The Difference Between a Boss and a Leader

     It's pretty safe to say that most of us have the responsibility of being in charge of someone. In many cases you may have the responsibility of overseeing a number of people ranging in size from a few people to other positions that assume the task of leading tens or hundreds, or even thousands of people. Today's question to ponder is this are you bossing those people and getting compliance because of fear or intimidation? Or are you leading those that are following you and being an example of a true "servant" leader?
      Bosses tell people what to do. Servant leaders model what should be done and others eagerly follow. Bosses make the rules and expect others to follow them. Servant leaders feel the pulse of each situation and act accordingly, realizing that this is a multicolored world we live in and people are not black and white and neither are the situations and outcomes that require our attention. Bosses believe they shouldn't have to do the dirty work, while servant leaders eagerly roll up their sleeves and get dirty. Bosses believe there is a difference in them and the people that work for them. Servant Leaders do not see a difference in any one on their team. The role each of us plays is just as important as the next, and the relevance to the success of any team is dependent on everyone on the team and their contribution to the outcome of each task the team assumes responsibility. Bosses deliver orders, while servant leaders seek guidance and deliver instruction, guidance, and hope. A boss is not worried about relationships. A servant leader cares about you and your concerns and makes a committed effort to be available to help.
     Whatever position in life you carry, parent, sibling, staff member, shift manager, supervisor, business manager, or CEO of your own company you are daily faced with decisions and responsibilities that impact people's lives. This week make more of an effort to get more involved in the lives of those you are charged with leading. If you are barking out orders and ultimatums your family, business, organization may be making it, but with more empathy, compassion, and dedication toward those you are leading you will no longer have to "boss" anyone because your team will be following you and your example. If you need an example to model after look no further than our Lord and Savior, "...., whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Matthew 20:26-28.
This week belongs to you, make it amazing!
Coach Carter

Who's Driving Your Car?

    

     “You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.” The words of author John Maxwell could never ring truer in relationship to today's Flat Tire Ministries Thought. The title presents a question that may seem very obvious in a literal sense, I mean when you sit down behind the steering wheel in your car it should be pretty safe to say you are driving, yet in more of a figurative sense who is driving your car? In life are you influenced by those you work with or go to school with? Or is your day constructed around what you watch on TV or what you deem as the reality of the current cultural trend in music or the entertainment industry? Do you have life habits that are unhealthy and thus create an unhealthy lifestyle for you and those that you love? Is your opinion of your life measured by what you see as success in someone's life that you may or may not even know? The question of who is driving your car may seem obvious, but I want to suggest that even if you are sitting behind the steering wheel you may not be the one that is making the decisions about where you are going.

     Going back to the opening quote, Maxwell makes it clear that if we want to do something different in our lives we have to change something that we do daily, think routines and habits. Whatever yours is "I would quit smoking, drinking, eating too much, or you fill in the blank________, but....", "I am so tired after I get off work I don't feel like working out", or "everyone else is doing it so why should I stop or change what I am doing?", you are the one that is driving those decisions and choices. Fortunately, we have the ability to change our lives, all we have to do is make the decision to change and then do it. Sounds easy huh? Well my friend it may not be all too easy, but it is possible if you really want to change. Remember Philippians 4:13 "I can do ALL things through Christ which strengthens me", Paul didn't say that you can change things up to a certain level and then things are impossible from there up, no I emphasized the word ALL because that is what the Word says we can change ALL things through our faith and trust in Christ. We must put our faith to work by making the choice to change whatever it is we want to see change, and that is where it gets tough,  many of us get stuck believing we can't change.

     We all have two voices inside us that guide and direct our thoughts and actions. In commercials and entertainment many times those voices are portrayed as a little angel on one shoulder and a little red devil sitting on the other shoulder. Each whispers thoughts of either encouragement or discouragement into the ear of the listener and then it comes down to a choice for the individual to decide which direction to go from there. That is pretty close to how it really is in life, but I want you to think about it just a tad bit differently. I recently read a thought that has opened my mind to a whole new perspective on change in my life. It went something like this, if you want to do something differently (change), you have to quit listening to yourself and start talking to yourself. First, I'm not suggesting you walk down the street chattering to yourself, that could result in you receiving a new white jacket and a padded room for accommodations. What I am referring to is that you stop letting your mind limit what you do or what you want to do in life. Too many of us let our minds be limited to areas that are comfortable and familiar when instead we should be telling ourselves that we can change, we can challenge ourselves, and we can be successful if only we will believe, trust, and stay strong in our faith that ALL things are possible. 

     Is it easy? Will there be immediate success? Did I say it would be easy and that you would succeed without effort? No, No, No, yet ALL things are possible. We must change our minds to change the world, and to change the world we must first change ourselves. "Who's driving your car?"isn't such a silly question when you think about what drives you to choose the direction you chose this morning to go to work, or what influenced your decision to continue that negative behavior you just can't seem to quit. At the end of the day you are driving your car, but are you listening to yourself as you make the decisions you make, or are you telling yourself what you are going to do in this life you are living? 

     Whatever you want to change in life, habit, behavior, actions, personality trait, it all starts with the one that makes the decisions in your life, YOU. I will conclude today's FTM with the words of Joshua 24:15, where Joshua made a choice about his faith in God that goes well with our message of  change today. Joshua in speaking to the children of Israel about their choices of who they were going to serve going forward took this stance, "But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua had a decision to make, he could have went along with what was the current, popular thing of the day and he would have just kept on going along with his life, but Joshua chose to not listen to his mind that might have been influenced by what was going on around him. Instead Joshua made the decision to do what he knew was the right thing to do. You can do this too. Whatever it is and I'm certain there is a long list of things that collectively we want to do differently in our lives, you can do it! Don't listen to those negative voices in your head, tell yourself that you can do it and that you will do it and then go out and do it! 

Have an awesome week and make a change in your routine this week that will signal a change in your life. 

Coach Carter

 

"Like Sands Through the Hourglass, So Are the Days of Our Lives."

     The title for today's Flat Tire Ministry Thought is taken from the opening tagline of the long-running daytime American soap opera Days of Our Lives. The tagline was accompanied by a picture of an hourglass with the sands quickly dissipating from the top bulb to it's resting place in the bottom portion of the timepiece. (Little did the viewing audience of said soap opera dramas realize that, in my opinion,  they were actually wasting their time about like someone sitting around watching the sand flow downward in an hourglass!) But that is all fodder for another day, today's topic for our  FTM deals with time and how we need to make the most out of the time we have in front of us. 
     A few years ago I settled with an understanding of a concept that, as obvious as it is, most people have not come to terms with and are not living accordingly. If you were to ask people about their fears you would find that one of the top ten things folks would tell you that they are afraid of is dying. Well guess what, not being morbid or pessimistic, but if you are living you are dying, point blank end of story. Just like the grains of sand in that hourglass aren't moving upward into that upward bulb, our days left on this egg aren't growing in number. So my conclusion, revelation, Aha moment whatever you want to label it is this; if we know we have a finite number of days to live, why are we so worried about dying, that is inevitable. We should instead be more focused on making sure we live each day as if there won't be a tomorrow! 
      Now like I said earlier I'm not convinced that most people have a full grasp of the gravity of this concept and I have garnered that conclusion in part because when I shared my "AHA" moment with a colleague they looked at me puzzled and concerned and inquired "Are you okay, is there something wrong?" Many times our first thoughts are about the wrong end of that outcome. Instead of putting so much concentration on our ultimate end, why aren't we more concerned with how much life we can squeeze out of the time we have and stop worrying about the one thing we can't control. 
      We can all do things like exercising, eating healthier, and getting adequate amounts of sleep, to hopefully extend our time here on earth, but at the end of the day, literally, we do not have very much control over when it is our time to go home. On the other hand, what we do with the time we have been given each day we live is totally ours to decide. How we are going to spend it and what we are going to accomplish during that time is completely up to us. When you look at your calendar what do you find filling the squares for each day? Are you spending your time working, moping around, harboring hard feelings, or worst of all looking at your condition in life and complaining about how bad you have it? Well you can spend your time here doing just that and what will you have accomplished, nothing that will amount to anything. Instead I believe you have to get up in the morning and armed with the knowledge that this is the day that the Lord hath made I will rejoice and be glad in it, (see Psalms 118:24 for more on that one), we have to go out and live today like there isn't going to be a tomorrow.
     If I'm living today instead of planning on doing something when I get time to do it I'm going to leave no stones untouched when it comes to my plans in life. I know people who go through life holding grudges or disowning family members over something as trivial like hurt feelings or financial matters. It may be bad, it may have cost you or your family a great deal of strife, but is it worth losing time with your family? Make amends today who knows there may not be a tomorrow. People proclaim that they would spend more time with family, spend more time exercising, reading, praying, serving, whatever you want to fill in the blank with, if only they were not so busy. Well "you can not serve two masters, for you will love the one and hate the other, or else you will hold to the one, and despise the other, you have to pick one." paraphrased from Matthew 6:24. You only have one life to live and trust me it ain't getting any longer, don't put off till tomorrow what you can accomplish today is a good motto to live by each and every day.
      The grains of sand aren't increasing in my hourglass and I'm okay with that, I'm in the same boat with about 7.5 billion other people, the area where I'm gaining ground is what I'm doing with those grains of sand I still have left. Do I know how many I have, unfortunately / fortunately we aren't given that tidbit of information, but what I do know is while I have breath to breathe and while I have an opportunity to live I am going to live it, love it, and make a difference in it until it's over and then I hope I did enough that my life will still be impacting other lives long after I am gone! That's how you can beat that old hourglass. Do things that will matter in other lives and things that will impact the world in a positive manner in which you live. Don't be worrying about yesterday it's gone, and don't be dwelling on how bad you have it because you are alive and as long as you are alive you have a purpose to fulfill so go for it! Make amends, make headway, set your course, go deep, work harder, live stronger, leave the place you were better than it was, and always make a difference in someone's life in a positive way! We can't stop the sand, but we can most certainly color each and every grain with a rainbow of life experiences that will make a difference in someone's life. 
     It's the last week of school where I'm from, I plan to keep on pushing to make a difference while I still have a chance, what about you? 
Coach Carter

  

The Gift of Failure

     I recently finished a wonderful little book by Jon Gordon entitled "The Carpenter". This inspirational story is centered on how a carpenter helps a man's failing business turn things around. This book was filled with so many takeaways to "build" and develop skills that will allow us to be successful in the workplace, business, and in life. Nice read, I highly recommend it to all.
     One of the takeaways I collected was in a chapter of the book where the main character, Michael, attempts to implement one of the strategies the carpenter had shared with him and it flopped. Frustrated and discouraged, Michael goes to the carpenter to share his disappointment at the failure he was experiencing. The carpenter's response is the focus of today's Flat Tire Ministries thought for this week.
     Gordon's character the carpenter, who if you haven't guessed is symbolically representative of Jesus the carpenter from Nazareth, likens failure to a gift in this mentoring lesson with the businessman Michael. I'd like to share the following excerpt from their discussion which explains how we need to address failures in our own lives. "failure often serves as a defining moment, a crossroads on the journey of your life. It gives you a test designed to measure your courage, perseverance, commitment, and dedication. Are you a pretender who gives up after a little adversity or a contender who keeps getting up after getting knocked down?" You see life is filled with "failures", but how we approach them is what truly helps us become who or what we are intended to become in life.
     I often times use the example of a baby who is just learning to walk to explain how we need to face failure. It is almost guaranteed that when that little toddler takes her first step she is going to plop right down on the floor, more than likely right on her little Pampers bottom. That is failure, the little baby wanted to walk across the room to her mommy or daddy, but instead the whole thing flopped. Disaster? No just a learning tool that enables this little toddler to learn from that first misstep and then pull herself up and equipped with a new piece of experience try the whole thing again. As I look around I do not see too many adults crawling around the streets on their way to work or play so I'm guessing the lessons learned from our early failures in walking 101 didn't stop us from learning how to walk. Life's failures have to be handled with that same type of resiliency, we have to look at failure as a necessary and important part of the learning process instead of a defeat that we will not recover from or a scar that will impact our lives forever.
     As an educator, coach, father, husband, and mentor I have failed so many times in life and I have witnessed a great deal of "failure" in each of my aforementioned roles as well. I like to say failure isn't failing unless you quit so you have to decide if you are going to give up just because something didn't work out the way you originally planned it or are you going to dig in a little deeper and pull yourself back up and take another step in the direction of your goal in life? When we begin looking at failure as an opportunity to grow our mindset turns in the direction of optimism and the anchor of defeat is lessened and eventually eliminated.
     Failing at something you want to accomplish may just cause you to evaluate how bad you really want something as Gordon points out in his book. He also says that failure may lead to your next success in some other area. The author shares that Oprah Winfrey was fired as a news anchor and told that she wasn't fit for television. Really??
      Are you holding back from taking a chance on something you want to accomplish in life, but you are too afraid that you might fail? Have you experienced a failure in life that has encumbered you and forced you to doubt yourself or your abilities? In either of these situations I want to encourage you to pull yourself up, set your sights on your plan or goal, and start making moves to reach your destination. You can do it, you can overcome it, become fearless in the face of failure and your whole approach will begin to change. Failure is a gift, accept it as such and embrace it for the growth it will provide. This week be amazing and be relentless in life's failures and setbacks. If a baby can get back up and not only learn to walk but to run, jump, dance, and play, your plops and flops are intended to help us grow and excel in our lives as well. Proverbs 24:16 reminds us, "The godly may trip seven times, but they will get up again. But one disaster is enough to overthrow the wicked." Trust, have faith, and get back up again one more time, ten more times, ten thousand more times, whatever it takes!