Peanut Gallery: On the way to visit family in Chicago, our car’s GPS guided us to restaurants, gas stations and motels along the way. It’s a 1000 mile road trip, but “Nancy the Navigator” kept us on track and eliminated much of the anxiety of a long drive. We always knew where we were… and how long it would take to get to our next destination. Nice.
All this was made possible by a simple question: “What is your current location?” Once “Nancy” discovered where we were, she could map out our surroundings and plot the directions to our next stop.
So… as you begin 2013, here’s the deal – “Do you know where you are?” “What is your current location?”
Ths is an existential, self-assessment question… not a road mapping one. And there’s no existential GPS to do it for you. You have to work out the coordinates of your own life. But there’s help available – you’re not the first person to try to figure out where you are in life.
That’s why I’ve re-blogged the article below with its associated links. There’s no quick fix here. But there is plenty of food for thoughtful reflection. And once you figure out where you are, you can plot the path to your next destination. Give it a try and God bless you in the new year.
Special thanks to godsbooklover for bringing this to our attention. Check out her posts here.
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Take Time to Reflect as We Tumble Over the Cliff into 2013
by godsbooklover, thabto.wordpress.com
A good friend of mine posted this message on Facebook recently:
Don’t want to make resolutions you will break all too soon, but want to be intentional about the direction your life is heading in the next year? Here is a tool to spend a little time evaluating your life holistically at the turn of the New Year.
She included a link to a website called reviveourhearts. com, where you can fill out a “Personal Vitality Plan” (a downloadable PDF) which examines 12 areas of your life, including not only the usual suspects, i.e.:
marriage, family, relationships, work, and finances.
But also: service, physical health, emotional health, moral purity, rest and recreation, and seeking God.
One way of visualizing your overall development (says the companion text) is to think of your life as a reservoir comprised of multiple sub-sections. It is possible to be doing well (to be full) in one dimension of your life while neglecting others (to be empty). Identify activities and practices that are helping “fill” you in each area or that are “draining” you in areas.
We all know that our calendar’s sometimes ominous turning from one year to the next is an artificial boundary. We don’t to wait for January 1st to look at our lives in this way. Each of us is quite capable of making changes in any area of life at any time.
[And so is our government, for that matter…but the two parties seem to be playing a prolonged game of “chicken” right now, as if our collective woes were nothing more than a teenage joyride on a country road. Meanwhile, the country is coming to the end of the “road”, and I don’t think there’s much joy happening any time soon.]
Even if Congress isn’t doing any soul searching, that doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t. Frankly, national disarray makes having one’s personal house in order MORE important rather than less. We each need, now more than ever, to be sober, responsible, prepared for anything…and right with God.
(How’s that for an end-of-the-year message? Might put a damper on your partying tomorrow night, I know.)
So if you’re looking for a handy tool for evaluating strengths and weaknesses in your personal or professional life right now, why not use the one I mentioned above? There are also others readily available with a simple internet search, but the Personal Vitality Plan is the only one I saw which is free.
After all–just because “New Year’s Resolutions” are a cliché doesn’t mean they’re not a good idea. And if you’re having trouble evaluating yourself, you can always ask for Help.
Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23-24, NIV
The Peanut Gallery 