Looking Back

It’s been quite a while since I’ve intentionally sat down to reflect on life in a true wooden stool type of way. Between all of the recent happenings and the constant writing that was required for school even more writing was really very far from my mind. However, it seems appropriate now. Looking back over the last year and seeing how much has changed I can hardly imagine many would disagree.

About a year ago this month I began to brainstorm with my friend Quint about how I could help him with his newly reestablished business in the financial industry and where he felt called to take it over the long haul. This transpired into months and months of doing some side work for him as well as continuing to discuss, brainstorm, and dream big all while trying to stay focused on school and continue to work at the job that was actually feeding and housing my wife and I at the time and which also happened to be a ministry that we loved. Finally, at the beginning of this year Quint and I decided it was time for me to join him out in Kentucky to put 100% of my efforts into the endeavors that we had been discussing. The whole decision process was amazingly surreal. I have seen a number of friends leave their current jobs with conviction and certainty that God was leading them to something new. However, as I sat around expecting this same lot to fall on me it seemed noticeably absent. There was a resounding sense that the choice was going to be ours when it came to staying in Vegas or heading to Kentucky. It was not a matter of being called specifically to either but a promise to be blessed wherever we passionately committed our hearts. I felt like this realization made the process incredibly more difficult then it had to be, I really just wanted God to give a clear answer on where He wanted us to go and then check back in with me to make sure I was ok with that before He made the final decision. It was at this juncture that I stopped asking whether this opportunity was the right move and started giving God the opportunity to close the proverbial doors and signal that it was the wrong choice to make. Week after week went by and it seemed like He just kept the doors open, it was almost eerily uncomfortable stepping through each one without Him seeming there to guide us through or stop us in our tracks. The amazing thing is that the entire three-month process from the decision being made to landing in our new home went so smoothly. In the end and looking back it is wonderful to see how God was guiding us along by appearing through our friends and family, bosses, co-workers and teams. In peoples’ silent encouragements and voiced enthusiasms. The entire community we were a part of made it so difficult to say goodbye and yet so easy to follow God on the journey of a lifetime.

As this next chapter is unfolding I hope to renew this discipline of documenting thoughts along the way. I will attempt to post them here, though probably nowhere near as disciplined as my mega-blogging friends out there (you know who you are), who are coincidently most likely to be the only 3-4 people reading this and who I hope will prod me, should the need arise, to get something up here if it goes dark for too long. And with that;

to be continued……(fade to black)

Blink Conclusion

Tucked away deep within the afterward, Gladwell does a good job of summing up the purpose of this book, “a simple adventure story – a journey into the wonders of our unconscious.” This book was not intended to be an instruction manual on how to refine one’s thinking into split-second, blink oriented thoughts on every matter in life. However, it is a great work in awaking readers to the fact that analysis is not the answer in every situation. Coming from an analytical person, one who does not mind having the opportunity to stew over decisions and is often found pacing the aisle of a store before making his final decision, this is a nervously refreshing idea. I agree with Gladwell that we must learn an appreciation for decision making that is not laborious, that we must adjust ourselves to make decisions without all the information neatly laid out for us.

I will probably take this book and let it sit on my office desk for a while, not so much to push me to Blink thinking though. Instead, it will serve as a vital reminder that this type of thinking is allowed. I will likely look at it throughout the next month or so till it takes its spot on my bookshelf and think that I’m really content with making decisions without every piece of information available, that I trust my brain to work in its mysterious ways and allow me to arrive at a conclusion I intuitively know but probably could not articulate to any depth. Hopefully, I will be comfortable enough having both split-second thinking capabilities and the obsessive, laborious ones that my personality is best known for. Furthermore, I think the greatest challenge of Blink is discerning with practical wisdom when to choose one style over another (which, logistically speaking, is a Blink decision in itself), that should prove to be the more interesting journey I believe.

Blink #2

I wrapped up the next two chapters in the book early this week thanks to memorial day. Malcolm develops heavily on the theme that he began in the first two chapters, this time focusing on the second half of his thesis, analysis can paralyze rather than assist. The general idea was this; if we make our best decisions in fractions of a second, based on our often accurate intuition, then analysis only serves to drive us away from our best decision or delay the execution of it. I suppose I agree with him on this point. Often times personal analysis has only served to confirm a prior intuition. I haven’t yet run into enough instances of this since reading the section to actually retest the thesis but I recall times in the past of spending minutes or hours reviewing options on a decision or direction only to realize that I came to the conclusion that my first thought was probably best. My greatest concern for this thesis however is the dynamic that it brings to team environments. It seems that one of two things would have to happen; either the entire team would have to rely on the leader’s intuitions or the entire team would have to come to an instant consensus. I don’t discredit the thesis but it is certainly going to take some time and observations to work through it. With one chapter and the conclusion of the book to go there is also the possibility that an answer will come in the next week.

Blink

I started reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell this weekend. The beginning of the book essentially talks about two things. First, we make tons of instinctual decisions or gut-based opinions without ever realizing it. Second, we use this same innate ability to read people or situations and respond to them without thinking. So far it has been a very interesting read and I am excited to see where he takes the rest of the book. The problem (or benefit), however, is that I have been slowing down my mental processes and analyzing these things happening throughout my day. On the one hand this is great because of the self-awareness I’m gaining. On the other hand I am already an extremely analytical person who probably doesn’t need to add the analysis of micro-behaviors to his to do list for the day. Either way, I am enjoying the book and am glad it has caused some stiring within me rather than simply providing information.

Overload

I have read much and written little over the past few months. I think it is because my mind is on sensory overload. However, I also think it’s because I haven’t really done much self-analysis. I have allowed a great deal of information to pass in front of my eyes and fall on my ears without wrestling with it and contemplating whether or not it truly challenges my current perspectives. I wonder if this is the disease that plagues much of our society today. A disease of too much information and an inability to dissect it all, leading to no real change, no real conviction. This reality leaves me somewhat depressed and I am challenged to figure out how to break through it. I hope that some scheduled time of reflection might do something to help, now I just have to keep my appointment.

A Current Conviction

The first six weeks of this year have gone by in a flash. Between work and school life has been a blur of information. What continues to bubble to the surface during this process of balancing life between these two environments is the question, or coviction really, of where the remainder of my time is spent. I’ve had to wrestle lately with whether or not the things that I devote time and energy too are really furthering the purposes I seem to be called to. This probably gets back to the similar idea of consumerism in one of the last posts. It’s probably because if I had to be really honest with myself, I am constantly trying to train myself to be much less self-centered. I am constantly in wonder as to whether I am paying enough attention to the people that matter most, the causes that I am called to support, and the values I said  build my life upon. I fear that I probably am not but instead, tend to push them aside and take time for my on selfish priorities and ambitions. This is the rough part of introspection, dealing with what you find when you get there.