The price of discipleship is a better deal than buying a Da Vinci for a penny

I’ve recently been able to step back and take a good look at the things I am holding on to in exchange for following Christ with abandon.  Such ridiculous things, almost all of them revolving around my pride and having people’s praise and respect.

Even writing this on my public domain is a stretch for me as I don’t want to be seen as a crazy by the business world.

Everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. – Matthew 10:32

I read an excerpt from the writings of Thomas Merton this morning and this is the part that jumped out at me:

But there is only one condition. If you desire intimate union with God you must be willing to pay the price for it. The price is small enough. In fact, it is not even a price at all: it only seems to be so with us. We fund it difficult to give up our desire for things that can never satisfy us in order to purchase the One Good in Whom is all our joy – and in Whom, moreover, we get back everything else that we have renounced besides

It also reminded me of this quote by Jim Elliot:

He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

The interesting thing is that from most people’s perspective (including mine), we are giving up a huge amount because we are giving up everything that matters.

If you want to be my disciple, you must hate everyone else by comparison—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple. And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple. – Luke 14:26,27

So you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own. – Luke 14:33

And when he refers to “carry your own cross”, that basically means you are dieing. The cross was the main instrument of death in Jesus’ day and seeing men carry their own cross to the location of their execution was a daily occurrence.

So you have to die to everything in your life. Or, in more practical terms, everything in your life – your hopes, dreams, ambitions, possessions, friends, family, etc – have to become worthless to you when compared to your love and passion and seeking of God.

But, as Thomas Merton wrote in the above quote, it is an amazingly great deal. Because you get all the hope, peace, joy, fulfillment, etc that comes from living your life with God and you get the stuff you gave up (at least the stuff that really matters) in an order that allows you to actually purely enjoy it.

A discipline you could practice here is to sit down with a pencil and piece of paper and write out – with extreme honesty and detail – everything that is important to you. Start with your friends and family and then move into your motivations for the things you do. Then consider once again what are you are so desperately trying to keep in exchange for something you cannot lose.

Why aren’t you more like Jesus?

This post is the first in a series I’ll be writing in preparation for a talk I’m giving at a Protestant church in July. So this is written towards that crowd.

“Why aren’t you more like Jesus?”

This is the question that sparked the change.

I was doing everything you were supposed to do.

• Didn’t miss church
• Didn’t (mostly) lie/cheat/steal in business
• Didn’t cheat on my wife
• Didn’t work to much
• Didn’t shirk my responsibilities as a father
• Didn’t (fill in the blank)

And I had been mostly not doing all the bad stuff my whole life.

I became a “Christian” when I was 9 years old.  Grew up in a conservative, Christan household with a wonderful, loving and involved set of parents.  Gone to church my whole life, gone to a Christian university, etc.

But when I read through the life of Jesus in the Gospels, it was pretty obvious my heart/soul/whatever did not match up with Jesus’.  I was full of contempt, anger, lust, etc.  The picture of love in Corinthians (which is the greatest commandment) didn’t exactly describe my general disposition towards God and my “neighbors”.

So, after almost 20 years of being a Christian, why wasn’t I more like Jesus?  I didn’t believe that:

1. Jesus commanded us to be something that was impossible
2. I was some kind of exception to the rule

which leaves me with… what?

I was doing something wrong.

If you were to see a list of all of the bad things you’ve done wrong over the past six months, what would that look like?  All of the stealing, cheating, coveting, etc.  And remember, it’s not just about the stuff you followed through on, it’s all of the bad stuff you wanted to do too.

It’d probably be really really long.

But that’s not the point of the question.

Would it be shorter than the list from the previous 6 months?  How about the year before that? Or 3 years ago?

If you’re not more like Jesus now than 6 months ago…

You’re doing something wrong.

So what is the point?

I just want you to ask the question.

This isn’t about condemnation or judgment or whatever.  Just step back and academically ask the question…

If I’m not in a perpetual state of becoming more like Jesus, what am I doing wrong?

More to come…

(Photo by pepe50)

Experimenting with Corporate Confession

Although I grew up quite religious, corporate confession was never a regular part of my life.  Even when it was suggested as a spiritual discipline, I still mostly ignored it as a little strange.

I didn’t understand how me dumping on someone about everything I do wrong is going to help either party involved.

However recently, I’ve found myself in a place with a few of my closest friends and mentors where confession became a natural part of what we were discussing.  I found it wasn’t the overt actions that I needed to share but rather the hidden agendas and motives that were brought to light.  

Here’s a few things I’ve taken away from my recent experiments with confession:

1. It forces you to expose your heart

I have thought patterns that are destructive to me and those around me.  Awful motives for seemingly just or acceptable actions.  Horrible thoughts about those I care deepest about.

When these things merely roll through my head, it’s extremely easy to ignore (because they’re so common) or justify as no big deal.

However, if you share these with someone you’re forced to see them for what they are and not so easily move past them.

2. There must be no condemnation

Obviously, confession needs to be practiced with someone that you trust and who will offer no condemnation.

The upside here is we are all human and have all thought, and probably done, some pretty horrible things in our lives.  Make sure your confession is done with someone that “gets” this and will only hurt with you as you share.

3. It’s freeing

Often the confession comes during a normal conversation.  I’m talking about things in my life I’m confused or worried about and as the discussion progresses I start confessing some things.  Things I wasn’t prepared to share.

This often allows me to get things off of my mind that were weighing me down and expose destructive thought patterns I didn’t even realize were there.  Once this happens I’m able to more easily let them go and then recognize them in the future so I ca start removing them from my life.

-

While I’m not doing regular, set times of confession, I do have people that I regularly meet with that I feel the freedom to share the darker parts of my life with as needed.  This is extremely freeing and I would suggest you give it a try with someone in your life you can truly trust.

Pros and Cons of buying an iPhone

I’ve been considering the purchase of an iPhone since version one.  Even when Candace was thinking of buying me one, I told her to wait because I wasn’t decided.

Now that our AT&T contract is coming due soon, it’s time to make a final decision.  So in the spirit of doing something cliche, I’m going to make a pros and cons list.

I tried to be brutally honest with myself, so some of them are beyond lame.

I’m obviously leaning towards not buying the iPhone but I need your help.  What would you add to either list?

Why does religion increase life expectancy?

It’s pretty well documented that religious people live longer.  While some of them are a bit dated, there’s articles here, here and here that I found with two minutes of searching.

While this is obviously good news to me since religion has always played a role in my life, the interesting part comes when you consider why this is the case.  I’ve been mulling this over some lately, and here’s a few conclusions I’ve reached:

1. Limits your choices

Self imposed limiting of choices (which I would also lump religion in with as we choose to follow it) greatly reduces your stress levels.  To many choices clutter the mind.

AJ Jacobs, self-proflaimed agnostic and author of The Year of Living Biblically, talks about this in his interview with Tim Ferriss:

It was fascinating. I’d always loved freedom of choice. It’s why I went to a loosey-goosey liberal arts college with no core requirements. But this experiment was all about freedom FROM choice. Or at least a minimal-choice lifestyle.

By imposing a set of rules for how you live your life, you reduce the number of choices you have to make, which not only reduces your stress but frees your mind to focus on more important things.

2. Encourages you to calm down and be nice

Anger will kill you.

Love will heal you.

The “greatest commandment” is all about love and anger is frowned upon by most major religions.  If you follow the tenants of being content with what you have, not thinking too highly of yourself, considering other people at least as important of you, etc, it will reduce damaging contempt and anger and increase healthy love and kindness.

3. Allows you to unload responsibility

This goes along with what I wrote about separating effort and earning.

The belief that there is a greater power that is, in some way, in control of things is a very calming belief.  When you begin to live your life under this system it frees you to feel less like Atlas.

I see this in my 3 year old son.  When he knows that mom and dad are in control of things, it frees him to relax and enjoy his surroundings.  When the feeling of security disappears, everything immediately changes.  He becomes frantic and scared and wildly seeks the comfort of knowing that we are, once again, in control.

What does this mean to a non-religious person?  Maybe you should do some study of a religion’s basic tenants and start implementing them.  It will add a few more years to your lifespan and help you enjoy them a bit more along the way.

Instrospection: 5 things I learned from the flu

Candace and I decided our Sunday would be better spent dealing with the flu than enjoying more pleasant things like church, family and eating carbs.  Thanks to my wonderful in-laws, we didn’t have to care for the two little ones, so we spent the day sleeping (four hour nap) and watching CSI via Netflix (four episodes).

After sleeping off the worst headache of my life, I came to realize a few things about myself.

1. I am petrified of vomiting – Sure, nobody likes to throw up.  But, it truly destroys me.  I kick. I scream. I cry. I moan.  Not to mention, my body never wants to stop. I continue to heave long after I’m empty.  I will do anything to avoid vomiting.  I’d rather endure hours and hours of nausea than just give it up.
2. When I’m sick, I’m a wimp – I remember my dad’s generation when they were sick.  They’d do extra work just prove it couldn’t stop them.  “Walking pneumonia be damned, I’m gonna cut down five trees after working a 12 hour day.”  Not me.  When I’m sick I want to lay in bed and have Candace bring cold ice water with a straw and apple sauce in a small bowl.
3. I start to wonder what life was like when I wasn’t sick – Last night as I sat next to the toilet with a migraine that was teetering me close to #1, I was trying to remember what it was like when I didn’t have a headache.  Yes, if I thought rationally about it, I could recall a few moments, but there were times when I couldn’t remember.
4. I enjoy being sick with my wife – While I’d never wish the flu on anyone but my worst enemies, if Candace and I are both going to get sick, it’s nice to do it together.  With two small kids we don’t get a lot of down time together, so spending a whole day just lounging around was pretty nice.  Definitely the brightest spot in the day.
5. I love living close to family – While my parents are, sadly, eight hours away, Candace’s parents live just twenty minutes a way.  Having in-laws that instantly dropped their plans for the day to take care of our kids so we could relax and recover was wonderful.  I’m glad we weren’t stuck caring for them ourselves.

Reduce Stress by Separating Effort from Earning

In a recent TED talk entitled A different way to think about creative genius, Elizabeth Gilbert “shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person ‘being’ a genius, all of us ‘have’ a genius.”

Back before the Renaissance, all of the great artists and thinkers were believed to have some sort of spirit that helped give them insight:

If your work was brilliant, couldn’t take all the credit for it. [...] If your work bombed, not entirely your fault.

This rings true with a recent personal struggle I’ve had of seperating the outcome of my work from the actual work itself.

Separating effort from earning.

Think through a few scenarios where assuming we’ve earned something causes problems:

• I’ve been at this company for 15 years, I deserved that promotion
• I’ve been schlepping at meaningless jobs for years trying to be an artist.  I’ve paid my dues.
• Why is that guy getting clients over me? I’m better than he is!

I’m sure you can come up with a few more.

However, if you begin to realize that your effort is far from the only thing that effects the outcome, the stress begins to melt away.  You’re relieved of a large portion of the responsibility and can therefore easily move on with the rest of your life.

You put in the effort but you don’t earn anything.

But you’re also not completely off the hook.

When I think of “effort” I think of the work you put into pushing an incredibily large boulder up a hill.

Kind of mindless.

However the definition of “effort” from dictionary.com is:

exertion of physical or mental power

The mental power here is what I want to focus on.

Your effort needs to be thought through, studied, focused and so on.  Merely pushing really hard against a brick wall isn’t good enough.

The kind of effort you put in matters.

My opinion seems to land on a kind of threshhold.  You have to put in the right kind of effort that will get you to a certain threshold of success and then from there it is no longer your responsibility.

Maybe the book you wrote was just as well researched and written, however it collects dust without ever getting a publishing deal.

Could be your ‘genius’ bombed.

My encouragement would be to do the sorts of things that will allow your ‘genius’ to act.  Put effort into becoming a conduit so when your creativity shows up, you’re ready to act instead of wasting all of your time watching TV.

Put the effort in, then detach yourself from the outcome.  You’ll live a longer more fulfilling life.

Should mass following on Twitter be considered spam?

We recently launched Maker Spot (a tool for Etsy shop owners) and I also setup a Twitter account for it as well.  My goal is to offer relevant links and information to help and inspire Etsy shop owners.  Obviously a goal of this is to build trust and recognition so people will sign up for our service.

In other words, it’s marketing.

To gain an audience more quickly, I’m using the Twitter search tool to find Etsy shop owners and following them.  From my experience and those I’ve communicated with that do this as well, about 50% of the people will follow me back.  Often it’s more.

The moral conundrum I’m having is whether this can be considered “spam” or not.

Why it IS spam:

• It’s unsolicited, although this one is easily explained away since almost all follows are unsolicited
• I’m not particularly interested in what THEY have to say
• I know politeness/guilt/etc will cause people to follow me back

Why it IS NOT spam:

• I’m not randomly following anyone. I’m following people that matches my content.
• They don’t have to follow me back. I’m asking for permission.
• I honestly believe I will offer helpful content to those that follow me

So what’s the verdict? Is it spam or not? What do you think?

Work Like a College Student: Late Nights

For several months I was getting frustrated with my work schedule. I felt like I wasn’t getting enough done at the office and was constantly going home feeling like I didn’t accomplish much.

Advice from my Dad and the rest of his generation is to get up earlier. After many failed attempts, I’ve decided this isn’t for me. I will never consistently get out of bed before 8am.

Staying later also wasn’t an option as I leave every day by 5pm to make sure I have a couple hours to spend with Conner and Max before their bedtime.

Along with this I was wanting to give Candace some time to herself during the week. She stays home with our kids and never gets any time for solitude and study.

Then a re-read of the Four Hour Work Week got me thinking about how I worked when I was in college and back before I hired Joseph and was pulling 60 hour weeks. I seemed to always get a lot done when I was forced to work between the hours of 10pm and 3am.

Hmmmm.

So about a month ago I decided to stop working on Tuesday and pull a late night on Monday and again on Wednesday if necessary. I’ve been doing this for over a month and here’s a few observations:

• No distractions – I get no emails, Twitter is silent and everybody is asleep. It’s not even hard to cut out distractions and focus.
• High motivation for productivity – One of the problems with going to the office every day is knowing I’ll probably sit there until 5pm.  If I don’t have a lot to do I tend to get distracted knowing I have plenty of time.  When it’s the middle of the night I work quickly through my list knowing I get to go to bed when it’s done.
• My sleep is more productive – When I first started pulling late nights regularly, I was dragging during the day.  However now my body has adjusted and I feel completely functional even when I only get four hours of sleep for a couple nights in a row.  I’ve done some reading on training your body to enter into REM sleep cycles more efficiently and I can say it’s definitely been working for me.
• Tuesdays are very fulfilling – My wife spends the morning in personal solitude and study and I spend the afternoon doing the same.  This is very refreshing and keeps me from getting overwhelmed by the stresses of life.

My next goal is to continue to increase efficiency at work and drop another day in the office.  In my opinion, three days at the office should be plenty if I’m planning correctly and working efficiently.

The guilt free process to breaking a bad habit

We all struggle with bad habits in our life. Some are dark and scary and some are merely frustrating.

You’ll be offered lots of advice from other places:

• Figure out the triggers – While we can do plenty to keep stress out of our life, there will always be triggers in our life in the forms of clients and kids that can set us off. Identifying this did me absolutely no good.
• Try really hard for 30 days – This has got to be the worst. The mere fact that it’s a habit that I want to quit implies that I can’t control myself. Trying really hard only produces guilt when I inevitably fail, which helps no one.
• Accountability – People lie. To themselves and to others. Especially when they feel ashamed. I’ve found having accountability works until you fail after a long stretch of doing good. Then I don’t want to admit that I’ve failed.

Two and a half years ago when I quit my job to run Out:think full time, I had no idea that amount of bad habits I had. It’s amazing how surfing YouTube for three hours a day has a different impact when you’re paycheck isn’t guaranteed anymore.

While wasting time online is relatively harmless, I’ve also battled and defeated darker habits in my life with the process I explain below.

The problem with all of the above advice is that you’re focusing on the problem. You need to focus on what you’re life would be like without your bad habit.

Have you ever watched a tight rope walker? They never look down. Their eyes are always on the end of the rope. Looking down is death.

All of the solutions I listed above are ways of “looking down” at your current situation. Looking down is death.

This process for breaking bad habits keeps your eye on the benefits of breaking the bad habit. If you follow it, you’ll quickly stop caring whether you break the bad habit or not. The end become the focus instead of the process that gets you there and before you realize it, you’ll make it to the other side.

1. Decide that it’s acceptable to fail

You have to do this first. You have to believe it. No more beating up on yourself. No more wishing it would just go away. You’ve got a problem and you’re taking steps to deal with it. No more guilt.

You are going to fail. A lot. And it’s ok.

It’s been drilled into our collective heads that we need to move fast on everything in life and once we’ve started something it needs to move as quickly as possible. If you’ve developed a bad habit over a long span of time, it’s going to take a long time to break it.

Let the guilt go.

2. Decide that you are going to stop trying to break the bad habit

I’m assuming by now you’ve already tried really really hard to stop. It’s normal but it’s how our bodies run. For this process to work you have to give up on trying to stop from sheer will power. It’s time to try something different.

3. Write down a list of all the negative results of your bad habit

Be specific and thorough. Write down every possible way this bad habit is has a negative impact on your life. Here’s part of my list from wasting time instead of working:

1. I don’t make money which means I can’t pay my bills
2. I have to make up the time later, which means time away from my kids. i.e. I traded playing with my son for watching dumb internet videos.
3. I have to make up the time later, which means time away from my wife which causes a strain on our relationship.
4. I fill my head with useless information.
5. I come home feeling stupid and worthless.

This is not about guilt. We took care of the guilt in #1. This is about having clarity on your situation. Once this list is written down, move on to #4.

4. Write down a list of all of the positive things that will be added to your life once your break this habit

Again, be specific and thorough. Obviously most of these will be the antithesis of what you wrote in #2 but this step is still very important. Here’s part of my list:

1. I will follow through on my work which means I will get paid and have money in the bank.
2. I will be able to come home on time or early and spend time with my kids.
3. I will be able to come home on time or early and spend time with my wife.
4. I will come home with a sense of pride and accomplishment.

These are the goals we want to focus on. This is what we really want. It’s not really about the bad habit. It’s about what we are missing out on because of it.

5. Spend 10 minutes every morning meditating on the first four steps

• Every morning before your day starts, take ten minutes to be still and quiet.
• Remind yourself that today you will probably fail and that’s ok.
• Remind yourself that you’re done trying to break the bad habit. You’re trusting the process.
• Thoughtfully meditate over your lists from steps #3 and #4.
• Live your life.

Once you remove the stress and guilt you constantly place on yourself to break your bad habit and begin focusing on the positive results, your patterns will begin to change. It will happen slowly and it will be surprising, but it will work.