FitzSpeaks - Balance

Yet the quality of a good aged wine is far superior to something cheap and quick. So take your time because when you serve this next season of what you have we want to savor the true rich taste of what you have prepared with your life or next level serving. 

Action Item: What would you lose if you rushed things right now and what would you gain if you were patient?

Reflection is one of life’s most important wisdom components. At the brink of 2019 you may be reviewing a season of labor profitably accomplished, or you may be about to launch your next season. Whatever the case, pausing, reflecting and stepping back will empower you to make a broader and fuller assessment of how what you’re about to do will effect who you are becoming. 

Action Item: Are your plans for 2019 energizing building blocks for upgrading your personhood and advancing your calling? 

 

While I spent much of 2018 culminating the past four years of our non profits cross cultural efforts my primary and far deeper focus for the past several months of 2018 has been a hidden and very demanding regimen of new skill set acquisitions, internal recalibration and re-envisioning for the position and platform those efforts are now opening up for me in 2019.

So this particular pause for reflection has not been to sharpen my pencil or master any plans that assure successful execution. I have already invested decades in strategy development, consulting skills and wisdom discernment in leadership. This time of reflection is a God imposed pause more like a temporary freeze. It’s not the cause or tactics that are under scrutiny it’s the man, the heart and just how much of that man’s heart is pure and still totally fascinated and fulfilled only in God. Needless to say that type of pause takes much longer. 

Don’t just do your pause, know its purpose.

Quietness has a loud voice if you can dim the clatter of daily life. 

Quietness speaks profound and yet simple things. It clarifies cognitive thinking, instills insights, and provides perspectives that become tools to see and interpret one’s life. It calls us above the relentless bombardment of ever increasingly invasive data. Without quietness, we become shallow; a mere reactive component of what the “other” has deemed valuable rendering ourselves to the realm of a social collage.

The one day of Sabbath defines the six days of activity, the one hour of the day defines the other twelve, skip the quiet and you're skipping the very reason you’re here. 

Who really are you? It’s not the reflected images you may throw up of blended homogenization. We are designed to be a directive light, instilling meaning and giving clarity amidst the endless data life style that others are engulfed in. We are by design to be inspiring, set on a hill; not a swallowed up refection.

Action Item: Are you getting the quiet time that brings out the true you? What steps can you take to improve on that?

Even though I was dressed in some older slightly shabby run around clothes, I was amazed at the color coordination between what I was wearing and this vintage car in the parking lot. Life shines when we can blend and harmonize the best of our past with our current fuller and more matured present personhood, it gives us volume, velocity and a vigorous confidence in our future.

How about you? What does your dye cast look like? Not the modification that maturity tends to water down but the real original you. 

I want to encourage you to defy and strongly push back against the homogenization of your life. 

Be you, preferably a sanctified version but never the less let the message of your life, your values and your purpose let them be clear, pronounced and penetrating. The clearer you are in the presentation of your personhood the clearer and more effective we can be in ours. Here is a toast to the original you. 

I like the contrast between black and white in fashion and photography but not in life. For some people rigid boundaries are essential for their internal harmony. For me life has not been that easy to categorize. I find wisdom, discernment and helping others find their way can lie in the nuances of the gray. Even if you find a perfect standard, who is to say who qualifies? In life some have come from such hard places and others relative ease. So I find the black and white measurements are best left in the photography, fashion and the hands of God. For the rest of us lets be there for each other by being dispensers of mercy.

My life is filled with new and exciting eras but sometimes I feel tired of the never ending new mountains to climb. 

Summits are awesome but for every summit view there are the long lowlands of beginnings. 

Imprinting a child. 

In our busy lives, stopping for a child may be one of the most lasting gifts we can give. The moment may not even be consciously remembered, but it has been sown for a lifetime. Warmth, acceptance, security, down deep in the heart.

A friend receives you as you are, shares the space where dreams are threshed out and then reminds you of who you are when you forget. 

We all have a little graffiti in our background. Places we have been, people we used to be, other eras of our lives. Some of it we like and some we don’t but it all provides a texture for emergence. 

Understanding the drama of the old paint behind me makes little impact now. Why? Because its eclipsed by a nice new bright comfy shirt, a countenance of confidence and feet set in light and white that are definitely headed somewhere. 

Action item: When you do review your past places make sure they are viewed in light of the always emerging better version of who you are becoming.

Positioned for Contrast. Sometimes standing in contrast between the commonality of the blacks and whites--and equally important above the grays--brings you to the forefront. 

Action Item: Have salt, stand out, be a light even if it’s to make those around you look better. Name three areas where your contrast clearly stands out.

Yet the quality of a good aged wine is far superior to something cheap and quick. So take your time because when you serve this next season of what you have we want to savor the true rich taste of what you have prepared with your life or next level serving. 

Action Item: What would you lose if you rushed things right now and what would you gain if you were patient?

Do you have something you that you have been working on that you know is a right arrangement? You know it fits but just haven’t yet found the place for it. Well look at the picture. The amazing symmetry of all these colors together, yet in a setting I never could have imagined. 

So design your solutions because there is a perfect fit out there just waiting for you to show up.

The real measurements that can have lifelong lasting value in life are our personal internal measurements that we use to bring about external results that are tailored to who we are in the process of becoming. 

So how are you doing? Are you measuring yourself in the light of others successes or do you have your own internal standards that empower you to do what your called to do? 

Action Item: Can you think of any way that your cutting yourself short in the comparison game? If so what would adjusting it look like?

I have always loved spending time in the gym. It’s one of my happy places (kind of). It’s me alone up against nothing but myself and iron. No outside influence, nothing to measure up to, nothing to lose everything to gain. In an ever changing world and an equally personal commitment to ever change internally its remains a constant. At 67, muscles do fade but the internal stamina only increases.

Having a good sense of timing is essential for some and for others they can seem oblivious to it. How they flow together is a mystery to me.

Some just flow freely, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. In my life I’m always on time dialed in and ready. While that works best for me, like the picture to often I get locked in to my own self imposed expectations and that causes frustration. 

What works best for you?

Learning how to pace yourself is one of life’s better lessons. I loved speed without limits until I got on this bike. 2014 New York City. You can go as fast as you can dream or exert yourself but if in the process of a non discerning speed or pace your personhood gets out of balance you ultimately can lose control. If I left this beast at full throttle it would literally throw me off the bike. 

Action Item: Are you more in touch with the drive to accomplish or complete  something that you are with being the person you will be when you arrive? 

Amazing the amount of detail and diversity that has gone into this one wall. I wonder if in the end this is what our lives will be like. So many different pieces, so many different shapes, so many connections, all crafted into even more distinct mini compartments until somehow it all flows together like it was planned all along. I sure hope so.

Action Item: Mystery and wonder is crucial for a free and fulfilling life. What part do they play in your life and how? 

Match and measure who you are by the sudden challenges that unexpectedly confront you. There are many good sayings about who you are under pressure, etc. But the best way to be ready then is by being ready now. Today matters. So if I’m going to match FITZ with a 911 then there will be a need for a turbo.

 

Action item: Make a list of the five top five seasons of your life. Then inventory their qualities and characteristics and discover patterns.