugitive injustice
- Howard
Hopson was insane,
- Arthur
Cutten was insolvent and died abroad,
- Richard
Whitney had just been released from prison,
- Albert
Hall had just been pardoned from prison and died at home, broke
- Jesse
Livermore committed suicide,
- Ivan
Krueger committed suicide,
- Leon
Fraser committed suicide.
Certainly, power, prestige, position, prosperity, and
pleasure don't always result in personal devastation. In fact, they are rather amoral-neither good or bad in on
themselves. They are used or abuse
determines the outcome of a person's life.
Certainly, he should not be discouraged from enjoying the rewards of your
hard work. However, is important to
leverage does rewards for the good of others as well as for yourself.
In the final analysis, we need to ask this question:
"at the end of your life, how will you know your successful?"
Without exception, I have never heard anyone answered, "by my power,
press Perry, position, prestige, pleasure, or any other related area."
Rather, we hear such statements such as "no one ever said on his
deathbed that he wished he worked more."
Or, "I've never seen a hearse towing a U-Haul."
Indeed, most people usually answer with statements such as
piece,
- It's
important how my kids turned out, it
- that
I live a personally rich and fulfilling life?
- Did
I positively change lives?
- Did
I build meaningful in deep relationships?
- That
I really love my spouse?
- Did
I make a difference?
One day, Harold Kushner who is a Jewish Rabbi, received a
visit from an executive who was in the depressed state.
The man gradually was able to unburden himself.
He spoke of a funeral he attended just the last week.
It wasn't the funeral that bothered him so much; rather, it was set in a
brief. Since the man's death, his
name had been taken off his office door and his desk quickly cleaned out,
"as though he were never there."
The executive then was able to describe a vision that come
to him during the funeral, "of a small serene forest.
Inside that forest was a placid pond, and it was as though a small pebble
had been dropped in net placid pond. It
quickly fell to the bottom. There
were a few ripples, but they were quickly gone.
And it was so that pebble were never there."
What had frightened this executive was a feeling that his
own life seemed like that, although he hadn't traveled extensively, made a lot
of money, met a lot of people, inexperienced a lot of things, his life seemed
insignificant and meaningless, "as though I've never lived."
We need to determine our concept of success and how it is
defined. How we live in scratch
that have we deliberately developed one, war is our concept of success simply
involved through the influence of the culture about us?
And is at the right concept of success for us.
If we're not sure as to our definition of success, then we
need to develop a new way of looking at this problem. It is important to move away from thinking of success as
simply a unidimensional concept of power, prosperity, position, prestige, or
pleasure. Rather, we need to begin
building a definition of success that centers on eternal values: what are the
things that ultimately count in life? How
do want people to remember you when you die?
Recently, there was in annual national presidential prayer
breakfast in Washington D.C.. Many
of the most important people in the United States and other countries were
present. President and Mrs. Bill
Clinton, Vice President and Mrs. Al Gore, among other important dignitaries sat
at the front desk. The main speaker
immediately gave the true meaning of authentic success.
It was instantly obvious to everyone in the room that the most successful
person there was this speaker.
She was not a particularly dynamic speaker.
As she read her tall, she seldom looked up.
She couldn't even be seen because of her diminutive size.
And her speech was as politically incorrect as could be imagined. She spoke out strongly against abortion.
The president and First Lady squirmed in their seats.
The conservatives in the room cheered in a show of approval.
But then she blasted birth control.
That shut the males of many of the conservatives in the room and almost
everybody else. If win this speaker
finished. She received a thunderous
standing ovation. She herself live
a life of authentic success even though she didn't have power, prosperity,
position, prestige, or pleasure as we typically know it.
But she did have real power, real prosperity, real position, broke
prestige, and real power.
I don't mean to suggest that in order to become
authentically successful we need to become poor and live in squalor and
anonymity. However, I do suggest
that are success in life has much to do with our sense of caring, sacrifice,
character, and contributions-values that Mother Teresa embodied.
How will you be remembered?
What epitaph do you want written on your tombstone?
How should your obituary read?
The name Alfred Noble is often associative with a Nobel
peace prize. Yet it that famous
prize is only half of his story. He
was a Swedish chemist who made his fortune by inventing dynamite and other
powerful explosives used for weapons of war.
Years later, when Nobel's brother died, a newspaper accidentally printed
and obituary for him instead. He
was described as a man who became rich by enabling people to kill each other in
unprecedented quantities. Shaken by
this assessment of his life, Nobel result to use his fortune to honor
accomplishments that benefited humanity. Thus he became to create four of the Nobel peace prize, come
on others.
Alfred Nobel had a rare opportunity to evaluate his life as
an, and still be able to change it. Now
we can have that same opportunity in this store exercise.
Howard Kushner wrote,
"Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth,
or power. Those rewards create
almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for the meaning, for the sense that we
have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will
be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it."
Isn't that really the issue when it's all said and done?
We were manned by our create four to succeed authentically
in all vital areas of our life and to make a positive difference with our life.
In short, we were meant to maximize our life.
Any success we might attain must be a holistic success-that
is, balanced, integrated success, one that is in harmony with who we are.
If we succeeded work and yet fatal in personal relationships, then we
have not succeeded in life. And if
we accomplish great things but live miserably in the process, then we also
haven't succeeded. Only a life that
is rooted in real and lasting values can be turned successful.
We are a whole person composed of an emotional, physical,
volitional, spiritual, and relational sides.
We also have responsibilities in various rounds of life-business, family,
and community. Each of these areas
has its own subresponsibilities as well. They
are all interrelated. We cannot
afford to succeed in our finances and yet fail in our marriage.
We cannot achieve levels of excellence in our business and yet burnout
physically emotionally. We must be winning in all vital areas in order to be
successful.
Some of this may think, "We can't have it all!"
But we were meant to have it all, the key is having it all correctly.
For example, if we are a manager, this idea of holistic
success might make us a little nervous. After
all, if people give attention to their personal lines, families, places of
worship, and communities, won't that hurt the bottom line?
No, this is precisely incorrect!
First, we have to define the bottom line not only and
financial terms, but also in human terms. We
need to realize that a well-managed life produces a well-managed business.
Happy and growing people are more productive; and healthy families feed
profitable ventures.
The goal of this exercises to help us refined, clarify, and
articulate a definition of success that is in harmony with the real person
inside of each of us, and will allow us to leave a balanced, fulfilled,
insignificant life.
Maximizing our impact on herself and knows about us is to
be a champion for good. A number of
years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French philosopher in statement, made this
insightful comments about the United States, "America is great because
America is good, and she ceases to be good then she'll cease to be great."
Right now, America ceasing to be good.
We have a breakdown in the greatness of our country because of erosion of
moral values and ignorance of the underlying principles that builds our society.
Society reflects the health of major institutions which
reflect the health of our families which reflect the health of individuals.
All groups of society, from government to the family, are influenced
ultimately buy their leadership. A
quality of leadership, or the lack of it, is at the root of our problems. We need ethical, value driven manned and women of deep
convictions encourage, people who have carefully determined and developed their
world fees and have decided upon a way of looking at life that is based upon
proven, authentic valleys.
Great cultures fall apart when great prosperity fools the
people into apathy. As people sit
back and enjoy their good fortune, their blessing of prosperity turns into a
cursive laziness and ingratitude. Eventually
that permeates the values and ethics of that society, and any in the entire
culture collapses.
Why does this happen?
A passage in the Bible teaches that the people fall when there is no
leadership (Proverbs 29:18). Lawrence
Cohen, the former mayor of St. Paul MN, said, "if cynicism and apathy are
to be reversed, the national leadership must take stains from a position of
honesty and integrity." A
former president of Harvard University said, "There is a very serious
dearth of people who seemed able to supply convincing answers, or even point to
decisions toward solutions."
In every major area of our culture today, people are crying
out for leaders of vision, moral courage, values, and ethics.
Leaders are needed who will say, "I want to make a difference and I
can make a difference." Such
leaders need to have lives that are deeply rooted in solid principles and driven
by universal, authentic values. They
have a strong sense of direction because they hold firmly to certain absolute
values.
Most people truly do wish to become that kind of person-a
champion. Most people want their
lives to be significant by helping to change the world. We need not only to take something out of the world, but we
need to put something back into it; to make a difference.
Just as physical laws govern the physical universe, so do
universal principles govern human existence.
If these laws are violated, inevitable consequences result.
These principles are abiding truth, universal absolute and a negotiable.
They are as factual as the law of gravity. We may not understand them were even buy into them, but that
does not invalidate them. They
simply won't move; they are affirmed an unchanging.
Our choice is either to discover and fully embrace them and thereby
succeed as we are meant to, or to ignore them and fail without ever knowing why.
If it if we want to succeed in life, then we need to
passionately pursue the discovery of truth and know-how to apply the truth
appropriately in our life. That is
cold wisdom. The word wisdom in the
ancient Hebrew language referred to craftsmanship.
To be wise was to be a craftsman at living, and participant of life.
The value of wisdom is far above the greatest treasures on
earth. In wisdom in good judgment
well together, for wisdom knows where to discover knowledge and understanding.
Wisdom gives good advice. It
is the strength that allows leaders to lead well into make good rules.
If we see This wisdom with all our might then we will find it.
It is the source of unending riches, honor, justice, and life.
There are three major assumptions which comprise this game
plan,
- Assumption
one. We are moving toward our
definition of success.
- Assumption
two. Authentic success is
maximizing all of our life and impact.
- Assumption
three. Wisely applying
universal principles is the key to authentic success.
There are 10 nonnegotiable principles that serve as the
organizing system about which we can develop all the subsequent fruits that
should flow in our life. These
principles formed the framework of the maximizers acrostic that will be
developed. This acrostic can be
further broken down into three categories of authentic success: attitude,
belief, and commitment. The power
of these three categories comes through aligning them together. Some people have good attitudes but lack commitment and
follow-through. Other people have
solid beliefs, but negative attitudes sabotage their authentic success.
Other people are volitionally strong and can commit themselves to
accomplish great things but consistently fall short either because their belief
systems or attitudes are incorrect. Finally,
others may be solid and all these areas but lack the integration of these
principles into a solid system.
As our attitudes, beliefs, and commitments become aligned
within us, our authentic success inevitably grows. They are all in direct proportion to each other.
If you're going to authentically succeed, then we must
focus on our roots in the upon the fruits of our life. The fruits of our life includes happiness, fulfilling
relationships, prosperity, infants, position, and so forth.
The roots however are the nonnegotiable principles around which we build
our life. These are the basic
attitudes, beliefs, and commitments that are communicated an illustrated through
the maximizers concept. The soil
for these roots is wisdom or universal truths.
Most of us have probably spent our lives focusing on
obtaining fruit. We need to stop in
this pursuit and rather make a commitment down to spend the rest of our life
focusing on roots to; those principles that when fully embraced produce
authentic success.
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