by Dr. Cecil Clements (3rd January 2012)
Here’s a truth that I found out in my life. If you don’t take care of background stuff, one day they will take centre stage. This truth will come home to you very clearly in the way you treat your Smartphone. Smartphones are smart as long as you and I also remain smart and know how to handle a Smartphone. For example, Smartphones have a lot of apps and very often we open so many of them and then don’t close them down. And all of these apps are then working in the background. Unless they have been shut down, they will continue to keep working. It will surprise you, if you do a check after this call, to find out how often we forget to shut down these apps. It’s possible that you may have 15-20 apps running in the background and all of them are actually slowing down your Smartphone. They’re eating into your battery life and you are not optimizing the Smartphone that you have, all because there’s background stuff that hasn’t been dealt with.
That’s a great analogy for our own lives. There is always background stuff in our life that, if we don’t deal with, has the potential to slow us down, to eat into our passion and our zest and zeal and be detrimental to our productivity. We very rarely stop and take a good hard look at our lives. In fact, it’s only negative things in our lives that make us do that – a crisis, an illness, a layoff, the death of a loved one – something like that which is more negative than positive. Because we’re facing a crisis, we stop and decide to look at our life from a different perspective.
But there’s a positive place that also allows us to look at life and that is New Year’s Day. New Years give us the opportunity to look at our life and say, “What are things that I need to change, things that I will willingly change and not be forced to change because of a crisis? What’s not working, what’s pulling my life down? What are the things that are underneath the surface that are intruding into the centre stage?”
So for the first Tuesday of this year, I want to throw out some things that could be background stuff, apps in your own life that are running and draining you of your own battery life.
Here’s a truth that I found out in my life. If you don’t take care of background stuff, one day they will take centre stage. This truth will come home to you very clearly in the way you treat your Smartphone. Smartphones are smart as long as you and I also remain smart and know how to handle a Smartphone. For example, Smartphones have a lot of apps and very often we open so many of them and then don’t close them down. And all of these apps are then working in the background. Unless they have been shut down, they will continue to keep working. It will surprise you, if you do a check after this call, to find out how often we forget to shut down these apps. It’s possible that you may have 15-20 apps running in the background and all of them are actually slowing down your Smartphone. They’re eating into your battery life and you are not optimizing the Smartphone that you have, all because there’s background stuff that hasn’t been dealt with.
That’s a great analogy for our own lives. There is always background stuff in our life that, if we don’t deal with, has the potential to slow us down, to eat into our passion and our zest and zeal and be detrimental to our productivity. We very rarely stop and take a good hard look at our lives. In fact, it’s only negative things in our lives that make us do that – a crisis, an illness, a layoff, the death of a loved one – something like that which is more negative than positive. Because we’re facing a crisis, we stop and decide to look at our life from a different perspective.
But there’s a positive place that also allows us to look at life and that is New Year’s Day. New Years give us the opportunity to look at our life and say, “What are things that I need to change, things that I will willingly change and not be forced to change because of a crisis? What’s not working, what’s pulling my life down? What are the things that are underneath the surface that are intruding into the centre stage?”
So for the first Tuesday of this year, I want to throw out some things that could be background stuff, apps in your own life that are running and draining you of your own battery life.
- Resentments: resentments at work tend to always make you produce less than the optimum. Why do resentments happen? It could be that you have a colleague around who’s very pushy. Or it could be because of an injustice that happened – somebody has plagiarized your work; you didn’t get that promotion that you should have got because somebody else took the credit for it; or you’re not getting recognition for your own work. It can lead to you thinking of injustices that are going on around you which in turn lead to anger.
- Jealousy – another form of a background app that is working in your life. Jealousy of a colleague who seems to have it all together (and I say seems to have it, because very often, not everybody has it all together; it just seems so. Everybody has their own problems). But we look at someone and feel that they have it all together, they’ve got a good car, great job.
- Worry – worry can bring you down. Worry and fear go together – fear of losing your job, not meeting targets, not finishing a project or maybe fear of a seemingly smarter colleague who is around you
All of these things, resentment, jealousy, anger, fear, all work in the background; all work bringing you to a less than optimal state where you’re not producing at the level that you ought to. As you look at the New Year, it will be a great time to see if these apps can be shut down in your own life.
By saying this, I do not mean that you can shut down resentment and anger, jealousy, worry and fear just like that. You probably need to look at it and get help. But what I want to say to you today is ‘Get the help.’ If you don’t deal with these things that are going on in your background, one day they will take centre stage in your life. And when they do, then it becomes a crisis.
What do these things make you do? They make you self-focused. They keep you self-absorbed. You’re constantly looking inward. You’re not able to see where you are going. As we look at the year 2012 and all that is before us, this would be a great time to say, ‘Carpe diem’. I’m going to seize the day. I’m going to look ahead, going to optimize myself. I’m not going to be bothered with things that are slowing me down in the background. I’m going to deal with them. New Years provide us with that opportunity.
So a word to all of you, my friends, from Smartphones that we use: take care of the apps that are working in the background. Shut them down. Look at your own life. Say, “Here’s a resentment that I have, that I need to deal with. Here’s anger or jealousy that has come that is sapping my morale and decreasing my productivity, or worry or fear.”
Just this morning as I was meditating and praying, I read this line from the Bible where it said, “God is the one who lifts up my head.”
I thought that it was just what I needed. I need somebody to lift up my head, because when my head is lifted up, I can see the horizon. I can see where I need to go. I’m no longer self-focused and self-absorbed. Looking ahead gives me fresh perspective on life. That’s what I need for 2012. That’s what we all need for 2012, to take care of those background things in our lives that pull us down, to trust Him, the Almighty God to be the lifter of our heads so that we can look ahead and embrace the year 2012.
God Bless Us All.
By saying this, I do not mean that you can shut down resentment and anger, jealousy, worry and fear just like that. You probably need to look at it and get help. But what I want to say to you today is ‘Get the help.’ If you don’t deal with these things that are going on in your background, one day they will take centre stage in your life. And when they do, then it becomes a crisis.
What do these things make you do? They make you self-focused. They keep you self-absorbed. You’re constantly looking inward. You’re not able to see where you are going. As we look at the year 2012 and all that is before us, this would be a great time to say, ‘Carpe diem’. I’m going to seize the day. I’m going to look ahead, going to optimize myself. I’m not going to be bothered with things that are slowing me down in the background. I’m going to deal with them. New Years provide us with that opportunity.
So a word to all of you, my friends, from Smartphones that we use: take care of the apps that are working in the background. Shut them down. Look at your own life. Say, “Here’s a resentment that I have, that I need to deal with. Here’s anger or jealousy that has come that is sapping my morale and decreasing my productivity, or worry or fear.”
Just this morning as I was meditating and praying, I read this line from the Bible where it said, “God is the one who lifts up my head.”
I thought that it was just what I needed. I need somebody to lift up my head, because when my head is lifted up, I can see the horizon. I can see where I need to go. I’m no longer self-focused and self-absorbed. Looking ahead gives me fresh perspective on life. That’s what I need for 2012. That’s what we all need for 2012, to take care of those background things in our lives that pull us down, to trust Him, the Almighty God to be the lifter of our heads so that we can look ahead and embrace the year 2012.
God Bless Us All.
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