How is your outlook

“I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court, indeed, I do not even judge myself.” 1 Corinthians 4:3 NIV

A large part of my life has been spent in violation of Paul’s advice to not judge myself.  But a friend asked me a question this week, “How is your outlook?”  I have been thinking about the question so I thought this post would be a good way to figure out the answer. 

Working in sales, people sometimes ask “How’s the market?”  I always say “I have no idea” meaning if the news says that the market is up and I don’t have any active clients or recent sales, my market is down.  If the news says that the market is down but I have active clients and sales are good, my market is up. 

When I first started selling insurance, I had some veterans in our agency give me advice.  It was amazing how detailed the superstitions were.  I had one agent tell me that if a client returned a lead that was printed on red paper, there was no way to sell  anything, don’t waste your time.  Green paper?  That meant a sale was likely.  I remember asking why he didn’t just use green paper all the time. 

Also, I will be 62 this year.  Medicare hotel is coming fast.  Actually, I just realized that I don’t have as much of a career left ahead of me as the one behind me.  I want to make that count but I want to live with much more balance than I had at several other times during my work life. 

I am far more conscious of time than I used to be.  It goes too fast to really soak it in.  It makes me wonder how much I have missed just running through a cycle of life, work, and sleep.  At times I was too involved in activities at church and the community, even though things I helped with like men’s ministry at church were good, I was gone a lot to do so.  Now I wonder if I am involved enough.  I have learned that my mind can play contrarian quite well.  If I am doing one thing, I should probably be doing more of another.  Switch to the other to do list and my mind can tell me I should go back to what I just convinced myself that I should stop doing.  There is a tension.

I realize that my outlook has almost always examined external factors like work and health and life in general and whether or not I think I am doing a good job.  It has always helped if my boss thought I was doing a good job, but it was rare for me to assume that I was. 

But let me tell you about our weekend.  It turns out that our grandkids were at our house for an entire weekend.  Their parents could have been in Mexico for all we cared.  Harlee and Oliver were with us. 

They have no agenda.  Well, except Harlee is three years old and sometimes she really does have an agenda to rule the world.  Tiny little miracles can be very loud sometimes.  By the time they left, our house was ransacked and there wasn’t a morsel of food left.  We had not done anything to get ready for the new week and neither my wife nor I cared.  Korbin even shared Oreo cookies with Ollie, willingly.

The things I worry about, the bible tells me I should not worry about, but that I should pray about everything.  Some of the material things I want the bible tells me that God will provide out of His riches and that can be a little or a lot.  It’s up to God, not me.  If I only examine one or two things and set my security on them, I may miss the giant shipment of just plain love in my life. 

What do you think you lack?  Money? Time?  Friends?

Being your own worst critic may push you harder, but you may end up slamming your head against a brick wall.  I am learning to follow Paul’s advice more often and stop judging myself.  That leads to more time to get on the floor with Harlee and Ollie.  They think I am doing just fine. 

Challenge:  Don’t spend time away from the life God blessed you with trying to find the things you asked God to provide.