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01-16-12

5 reasons why commitment and responsibility trump the independent life

Most young peo­ple (and even older adults) run from things that might tie them down. A full time job, buy­ing a house, mar­riage, etc. They want to live a life that’s free. A life where if their desires change, there’s noth­ing hold­ing them back from fol­low­ing through on them. At a quick glance, peo­ple might say that inde­pen­dence is the sim­pler life. There’s less respon­si­bil­ity and there­fore more joy (after all, that’s what this blog is about, get­ting the most out of life through simplicity).

How­ever, I’m going to argue against that premise and lay out 5 rea­sons why hav­ing com­mit­ment and respon­si­bil­ity are more free­ing and enjoyable.

1. In order to build a life of sub­stance, there needs to be a solid foun­da­tion. You can’t build a sky­scraper on sand, nei­ther can you move up in life if you never set­tle down and take on respon­si­bil­ity. I’m not speak­ing of only mov­ing up finan­cially. In all areas of life, there’s room to grow, and growth requires a firm foun­da­tion (phys­i­cally and emotionally).

2. Per­ma­nence allows for you to invest. Whether it’s invest­ing in rela­tion­ships, the com­mu­nity, your church, etc. Not that you can’t make a dif­fer­ence in a person’s life in a short time period, but some of the most reward­ing moments in life are see­ing your hard work and invest­ments grow and mature over time.

3. Rou­tine takes away the stress of the unknown. Some could argue that hav­ing bills, a fam­ily, and a full time job can be stress­ful. On the other hand, it can be just as stress­ful when you’re always won­der­ing if you’ll get enough hours this week or if the you’ll have enough free­lance projects, your retire­ment, when that spe­cial some­one is going to come into your life, and liv­ing pay check to pay check can be rough when your car unex­pect­edly dies.

4. Sta­bil­ity and reg­u­lar­ity build cred­i­bil­ity. As you invest in those rela­tion­ships, your net­work grows, and assum­ing you’re a per­son of char­ac­ter, so does your rep­u­ta­tion. This is another aspect of mov­ing up (from point 1). A good name is to be more desired than pre­cious met­als (that’s what the Bible says). And as a Chris­t­ian, a good name is what you want because it implies an abil­ity to more effec­tively min­is­ter to other peo­ple and have influ­ence in their lives.

5. Per­ma­nence in the begin­ning allows for more inde­pen­dence in the long run. As you work that full time job, as you put in the years in one place, and as you build your sav­ings account, the oppor­tu­ni­ties abound. Per­haps you can’t take week­end road trips all the time in the begin­ning, and maybe you can’t spend the sum­mer back­pack­ing through Europe, but a well planned and invested life will give you more oppor­tu­ni­ties in the long run to do just as many, if not more, amaz­ing things that your friends did in the first few years of their young adult­hood. Because when you reach your 30s and you find your­self well estab­lished, your friends who didn’t want to set­tle will find them­selves fac­ing a harsh real­ity that they’re 10yr behind the eight ball hav­ing to start a career, and their days of inde­pen­dence will for the most part have ended, while yours are just beginning.

*Side note: If God’s called you to live a life as a missionary, evangelist, or mil­i­tary per­son­nel, that’s a dif­fer­ent story. I’m talk­ing about the peo­ple who aren’t nec­es­sar­ily look­ing to God’s leading.

10-11-11

John Flavel on Finding God’s Will

John Flavel:

If there­fore in doubt­ful cases you would dis­cover God’s will, gov­ern your­selves in your search after it by the fol­low­ing rules:

1. Get the true fear of God upon your hearts. Be really afraid of offend­ing him. God will not hide his mind from such a soul. “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will show them his covenant” (Psalm 25:14).
2. Study the Word more, and the con­cerns and inter­ests of the world less. The Word is light to your feet (Psalm 119:105), that is, it has a dis­cov­er­ing and direct­ing use­ful­ness as to all duties to be done and dan­gers to be avoided…
3. Reduce what you know into prac­tice, and you shall know what is your duty to prac­tice. “If any man do his will he shall know of the doc­trine” (John 7:17). “A good under­stand­ing have all they that do his com­mand­ments” (Psalm 111:10).
4. Pray for illu­mi­na­tion and direc­tion in the way that you should go.Beg the Lord to guide you in straits and that he would not per­mit you to fall into sin…
5. And this being done, fol­low Prov­i­dence so far as it agrees with the Word and no fur­ther. There is no use to be made of Prov­i­dence against the Word, but in sub­servience to it.

The Mys­tery of Prov­i­dence, 1678, (Carlisle, PA: Ban­ner of Truth Trust, 2006), 188–9, empha­sis mine.

HT: Jonathan Par­nell

03-11-11

How to Simplify When Things Aren’t So Simple

Life comes in vari­able sea­sons. Some­times we’re soar­ing on moun­tain tops while at other times we’re in the deep­est pits. Pits come in all dif­fer­ent shapes and sizes. Some are rela­tional pits, job pits, finan­cial pits, and a myr­iad of other things. These can be some legit issues that are tough to work through. It’s times like these that we feel trapped, life starts loos­ing it’s lus­ter. The awe­some life we were accus­tomed to becomes mundane.

That’s when it’s time to learn how to push through all that and con­tinue to sim­plify because hap­pi­ness comes through sim­plic­ity. Iron­i­cally, doing sim­ple things sim­pli­fies com­plex cir­cum­stances. The con­fus­ing and com­plex things in life are all in our heads. When we look back 10, 20, 3o years ago at dif­fi­cult things we went through, they never seem nearly as bad as when we were going through them. That’s because we’re no longer deal­ing with the emo­tions and pres­sures that came with that situation.

So, by find­ing things that sim­plify our life now, we can free our­selves from life’s pits because we real­ize life is big­ger than our prob­lems and life still goes on. I don’t know what you’re going through right now, and maybe you’re not going through any­thing and sit­ting on a moun­tain top; but we all have our pits and we all know peo­ple who are in the pits right now. So, here’s some things to do when you find your­self in those situations.

• Get some fresh air
• Block out an indef­i­nite amount of time to sit out­side at a park
• Ride a bike, go for a swim, run
• Read a biog­ra­phy about some­one else who went through a hard time to get some perspective
• Call a friend and talk about it
• Talk to an elderly person
• Do some­thing ther­a­peu­tic like cook or clean
• Go to a park where you’re around peo­ple but don’t have to socialize
• Plan a week­end get­away, it doesn’t have to be any­thing fancy or special
• Change up your weekly rou­tine and do some­thing out of the norm

DON’T

• Wal­low in self-​​pity
• Keep your­self locked up in your room all day
• Not talk to anyone
• Make your­self so busy try­ing to dis­tract yourself
• Over eat and snack on unhealthy foods
• Stay up at night stress­ing over the situation
• Watch tons of tv and movies (that’s not real life)
• Allow your­self to cre­ate inhibitions

If you like what you read, please con­sider sub­scrib­ing. Also, share this with your friends, and leave a com­ment with other sim­ple ideas.

09-16-10

The Danger of Retirement

Retire­ment is a funny thing. So many peo­ple set their hopes on the day they get to retire, kick back, and relax. But if you talk to most retired peo­ple, they’ll tell you their lives seem busier than ever. I’ve heard it said that retire­ment is just get­ting new treads on the wheels. Get it? Re-​​tire.

Ok, but in all seri­ous­ness, why are retired peo­ple some of the busiest peo­ple?  Well, here’s the con­clu­sions I’ve come to.

1. Plan­ning. The days that are planned out in more detail always seem to be more pro­duc­tive. Retired peo­ple let plan­ning go to the way side and as a result end up with more stuff on their plate than they were “plan­ning” on.
2. Peo­ple assume. Soci­ety looks at retired peo­ple as hav­ing loads of time. So, a retired per­son ends up with all the calls to watch grand-​​kids, help with house projects, and run­ning errands.
3. Oblig­a­tion. Retired feel some sense of oblig­a­tion to help with all the incom­ing requests because oth­er­wise they feel lazy since they have no “real” work.

So what’s my advice to all retired peo­ple? Iron­i­cally, it can be found in my last post The Rule of 3s. Cre­at­ing pri­or­i­ties and get­ting involved in some­thing that defines their life and cre­ates struc­ture will help get the mes­sage across to oth­ers that even though they’re not work­ing a 9–5, they still have a life.

Per­son­ally, I cringe at the thought of retire­ment. It goes against my whole life phi­los­o­phy. I believe you should do what you love, and if you love what you do, why would you want to stop!? Prob­lem solved.

06-23-10

Roll With the Punches

Just came off a crazy week with lots of things going down. It was one of those weeks where every day I was up early and crawl­ing into bed late with hardly any­thing done on my to-​​do list because there wasn’t enough time in the day. Sat­ur­day came around and I was com­pletely out of steam, but I had a Sum­mer­Fest to run for the kids in our church. Because my to-​​dos hadn’t been com­pleted, there were a num­ber of things that didn’t hap­pen at the Sum­mer­Fest as planned. By the end, I was run­ning on exhaust. So, need­less to say, I was ready for a lit­tle R’n’R this week.

Look­ing back, I have some observations:

• Things may not go as planned, but when done in con­fi­dence, no one will prob­a­bly know the difference
• There may be sea­sons of exhaus­tion, but life seems to have a way of bal­anc­ing itself out, so don’t stress and keep plug­ging away
• Sched­ules and plan­ning ahead are good, but I need to expect things to almost always change (some­times drastically)
• Build­ing myself on my expec­ta­tions can be dan­ger­ous because expec­ta­tions can be kicked out from under­neath my feet
• Learn to enjoy the spon­tane­ity of life
• I squeezed in sim­plic­ity when­ever I got the chance like hit­ting the snooze but­ton and enjoy­ing 10min of unplanned sleep, dri­ving with my win­dows down, tak­ing 5min to lay in the grass and watch the stars, and forc­ing myself to walk slower to take in things going on around me

What have you learned from your past week? And what are you doing to improve on it?