I’ve a friend named Stacey Gorton (guy) who started dating a girl years ago. I asked him how he was feeling about it, whether he thought she was going to work out. He said he hadn’t thought much about it, that it wasn’t time yet. What do you mean, I asked. Of course you’ve thought about it. He admitted he had, but that he wasn’t going to evaluate the relationship for another month. Instead, he was just going to enjoy it. He actually showed me his calendar and the following month had an X on a specific date. He said he had given himself permission to wait a month, and after this specific date, to ask himself whether it was working. This advice works in a lot more areas than just relationships. If you’ve got a new job and need to commit for a year, wondering about whether this church is the right fit for you or just about any major decision, you can give yourself permission to just be, to enjoy, and wait to evaluate after you’ve had enough time to experience some of the highs and lows. By the way, Stacy married the girl.
I’ve written my goals for the year: to eat healthy and exercise, to pay down my home, and to dig deeper into friendships. But while those are great ambitions, if I left them as just ambitions, or resolutions, chances are I wouldn’t get them done. Most people don’t stick with their new-years resolutions. But it’s not because they lack the resolve. It’s because their goals aren’t embedded in the context of a narrative. I’ve discovered something better than resolutions. If you’ve read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, you know I’ve reorganized my life into stories rather than goals. I don’t have any problem with goals. I like goals and still set them. But without an overarching plot, goals don’t make sense and are hard to achieve. A story gives a goal a narrative context that forces you to engage and follow through. People who are in great shape and have their finances in order probably don’t set goals to be in good shape or get their finances in order. They probably set goals of running a marathon or paying off their house. In other words, they think in narrative rather than goals. The goals get met in the [...]
This blog will officially get restarted on January, 3rd, but here’s a bit about living a great story for next year? Do you remember last years resolutions? Did you keep them? Are you a better person because you made them? Resolutions don’t help us have a better year, what helps with that is living a better story. What you do remember is the highs and lows, the toughest day of the year, the greatest achievement, that time you jumped off a bridge, climbed a mountain or asked the girl at the counter if you could have her e-mail address? Stories are built around risks. And if you want to live a better story this year, prepare to take some risks. Last year I made no resolutions. Instead, I decided to live a better story. I took some risks. One of the things I wanted to do was climb Mt. Hood. We tried. It was the worst weather in 70 years, but me and a bunch of friends had a great (if not cold and painful) time climbing around on the mountain in the middle of the night. We spent about two weeks orbiting the mountain, and nobody summited. There are [...]
