I’m reading a great book recommended by a colleague called the Infinite game by Simon Sinek. It synthesizes concepts that have become reiterated to me in the last year and a half, especially through my change in job and the subsequent opportunities to pursue leadership, master’s level education, see how much larger firms operate, engage in therapy, and identify and prioritize my values, well being and self care.
I, as a Christian, can’t presume that the synthesis happened randomly. Concepts include:
– Trust is fundamental to any relationship for any reason (business, personal, one time transaction). Trust is rooted in respect and integrity. These are good for business, but they’re also vital values that I must attempt to uphold in every human interaction I have as a Christian so that I can put the dignity of the human person, of the tabernacle that person is for the loving God within them, first.
– The act of being vulnerable is a strength and builds trust which is good for business and relationships. People and cultures that avoid vulnerability, authenticity, and truth are lacking at best dangerous at worst. If I find a toxic person or a toxic culture I’ve got to cut it off because it will start to take space in my mind and my actions and make me question my authentic mission. This idea is steeped in scripture,”for power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 9)”.
– Every second of life is a gift and the more closely we can identify our unique goal and purpose and align our life to it, the more joy we receive. First, this joy comes from a natural reverberation of our life and our actions aligning with God’s purpose for us. Since I come from band, I imagine this is like God playing a unique note and I am trying to live my life so that my note matches His note. The closer my note is to His the more fulfilling my life is, the better my use of His gift of life to me. Our joy also increases because when we face suffering, we acknowledge that suffering is a part of our purpose and we recognize that our actions, even though they produce suffering, are still aligned to our purpose and therefore suffering becomes something we can offer up and acknowledge. Just as our Savior suffered first, we must follow in His path before we meet Him in His glory,s Jesus informs Peter at His transfiguration.
So how do you get here? First pray, reflect and practice various exercises to determine your values. Generate a mission statement from your values and evaluate your life to determine how you are meeting those values.
My values are love (charity – do unto others), joy, and integrity.
My mission statement is to live a life where I grow in holiness and relationship with God, and where I emit joy of the good news and uplift my family, friends, and all who I meet. (A reminder if you need it, that holiness does not mean perfection, but rather it means to be set apart. In my pursuit of holiness, is it evident that I am living in a way that sets me apart from the world?)
This fits the book’s idea of an infinite goal, which is a goal that is not attainable. It seems counterintuitive to choose a goal that is not achievable, but the idea is in the infinite game. We can’t continue to strive for metrics that we achieve and then look for more metrics and more metrics and more metrics. It’s tiring, cumbersome, and not inspirational. My goal, succinctly, is to get to heaven. While I do play a role in it, it’s ultimately not my decision and I’m not going to focus on the giant true/false of whether I make it. It. Instead my entire life’s goal can be to grow in holiness and relationship to God.
I evaluate my calendar against these goals. Am I spending time in prayer and taking care of my body so that I physically and mentally am prepared to be a person who can love fully and bring joy? Am I spending ample time with my family, who I am called to evangelize to first, and do we have enough down time to enjoy that time together rather than engage in frenetic activity? Do we take time to enjoy God’s creation through being in nature and hikes? Do we prioritize honesty, simplicity and transparency over commercialism, vanity, and mindless use of the gift of our lives? While we are not called to the religious life or specific vows of poverty, we are called to embrace the joy that comes from family life and our vocation to marriage, and to evangelize that joy in the world by being a light to joy that exists despite our rejection of over commercialism, busyness, and other pursuits of mammon.
This blog is another example of a way that I want to meet my goals, by bringing my thoughts and joy and also a spirit of evangelization to the written record somewhere where it can be made available for others to hopefully read my particular flavor of the good news and take what they can to incorporate into their own good news.
Okay that’s a lot and it’s starting to rain. I’ll leave you with this image that inspired this post. It’s spring and the blue bonnets are coming out and I took the same picture, one with a focus on the beautiful flowers and one with a focus on the prickly cactus. In life, we’re going to have beautiful flowers and we’re going to have a prickly cactus and for an outsider looking in, such as we are when we reflect on our lives, we have to make the choice. Do we focus on the flowers or do we focus on the cactus. Both are there, the focus is up to us.
