Look at the Big Picture

Have you noticed that most of the people around you have either tunnel vision or blinders on?

Let me break this down for you.  You have to look at the big picture no matter what you're doing.  In life it is the little things that you do every day that makes the biggest impact on your life and where you end up on your journey.  In doing these things you do day to day, you have to focus at what you're doing but keep in the mind the bigger picture of what is really going on around you.  How does what you're doing impact others?  Your spouse?  Your family?  Your co-workers?  The company you work for?

The really big picture starts with our Father, God.  He designed and created us to walk and talk with him, to be with us and have a relationship with us.  Think about your children.  When you get to, there is nothing you want more than to spend time with them, talk with them, and be in their presence.  That's what our Father wants from us.  He wants you to desire to have a relationship with him, just as we hope our children want to have a relationship with us.

You want your children to grow up and mature and become a productive part of society, to earn enough money to have a better standard of living than you did.  Our heavenly Father wants the same for us.  Are you being productive?  Are you giving back?  Are you striving to have and build a relationship with him?  God created the Universe and all things come by and through his blessing.  He can change your life to bring anything into it or take anything away from it he wants to at any given moment.  Immense wealth?  Fame?  God's Glory?  God's forgiveness?  What do you want?  Are you giving God what he wants?  Things to take away could be cancer?  Your community?  Your job?  Another important point to remember is God helps those who help themselves.  I have seen this so many times, that it is not funny, it is SO Very True!

If your children act up, it is your job to correct them and teach them.  Our heavenly Father will correct and teach us in direct relation to our relationship with him, and how well be behave.  Are you doing right in the eyes of the Lord?  Keep in mind at your lonelinest, when you are all by yourself, he is still there with you and watching you.  Sometimes testing you?  Hoping that this time you make the right choice.

Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results!

The next big picture that should come in under God is your family.  If this is not the hierarchy of your life, that might be a clue as to why you're not getting to where you want to be!  In my family I am a role model to my children.  Am I perfect?  Far from it, but because I am role model I strive to be better today than I was yesterday, and I keep in mind that the children are watching me and I am making an impact in their lives for the positive or negative.  Too many of us want to just say 'Do as I say and not as I do.'  Well that will work as well for you as it did your parents.  Until you make a change and start with the 'Man in the Mirror' like in the Michael Jackson song, we will be repeating the same old things and expecting different results.  Insane!

I also constantly remind myself, that if I don't do it that means my wife will have to do it.  She has a full time job that doesn't end when the time clock is punched.  Many times it doesn't end until she goes to bed and it starts before she gets out of bed in the morning the next day.  They don't tell you that part in school, or sex education classes, or when you think "Gosh we should have a baby."  Children are full time, all the time!  Parents only saving grace is our stamina.  That we can stay up later than they can.  I try and do as much as I can to help my wife around the house.  To give her breaks from the kids and time to do something she might enjoy doing.

Next in the big picture is your role as a citizen of your country.  Some would put their job here, if it wasn't first on their list, but jobs can come and go.  Your country is where you live.  I don't know about other countries but I live in the United States of America, and Freedom is HARD!

Let me explain.  In my country it is somebody's God given right to stand in the street and be able to burn my counties flag.  It is the right to protest or march for any group whether you support them, believe in their cause or that the very sight of them makes you want to take up arms and fight them.  That's Freedom!  One of the early colonists said something once that went like, "I may not agree with what the other guys is saying, but I will die for his right to say it!"  That's Freedom!

If you’re an American you get to vote for the leaders you want to send to Washington and support your beliefs and represent you.  After the election if your candidate didn't win you still have to support who ever did win until their term is done, to then try and vote them out of office.  If your guy did win you still have to support them even when they get to Washington and don't play well with others and screw their fellow American's in the name of private interest groups, politics, big business, and corruption.  Even when our government is failing as a whole, as American's we must continue to vote, do jury duty, and participate in helping our fellow citizens make this a better place in spite of failing political parties and government bureaucracy.

Fourth in the lineup could be your job.  It could be your career.

I think the comedian Chris Rock put it best when he said that the difference between a job and a career is time!  When you have a job time drags, it can't go by fast enough, two hours relates to fifteen minutes in real time passing.  If you have a career, you can't get everything done you want to do during the day.  If you reach the end of the day and your project isn't finished you will have to get up early and come in and finish it in the morning.  I have two careers, my day job, and my newest passion of writing.  Writing is actually a job that when I get to do it full time from home, I will never think of retirement.  I plan to keep cranking out books until I die and hopefully will have three or four in the works scattered in bits and pieces around my desk when they plant me in the ground.

With your country, job, or career you should still be mindful of the Bigger Picture!  How is what you're doing, day in and day out, affecting others?  Those you work with, those in the immediate environment, community.  How does it affect your country?  Your Family?  Your relationship with God?

Focus on all the little things, the details.

Do a great job at whatever you're doing.  You're doing it, so it has to be great, so give it your best!

Keep in mind the Bigger Picture!

If the priorities of this post seem out of whack to you, I strongly suggest you re-evaluate your priorities.  I'll bet you feel like you have been swimming upstream and not getting to where you want to go!  Change something, and quit acting Insane!

Take the blinders off, get involved, help some people, help yourself, get some religion, and enjoy your life.  It is your life so you might as well enjoy it.

Success is enjoying the journey to getting to where you want to be, not the destination you're striving for.  Too many people have hit it big to sit there and realize they are the same person, with all new problems, and wonder what in the hell the point was of getting to where they are at.  The point all along was to enjoy the trip, not the destination.

In the End, the First Priority will seem like the most important, and when you realize all the time and opportunities you've wasted.  How you never once read your Bible, asked the Lord to be your savior, to build a relationship with your heavenly Father.  All the rest will pale in comparison.  If you're reading this it is not too late!

Now quit wasting your time reading silly stuff on the Internet and get busy living!

Posted in: God priorities Sucess Big Picture