1.14.25 ~ Flexible Plans

Good morning!

Commercial: Last night's zoom call: "Taking the Joseph-Moses challenge for 2025" or "you can't steer a parked car"

Have you ever heard the expression, "I’m gonna do that one thing even if it kills me"? Well, many times in my life I’ve just about done that to myself; and with that mindset I missed many opportunities along the way. I became so dogmatic, so focused on the goals that I had set, in the specific plans that I made to achieve them that I had my blinders keeping me from...

One, seeing the easier and faster routes to my destination. Two, missing out on the things that I considered important, at the start of the year, were actually less important than I originally believed. And thirdly, in that blind focus, I didn’t even see the even better, more significant, more consequential and even easier to achieve opportunities that presented themselves along the way.

One of the greatest challenges to any type of success is to stay focused on your goals, while remaining flexible enough to adapt to any needed change (Deut. 6:23-25). Even though we have designed a very specific strategic plan to achieve those goals, it is equally important to remain open and flexible each step of the way. For instance, if you look back at most of your defining moments or those pivotal events that transformed your life, I bet most of those were unplanned and happened unexpectedly.

Without a doubt, life is a mystery. You never know what might show up! Consequently, that means, I can’t be so myopically focused that I miss the opportunities and solutions that weren't imagined or fathomed at the beginning. As many of us know, jokingly, but seriously, Murphy’s Law lives to teach us, 'that if something can go wrong, it will'. Therefore, a word to the wise, don’t be too attached to the route that you first charted, as you undoubtedly will reevaluate and readjust along the way.

Here in Michigan, we're getting some 'snowman', 'snow angel,' snowball fight, tubing, snow skiing and ice fishing weather. The path to success in any of the five categories of life (spiritually, emotionally, physically, relationally and financially; 1 Thess. 5:23) is like standing at the top of a double black diamond ski run...hoping for that this winter :-). As you stand there, by choice or not, you have the goal to get into that comfy cozy chair next to the warm fire, at the bottom of the hill, inside the lodge, sipping on a mug of hot chocolate, smiling at that 'I'm so glad to see you person'.

Some of you know, by experience, that if you just ski straight at that destination, you probably won’t end up with all your limbs intact, nor all your equipment still attached to your body. 100% of the time you’re gonna run into a mogul, or fifty (lol), and it’s gonna force you off track and you’re gonna have to zig and zag, bob and weave your way all the way down. If you're like me, you might not look too graceful. You may fall repeatedly. And you’re most likely terrified all the way down...This is the voice of experience speaking...But if you keep picking new paths and coming up with new approaches to get to your desired destination, you can get to the exact destination of your desires: That comfy chair next to the fire in the warm lodge with limbs still intact, sipping on that mug of hot chocolate, next to that 'I'm so glad to see you person' (Matt. 25:21,23).

The key to your goal success is to remain fixed on the destination. Have a vision and an outcome in mind. Have a mission, a big goal, who it is that you are growing to become and who you want to be with, but remain wide eyed and flexible to the various paths that you might need to take all along the way until you get there!

As someone famous once said, I wish I could remember who this wise person was :-)...

"Life is what happens to you when you’re planning to do something else."

Just as business never goes according to its initial business plan neither does the plan for your life. The same holds true for the spiritual, emotional, physical, and relational parts to life. Don’t get too entrenched in having it have to be, or go a particular way.

And for the super intellect of the couch potato out there reading this, oh wait, couch potatoes wouldn't be reading this...anyway, just in case you were thinking of that other sarcastic person who says, 'well, then why bother planning at all if nothing goes according to plan'?

As the great 19th century military strategist, Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said, "No battle plans survive the enemy". He also said, regarding his D-Day strategy, "in preparing for battle I always found that the plans are useless, but the planning is indispensable." King Solomon, the wisest of mere mortal men said,

A man's heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps (Prov. 16:9)

Alan's addition: (on the winter slopes) get ready for some moguls or (on the summer waves) the wave may break differently than expected!

Make a plan and remain flexible. Stress and success constraints are caused when people are too fixed and rigid in their beliefs about how things should be. Do you wanna learn how to bob and weave, particularly when the bullets, or as we said a couple of days ago, when the arrows start flying, realize that it’s OK to say, "I changed my mind about the course, not my destination!" (Matt. 6:33)

Have an amazing 3rd day of the week! Did you smile more yesterday? Today, it's bob and weave :-)! Keep smiling!

Shalom

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