Do you feel like you’re living life on autopilot; just drifting without purpose? In this message, Derek Staaland teaches us some practical ways we can get back to living life with vision, joy, and purpose! Don’t let 2024 be another year of living on autopilot; take hold of the wheel and live your life to the fullest!
Notes 📓✏️:
The Dash by Linda Ellis
I read of a man who stood to speak
at the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on the tombstone
from the beginning…to the end.
He noted that first came the date of birth
and spoke the following date with tears,
but he said what mattered most of all
was the dash between those years.
For that dash represents all the time
that they spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved them
know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we own —
the cars…the house…the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
and how we spend our dash.
So, think about this long and hard.
Are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left
that can still be rearranged.
So, when your eulogy is being read
with your life’s actions to rehash,
would you be proud of the things they say
about how you spent YOUR dash?
4 Steps To Becoming The Future Self You Desire:
Remember the steps as V.O.T.E
1. Vision: The ability to imagine and commit to future results that do not exist yet.
Dan Sullivan- “Our eyes only see, and our ears only hear what our brain is looking for.”
Albert Einstein- Imagination is more important than knowledge
George Washington Carver- “Where there is no vision, there is no hope”
Viktor E. Frankl- “The prisoner who had lost faith in the future – his future – was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.”
Proverbs 29:18- “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
Jeremiah 29:11- “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Psalm 37:4- “Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.”
Psalm 139:16- “Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book, they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.”
Hebrews 13:5- “Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.””
2. OBSTACLES
Dan Sullivan- Stop seeing obstacles as negative, and start using them as the raw material to achieve your vision.
James 1:2-4- “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”
Romans 5:3-4- “And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
3. TRANSLATE OBSTACLES TO A PRIORITY (TO INTERPRET)
Jim Collins author of “Good to Great”- “If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any.
Gary Keller, author of “The One Thing”- “Things don’t matter equally. Success is found in doing what matters most.”
“Multitasking is a lie … It’s an effective way to get less done.”
“You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once. Achievers always work from a clear sense of priority. What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
Matthew 6:33- “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”
Psalm 1:2-3- “And in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.”
4. ENJOY THE JOURNEY
Imagine forward, but measure backward.
I Thess. 5:18- “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
Paris, April 2, 1910- Theodore Roosevelt-
“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Hebrews 12:1- “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”