Fly Like an Eagle

 

I've received an incredible amount of benefit the last few years from Dan Miller and his 48 Days Community. They help people like you and me find or create profitable and enjoyable work (and a life) you love combining your SKILLS and ABILITIES, PERSONALITY TENDENCIES, and your VALUES, DREAMS, AND PASSIONS.

Dan Miller's 48 Days Eagles Community helps driven, smart, creative individuals like you who are willing to take action to break free from monotony, find your true purpose, and create not only work, but a full life you thrive in.

Click here for more details.

Featured on EntrePastors Podcast

 

Last week, Jon Sanders interviewed me on his and Les Hughes' EntrePastors podcast. Sanders and Hughes encourage pastors to develop their skills and income potential in the marketplace. I recently got connected to them after they heard Dan Miller mention me on his 48 Days podcast.

Their website includes:

"Following God's calling into ministry doesn't mean you have to live a life of scarcity and meagerness. 

We believe God is a God of abundance who gave you multiple talents to build and serve His Kingdom and by using ALL of your God-given talents, you take better care of yourself and your family and become a better pastor in the process."

My interview, #45, is titled "Understanding Your Calling."

Listen to it here.

18 Benefits of Working Remotely

It's called "The Great Resignation,” and it’s affecting the North American workplace. For many American knowledge workers, the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown showed us we could fulfill 100% of our work responsibilities without leaving the comfort of our dens.

In December 2021, 4.3 million American workers resigned from their jobs. Yes, some of those are due to freeloaders who choose to get a “government check,” and others result from people leaving their jobs due to vaccine mandates. However, many of these resignations result from people seeking remote opportunities that better fit their lives.

CBS' Sixty Minutes recently reported that remote work has grown from 1 of 67 jobs to 1 of 7.  One author shares, "We are rapidly moving toward the time when only 50% of the American workforce will be 'employees.' The rest will be independent contractors, temps, consultants, contingency workers, freelancers, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and more."

Online job sites advertising remote jobs keep increasing, like FlexJobs.com, which recently shared on their site, “The landscape of remote work will be permanently changed as a result of COVID-19. Instead of ad hoc use, we've seen the full deployment of remote work across many organizations. Most surveys find that companies are organizing remote work as a long-term strategy. 69% of large-company CEOs plan to downsize their office space. And about 80%of CEOs say they expect a more widespread remote workforce as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.”

For three years, I drove 500+ miles a week commuting to and from my office job. Writing for a large organization, I enjoyed my creative co-workers and the excitement of working for a multi-million dollar institution. Though I admired the organization, I greatly disliked being tied to a cubicle. I found the cubicle environment to be terribly draining rather than life-giving. For the first time in my working career, someone else told me when to sign in and sign out (which inevitably means telling me when to get up and go to bed), how many weeks to take off a year, and faithfulness to the job was at least in part tied being paid for time and not just productivity.

Our organization sent us home during 2020 for a couple of months. I lost weight, ate healthier, slept more, enjoyed face-to-face time with my family, and got all of my work done for my fulltime job. No commute. No eating out. No cubicle.

About a year ago, I intentionally began investigating, analyzing, and delving into remote job possibilities. I absorbed podcasts, articles, and books from career coaches like Dan Miller and the Ziglar Corporation. I read Freelance to Freedom by  Vincent Pugliese, Richard Bolles’ What Color is Your Parachute?, and other motivational positive materials. Many of those materials helped me begin thinking differently about work, shifting from a traditional view of work to a modern one. Actually, modern job writers like Seth Godin argue that our "traditional" view of work did not come into being until Henry Ford and the Ford motor company. What we are seeing today, a return to being paid for productivity, not time, is a return to a real "traditional" work model.

I discovered the American Writers and Artists Institute (AWAI), took their ground level course The AWAI Method for Becoming a Skilled, In-Demand Copywriter, signed up for their magazine The Barefoot Writer, and began exploring their extremely helpful site and other related resources.

I thought and prayed a lot, and I created a plan. That plan included creating several streams of income and learning to think very non-traditionally about work, employment, and income.

In January, I made the leap with the full support of my wife, resigned from my “secure” position and came home, leaving my cubicle and moving into my private office at home. In the past six weeks, here are benefits I am experiencing:

1. Enjoying lunches with my 16-year-old son. I can text my son, “You want to grab lunch?” and run out for a face-to-face meal. We’ve done it five or six times since I came home. We are currently reading Dan Miller’s 48 Days to the Work You Love together.

2. Sleeping 7-8 hours every night. Sometimes more! Waking up without an alarm clock. Marvelous.

3. No traffic stress. Commute is less than 0.1 miles. Sometimes I even walk! Ha.

4. A private office with a door that closes. I wholeheartedly agree with writer mentors like Stephen King and Eva Shaw, who say the most important tool a writer needs to succeed is an office with a door that closes. Writing in a cubicle with people walking back and forth regularly and engaging in conversations all around me was a stressful way for me to work. My mind is much clearer and more productive in an isolated, quiet space.

5. I can have a creative space to work that I create. I enjoy color and lots of mementos around me reminding me of things I like. My first two days of independent working, I created a great working space in my church office, complete with an electric desk that I can raise to stand or lower to sit, lots of pictures, wall hangings, and memorabilia, and plenty of books lining the walls.

6. Not worn out at night/weekends. The commuting life left me exhausted by 5pm Friday and worn out most of the weekend. Now, I’m enjoying much more energy and alertness over the weekend.

7. Eating healthier and losing weight. I said goodbye to fast food breakfasts eaten in the car and big lunches, which were often a stress release. Working from home, I’m able to eat healthier with smaller portions several times a day. So far, in six weeks I’ve lost five pounds.

8. Exercising 3-4 times a week. It’s easy working from home to incorporate a brisk 20-minute walk inside or outside or a push-up and sit-up routine in the middle of my day.

9. Able to be more present with my wife. Priceless.

10. Can work, stop, and restart as I choose. I can work best at my natural cycles of productivity. And I can break during the in-betweens. That means I can use that time to run to the post office, pick up groceries, take a walk through the woods, do a house chore, or go get some gas for the car.

11. Uninterrupted time with the Lord and positive input at the rudder of the day. I can spend unhurried time in prayer and Bible meditation as the day begins. And I'm taking career coach Dan Miller’s advice: “Years ago I made it a practice to spend at least two hours daily listening to, or reading, positive materials. That practice has given me access to the greatest thinkers in the world and an ongoing education that is current, practical, and profitable.”

12. Spending less money on gas and eating out. Not commuting and eating out daily, according to gas prices in 2021, saves me between $4000-$5000 a year.

13. More mental energy to focus, plan, and set goals. I purchased the Ziglar Corporation’s Performance Planner and spent about fifteen hours the first two weeks I came home thinking through life goals. I recorded forty-eight short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals and am using the planner to help me stay on track. I’ve already completed three of them, including finally submitting my completed first book manuscript to a publisher.

14. Time for productivity. Since coming home, I’ve completed my own book, was almost immediately hired by another organization as their part-time, remote, writer, have begun work on two different book projects as a ghost, and am talking with another party about a completely different book editing project. I'm also working on redoing my own freelance writing and ghostwriting promotional materials. And I’m just getting started.

15. More time for education and instruction. I’ve completed AWAI's Build Your Freelance Website in Four Days webinar, started Ray Edwards' Profitable Copywriting Business, and begun Nick Pavlidis' Ghostwriter School in the past six weeks. And in audio helps, I'm currently listening to Earl Nightingale's Lead the Field, Zig Ziglar's The Goals Program, and Nightingale-Conant's Goals and Vison Mastery Course. I've also read Ruth Soukup's Do it Scared and Wayne Cordiero's Leading on Empty since coming home.

16. Am able to take days or vacation time off when needed, not according to a benefits scale. Entering my last job at age 46, I received two weeks off the first two years. With three teenagers and one in college, only taking two weeks off a year was quite challenging. Now, I can take off what I need and want, assuming that I’m hustling enough when I am working to make the income we need. This also offers more time to visit my now two children in college and my octogenarian mother. And it puts me in the driver's seat.

17. I’m learning to plan my life first and then my work to fit that life. 

I wish someone had drilled that into my head thirty years ago. The traditional American concept of work is to
choose your work and then plan your life. However, modern wisdom shares, “To have real success you must understand yourself and plan your life first, then plan your work to embrace the life you want” (Miller).

18. In essence, and somewhat as a summary benefit, I’m much better able to order my world from the inside-out rather than playing catchup from the outside in.

Gordon MacDonald, in his excellent book Ordering Your Private World (which I am re-reading for the sixth time since 2002), writes, "Those who brought their lives into discipline or . . . intentionality would, more than likely, go on to long-term lives of fruitfulness, and their best years would be in the last half of their lives when discipline and depth paid off. . . . The ordering of my private world is an inside-out matter, not an outside-in matter."

Wayne Muller writes, “The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and, we imagine, to others. To be unavailable to our friends and family, to be unable to find time for the sunset (or even to know that the sun set at all), to whiz through our obligations without time for a single mindful breath, this has become the model of a successful life.”

And Dan Miller writes, “Henry Ford once said he didn’t want executives who had to work all the time. He insisted that those who were always in a flurry of activity at their desks were not being the most productive. He wanted people who could clear their desks, prop their feet up and dream some fresh dreams. His philosophy was that only he who has the luxury of time can originate a creative thought.

Wow! When was the last time your boss told you to quit working and do more dreaming? Unfortunately, our culture glamorizes being under time pressure. Having too much to do with little time is a badge of ‘success.’ Or is it? . . .

Andrew Carnegie would go into an empty room for hours at a time – not allowing any interruptions – as he was ‘sitting for ideas.’ Thomas Edison would go down to the water’s edge each morning, throw out his line – with no bait – and then watch the bobber for an hour until he was ready to think for the day. . . .

If you are feeling stuck, your solution may not be in doing more, but in taking a break from the ‘busyness’ of life. Want to be more productive – try doing less. Go ‘sit’ somewhere for a while!”

Today's changing landscape presents multiple opportunities for those who will seize them.

Pictures used by permission from Pixabay.

 

Featured on Dan Miller

One speaker-thinker-author I listen to regularly is career coach Dan Miller. His 48 Days to the Work You Love book and workbook have helped me through several adult life transitions. His 48 Days podcast can be heard here, a format where he usually answers questions from listeners.

I was surprised to discover he featured my recent email to him as a part of his broadcast today. Check it out here. My portion begins at 15:45.

And check out my recent article, 18 Benefits of Working Remotely.

Emotional Intelligence - Better than IQ

 “Opportunity lies in the man, not in the job.” – Zig Ziglar

For many years, it was commonly accepted that a person’s IQ (intelligent quotient), which is a measure of a person's reasoning ability, contributed significantly to a person’s level of success in life. The higher their level of education, the “smarter” they were – which usually meant book smart not life or street smart – the higher they would rise.

In recent years, however, much has been explored in an entirely different arena. Leadership groups, businesses, schools, and churches have begun the study of EQ (emotional quotient), the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways as well as read and relate to the people around you in healthy rhythms.

It is possible for a person to be highly educated or gifted in a particular field yet show a very low EQ, commonly known as emotional intelligence. It’s also quite possible for a person to be very educated yet still be in practical terms a fool in many areas of life. Education often shows the amassing of information or knowledge, but it does not necessarily equal the acquiring of understanding and wisdom, the ability to apply that knowledge to life.

According to Jewish wisdom literature, true wisdom finds its root in the fear of the Lord. The biblical canon contains the book of Proverbs, whose purpose, clearly stated, aims not at just acquiring information, but instead, “to know [skillful and godly] wisdom . . . in behavior, righteousness, justice, and integrity, that prudence (good judgment, astute common sense) may be given to the naïve or inexperienced [who are easily misled]” (Proverbs 1:2-4 AMP). Today, I’m afraid, we have a lot of educated fools, lacking in true wisdom and common sense, in high places in our society.

Dr. Jim Osterhaus, professor of counseling, writes, “Smart people, people with all kinds of degrees from all the best places, make terrible leaders. Not all of them, but many of them. And the reason this is so, is that these folks, though knowing all kinds of facts about many areas of life, lack any kind of self-awareness that allows them to manage themselves, leading to social awareness and the ability to manage relationships appropriately.”

This is why you can have a Ph.D. yet lack the skills to maintain a healthy marriage, balance your finances, deal with life’s disappointments, overcome addictions, and manage disagreements in a workplace. It’s also why an organization’s linchpin, to use Seth Godin’s popular term, likely may not be the person with the highest GPA or SAT score.

I’m not putting down education. I spent years pursuing bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees. However, in the raising of young adults we need to remember educational achievement is only one piece of the pie to a successful life. Ongoing personal development in several areas of life makes for a well-oiled human: mental, spiritual, emotional, physical, family, financial, personal, and career.

According to the popular book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Bradberry and Greaves, EQ is “the single biggest predictor of performance in the workplace and the strongest driver of leadership and personal excellence.”  They describe your emotional intelligence as “your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships.” Thankfully, our EQ, unlike our IQ, can be developed and grown.

EQ covers four areas:

1. Self-awareness: understanding what makes me tick, thinking through both my positive and negative emotions, responses, and motivations

2. Self-management: using my self-awareness to “stay flexible and direct [my] behavior positively.” Bradberry and Greaves write, “Real results come from putting momentary needs on hold to pursue larger, more important goals.”

3. Social awareness: simply put, this means the ability to read other people, listening and observing to what is going on around you emotionally

4. Relationship-management: working toward influence, teamwork, and collaboration, developing others

Our EQ encompasses the whole person and how we relate to people around us. The apostle Paul understood this reality. That’s why much of his New Testament instruction includes practical exhortations aimed at helping people get along with others.

Career-coach Dan Miller shares, “Major companies are moving away from a focus on SATs, GPAs, brand name schools and credentials. Instead, they are looking at how does this person think, solve problems, lead and handle failure. . . . Gone are the days when companies valued credentials more than competence. . . . Your skill in this area [EQ] will allow you to form healthier relationships, achieve greater success at work, and lead a more fulfilling life.”

Check out the small, practical book Emotional Intelligence 2.0. It includes an EQ questionnaire and many helps at developing our own emotional quotient.

A healthy, growing EQ is one way we can put into practice one of the most important instructions of all time: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31 NIV).

Pictures used by permission from Pexels

 

18 Benefits of Working Remotely: the first six weeks

It's called "The Great Resignation,” and it’s affecting the North American workplace. For many American knowledge workers, the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown showed us we could fulfill 100% of our work responsibilities without leaving the comfort of our dens.

In December 2021, 4.3 million American workers resigned from their jobs. Yes, some of those are due to freeloaders who choose to get a “government check,” and others result from people leaving their jobs due to vaccine mandates. However, many of these resignations result from people seeking remote opportunities that better fit their lives.

CBS' Sixty Minutes recently reported that remote work has gone from 1 of 67 jobs to 1 of 7. One author shares, "We are rapidly moving toward the time when only 50% of the American workforce will be 'employees.' The rest will be independent contractors, temps, consultants, contingency workers, freelancers, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and more."

Online job sites advertising remote jobs keep increasing, like FlexJobs.com, which recently shared on their site, “The landscape of remote work will be permanently changed as a result of COVID-19. Instead of ad hoc use, we've seen the full deployment of remote work across many organizations. Most surveys find that companies are organizing remote work as a long-term strategy. 69% of large-company CEOs plan to downsize their office space. And about 80%of CEOs say they expect a more widespread remote workforce as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.”

For three years, I drove 500+ miles a week commuting to and from my office job. Writing for a large organization, I enjoyed my creative co-workers and the excitement of working for a multi-million dollar institution. Though I admired the organization, I greatly disliked being tied to a cubicle. I found the cubicle environment to be terribly draining rather than life-giving. For the first time in my working career, someone else told me when to sign in and sign out (which inevitably means telling me when to get up and go to bed), how many weeks to take off a year, and faithfulness to the job was at least in part tied being paid for time and not just productivity.

Our organization sent us home during 2020 for a couple of months. I lost weight, ate healthier, slept more, enjoyed face-to-face time with my family, and got all of my work done for my fulltime job. No commute. No eating out. No cubicle.

About a year ago, I intentionally began investigating, analyzing, and delving into remote job possibilities. I absorbed podcasts, articles, and books from career coaches like Dan Miller and the Ziglar Corporation. I read Freelance to Freedom by  Vincent Pugliese, Richard Bolles’ What Color is Your Parachute?, and other motivational positive materials. Many of those materials helped me begin thinking differently about work, shifting from a traditional view of work to a modern one. Actually, modern job writers like Seth Godin argue that our "traditional" view of work did not come into being until Henry Ford and the Ford motor company. What we are seeing today, a return to being paid for productivity, not time, is a return to a real "traditional" work model.

I thought and prayed a lot, and I created a plan. That plan included creating several streams of income and learning to think very non-traditionally about work, employment, and income.

In January, I made the leap with the full support of my wife, resigned from my “secure” position and came home, leaving my cubicle and moving into my private office at home. In the past six weeks, here are benefits I am experiencing:

1. Enjoying lunches with my 16-year-old son. I can text my son, “You want to grab lunch?” and run out for a face-to-face meal. We’ve done it five or six times since I came home. We are currently reading Dan Miller’s 48 Days to the Work You Love together.

2. Sleeping 7-8 hours every night. Sometimes more! Waking up without an alarm clock. Marvelous.

3. No traffic stress. Commute is less than 0.1 miles. Sometimes I even walk! Ha.

4. A private office with a door that closes. I wholeheartedly agree with writer mentors like Stephen King and Eva Shaw, who say the most important tool a writer needs to succeed is an office with a door that closes. Writing in a cubicle with people walking back and forth regularly and engaging in conversations all around me was a stressful way for me to work. My mind is much clearer and more productive in an isolated, quiet space.

5. I can have a creative space to work that I create. I enjoy color and lots of mementos around me reminding me of things I like. My first two days of independent working, I created a great working space in my church office, complete with an electric desk that I can raise to stand or lower to sit, lots of pictures, wall hangings, and memorabilia, and plenty of books lining the walls.

6. Not worn out at night/weekends. The commuting life left me exhausted by 5pm Friday and worn out most of the weekend. Now, I’m enjoying much more energy and alertness over the weekend.

7. Eating healthier and losing weight. I said goodbye to fast food breakfasts eaten in the car and big lunches, which were often a stress release. Working from home, I’m able to eat healthier with smaller portions several times a day. So far, in six weeks I’ve lost five pounds.

8. Exercising 3-4 times a week. It’s easy working from home to incorporate a brisk 20-minute walk inside or outside or a push-up and sit-up routine in the middle of my day.

9. Able to be more present with my wife. Priceless.

10. Can work, stop, and restart as I choose. I can work best at my natural cycles of productivity. And I can break during the in-betweens. That means I can use that time to run to the post office, pick up groceries, take a walk through the woods, do a house chore, or go get some gas for the car.

11. Uninterrupted time with the Lord and positive input at the rudder of the day. I can spend unhurried time in prayer and Bible meditation as the day begins. And I'm taking career coach Dan Miller’s advice: “Years ago I made it a practice to spend at least two hours daily listening to, or reading, positive materials. That practice has given me access to the greatest thinkers in the world and an ongoing education that is current, practical, and profitable.”

12. Spending less money on gas and eating out. Not commuting and eating out daily, according to gas prices in 2021, saves me between $4000-$5000 a year.

13. More mental energy to focus, plan, and set goals. I purchased the Ziglar Corporation’s Performance Planner and spent about fifteen hours the first two weeks I came home thinking through life goals. I recorded forty-eight short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals and am using the planner to help me stay on track. I’ve already completed three of them, including finally submitting my completed first book manuscript to a publisher.

14. Time for productivity. Since coming home, I’ve completed my own book, was almost immediately hired by another organization as their part-time, remote, writer, have begun work on two different book projects as a ghost, and am talking with another party about a completely different book editing project. I'm also working on redoing my own freelance writing and ghostwriting promotional materials. And I’m just getting started.

15. More time for education and instruction. I’ve completed one copywriting online class, started another one, and started a ghostwriting one in the past six weeks.

16. Am able to take days or vacation time off when needed, not according to a benefits scale. Entering my last job at age 46, I received two weeks off the first two years. With three teenagers and one in college, only taking two weeks off a year was quite challenging. Now, I can take off what I need and want, assuming that I’m hustling enough when I am working to make the income we need. This also offers more time to visit my now two children in college and my octogenarian mother. And it puts me in the driver's seat.

17. I’m learning to plan my life first and then my work to fit that life. I wish someone had drilled that into my head thirty years ago. The traditional American concept of work is to choose your work and then plan your life. However, modern wisdom shares, “To have real success you must understand yourself and plan your life first, then plan your work to embrace the life you want” (Miller).

18. In essence, and somewhat as a summary benefit, I’m much better able to order my world from the inside-out rather than playing catchup from the outside in.

Gordon MacDonald, in his excellent book Ordering Your Private World (which I am re-reading for the sixth time since 2002), writes, "Those who brought their lives into discipline or . . . intentionality would, more than likely, go on to long-term lives of fruitfulness, and their best years would be in the last half of their lives when discipline and depth paid off. . . . The ordering of my private world is an inside-out matter, not an outside-in matter."

Wayne Muller writes, “The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and, we imagine, to others. To be unavailable to our friends and family, to be unable to find time for the sunset (or even to know that the sun set at all), to whiz through our obligations without time for a single mindful breath, this has become the model of a successful life.”

And Dan Miller writes, “Henry Ford once said he didn’t want executives who had to work all the time. He insisted that those who were always in a flurry of activity at their desks were not being the most productive. He wanted people who could clear their desks, prop their feet up and dream some fresh dreams. His philosophy was that only he who has the luxury of time can originate a creative thought.

Wow! When was the last time your boss told you to quit working and do more dreaming? Unfortunately, our culture glamorizes being under time pressure. Having too much to do with little time is a badge of ‘success.’ Or is it? . . .

Andrew Carnegie would go into an empty room for hours at a time – not allowing any interruptions – as he was ‘sitting for ideas.’ Thomas Edison would go down to the water’s edge each morning, throw out his line – with no bait – and then watch the bobber for an hour until he was ready to think for the day. . . .

If you are feeling stuck, your solution may not be in doing more, but in taking a break from the ‘busyness’ of life. Want to be more productive – try doing less. Go ‘sit’ somewhere for a while!”

Today's changing landscape presents multiple opportunities for those who will seize them.

Pictures used by permission from Pixabay.

 

What I Can Teach You About Racism

The following article is by Carol Swain, a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University. . . .

Let me tell you how my story ends: I become a tenured, award-winning professor of political science at an Ivy League university, and then at one of the leading universities in the South.

Now let me tell you how my story begins: I grow up in rural Virginia, literally dirt poor. I drop out of school in the eighth grade and have three children by the time I'm 20.

I consider myself to be a reasonably modest person, but even I have to admit that's quite a journey.

How did I do it?

I worked hard. Not crazy, 24/7 hard—just hard. I made good decisions. Not brilliant, three-dimensional-chess decisions—just good ones. I met people along the way who helped me and sincerely wanted to see me succeed—not because they had something to gain, but because they were decent people. Almost all of these individuals, by the way, were white.

But mostly, I think I was blessed in one crucial way: I was born in America, a true land of opportunity for anyone of any color or background. In this country, where you start your life does not determine where you end up.

That works in both directions, by the way. You can start out with every advantage and waste them all. Or you can start out with nothing and become a success. It all depends on you. Your attitude is far more important than your race, gender, or social class in determining what you will accomplish in life.

When I hear young blacks—or anyone, for that matter—talk about systemic racism, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I want to laugh because it's such nonsense. I want to cry because I know it's pushing untold numbers of young blacks into a dead end of self-pity and despair. Instead of seizing the amazing opportunities America offers them, they seize an excuse to explain why they're not succeeding.

I was born into a world where systemic racism was real—no-fooling, outright-bigotry, back-of-the-bus real. But here's what you need to know: Yes, that racism shaped the black experience—but even then, it did not define it. Change was in the air. Call it systemic reform.

The modern Civil Rights Movement was in its infancy, and the leaders who fought for equal rights for blacks were men and women of all races. They believed in America and were determined to see it live up to its highest ideals—ideals manifest in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

Did I know, growing up, that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves? I don't think I ever thought about it. If I did, I'd like to think that I would have had enough common sense to know that we can't judge men who lived 250 years ago by the moral standards of our own day.

But I know that Jefferson wrote the words in the Declaration of Independence that made slavery ultimately impossible: that all men are created equal. And I know that Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Adams and the rest of the Founders risked everything to make my world, my America, possible. How could I not be grateful for that and for the sacrifices so many others have made to preserve it?

The truth is I cannot remember a time when I did not love America and feel pride in the belief that I live in the greatest country in the world. I knew if I diligently pursued my ambitions, I could leave the poverty of my early years, with all its abuse and depression, behind me.

I was fortunate in another way. I was spared the life-sapping, negative messages about America that are crippling a generation of young people. These ideas are poison:

☆ White privilege.

☆ Whiteness as a form of property.

☆ Unconscious racism.

☆ Reparations.

☆ Microaggressions.

☆ Police have it out for blacks.

☆ That the United States was created to protect and promote slavery.

These are the ideas young people are told they must accept. And then they're told to reject the ideas that can save them—the antidote: the success principles that enabled me and millions of other Americans to escape lives of poverty.

These principles aren't complicated: work hard, learn from your mistakes, take personal responsibility for your actions. When I made the decisions to get my high school equivalency, attend a community college, and then earn four additional college and university degrees, I believed that my education would open doors. And it did.

It was only when exposed to academic theories of oppression in graduate school that I was informed that because I was black, poor, and female, I could never do what I had already accomplished.

Thank God, it was too late for these toxic messages to stop me. Don't let them stop you.

 

Pardons, Ink, and Toner

The following article is my editorial this week in The Clinton Chronicle . . .

“Dare to risk public criticism,” said Mary Kay Ash. She should know. A successful businesswoman who broke many molds and took many risks, I’m sure she endured her share of critics.

I remember as a young pastor receiving an anonymous letter full of complaints about me and my wife. Most pastors have received a few of those cowardly gems.  The author rebuked me in one line by saying, “You make too many photocopies, which wastes our ink and toner!” Boy, he might as well have said I was lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut. My wife and I still laugh, some almost twenty years later, that we may stoop really low one day and waste too much ink and toner.

Dick Cheney’s autobiography In My Time reviews the lives of political figures who have shaped America the past several decades. Cheney rubbed shoulders with many of Washington’s elites.

One lesson was gleaned from observing the leadership of Gerald Ford: some actions are only justified by time.

Cheney shares the surprise he and many Americans experienced when, on September 8, 1974, President Ford issued a full, free, and absolute pardon to Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. Cheney writes, “He described his actions as a way to ‘shut and seal’ the matter of Watergate and to mitigate the suffering of Richard Nixon and his family.”

At the time, this action cost Ford – some speculate that it cost him the reelection. There was immediately “a firestorm of controversy and criticism.” Ford’s approval rating dropped from 71% to 49%. The press condemned Ford, and he endured much negative criticism as a result. 

However, more than 30 years later, Cheney writes, “[T]he wisdom and generosity of Gerald Ford’s instincts have been recognized for their courage and honored for their rightness. But at the time the pardon was controversial and unpopular.”

Wisdom beckons, at times the right choice is the unpopular choice. The right choice may be greatly misunderstood and even condemned. It takes courage to make the right choice. And in time, even those who criticize that person may see years later that it was the right choice.

Two decades ago, my parents left a church situation that had become toxic. Before they left, she warned some persons of the unwise and ungodly path that the senior pastor was taking. Mom and Dad – and anyone else who questioned the pastor - received an incredible amount of criticism and ostracism for their stance. The staff was even told to not have conversations with them. Several years later, however, after several hundred people and most of the staff left the church, an ex-staff member commented in retrospect, Mrs. Wilson was right.

I’ve tried to remember through the years one simple difference. Reputation and opinion are what people think and say about you based on their limited perspective. Character is what God sees about you from His unlimited perspective when no one else is looking. Sometimes they are the same, sometimes different.

A godly person does not play to the crowd. A wise person does not make judgments based solely on public opinion. Instead, he or she seeks to please the audience of One – the Lord. The book of Proverbs reveals that true wisdom is rooted in the fear of God.

King Saul in the Old Testament lived most of his reign working to make himself look good in front of others. The fruit of his character revealed a pitiful life, not so different than the lives of some Hollywood favorites or political figures that woo the crowds but lead miserable lives of shallow character.

Be willing to make the hard decisions when necessary. God will be pleased, and time will tell.

Pictures used by permission from Pixabay.