Vision casting can be dangerous…

It can destroy the health of a team…

Cast your stones if you want, but it’s true.

The most prolific vision-casters can ruin a good team.

Let me explain…

Casting a vision is one part of success…an important part…

Completing the vision is another…equally important part…

And if the team doesn’t understand the vision…

Or how to complete it…

It won’t matter how well the vision was cast…

In fact, it can even do more harm than good.

Visions can appear bigger than life…

People left without the “how” may feel discouraged, defeated; like failures.

They may give up and the vision dies…

Vision-casters, by nature, thrive on casting…so they are continually throwing out the big idea…

It’s fun, exciting, motivating…visionary…

Great leaders continually work to ensure people not only catch the vision…

But also understand the how and have the resources to accomplish the vision…

It takes both…

Great leaders:

• Ask questions to make sure everyone understands…
• Ensure there are plans, strategies, and systems in place…
• Never leave the process during implementation…
• Break the vision down into measurable steps or goals…

Have you been on the bad side of vision casting?

Everyone wants to be successful in life, but the truth is that many people never really achieve what they set out to accomplish. Many of us fall short of obtaining the dreams and goals we have for our life. After years of observing a lackluster success rate among some of the people to whom I minister, I began to examine why some people never seem to succeed.

What is it that keeps people from being achieving what they claim to want most in life?

Are there some steps that can be taken to enhance our chances of winning in the “game” of life?

Here are six steps to win in the game of life:

If I am asked to coach someone to be a winner, these are some of the steps I will start.

Step One: Get in the right race.

Many people never achieve the success/win the race of life they wanted, because they entered the wrong competition. They are aiming for the wrong targets. We should ask ourselves “where do I want to go in life and what do I eventually want to accomplish?” Until we know how we want our life to end we will never know the steps to take to succeed. Of course, I believe that starts with a decision to allow Christ to set your path. Proverbs 16:9 says, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.”

Step Two: Discipline for the race.

Winning happens over time; not in an instant. The greatest athletes work hours outside the game in order to perhaps win even a single game. Victory doesn’t often happen without hard, painful work to get there. It takes diligence and consistency to be a winner. Winners learn their individual skills and continue to develop them.

Step Three: Develop character first.

People who truly win in life spend a great amount of time on the development of themselves and others around them. Most of the successful business people and church leaders I know set aside time each week for personal development. They are frequently in the gym, reading a good book, and attending a church on Sunday. They recognize that they must be relationally and emotionally healthy if they want to have success in life.

Step Four: Accept Failure

Most winners are built through brokenness. The greatest leaders have failed many times. Before inventing the light bulb, Thomas Edison failed a thousand times. Babe Ruth had 714 home runs and 1,330 strikeouts. Abraham Lincoln was said to have failed so many times, in business, in his love life, in politics but finally became one of the greatest President of the United States. Allow failure to be your friend not your enemy.

Step Five: Ignore unnecessary distractions.

Winners don’t give up when obstacles get in the way of achieving their goals. They find a way to work around them. Life is full of disappointments and set backs, but the winner learns to keep pushing forward. The winner also doesn’t waste a lot of time and energy on the wrong things.

Step Six: Stay in the race.

If a person wants to win he or she has to stay in the race. One cannot be a quitter and still win. Many times the winner is the one with the most heart. Often we see the underdog team come from behind to win simply because they have more passion. If you want to be a winner…if you want to achieve success…stay in the game!

Choose today to be a winner! Don’t let your “hope to do’s” become your “wish you had’s”.

What would you add to my list?

Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and have it in abundance.” (John 10:10, HCSB). He gave life. That’s why we must introduce people to Him and give that kind of life away.

There are so many ministries doing that very thing today. You and I together couldn’t begin to number the ways they give life to others—from giving shelter to a homeless family to providing meals for the hungry and from rescuing a child out of slavery and trafficking to training up leaders to be disciples of the Word.

And that just touches the tip of what we’re called to do to be Jesus to the world.

That’s why I want to introduce you to my good friends at The Resonate Group and The SoulCare Project, who’ve teamed up to create a unique grant initiative for 501c3 ministries who give life to others every day. Bottom line: They’re giving away money to people who give away life. It’s a collision of innovation and funding through a simple online process—no frills, zero red tape.

There’s already a lot of excitement surrounding this new initiative.

For ministries and organizations, all they need to do is apply online, share who they are and how they give life, and upload a short video. Done. That’s it. Some great ministry leaders and organizations have already jumped on board to apply.

As for the rest of us, we just need to go to the Giving of Life site and vote on our ministry and/or ministries of choice to put them in the running to receive a grant of 50K, 20K, or 10K. Hundreds of fans are already following Giving of Life on Twitter and Facebook. And thousands have already voted.

On November 8, the top 10 finalists will be selected based on those who receive the most votes between now and then. In the end, a review committee will step in and help pick the top three ministries out of those ten who’ll receive grants.

How cool is that? Don’t wait. Go and apply or vote today.

Bad culture eats good vision…

I don’t know who said it first. I’ve heard it several times. I’d love to give credit for it’s author, but I just don’t know.

I do know the phrase helps shape my thoughts as a leader…

Bad culture eats good vision…

You can have the greatest vision…

You can have an incredible plan…

You can be cleverly strategic…

You can have the best of intentions…

But…

Bad culture eats good vision…

Every time….

Display seeds of dishonesty…

Spread some gossip…

Throw a little laziness in the equation…

Embrace complacency…

Have a controlling leader…

Let momentum dwindle…

Resist change…

Name the bad culture…

It will eat a hearty meal on your vision…

You know why?

Because…

Bad culture eats good vision…

I love whoever said that…

It almost seems to make culture as important as vision…

Moral of this story: Always build and maintain a healthy culture so you can protect your vision…

Have you seen bad culture eat a good vision?

We moved downtown…

Earlier this year, Cheryl and I sold the house where we raised our boys and purchased a condominium in the downtown area of our city. We have a river view. It’s an open floor plan. Everything we do is on one level, plus we have an upstairs living space for the boys when they come home. We walk downtown almost every night. When we can, we eat downtown too. On Saturdays, we visit with the downtown street festivals. We love it!

It was hard leaving our home with so many memories of raising our family and move from the safe and quiet neighborhood, but we sensed it was time for a change in our life. Here is something we have learned from experience: Sometimes people need intentional change in order to keep life interesting and protect or grow a marriage. I shared before about “Couple Dreaming“. Cheryl and I had always dreamed of living downtown, so rather than keeping it a dream, we took steps to accomplish that dream.

Working with many couples and individuals in counseling I have learned that becoming bored in a relationship can be dangerous. We don’t intend to let that happen! As we entered into a new chapter of our lives as empty-nesters, we decided to make some intentional changes in our life. We have a few more dreams in our future…we’ll see what happens next with them. It’s keeping our marriage and lives exciting!

It doesn’t have to be a move, but sometimes a change of pace will ignite new excitement in marriage. The same can be true of a career or a personal life. Change can bring about renewed energy and motivation. Cheryl and I were not bored in our marriage. We would have been fine had we stayed in the house, but change made us even closer in our marriage, because it forced us out of our routines and into new avenues in our relationship. It’s an exciting time.

What intentional change have you made or do you need to make in your life?

Motivate us: Share an experience of when you made an intentional change in your life!

God said something to me today!

I’ll be honest, as someone who is supposed to teach others how to have a relationship with God, and to actually hear from God, I’m always somewhat startled when He chooses to speak to me. Anyway, today He said something to me.

Let me set up the scenario for you, so you’ll understand the context.

This week I’m at the beach. My oldest son, Jeremy, is getting married and our youngest son Nate is his best man. I get to perform the ceremony. How cool is that? Anyway, this morning I went for my normal morning run. When I’m out of town I normally run further, because the scenery changes, so I ran 4 1/2 miles before I realized how long I’d been running. I decided to stop, buy a drink, and sit and look at the beach for a few minutes, before running back.

As I was sitting there, I became enchanted with the size and power of the waves. I watched a little boy running away from them, and nearly get knocked down by one. I saw a couple walking the beach get splashed unexpectedly. Mostly, however, I just saw the beach being pounded by wave after wave after wave. I have been to the beach many times and I never get tired of watching the ocean display God’s glory. In that moment, I did as I’ve done so many times before…I bragged to God about His handiwork.

I prayed, “God, this is so majestic; so powerful, and You made it all. Every wave I’m seeing today was shaped by You! You are so incredible and worthy to be praised! What a mighty God I serve!”

Have you ever had such emotions flood you when you see God’s creation? Which part of His creation brings those kind of thoughts to your mind?

Anyway, as I was praying, I sensed God say something else. It was almost as if He said, “Hold on Ron, (I always love that He knows my name) you’re talking so fast and thinking so big, you may have missed something.” I paused to listen to the God I was talking to and it seems I heard Him say:

“In the process of thinking BIG, don’t forget to think small.”

I looked down and saw the sand all around me. I was instantly reminded that God made every grain of sand. I’ve been told that no two grains are the same. My God knows each one of them and the Bible seems to indicate God may know how many grains there are…I think He does. Instantly, this passage came to my mind:

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you. Psalm 139:17-18

I don’t know exactly all God was teaching me in that moment. I know I’m a big thinker. I always have a new dream. I don’t think He was telling me not to think big. I’ll obviously never out-think Him and He tends to stretch us towards big dreams in HIs word (…no eye has seen…no mind has conceived…what God has prepared…).

For now, I think He was simply, kindly and gently reminding me that “In the process of thinking BIG, don’t forget to think small.” I’ll continue to process that thought and how it may apply to my life in the weeks to come.

Do you have insight or thoughts for me as to what that could mean? What could that mean if you applied what God said in your own life?

BTW, If you are struggling to hear from God you may consider reading this previous post:

Hearing a Word from God

Has God been saying anything to you lately? I’d love for you to share it here.

This is a random Sunday afternoon post…

I want to encourage us to have a great week this next week…

I believe and strive for continual improvement…

In my experience, this happens best when we make intentional changes…

That’s the point of this post…

This next week, I want to encourage…challenge…even dare you to make an intentional change to improve something in your life…

I’ll go first…

This week, I plan to pray more specifically…

I frequently use a prayer list, but I seldom follow it…

This week I want that to change…

Now your turn…

It can be anything…about any subject…just so it’s an intentional change to improve your life…

What intentional change are you going to make this week to make things better in your life?

GO!

I met with a young man recently who is passionate about growing in his relationship with God, being a better husband and father, becoming more active in the church and community and excelling in his work.

He’s sensing an internal, self-induced tension to do more and be better in each area of his life.

His question to me was basically, how can he balance all the things he wants to do or feels he needs to be doing?

I certainly understood the question. It’s a pressure I’ve experienced many times in my life, especially during certain seasons. In fact, I’m sensing it again as I entered the empty-nester phase of life. I do believe in order to be successful with all the demands a person has, one has to get better personally, physically, spiritually, emotionally and relationally, before we can achieve more but, I think there may be a better answer than that.

I gave him one word of advice that has helped me during those seasons. Perhaps you need to hear this as well.

I challenged him to consider if he was asking the right question.

Instead of asking…

What should I be doing?

Maybe he should be asking…

Who do I want to be?

I have found that when I consider the person I want to be that the actions I need to take to get there become clearer. In fact, many of the actions I may have thought I needed to take, become less important, because they don’t seem to help me become who I say I want to be.

Which question are you or do you most need to be asking?

For several years, I spent some of my reflective time in an old cemetery in our city. The older the tombstone, the more likely to have an epitaph inscribed. This short sentence or phrase was intended to capture the heart of the person…the way he or she lived his or her life.

If you Google my name “Ron Edmondson”, you’ll easily find my blog, that I’m on Twitter, my church, and some other blogs that I’ve commented on or that have featured some of my writing. What you’ll also find is that I died June 11, 2008. I was an attorney in Texas, apparently well-respected, and I left a loving family. Of course, that’s not the real me, but who knows that in 13 years…or any day…it won’t be.

I’m not trying to be morbid, but when I ran across this Google listing, I couldn’t help but consider what they will write about me some day. By the way, most likely, others will have to say or write something about you some day also.

What will the say?  Perhaps, more importantly, what do you want them to say?

Do an exercise with me. Help write your obituary…your epitaph…beyond your date of birth, birthplace, occupation, and family listings…Those are the basics…everyone gets them listed.  When you get past those points, what will they say?
(more…)

There is often a difference in…

Knowing…

And…

Doing…

When it comes to right things…things we should know and do…

It’s true for all of us…some more than others…

You can know the right things to do…and never do the right things…

In my experience, not doing is often a bigger problem than not knowing…

Many people who know never do…

Yet…

The margin between knowing and doing may determine the degree of success you attain…

Understanding your margin sets you up to address the problem…

What is the current margin between your knowing and your doing?