Angela Pitts
There are two main topics society says we shouldn’t talk about – politics and religion. Since I’ve been talking about Politics already on previous posts, I figure I might as well hit the religion side 🙂
While this topic did come out of the sermon this week (I go to Eaglebrook Church, Bob Merritt Sr Pastor, deliverer of this sermon), it is VERY practical advice. The concept in this 8 part series is how to build a great life. This week (#2), the topic was about Discipline. Not necessarily in ‘disciplining someone’, but more of having discipline. He quoted someone famous, as saying Discipline is the thing we want the least but need the most. Bob broke it down to having 3 main points to follow, in order to have a disciplined life:
1) Get out of the Entitlement mindset: I’ve seen this myself, especially in the younger generations. As a society, we have this entitlement perspective that things should be handed to us. Yes, this does dovetail in with my political views as well. Americans just aren’t working as hard, being as innovative or creating new things. We expect that just because we were born here, then it is society’s job to give us a good life. Working hard and being independent is even biblical.
2) Practice Delayed Gratification: The notion of working hard for something – or saving money for something – has been trampled in today’s mindset. Think of credit cards – people want to buy that widget and they want it now. Since they don’t have the cash at the moment, let’s just charge it. Also – the mindset becomes if I have to work for something hard, maybe it isn’t that great. At Avionte, we’ve always tried to look for the right people instead of the right experience/knowledge. We can teach SQL, we can’t teach attitude. We’ve looked at energy level and problem solving more than degrees or past experience. During the sermon, Bob quoted a study saying that self-discipline is twice as important as intelligence in predicting success. Read that one to yourself again. LITERALLY, an average person with high discipline is twice as likely to have success as a really smart person with average discipline.
3) Make Advanced Decisions: Bob had made 6 life decisions early in his life (Spiritually strong, Financially stable, physically fit, sexually pure, strong family and good leader) and lived his life according to this principles. I relate it a little differently – if your current lifestyle/habits are not producing the results you want – make a decision to change. If you are sick of being poor, not having enough money to do what you want to do – change something. You either need to increase your earnings (new job, 2nd job, marry a rich person?) or decrease spending (eliminating interest, cutting bills, buying less, divorcing a rich person?). If you don’t have a plan for your future, your life will look much the same as it does now in the future.
If you are interested, you can see the video at https://www.eaglebrookchurch.com/pages/page.asp?page_id=38656 . Bob quotes Bill Gates as well.
Quoting a great philosopher of the recent era, Larry the Cable Guy, Get ‘er done!
