Thing I’ve come to realize #2

“Thing I’ve come to realize #2”:            It’s not just about doing your best, its much more than that.

The concept of doing your best all around, teachers, parents, coworkers, and peers use the phrase “do your best” on a daily basis as when motivating others. When I stopped to think about it I realized that many people sell themselves short by “doing their best”.  For example, when someone is doing a task and asked why it is not being done a certain way or in a certain timeframe, a common response is, “well… I’m doing my best.”  That statement may be true some of the time, but I am willing to wager that many people say it as an excuse for laziness. Personally, when I think of doing my best, I think of finishing a task, but not only that. I think of finishing it to a higher standard than my own, in minimal amount of time, and having a good attitude about it.

When I stopped and examined what my expectations for “doing my best” were, I realized that I was including a higher standard that was not my own into the equation. If I was left to my own devices I would probably do an average job, take my good, sweet time, and depending on the job, have a crummy attitude while doing it. “My best” isn’t really “my best” if viewed this way because I have the capacity to do so much better (and so do you!). This is why I came to the conclusion that it’s more than doing your best.  I believe that some sort of higher standard needs to be put into practice or we are not pushing our personal envelope. In my case, Christ is my motivation to perform at a higher level (if you want to know WHY Christ motivates me, ask). Some people insist on constantly comparing themselves to their peers, national averages, and worldly standards (which I am guilty of as well), but I want to challenge all of us to seek motivation through God’s unfailing love, not by people’s judgments of you.  To be quite frank, YES, this does take effort, but the reward of hard work is far greater than the temporary relief of our apathy.

Things I've Come to Realize

I think I’m going to start a series blogs entitled ‘Things I’ve Come to Realize.’ In these blogs I will be sharing tokens of wisdom that I’ve acquired, epiphanies that I’ve had, and things that have been on my mind along with the context that accompanies them. For your convenience as the reader and my sanity as the writer, I’m going to number the ‘things I’ve come to realize.’

“Thing I’ve come to realize #1”:            I shouldn’t get upset about things that I cannot control.

 I was thinking about this recently.  How often do we as humans get ‘our panties in a bunch’ over things that happen to us?  My conclusion was: a lot… too often, perhaps.  I was talking to a friend recently who is going through tension in her family.  The tension was bad enough that she told me, “my parents are trying ruin my life.” (highly unlikely in reality, but this shows the severity of her emotions) It turns out that her parents made decisions that directly affected her, but did not take time to ask for her opinion.  I’m sure if we were in her shoes we’d feel hurt, angry, neglected, and probably have a similar response. Do I think this gives people an excuse to have a negative reaction to those situations? Definitely not. Don’t get me wrong, I’m guilty of this just as much as the next person, but this is one area in my life that I am trying to turn around.  If you think about this rationally, what do you get out of an intense negative reaction (ie. Name calling, false accusations, pointing fingers, etc) when life throws you a curveball? Absolutely nothing in my opinion. At best you will get stressed, angry, and worried about the issue (again, this is under the assumption that the problem is something you cannot control). 

The idea that I’m trying to pitch is that instead of these negative reactions in uncontrollable situations, we should give the issue to God.  I believe in a God that is all knowing, all powerful, all loving, and highly personal.  If a situation gets me so worked up that I am no longer acting normally or rationally, I’m telling God that I don’t trust Him to take care of me the way he has promised. I would be saying that my imperfect, finite knowledge is better than His.  I would essentially be calling Him a liar for breaking His promises and asserting my own plan in His place. Not only that, but I would also be allowing the situation to dictate my emotions.  Emotions are not something easily controlled, but I do believe they are controllable. I’m sure you can draw your own conclusion from here, but first I want to leave you with a message that I got from a fortune cookie of all places.  It reads “The best way to navigate through life is to give up all of our controls.” I taped this on the inside cover of my bible as a constant reminder that I need to give up uncontrollable circumstances and my emotional responses to them to God since He’s in undoubtedly in control, not me.

For those who ask, "why?".

Why am I writing this blog?

I have two reasons in mind. First is, as you probably know, I have a lot to say, that much is obvious.  The second reason is, writing a blog seemed like a good idea at the time. The time being 3:00am...