Sometimes life feels aimless. We go through our days wandering or, worse, floundering. And of course some of this is just part of the human experience. It’s normal, and we shouldn’t beat ourselves up too much for it.
photo credit: Paolo Camera via photopin cc
But if it goes on for too long or if it’s too pervasive, life itself begins to feel pointless. We wonder: What’s this all about anyway?
And we meet people, don’t we, who seem to be making real progress. They seem to be “gettin’ it done.” And while we’re happy for them, in a weak moment we might imagine ourselves doing not very nice things to them—keying their car or strangling their cat or rethinking our position on water-boarding.
I want to offer a relatively simple way to add more direction to your life. Anyone can do this, it’s inexpensive if it costs anything, and it really does make a difference.
As with everything in life, it all comes back to the movie Pretty Woman. OK, not everything in life comes back to Pretty Woman, maybe not even most things, but this comes back to ten seconds at the very beginning of the film. And it just so happens that somebody posted a YouTube clip of these ten seconds. Enjoy:
So here’s my question: Who is this guy in your life? Who’s asking you the most important questions, questions like:
- What’s your dream?
- What’s energizing or inspiring you?
- What are you working on?
- What do you need help with?
And how intentional are you being about engaging this person or people in your life?
We all need a creative partner or two or five. And it is important that we are regularly meeting with these folks, asking them the big questions and letting them ask the same of us.
I’ve written elsewhere about how important my friends are to me, and how important we all are to each other. We certainly have accomplished a lot more together than we’re likely to have done otherwise.
This doesn’t have to be a big deal. You could simply call a friend and ask her to come over for coffee. Then ask her if she’d be willing to get together, say, once a month, to go through a few questions. Tell her it’s your way to stay on track, to keep moving toward the things that are most important to you.
Give it a shot because here’s the thing: we were never meant to do this thing alone. The whole project is about relating with others—giving and receiving, talking and listening.
I’d love to hear how it goes for you.
I want to end this post with an opportunity for you to think “out loud” in the comments about which questions would be most helpful to you. Which questions will help you make progress?
Go ahead: What are the questions you want someone to ask you regularly?
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Interesting post…
It’s true that we all need support in life; a person, or people, who will help us to achieve our goals. You are right to suggest that it is not at all easy to go it alone. We need sometimes to have somebody act as a “sounding board” for us – somebody to question us, to motivate us, to keep us focussed and on the right track.
However, where you go wrong is to assume that everyone will have such people in their lives. This is NOT true. For some of us, life is more complicated, and we find that we are surrounded by people who wish to keep us down, people who hold us back. You might suggest that we simply eradicate these people from our lives; you might argue that we do not need people around us who are not good for us. Well, there’s the rub! Sometimes, these people are unavoidably in our lives. Sometimes, these people are our own family – parents, spouses, siblings…
It annoys me when people make assumptions about life. All too often, the assumptions include the belief that everyone’s life is the same; that we all have people around us who unconditionally live us, support us and cheer us on. The reality of life may be anything but for some people. Remember… we do not get to choose everything in life, and some of the things we cannot choose are the most significant things to affect our upbringing and later life outcomes. We do not get to choose our family, our parents and siblings. We do not get to choose our place of birth, or level of affluence.
I can offer you another perspective on why some people seem to make more progress than others. It’s called LUCK. It’s all about circumstances – who your family are, how well-off they are, what opportunities you are afforded, whether you grow up in privileged circumstances, whether you are surrounded by love and support or by dysfunction and deprivation…
I’ll give you an example:
Two kids are born the same day of the same year. So, they are the same age. However, one is born to an impoverished Hispanic family, where the father is in and out of low-paid work in the construction industry. He drinks a lot. The mother, a housewife, has problems with depression due to the fact that she struggled to learn to speak English very late in life. Her main language is Spanish, and on a day-to-day basis she still finds it hard to get by in English. When the child starts school, he is sent to a struggling inner-city school with huge class-sizes and very poor facilities. The area where the family live is high in crime. The boy finds he is unable to concentrate on his education much beyond the age of 15, because his parents need an extra income, and force him to get a weekend job. Sometimes, he works evenings, too, washing pots at a local café.
The other boy is born into a very wealthy family. His father is a real estate broker. His mother teaches part-time at a private Nursery. The boy has a nanny, and later a personal tutor. His parents pay for him to have a private education at one of the country’s top schools. The boy also has private tuition to teach him the piano, and violin. He has lots of hobbies, and plays on many of the school’s sporting teams. The family home is huge, and safely within a gated community. It even has a swimming pool.
Can you imagine how life might turn out for these 2 kids? Can you imagine how much harder it will be for the first boy (the Hispanic boy) to make progress in life? He has far fewer opportunities, and means of support, than the rich boy. So, you might well see the poor Hispanic boy end up like his father, doing poorly-paid construction work. Whereas the rich boy might win a sports scholarship to a top University.
Why? Because progress in life is sometimes very little about a person’s actual talents and ability. Because progress in life can be hindered, too; not just helped. Because some people are more fortunate than others with respect to the circumstances of their lives…
The Hispanic boy might be perfectly capable, well able. He might be just as clever and as competent as the rich boy. However, there are things in life that hold him back, and these would be problematic even if he did have people around him to talk to and to ask for assistance. Even with support, coping with a difficult life is not easy. Having a parent who is an alcoholic, or is mentally ill, is not easy – I know this from personal experience. It scares you, worries you, unsettles you – holds you back. Coming from a poor family, or from deprived circumstances is not easy. It means you have less opportunities in life. You may not get a good education; even a genius might struggle to get top grades if sent to a failing school. You may struggle to find the money for basic needs like food, clothes, housing. You may live in fear of unemployment, crime, gangs, ill-health…
We need to be aware that how people are seen to make progress in life is not always the WHOLE picture. What we see is superficial; we need to get beyond that. Besides, I would argue that it is unfair – even prejudicial – to make judgments of any person’s so-called “progress”. Progress is individual to each of us. The rich kid might find it easier to make visible progress in life; but is this actually progress at all, when he has had life so very easy? By contrast, it might be argued that for the Hispanic kid even to complete school and get some qualifications, he has made HUGE progress because he has had to overcome a lot of obstacles just to get to this point.
Maybe the REAL exercise for all of us is to sit carefully, and to rethink what we actually mean by progress!
Thanks for this encouragement, we were not meant to do this alone. I like your idea of keeping a “training log”. A question some close girlfriends and I often ask one another is what are you struggling with most right now and how can we help. Often, just talking it through with someone else brings just the right clarity. I like Cynthia’s question about how have you served God today. I would love to be asked how I supported God’s work in the world with my words and encouraged hope.
Love your list of questions, Cynthia. Excellent post, Chad. My largest obstacle right now is lack of support from the spouse. And at this point, I wonder if I allow that obstacle to keep me from reaching my full potential. So, questions someone should ask me regularly are:
* Have you submitted a project recently?
* What have you done this week to build your platform?
* What new opportunities have you explored this week?
* What are you working on right now?
GREAT questions, C. C. I love, in particular, the question about new opportunities. That’s an intriguing one, and if I knew someone was going to ask me that regularly, I would be on the lookout for more new opportunities.
I hope you have or can find a friend to ask you these questions. If not, try reporting on them briefly in a notebook on a regular basis. Lately I’ve been keeping a small notebook–one that fits in my shirt breast pocket. I think of it as my “training log,” and I report (very briefly) in it each day what I’ve done in terms of improving my art or expanding my platform. It’s been both fun and useful!
CC, I’ll pray that the Lord touch your spouse in a very special way…that he might see your heart’s desire and how important your writing ministry is to you.
Here’s a Happy Friday hug– (((hug))) Feel the love? 🙂
Chad, I loved this post! (Of course, I love Pretty Woman and I know the clip you’re talking about.) 🙂
I posted today about “questions,” too, but in a different way. Mine was a different take, but I sooo get what you’re saying.
The questions I would like someone to ask me regularly?
*How have you served Jesus today?
*What goals did you meet?
*Have you exercised?
*Did you make your word count?
*How were you proactive about your career today?
Have a super-blessed weekend!
Gosh Cynthia, can I just copy your question list?? We may be leading parallel lives…. 😉 I love that your first question (“How have you served Jesus today?”) came first, above all else. Thank you for being an encouragement and inspiration.
Amanda, you humble me. Without Him, I’m nothing.
Great questions, Cynthia! I love the word count question because it tells me you’re committed to writing a certain amount over time. That’s what it takes!