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Building A Dream Life

An Unexpected, Modern-Day Twist to The Christmas Carol

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It’s Never Too Late to Build A Better Life

As I’m working on goal setting and planning for the new year, I’ve been reviewing the past several years. Looking back can be disappointing and discouraging if things haven’t gone as well as you had planned. And this year certainly didn’t go as planned

While thinking about places I fell short and opportunities I missed or ignored, it caused me to think about the Hallmark Christmas movie, “A Shoe Addict’s Christmas”. In this movie a woman, Noelle, accidently gets locked in a department store where she works. While waiting to be rescued a quirky woman, Charlie, appears. Over the next few days Charlie, a guardian angel, helps Noelle rediscover the life she has been avoiding, by visiting Christmases past present and future.

We all have situations that we can look back on and wish we had done something different. We can’t change the past, but what we do today will affect the future.

You may have heard the story (or some variation of it) that Charlie told Noelle in the movie. It goes like this, there was man who was out in the snow and someone came by in a sleigh and offered him a ride. The man refused. He said, “God will take care of me”. Later as the snow continued to get deeper another man in a sleigh came by and offered to help. Once again, the man refused. “God will take care of me.” The next time a sleigh came by the snow was up to the man’s chin. For a third time the man declined the help and said, “God will take care of me”. Then the man is in Heaven and asking God why He didn’t save him. God answers, “I sent three sleighs and you ignored them all”.

Too often we ignore the sleighs that God sends us.

As long as we’re still alive, even if we’ve missed or ignored sleighs in the past, it’s too late to use the next one. It is up to us to decide. There is a balance of faith and doing. Dave Ramsey says to “Pray like it all depends on God but work like it all depends on me.” We need to take of the blinders off and be more observant of the sleighs. “God moves mountains to create the opportunity of His choosing. It is up to you to be ready to move yourself.”, “The Traveler’s Gift”, Andy Andrews.

If I don’t want to get buried in the snow, I need to shovel what I can when I can and take the sleighs when they come along. I was presented some sleighs this past year and took them.

Learn from the past, look to the future, live in the present.

Watch for the sleighs and make this year the best year ever.

Life Takes Strange Twists and Turns, but God is Faithful to His Promises

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Life being full of twists and turns is certainly an understatement. We all have examples of our own lives taking a twist here or a turn there. As crazy as some of those experiences are, none of them even come close to the twists and turns in Mary’s life when she found out that she was going to give birth to God’s son. And this was just the beginning of the twists and turns she would go through.

In Luke 1:39-45 we read about Mary’s reaction after receiving this message. She “got up and went quickly to…Zechariah’s house and greeted Elizabeth.” Elizabeth being Mary’s older more mature cousin had more years of experience. It is good when we find ourselves twisting and turning to confide in people who have been through more. This experience can help us regain perspective, give us direction moving forward and help us prepare for the next twist or turn.

We can’t see the future. We don’t know what is going to happen next. What we can do is trust in God’s promises. If He says it, He means it. The difficult part is clarifying what He says. Some people tell us He says one thing While someone else tells us the opposite. To get clarity we need to go directly to the source. That source being the Word of God. We can’t just go there once. We need to consistently and  continually go there.

What is the Word of God? The Word of God refers to the Bible and to Jesus. You can get a more in depth explanation here, https://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-Bible-Word-God.html. This seem to be two different things that are actually the same. For example, I am Mark, but I am also the words that I’m writing in the email. My thoughts and writing can change over time as I experience more, but God isn’t going to change. He has already experienced it all.

We can trust God to help us through life’s twists and turns. He will direct us if we will faithfully follow Him. If we, “Trust the Lord completely…He will make our paths straight”, Proverbs 3:5-6. We can know how to follow Him through His Word.

I will close with this story about a Christmas twist and turn from Pastor Lee’s message.

A pastor shared with his congregation about a family that was going through some financial difficulties at Christmas. After hearing this, a man and his son decided to take a Christmas tree to the family. While driving to deliver the tree they were hit by a rock slide. The truck would not move and the son was cut by glass from the broken windshield. Car after car drove by and did not stop to help. Finally a couple stopped and took them to get the help that was needed for the boy and the truck. In all of the chaos they never even got the couples name.

A short time later after the truck was repaired and the boy was healing the pastor asked the man if they would deliver a box of food that had been given for the struggling family. When he got to the home with the delivery he found out that they were the same couple that had stopped and helped them. This is a Good Samaritan twist and turn. Luke 10:30-37

Remember God’s promises when twists and turns happen in your life and help others with theirs.

We Are The Ones Who Can and Will Do What Needs Done

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In the Christmas season we see the words love, joy and peace a lot. This doesn’t mean that these are the only feelings we experience during the Holidays. I do think we see these types of actions now more than other times of the year. This brings up the question why. Why do people seem to be nicer around Christmas?

I think that the Christmas season brings the Christian ideals to the forefront due to the fact that we’re celebrating Christ’s birthday. This makes us more aware of Christ and what He has asked of us. In Philippians 4:4-7, we are told to “…be filled with joy.” It doesn’t say to just be filled with joy the few weeks of the year when celebrate Christ’s birthday. It says be filled with joy. How can we be filled with joy?

What about peace? Merriam-Webster says that peace is 1. a state of tranquility 2. Freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions 3. Harmony in personal relationships. These all sound like great things. Why is it that we struggle to find peace, especially during the hectic chaos of the holiday season? Maybe it’s because everyone has different ideas, thoughts and goals. This can make peace difficult to accomplish. Pastor Lee told a story of a Nigerian woman whose Nigerian name means “the child who takes anger away”. When asked how she got this name she told about her grandparents on both sides of her family disapproving of her mother and father getting married. After they went ahead and were married the families quit speaking. After she was born the grandparents decided to get past their disagreements. It’s amazing the power of peace that a baby can have. There was a baby who’s birthday we’re now celebrating that this name would be a fitting for.

We have the choice to be filled with love, joy and peace through out the whole year, not just at Christmas, it’s up to us. We have to decide to and then do it. We can choose how we are going to live and act. Are we going to harbor anger and turmoil or are we going to choose joy and peace?

Another story in the Pastor’s sermon was about a military plane crash. It was a awful sight with body parts scatter around. The military personnel were cleaning up the mess when local civilians came and helped. This wasn’t their responsibility or a requirement. Never the less they were helping. Later that night a mortuary lieutenant was struggling with all that he had seen that day. He went and spoke with the Chaplin. While they were talking the young lieutenant said about the civilians, “They Are the Only Persons Who Would, or Perhaps Could, Do What We Had to Do Today”. This made a huge impact on the young man’s life.

These civilians would or could do what they did. The same thing is true of us when we are struggling with feelings opposed to love, joy and peace. We can choose love, joy and peace.

I hope you have a love, joy and peace filled Christmas.

Getting Inspired for A Better New Year

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Some New and Exciting Plans for The New Year

I don’t know about you, but I get excited about planning for the future. Looking forward is exciting. It feels a little like the expectation of Christmas morning. The possibilities and opportunities of the New Year offer similar exciting feelings of anticipation.

If all your goals are always reached, then they aren’t big enough. They need to be big enough to stretch you, make you work harder at building a better you. I’ve never been short on big ideas and plans. To this point we didn’t reach all our 2018 goals. This doesn’t mean that we’re going to quit. God has too many big things left for us to accomplish.

One of the goals was to help more people find solutions for building their dreams through growing the number of people following these weekly posts. We missed it…by a lot. So, what are we going to do? Are we going to quit?

No. We’re going to try some new things because, failure only exists for the person who quits. I DO NOT QUIT!

As we have been discussing ideas for growing our community in this next year my financial assistant/sister had a suggestion. She thought I should share the weekly email that I currently send to my Sunday school class (which she receives).

What a good idea. I have always written these blog posts from a perspective that God is the Architect of our lives and we need to build our lives accordingly. This fits well with the mission of Solution Building to help you “find the solutions you need to build your dreams”. This second “Weekly Solution” posting will be mid-week and have an inspirational focus. I’M EXCITED!

Read the first one of these posts here.

Looking forward we’ve got some new and exciting things that we’re going to implement in the coming year. We want to develop our community and expand our circle of influence. We hope this addition will help with that. Keep watching for other new and exciting things.

One of the important parts of community is communication. Please share this with others who you think would enjoy or benefit from it and give me feedback by replying in the comments below.

The Ultimate Gift Card, Be Sure to Use It

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We know that God loves us, but can we understand how much? How much He really, really loves us? I mean think about it.

He gave everything for us. He left the peace and comfort of His home in heaven for us. He suffered for us. He died…for us. THIS IS LOVE! “They Will Know I Love Them Because…”

When reading Luke 3:1-6 previously, I read the making roads straight and the leveling of mountains and filling the valleys, but didn’t make the connection that it is my responsibility. My responsibility to, “be baptized… Prepare the way for the Lord.” I’m the one that is supposed to move mountains and fill valleys.

But do I have what it takes? Yes I can do this! All things are possible through the Lord, Mark 9:23, Luke 18:27, Isaiah 41:4. We just need to believe and do our part. Satin wants us to think that it’s too big for us to do. This keeps us from doing our part. If we will ignore him and work together we can move mountains with our little shovels.

There are a lot of gift cards given this time of the year. These can be great gifts…if they’re used. Not so much, if they aren’t. There is $44,000,000,000.00 worth (yes that’s billion) of unused gift cards since 2008. The average household has $300 worth lying around. These pieces of plastic aren’t much value if they aren’t used. The same is true with the spiritual “Gift Card” we have been given. If we don’t use it, it will go to waste.

They “Will Know I Love Them Because…” of the “Gift Card” given. Don’t leave your “Gift Card” lying around unused.

We Can Choose to Be Thankful

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But It’s Up to Us to Decide

Yesterday was the Thanksgiving holiday for US. This brings the topic of giving thanks to the forefront of our thoughts. These discussions are every where and for a variety of reasons. Some are as simple as to remind us to be thankful. Some are using this as a marketing plan.

I received a lot of different Thanksgiving themed emails over the last week. Many had fantastic thanks giving messages. One was from one of my favorite authors, Andy Andrews. It was his weekly podcast titled, “A Thanksgiving State of Mind”. In this podcast Andy shares a story about finding thankfulness when you’ve lost your grateful spirit.

My fondness for Andy started with the reading of his book, “The Traveler’s Gift”. This book is about how one man’s choices made the difference between success and failure. I read it a little under six years ago while recovering from a concussion. I attribute much of my increased level of giving thanks to the connection I found with this story and my injury. It gave me a new appreciation for the gift of life that we have been given. Much of this improved awareness I can attribute to the “Seven Decisions” in the “Traveler’s Gift”.

 

 

Being THANKFUL is a CHOICE we make. We can DECIDE how we are going to live.

 

 

The Thanksgiving holiday in the United States started being officially celebrated in 1789, as proclaimed by George Washington. It was to commemorate the Pilgrims giving thanks for the harvest in 1621. We all have things to be thankful for. We just need to slow down long enough to think about it and to remember.

 


Why is it important to give thanks? – If we are giving thanks, we are acknowledging that there is someone to give thanks to. This acknowledgement is critical to our living a well-focused life. This is the understanding that everything we have and everything that we are comes from God.

 

Kenneth Copeland lists 5 benefits of thanks giving as:

  1. Thanksgiving brings God on the scene – Entering into thanksgiving you invite God’s presence into your life.
  2. Thanksgiving puts challenges in perspective – It reminds us of how powerful God is.
  3. Thanksgiving focuses your mind on the right subject – It helps us refocus our attention on the One who is greater than every challenge.
  4. Thanksgiving strengthens your faith – It reminds us of all that God has done and all that He will do.
  5. Thanksgiving is a weapon against the enemy’s maneuvers – When giving God praise our enemies will be turned back.

We have the “super-power” of choice at our discretion. We can choose to be THANKFUL or not. By choosing to GIVE THANKS we unleash God’s benefits in our lives and to all of those we connect with.


I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and that you will remember to give thanks all year long.

Good Communication Is Not A One-Way Street

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Remember That I Have Two Ears and One Mouth

 

In January last year I wrote about my core values and how I use them as a life filter. In that post I told you that I would go into each one in more detail. In this week’s solution we will dig into another one. It is to Remember that I have two ears and one mouth.

This core value points out that good communication is twice as much about listening. This makes perfect sense why God gave us two ears and one mouth. I have accepted the fact that I like to talk and do quite a lot of it. I believe that over communication is better than poor communication.

This core value reminds me of the importance of listening.

Within the last week I had two different people compliment me on my ability to communicate. One was directed at speaking and the other to writing. This was nice because I haven’t considered this to be something that I was particularly skilled at. The fact that this was communicated to me, was encouraging and inspiring.


Poor communication or the complete lack of it is one of the biggest issues in business and in life. How can I expect to help people build their dreams if we don’t communicate? Too often assumptions are made, and they lead to disasters.

If I don’t know what you want to achieve, and I don’t accurately tell you what to expect, somebody is going to be disappointed.

It is understandable why communication gets ignored. We’re busy. Communication takes time and we don’t have any extra. Whether it is listening, talking or writing…it takes time. You’ve probably heard the proverb ‘haste makes waste’. This is more evident now than ever. We are an instantaneous people. We want everything now. Aesop’s Fable about The Tortoise and the Hare points out how intentional focus on the goal and a steady movement toward it will win the race.


The constant connection to our electronic devices also contributes to our losing the ability to communicate well. There is nothing wrong with electronic devices. They allow us to connect with more people than ever before. It’s just that it can be hard to convey emotion electronically. We need to be careful to strive for and maintain a balance.

This is the ninth core value that I have written about in more detail. You can read the others here:

 

Honor God in all that I do

Intentional action

Take off the blinders, be more observant

Pay attention to detail

Spend time wisely, there is a limited amount

Never be satisfied with mediocrity

Find and maintain the balance in everything

Move the mountain one shovel full at a time

That only leaves three more to examine more thoroughly. I will communicate about them in more detail in the future so keep following these Weekly Solutions and if you know of anyone that you think would enjoy or benefit from these solutions be sure to share this link with them.

 

Move the Mountain One Shovel Full at A Time

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The Size of Your Shovel Is Not Important

I had a conversation with Brett at Engineered Door Products earlier this week about how busy he was. He told me how he was working late into the evening and coming in early of a morning in an effort to keep up. I could feel his frustration. I have had this same conversation with too many people, too many times and deal with this myself almost every day. It reminded me of an earlier blog about spinning too many plates at once.

There are so many great things to do. How will we ever get them done? Why do we continually find ourselves in this place? Who’s fault is it that we’re so busy? 

WE ONLY HAVE OURSELVES TO BLAME!

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about why I’m always so far behind and what I can do to get caught up? Looking at this huge mountain in front of me is overwhelming. How will I ever get it moved?

Looking at a blueprint for a new building can be one of those mountains. There is tons of information on all of those pages. Where do I even start? With the first next thing, that’s where. Determine the first next thing that needs to be done and do it. If I don’t stop looking and start shoveling the foundation will never get poured.

 

It doesn’t matter whether you have a teaspoon or a steam shovel. What matters is that you start shoveling and don’t quit. Failure only exists for the person who quits.

 

 

Another way to move the mountain is with help. Two shovels can move more mountain than one. Sharing the moving of the mountain can be hard for us micro-managers but is critical to accomplishing the task. If the mountain that needs moved is much bigger than a mole hill or unless you have a really really big shovel, some help moving the mountain will relieve some of the weight of that mountain.

Moving the mountain one shovel full at a time is one of my twelve core values. My core values are the root of who I’m meant to be. The list falls into two different categories. Some I’m naturally good at. These I want to constantly reinforce. The others…don’t come so naturally.

This post is to remind myself to keep shoveling my mountains and to let you know that you aren’t the only one standing in the shadow of a mountain that needs shoveled.

KEEP SHOVELING

Here are some links to previous core value posts. We’re getting closer now, only four left.

How to Live A Well-Balanced Life

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Finding and Maintaining the Balance in Everything

 

I initially wrote about Using Core Values as My Life Filter last year. The focus of that post was the importance these CORE VALUES have in providing me with insight to who I am and more importantly, who I aspire to be. In that post I listed these twelve core values and said I would write about each in later posts.


Currently have written about:

• Honoring God in all that I do
• Paying attention to detail
• Spending time wisely
• Never being satisfied with mediocrity
• Taking off the blinders and being more aware
• Intentional action and again

Today’s core value is FINDING AND MAINTAINING THE BALANCE IN EVERYTHING.

I listened to a Story Brand podcast recently in which Tim Arnold’s point was that tension was a better description of this value than balance. He points out that “we tend to be binary thinkers. We assume things have to be one way or the other”. This was his point about the term balance when used in this context. Often the word balance creates the picture of an instrument with two sides used for weighing.

Sometimes there are only two choices. When choosing between right and wrong or good and evil, I believe this is the case. I agree with Tim that too often we tend to stop our thinking at only two choices and miss all of the out of the box opportunities that are out there.

I see balance as something that involves a lot more than two things.

The Merriam-Webster definition of balance is extensive and covers a variety of different areas including people, weight, stability, accounting, mental and emotional. This is more the way I think of balance.

I see BALANCE as large platform sitting centered on top of a small point. Without anything on the platform, it sits level. When one thing is placed on top of the platform near the center, things go pretty well, and it stays relatively level. As more things are put on the platform and things begin to be crowded from the center it starts to get heavier at different areas. This causes the platform to lean. If one heavy thing or too many things are moved too far from the center the platform will tip far enough that things falls off. Keeping things setting on the platform is all about weight and location.

Our lives are like this platform. God has set our platform balance perfectly on this point and given us the responsibility of keeping it there. The difficult part of this obligation is the number of things we get to choose from to put on our platform. The choices are endless. There is spiritual, family, work, friends, fun, community, etc. and each of these areas are full of an endless number of specific things that we can put on our platform. Some things carry more weight than others. As we go through life the things we have setting on our platform will and should change.


FINDING AND MAINTAINING THE BALANCE of our platform is the responsibility given us. Will we be perfect at it…no. Can we learn and get better at it…YES!

Whether you use the word balance, tension or something else to describe this endeavor is less important than being aware of it and actively keeping your platform as level as you can.

Why Me…Why Not Me?

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What Can I Do to Improve My Self-confidence?

 

Why is it that so many people struggle with low self-esteem or the lack of self-confidence? I know that different people deal with it in varying degrees, but I think everyone deals with it. People who appear confident have just figured out how to deal with it better.

The huge amount of self-help books, speeches, programs, etc., speak to this struggle. I have been battling with this feeling regarding these blogs. Why is it that so few people are reading them? Then my inner evaluation begins. The content isn’t any good. The writing stinks. It doesn’t make any sense. The topics aren’t relevant. Am I wasting my time…and on and on.

 

Our book club just finished reading Cara Brookins’ book “Rise: How A House Built A Family”. The club collectively thought I might struggle reading this book (part of the reason it was picked 😊). You know, me being a professional builder reading about a woman and her four kids building a house using “how to” videos. I just want to say; this book is now in my top ten. Cara and her family really impressed and inspired me! Inspired me so much so that I gathered up the courage to email her (way out of my comfort zone).

And you know what.

She replied…to me…to little ole’ me and not only that, we had the opportunity to have a Skype conversation with her during our review of her book during book club. How cool is that! If she can build a house…I can write a blog.

Her current projects are based on her “firm belief that everyone who wants to can build themselves a bigger, better life. And the feeling…of being stuck and frustrated is exactly what most people are feeling. It’s a sign you’re on the right path, because feeling discontent creates action.”

Helping people build a bigger better life is exactly what I plan to do with my coaching, consulting and constructing here at Solution Building.

Her building of this house is proof that what is required to get past self-doubt is choice and action. We must decide to do something, something big, something as big as a house and then do it. It doesn’t matter how good the information in the self-help program is, it’s not going to do any good if it isn’t put into action.

God did not put us here to fail. Satan on the other hand is a master of using our weakness to keep us from doing the great things that God wants for us. Like our low self-esteem to keep us stuck. We must decide if we trust and believe. If we do, then it is up to us to start building.

Another one of my top ten books is Andy Andrews’ book, “The Traveler’s Gift”. It was turned down by fifty-one publishers before it was accepted.

Fifty-one.

Okay if Cara can push through the months and months of building her own home and Andy can go through fifty-one rejections I can keep blogging. Nobody said that persistence was easy, but it’s the thing that separates quitters from successful people.

I can persist – I can succeed – WHY NOT ME!

If you have any feedback on my blogs or if there is some specific topics you would like for me to write about let me know in the comments below.