If you've been on this call for about a year or two, then you know that I'm one who likes flying; I enjoy the experience, I enjoy aircrafts and hearing those jet engines roar at the beginning of the runway as it takes off. One of the things I always look out for which causes an amazing sense of awe when you look out of the window and see the huge wingspan of a big aircraft like a 747 and you can actually see it move. You do realize that it is meant to give in the wind but then you see how strong and powerful the winds are that something so huge could still be tested by those winds.
I remember reading that bridges have a certain amount of give – they move – and that's built into the way they are structured so that they will not be compromised by the strong winds that blow. Buildings, as well! A statistic about the World Trade Center: it had beveled edges to help the wind glance off its corners so that it wouldn't play on the strength of the building.
All this to say that winds are so powerful that they can easily take one off course. I was reading an article by Vijay Govindarajan and Srikanth Srinivas, writing about the fiscal crisis in the US before the government really shut down. They talked about how one needed to make course corrections. You can't just keep going. They used the analogy of the flight. I know Brian Tracy wrote about 'The Flight Plan: The Real Secret of Success' many years ago, but they used the analogy of the aircraft saying, "An aircraft always needs course corrections. You can't set a flight plan at the start and expect that it will reach its destination without any problems. There are course corrections that are constantly being made along the way, allowing for the wind drifts, the head and tail winds that are constantly working on the aircraft."
They talked about course corrections in four points:
- Starting Point: you have a starting point and you have to understand where you are in that starting point. You have to have a reality understanding of your starting point.
- Destination: then you need to know where you are going. You need to say, "This is my end point." It cannot be a random point.
- Plan: how are you going to get there?
- Course Correction: This is the key because there are always variations and variables that can happen in our plans.
I thought how important it is for us to know these four points clearly even in our own lives. We need to have a clear understanding of where we are. Sometimes we can be like a stork with its head in the sand, not clear about the things that are all around us. Sometimes we are not very clear about where we want to go – we are drifting, going with the wind. Sometimes we don't have a clear plan, we've not done due diligence, we don't know how to get to where we want to go. All of this comes back to course corrections that we need to make. We need to be constantly looking at our destination and say, "Am I still on course or have I changed?"
I know a man who came out of college at 21 years, had a degree in hand, got a job and worked for 12 years. However, he didn't really like what he was doing and at the age of 33, he realized that this was not what he was meant to be as against what he was actually doing. So he gave it all up, went back to studying and changed the flight plan of his life. Today he is so happy with what he is doing.
There are many such stories of people who have done major course corrections or just minor ones, shifting just one degree either east or west to make sure that one stays on path. I thought that it might be good for us to look at our own lives and the context that we are in and say, "In my job, am I where I ought to be? Am I doing the things that I really need to be doing? Is this my flight plan for life or are there course corrections that I need to be making?" Or maybe in your relationships with colleagues around you or people who work above you or below you. Is that where you want to be in that relationship? Is there a course correction that needs to be made? Has a relationship gone sour? Does it need to be rectified? Or even maybe in your family. Are there course corrections that you need to make with your children, your spouse, your parents? Have you lost track of what's going on? Are you just drifting through? Or perchance it's your community, the people around you in your society or your place of worship. Are there things that you know you need to be doing but are not doing? Maybe this is a course correction that needs to be made in your life.
I love listening to Indra Nooyi. In one of her interviews she talks about the 5 C's that are so important for leaders and this comes out of her experience. They are:
- Competency
- Communication
- Courage and confidence
- Consistency
- Compass
About compass, she said, "Compass always points north. Always make sure that your life of integrity, that it never veers. It's always pointing due north."
I wonder this morning, whether that needs a little adjustment, whether there are things that you have allowed into your life that have moved that compass just a little degree off north and that needs a course correction.
Every now and then, God gives us the opportunity to make course corrections, to be able to take a good hard look at our lives and say, "I'm not where I really ought to be, but I can get there by making a little bit of a correction in the way that I am going." Sometimes we end up in a boat and we are just going downstream, wherever the wind or the waves take us. Then one day we realize that there are oars in the boat and that we can chart our courses. And we must. We cannot allow ourselves to drift. We must have our starting point. We must have our destination and we must make sure that we get there, in every area of our life, whether it's our job, our colleagues, family, community, society, or our own personal lives.
For me, the caveat is a verse from our Scripture that says, "God says – I know the plans I have for you."
When God has plans for us, they are incredible plans. But the key question here is: are we working with His plan or have we started working on our own plan? One is an ordinary plan if we are the only ones going after it. The other is a divine plan if God is in the midst of it.
I wonder this morning, if there are some of us on this call who need to make a course correction. My prayer for you is that you will have the courage and the conviction to make it.
Let's pray together. Almighty God, on each one of these precious ones on this call, pour Your Spirit. Give us wisdom to take a good look at our lives and ask the question, "Are we really adhering to the flight plan that you have for our lives? Do we need to make course corrections?" if we need to, I ask that You would help us, that You would speak to us, that You would show us what we need to do and that You will also give us the strength and the conviction to follow through on that course correction. I pray Your blessing on each one on this call. In the precious name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.
• Vijay Govindarajan & Srikanth Srinivas, "Our Political Leaders Need a Fiscal Flight Plan." http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/12/our-political-leaders-need-a-f/
• Brian Tracy, "Flight Plan: The Real Secret of Success."
No comments:
Post a Comment