Here are several reasons to create a Personal Life Plan:

1. A personal Life Plan is a foundation: If you feel like your life is crumbling, it’s probably because you either have a foundation that isn’t quite strong enough or you’ve got too much weight on your foundation. Strengthening your foundation is accomplished through a clarification of values. What matters to you most? What do you really care about? What will matter in the end? All great questions, and all questions that strengthen our foundations.

2. A Personal Life Plan is a filter: If your foundation is already strong, another problem may involve taking on too much stuff. Either too many relationships, the wrong relationships, projects that aren’t aligned with who you are as a person or your personal values, or work that you could be delegating to somebody else. Creating a Life Plan automatically establishes a filter for your life. Because your values are clear, you will know much better what matters and what doesn’t, and you’ll be able to get some of the burden off your shoulders.

3. A Personal Life Plan gets you in touch with your heart: This is much more than a tool for busy executives. A Personal Life Plan helps you focus on what matters most: relationships. This is not a book about how to be more efficient, though it will accomplish that. The gist of a life plan involves strategically aiming your life toward a more fulfilling overall experience, setting great relationships as the  primary aim.

4. A Personal Life Plan can create community: I decided not to do this exercise alone. I invited four of my friends into the process with me. We each printed out the book and met at my house to get started. The first exercise led us into a discussion about our funerals. We each talked about what we want our funerals to look like. The conversation was deep, powerful, and connected us as a group of friends. I was surprised at how some of my friends answered the question, and even more surprised at how I answered the question. We left with some homework, which will be obvious when you read through the book, and will be meeting again and again until we’ve gone through the entire book and each have our Personal Life Plans in order.

Please download Mike’s e-book, Creating Your Personal Life Plan, and also consider filling out your plan with your closest friends, your family, or even your colleagues. I’ll be using this resource for years. Very thankful to Mike for creating it and giving it to us for free.

Creating a Personal Life Plan is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

I think coach Kelly has a point. I don’t think it’s completely true, but it’s largely true that if we feel nervous about a task we’ve got coming up, what would take the pressure off may be a few hours of preparation.

As I thought about the idea that preparation takes the pressure off, it motivated me to sit down and go through my major projects and do a little more preparing. I had a speech coming up, I had to go through the script and prepare a few scenes, I had a book tour lined up only  a couple weeks away. Now, for all those things, I’m feeling a bit more prepared than pressured.

But I’m not sure what to do about nerves.

Pressure is What You Feel When You’re Not Prepared is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

STOP TAKING SOCIAL CUES FROM YOUR PEERS.

Instead of taking social cues from people your age, take cues from people ten and twenty years older than you. Are you looking for a church that has a lot of people who are your age so you can hang out? That’s fine, but try looking for one where most of the people have families and perhaps a little grey hair. Why? Because the sooner you can relate to their priorities, the sooner you’ll be ready for the next stage of life. I’m in my late thirties but I’m more interested in hanging out with people who are retired. What’s it teaching me? It’s teaching me what matters later in life is friendships, family and love. In matters of faith, what matters to them is not theological debate, but closeness with Jesus and unity with believers.

Element of Success: Make Old Friends Old Friends is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

“It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.”

My friend Bob, who is about ten years older than I am, told me recently that, at least in our culture, your twenties are about getting educated, your thirties are about accumulating resources (becoming financially sustainable), your forties are about building (families, houses, careers, ministries, impact) and your fifties are about enjoying what you’ve built (and perhaps pressuring your kids to get married and make babies)… He did not intend this as advice, he was only making an observation. But I tend to think it’s a pretty good path. It takes time to build influence, to establish connections, and to build confidence in others at your abilities. But delay the process and, well, you are in what psychologists call “suspended adolescence.”

To be honest, most of my friends who are in their twenties are seriously ambitious and enormously accomplished. I think of my friend Justin Zoradi over at These Numbers Have Faces, or Chase Reeves who is building his little blog empire, or Joshua Dubois who runs the Presidents Faith-Based Partnerships and Community Initiatives Program, or Jenny White who is heading up Charlie Peacock’s Art House Program in Dallas. It’s hard for me to see twenty-somethings as kids (unless we start talking about music, in which they trade in bands like children with baseball cards, hardly taking time to actually listen to the music! Call me an agist. I know I am an agist) but apparently the phenomenon is real. So if you’re in your early twenties and it’s just after noon and you’re crawling out of the bed you grew up sleeping in and surfing internet sights with a laptop on your belly, here’s some tips:

1. Lose your friends: If your friends aren’t ambitious, if they don’t have clear plans, you probably won’t either. This doesn’t mean to reject them, but it does mean if your friends want to lay around doing nothing all day, get some new friends. The single greatest influence playing on you is your friends. You will become like the people you hang around.

2. Read books: Try to read a book a week for the next six weeks. This alone will stimulate your mind and you’ll start being bored with being bored. You’ll want to explore ideas. Your conversations with friends will become boring. You’ll wonder how many more conversations you can have about what happened the last time you guys were drunk.

3. Write down your goals for the next five years, one year, one month and one week: Do this now. If you don’t know what you want, that’s a very serious problem, so just write down anything and start moving. A body in motion stays in motion. It doesn’t matter if you change your mind later. You can’t change your mind about what you want until you start moving forward.

4. Ask your parents for criticism: Criticism from people who love you is a gift and a blessing. It’s going to be hard to take, and the first thing you are going to want to do is criticize them back, but don’t do it. Just soak it in, then act on whatever they say. Nobody is perfect, but people who don’t accept criticism end up worse off in the end.

5. Accept hardship: Hardship is part of every life, and God intends it to purify you and prepare you. If you reject hardship, you reject life.

6. Cut the cynicism: Leaders don’t roll their eyes, children do. Is the Dave Matthews band so yesterday? Great. You and the kids in the high school cafeteria can talk about it all day. People work very hard to do what they do, and when you roll your eyes you’re being insulting. Children are insulting, adults appreciate craftsmanship over fashion. That said, the last Dave Matthew’s record really wasn’t that bad.

7. Accomplish something: Nothing builds true confidence like success. Want to be a filmmaker? Make a short film and enter it into a contest. Want to write? Write an essay and submit it to a journal. Pick something and practice and work until you’re good at it. You can only change direction if you are in motion.

And of course there are a million more. But this should get the ball rolling, or at least get you out of bed.

Know any twenty-something bucking the trend? Provide a link in the comments section…

If 40 is the New 30 Then is 20 the New Junior High? is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

In part, I completely understand how my friend feels. But I’d not lump that characteristic in with the church as I’d lump it in with all of humanity. There are pockets of people who do not seem to make a big deal out of the differences in others as much as the similarities, but those pockets are few, and some of them are part of the church and some of them are not. Whether these are church people or not doesn’t seem to matter, rather, they are people who, for some reason, can just be comfortable letting people be whoever they are.

Regardless, I found my friends answer interesting, and it’s something I will think about for a while.

My question to you is, did the community you grew up in teach you to see the “otherness” in others, or did your community teach you to see the common humanity in us all?

*Because I will be out of the country, I can’t moderate comments. Comments have been disabled on this blog entry. Thank you for understanding.

Does Your Culture Teach You to See People’s Differences? is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

My best friend Annette and I laid on our towels until we realized that someone was standing in our sun. We squinted up at a big man with a big camera wearing a Girls Gone Wild hat.

He told us that if we went out in the water and kissed and took off our bikini tops, he’d give us each a hat. We stared up at him. Where to start, really?

We sputtered out unrelated phrases like, “Um, those are our husbands, right there in the water …” and, “You know, that’s not really our deal …” and, “Uh, we’re like a lot older than you think we are …” Finally, we gave up explaining and said, “No, thank you. No. No, thank you.”

He shuffled away, and a few minutes later, there were lots of girls in the water, kissing and taking their tops off.

Huh. Questions abound. Our first question: “Wait—did he really think we were that young?” But then our second question: “Wait—​did he really think we were that stupid?”  We were dumbfounded, and then a little angry. Just for conversation’s sake, where am I going to wear that hat? On a job interview? To my grandma’s house?

My friends Brannon and Chris have a little girl named Emme, and before she was born, Brannon and Chris declared their house a princess-free zone. There could be pink, there could be dresses and lace and babies galore, but no tiaras, no wands, and no princes coming to rescue any little princesses.

I love this. I think maybe we should all live in a princess-free zone. I think the current cultural messaging that tells women it’s attractive to play dumb and fragile and hope that they’re saved by their beauty is incredibly destructive.

I’m not anti-feminine. I operate, in many ways, within squarely traditional gender roles. I love to cook, I hate to drive, and I’m terrible with technology of all kinds.  I fit squarely within the stereotypes, and then also not, largely because I was raised by a strong leader who recognized aspects of himself in me. I wasn’t raised to play dumb, or play cute, or play princess. I learned to work hard, to develop my skills, to contribute on a team and in society, and it drives me bonkers when women depend instead on their sexuality or their fragility. I think there’s a better way.

If you’re a woman, and you get what you want by batting your eyelashes or faking fragility, and then you wonder why you’re not taken seriously in your career or given responsibility in your church, I think you may have believed the reigning cultural lie about what makes us attractive. And if you’re a man, and you celebrate femininity only as it presents itself in beauty and tenderness, please consider widening your view of what it means to value women. Consider strength, intelligence, passion, and compassion.

I want businesses and government systems and certainly churches to be led more and more often by women. I believe that men and women would both benefit from it in dozens of ways. But if that’s going to happen, I think we have to declare a princess-free zone. No tiaras, no Girls Gone Wild, no pretending we can’t carry things. No fairytales, no waiting around to be rescued, and absolutely no playing dumb.

Excerpted from Bittersweet, by Shauna Niequist

Excerpt from Bittersweet, from Shauna Niequist is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

In real life, the bad guy doesn’t always get killed off, but that doesn’t change the fact we don’t like him. And ultimately, bad guys get what they deserve. They end up alone, or worse, surrounded and yet lonely. They may take advantage of people but the world doesn’t run on money or fame, it runs on love, and when you take advantage of people, you end up without love.

The other problem with real life is it’s hard to tell whether or not you are the bad guy. We all believe we are the good guy or that our words and actions are justified. The other day I lost my temper at a stranger. I really let them have it. I still feel like they deserved it. It was a bully situation in which somebody was being threatened. But I went too far, honestly. I pretty much said things that person will be thinking about for years. I went for the jugular and put him in his place. Or perhaps it went in one ear and out the other, I don’t know. But regardless, I was thinking about that today, and realized that the things I said could be placed word for word into a film in which the character that said it got “what they deserved” at the end and nobody would really care. Stink. Can’t believe I said those things.

The point is, story can teach us something about what we should and shouldn’t say or do. Before you unload on your spouse or kids, ask yourself if a character in a movie treated their wife or husband the way you are about to treat your wife or husband, would they be the good guy or the bad guy? Story can help us step outside ourselves and see a dynamic with more wisdom.

The sad truth is, good guys often get taken advantage of. When I lose my temper, it’s usually because I don’t want to get taken advantage of, I don’t want to be disrespected. I’ve stepped into a game in which people are keeping score, and I’m determined not to lose. But the truth is, there is no game, it’s just a hoax, and the only way to show others there is no game is to lose and show how much it didn’t matter. Perhaps that’s why Jesus asks us to turn the other cheek, to give our shirt to somebody who asks for our coat and so forth. He wants us to show people we aren’t playing their game.

Let Story Guide You Pt. 1 – Would the Hero Say That? is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

If you don’t like formula books, or books that are overly spiritual (good, practical advice with language and scripture passages that seem like they are placed to pacify church people rather than actually enlighten us about a text) then you’ll like Steve’s book.

I won’t say too much more, but please, if you are a single guy in your twenties, just buy the book today and read it as soon as possible. You’ll be glad you did.

Thanks for sending the book, Steve. Sorry it took me a couple months to finally read it. Where were you when I was twenty, friend?

Advice to Single Guys About Dating is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

I hate exercise. It’s completely stupid. I’d no sooner stand around in a gym lifting weights than you’d eat your own poop. Eating your own poop makes complete sense because it’s filled with vital nutrients but standing around in a gym lifting weights makes no sense at all. I never, ever exercise. Call me lazy if you want, but I don’t exercise and don’t see the point of it. I don’t set fitness goals, I don’t plan out my week, I don’t work with a trainer (not the kind of trainer you’re thinking of. I work with a trainer sometimes and fitness trainers could learn something from my trainer, actually. If fitness trainers threw a mini-snickers at their clients every time they did a push up people would want to do more push ups but that’s off the subject.) The thing is, I like my body. I don’t think about it’s limitations at all, or the fact that I’m a bit more pudgy than I was only a year ago. I don’t sit around wishing I was a more fit dog and I never will. So my only advice about exercising is never, ever think about it or want to do it or plan it or hire a trainer (unless they have a fannie pack of mini-snickers bars.)

So that’s all the advice I have for you about exercise.

That said, here’s what I love. I love to run after a ball. I love to fetch and I could fetch all day. It’s my absolute favorite. My favorite favorite fetching is when Don throws the ball into water. If we are at the river, Don throws it way down the beach and I run down the beach and tackle the ball in the shallow water like it was a baby antelope. I make a huge splash about it and if the ball is in deeper water I swim as hard as Michael Phelps and when I get the ball I take it down like an alligator drowns a swimming cat. Then I run it back to Don and drop it at his feet and he throws it again. We do this for hours. If we are at the reservoir it’s a whole different system. Don throws it into the water and I dive off the edge like a cliff diver in Rio and land flat on my belly with such a loud splash that everybody in the park turns and points at me in time to see me catch my stride, making a two-inch wake in front of my snout, reeling the ball in by feet per second. I sometimes get distracted by ducks so I lose the ball. Ducks are complete jerks because they make you swim around in circles. I’d seriously like to get my teeth into a duck. I can see their little buts under their feathers just a half inch above the water and I want to bite their duck butts. But then I go get the ball and bring it back. I do this until I am completely tired and I can’t walk anymore. Then I lay down in the shade. When I want to chase the ball again, I pick it up and lay it down next to Don and get into a hunting position, very frozen, you can’t move an inch, you just have to stare at the ball like you’re a statue and then Don picks it up and you get to start the whole thing over again.

But I never, ever exercise. Exercise makes no sense at all.

Lucy’s Blog Pt. 7 – How I Stay Fit Without Exercising is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog

I pretty much like everybody. I don’t like them instantly, though, but if they show the slightest bit of niceness I like them immediately after and I like them a lot. When somebody first comes to the door I bark at them to let them know this is where we live. I set very clear boundaries. And then I get so excited to see them and be with them I just about explode. When my bladder was smaller I would just pee right there on the floor. I peed because I was very excited and also to show that I would be submissive and I wasn’t going to threaten them. Not all dogs are as trusting, but that’s another subject.

Here’s the thing about people, though. Not everybody is going to like you back. But that’s okay. You shouldn’t hardly think about that at all. A dog can only take so much love. I have more than I even know what to do with. Here’s how I got it:

1. I am genuinely excited about seeing and being with people. Seriously, if you are excited about people, you improve the chances of them being excited about you. It’s best to genuinely love them and want to be with them and enjoy their smells. One of the differences between people and dogs is that people can fake whether they want to be around somebody but dog’s cant. People like dogs because dogs are genuine. But people can be genuine too if they practice and they learn to trust and forgive.

2. I don’t get bitter when somebody doesn’t like me. If somebody doesn’t want to pet me, I could care less. I will be very nice to them and excited to see them all the same. I don’t take it personally at all. Remember, there’s plenty of love to go around. The cool thing about dogs is we really don’t care who loves us. I don’t place the value of one persons love higher or lower than another’s, except for my master. If you show partiality, you are going to have a very hard time loving and being loved and you’re going to be miserable. It’s a sad thing about humans that they want people to love them who just don’t, and they don’t accept love from the people who really do love them in the first place.

3. I know my place. I know that I am just a dog, so I don’t get all up on people too much. Okay, I do it a little too much, but not too much too much. If you liked people as much as I liked people, you’d want to stand on them while they were sitting on the couch drinking coffee too. I seriously love people. But I also know that any creature can feel like a burden if they don’t have self esteem and the ability to be okay with just themselves, laying on the dog bed, for a little while. You can still watch them from the dog bed. They are so awesome. I love them.

4. I avoid people who hurt me. If somebody is mean to me, I will remember it forever. I will associate that person with a mean time. I don’t hold it against them, but I don’t get too close to them. In fact, I’d just prefer it if they weren’t around. But I certainly don’t sit around thinking how I’d like to hurt them. When they are gone, they are gone. My life is really good in this way, and I think it’s sad that some dogs have to be with people who hurt them. It’s sad for people in that situation, too. If they can get away and to a better place, I think they should. Or maybe they should try their hardest to talk it out. But if they keep getting hurt, they need to move on.

5. I don’t hold grudges. Sometimes you meet people who don’t love you. They may even not like you at all or want to be with you. With these people, I am just as nice. If they don’t want to be with me then they walk away. That’s their thing and I don’t take it personally. And if they ever come back and want to be friends, I am all in. Like I said, I don’t take it personally. The best way to be forgiving is just to wipe the slate clean and call it even as often as you can. Actually, though, that’s a human thing, because I don’t keep score. I just like people all the time.

6. I am loyal. I will never turn on a friend. Never. I understand going into it that I am going to love them more than they love me, and they won’t always be so loving, but that doesn’t matter. I can only control me, and I really like people and will never turn on them. Some dogs will but those aren’t good dogs.

There’s probably more but I want to go outside. Do you want to go swimming? We go to the river. I want to tell you how to get along with other dogs, next. But not right now.

Lucy’s Blog Pt. 5 – How to Love and be Loved is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog