Got a Vision or a Mission?

Vision and Mission

They say to follow your dream, but first you have to wake up.”–Bill Cosby

It is not hard to make decision when you know what your values are.”
-Walt Disney

Start with the big picture—put first things first.
Experts in the fields of psychology and personal effectiveness now recognize it if you feel upset or an uneasy about your lack of personal time, it’s not because you have too much to do. It’s because you not satisfied with most of what you do. Determine what’s most important in your life.
1. Ask such questions as what’s most important?
2. What gives your life meaning?
3. What do you want to be and to do with your life?
Clarity on these issues is critical because the answers to these questions affect everything else in your life—your goals, the decisions you make in the way you spend your time, and so much more.
The need for a balanced life—
If you don’t think balance in your life is vitally important to your happiness, success and health. Consider this: there is considerable evidence showing that mishandled stress at home interferes with work performance, and mishandled job pressure creates and magnifies problems at home. Research shows that the quality of your personal relationships strongly influences job productivity, disease resistance and longevity. Conversely, people who have value power over family and friendships appear to have a harder time fighting off disease and sickness.
Ask yourself these questions:
1. Can success in one area of life compensate for failure in another?
2. Can success in your profession compensate for a broken marriage or ruined health?
3. Can success in the community justify failure as a parent?

Important: success or failure in any role you have contributes to the quality of every other role, and your life as a whole. Keep balance in your life. Identify your various roles and keep them right in front of you so that you don’t neglect important areas such as your health, your family, your community involvement, or personal development. Evaluating your various roles and attaching a new level of priority in each is another important step in becoming balanced and aligned and a whole person.

Enjoy life—
The matter what your circumstance or how uncertain future, you can still be filled with enjoyment, humor, and a good attitude. Don’t let fear or anxiety keep you from experiencing the happiness that life has to offer. Go to a local park, enjoy the fresh air, and have fun. Have friends over for dinner. Spend time with family. Think about what activities you enjoy and go do them!

How to Leave a Spiritual Legacy

SPIRITUAL LEGACY—GOD STUFF

We know that God works all things for good for those who love him, for those called according to His purpose.” St. Paul

Where do you start with on the spiritual stuff?
Much of this subject has been debated by brilliant minds for centuries.
How does one translate ones faith to their children or loved ones without some fundamental disconnects in communication? How do we talk in a common dialect? What is the commonality? What are the common assumptions? There aren’t many…. We are a post-Christian nation with a mishmash and hodgepodge of spiritual and not so spiritual values and beliefs systems. These often contradict, are illogical, and sometimes patently nonsensical. These belief systems are almost always adopted in the name of diversity, tolerance and usually some measure of self-serving accommodation to what we really desire in their own self-made religion. We therefore create God in our image. We create God in an image that we like and accommodates what we believe is true. This is spiritual and intellectual hypocrisy in its highest form. It negates what is known about God, and seems to be the new religion of the masses.
It is all so over talked, used, abused, and mishandled so that it’s a tough subject to treat with any hope of non-bias, open-mindedness, possibility thinking. It seems that everybody has their own spirituality of one sort or another. To address anything spiritual seems to attack individuals on sort of a personal level. This defensive position precludes any positive or open dialogue that might lead to new information or even new awakening.
Kind of pathetic, wouldn’t you say?

A relationship with God—
Relationship with God is premised on spiritual values in truth, which encompass common purpose, foundation, priorities, and truth.
There is such a universal misunderstanding of God, spirituality, Christianity, and anything religious in our society. That makes it tough to translate one’s faith into a positive dialogue of understanding and mutual comprehension.
Let’s give it a go anyway…
A relationship with God begins with an understanding of grace and mercy and receiving his love for genuine faith and belief. It begins with forgiveness, freedom restoration and healing of the wounds in the hurts of life. What follows is that we can begin to understand that we’re forgiven and free. This is a bona fide sense of restoration and refreshment.

A walk and friendship with God—
A quiet time of devotion, usually in the morning, is a great venue to learn about God and to begin to hear truth in the context of quietness, faith, hope and love. Childlike faith and innocence are key here. Having daily communion with God in prayer, and having a relationship, which promotes a rapport with Him is where it all starts. To begin to get a sense of God’s direction for your life on an inner heart level is the beginning of this friendship. To know the father heart of God is love is to begin to understand what He is after in our lives. This relationship is based on a response to His love and kindness as opposed to fear-based relationship of dominance or heavy handedness.
One can then focus on growing in their faith. This is way beyond simple knowledge or information download of facts and figures and data. What we are talking about here is a relationship based on a friendship with God in the context of a relationship with spending time in prayer, meditation, quietness and listening. Grace is paramount as the foundation; God loves and honors you…just because. Bible study becomes more than a daily chore or download with the Holy Spirit making the pages of the Bible alive and living— change/transformation becomes possible.

Translating this love of God to our kids—
1. How do I translate something as intangible as love and faith toward God to my kids?
2. How do I adequately model and live with this belief/faith/paradigmto those that love the most?
3. How do I properly translate the God to my children?
4. Who’s up for such a task is this?
5. How do I not make the same mistakes as so many fathers before me, who failed or ignored the mandate to show their kids the true love of God?
I have a mandate and an inner compelling to want to give my kids at least a small vision of the father heart of God and to show them his heart/kindness through my actions, words and deeds.
How can I get connected enough to God to genuinely be a conduit of his love for His purpose?
Once I have that connection, how do I then form a lifelong relationship with by children? Then I can pass along more than to spiritual values—a true life-changing relationship to the God of the universe who truly loves us all?

This is the stuff of Spiritual Legacy. This is the deeper stuff of life and parenting. This is the core of fathering and parenting. Fail at this and fail as a parent.

Relationship vs. Religion with God

Tools of Effective Legacy: a Relationship with God
The most important “tool” is a genuine relationship with God, both as an individual and as a family.
Writing about our relationship with God is extremely difficult. So let’s start with what it is not.
It is not:
1. About attending church
2. About giving money
3. About being” good “
4. About being religious
5. About being condemning, condescending, or arrogant about one’s faith
6. About religious activity, service, or lifestyle
What it is about:
1. Knowing and understanding God’s Word–the Bible and reading and meditating on it regularly.
2. Understanding and having a genuine salvation/saving relationship with God by faith in Christ.
3. Being a person who prays on a regular basis, who has two-way conversations with God.
4. Being a person who’s quick to repent, be humble, and truly make things right, admitting it when you are wrong.
5. Being a person who’s willing to serve others, even at your own expense.
6. Living an obedient life, not out of obligation, but out of thankfulness and deep gratitude for all God has done for you.
7. Allowing God’s full expression in your thoughts, deeds, words, motivation, attitude, resources, and so much more.
8. Being a person who puts her walk with God as the number one priority in life, through prayer, Bible study, praise, worship, sharing my faith, serving my church and community and all fellow humans.
9. Obeying God in the small stuff, being sensitive to details and doing the right thing even when no one is looking….even when it hurts.
10. Relaxing, taking deep breaths, simply appreciating the life and the love God has given you, realizing you cannot add to this love. You can only respond to it by living in the moment, and being the obedient son/daughter He’s asked that you to be.
11. Utilizing the gifts and the resources He’s given you in the way that He leads you.
12. Having a heart attitude and disposition that seeks to glorify God in every aspect of life.
Much of this has to do with what I call a “heart attitude”, the core belief system/personal disposition that governs all behaviors, words, deeds, and attitudes.
It stems from the realization of all that God has done for me, is doing, and will do in the future. It comes from a heart of deep gratitude, which seeks to please, not repay, or pay penance, to the God who loves me and has given his all for my life and eternity.
It’s just this: the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and faithfulness, and self-control… against such there is no law.” These are the heart attitudes which demonstrate Christ’s likeness. They only come with a genuine long-term walk with Him.
Be careful to understand that we’re not speaking about perfection. We are all human, fallible, frail, weak, and prone to making all manner of mistakes. The giant difference is having a heart of repentance. It’s quick to humble, turn, pray, and make course corrections when we discover we have sinned against God or people. We need to be good “repenters.”
This doesn’t mean that everything is a bed of roses; in fact Christians suffer as much or more than others. The difference here is:” God works all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” This means that even the worst challenges, problems, and disasters are actually blessings in disguise as we trust God to work it all together for good. When a person can live this way, in a faith walk with God, all of life takes on a brand-new adventure and excitement, knowing that no matter what happens, I’m going to become closer and more like my Father in each and every situation.
This is the foundation for a great life, marriage and family. It makes for stability, a joy, and the love that permeates a family and a marriage with the sweetness and a sanity that is rare and precious.
To call this Walk with God a “tool” is to misrepresent and underestimate what’s being written here.
This Walk with God is the life-giving, dominant feature of the dedicated Christian family and individual. With God at the vanguard of our lives, life really becomes worth living.

THE TOOLS OF LEGACY: A RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

Tools of Effective Legacy:  a Relationship with God

The fifth and most important “tool” is a genuine relationship with God, both as an individual and as a family.

Writing about our relationship with God is extremely difficult. So let’s start with what it is not.

It is not:

1. About attending church
2. About giving money
3. About being” good “
4. About being religious
5. About being condemning, condescending, or arrogant about one’s faith
6. About religious activity, service, or lifestyle

What it is about could take up several pages .

But we’ll start with the following:

1. Knowing and understanding God’s Word–the Bible and reading and meditating on it regularly.
2. Understanding and having a genuine salvation/saving relationship with God by faith in Christ.
3. Being a person who prays on a regular basis, who has two-way conversations with God.
4. Being a person who’s quick to repent, be humble, and truly make things right, admitting it when you are wrong.
5. Being a person who’s willing to serve others, even at your own expense.
6. Living an obedient life, not out of obligation, but out of thankfulness and deep gratitude for all God has done for you.
7. Allowing God’s full expression in your thoughts, deeds, words, motivation, attitude, resources, and so much more.
8. Being a person who puts her walk with God as the number one priority in life, through prayer, Bible study, praise, worship, sharing my faith, serving my church and community and all fellow humans.
9. Obeying God in the small stuff, being sensitive to details and doing the right thing even when no one is looking….even when it hurts.
10. Relaxing, taking deep breaths, simply appreciating the life and the love God has given you, realizing you cannot add to this love. You can only respond to it by living in the moment, and being the obedient son/daughter He’s asked that you to be.
11. Utilizing the gifts and the resources He’s given you in the way that He leads you.
12. Having a heart attitude and disposition that seeks to glorify God in every aspect of life.

Expert Parenting– 40 ways to really love your kids

The National Down Syndrome Congress Conference was an awesome experience and  I was honored to meet such great parents. Parents are the experts and  really know what works in the raising of  great kids. Here are 40 ways to enhance your parenting skills from some of the best parents on Earth…

We surveyed all the parents in attendance of my conference session entitled 5 Secrets of Effective Parents and found the following 40 parental best practices:

1. patience– this was #1. by 10 to one.
2. flexibility
3. sense of humor
4. having ans using good listening skills
5. being principled
6. being a creative
7. love and acceptance
8. creating less stress
9. prioritizing time
10. having a plan B.
11. having seeking mentors
12. understanding
13. encouragement
14. empathy
15. discipline
16. personal responsibility
17. personal self-care
18. being consistent
19. having a good support structure
20. being in the moment
21. acceptance
22. family activities
23. teaching
24. having boundaries
25. encouraging individuality
26. laugh or being silly
27. much prayer
28. being  understanding
29. being supportive
30. having a good attitude
31. having good communication
32. loving God
33. staying  calm
34. being aware
35. having adaptable planning
36. avoiding conflict
37. unconditional love
38. quality time
39. studying your children
40. having a strong marriage

We have much to learn…pick 3 and get started today.

What are your strengths/weaknesses above?

How will you leverage each today?

If not you, who?

If not now, when?

10 KEYS TO RAISING EXTRA UNIQUE KIDS

Extra Mile Parenting; 10 Keys To Raising Extra-Unique Kids

Extra-mile parents are those who accept their child’s condition, are aware of their family’s emotional needs, and seek to build a positive attitude in their family culture. They have learned to grieve openly, celebrate freely, respect the feelings of each family member, and to get the focus off themselves. These parents are heroes we have much to learn from. Here are ten keys to help you become that extra-mile parent.

1. Patience. Everything comes more slowly to EU kids. Milestones are fewer and far apart, but this makes achievements all the sweeter.
2. Acknowledge grief. Revisiting grief is normal and natural, especially at birthdays, special occasions, or other milestone events in your child’s life. Allow yourself room to grieve and talk, and then move on.
3. It’s not about you. Remember it’s really about accepting your child and being OK with who they are. Don’t make it about yourself; remember your goal is to resource, facilitate, and love your child first.
4. Support. Find and link up with like-minded parents who are willing to be real, genuine, and transparent about their lives, struggles, and victories.
5. Slow down. Be here now and focus on enjoying your EU child. Get into their world by being present and in the moment, and stepping off of your own life roller coaster, even if only for a few moments.
6. Let your child teach you. Learn from their simplicity, spontaneity, and the joy with which they approach life. Learn from their perspective how to enjoy simple things again.
7. Making comparisons. Avoid the dangerous pitfall of comparing your child to any others. She is unique, perfect, and valuable, so enjoy her as God made her.
8. Unrealistic expectations. When your expectations are beyond what is realistic, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Be aware and honest with your unspoken and even subconscious, unrealistic expectations of your family life.
9. Vicarious identity. Remember, it’s not about you. When you feel embarrassment, shame, or perceived disapproval of your child, it’s not about you or your reputation, or your value as a person. Consider this…is it possible the problem lays in others, or even yourself? Ultimately, this is about being OK with who you are as a family and accepting and even celebrating it.
10. Be Yourself. Focus on being real, transparent, and authentic as you walk through life and your EU experience. Keep a good sense of humor and be willing to really laugh and have a perspective which allows you to have fun, enjoy life, and be yourself in the context of your family challenges.

SPIRITUAL SUNDAY COMPELLING CA QUOTE-09 Calvary Men’s Conference

Posted via email from Become a Better Father with Scott Hammond

Pain is the Fuel of Passion

How God uses our pain and challenges to create passion and possibility. Fieldbrook CA Community Church September 2008.fieldbrook92808

Francis Was the Bomb!

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

5 Needs of Sons

5 Needs of Sons

Written by Ken Canfield, Ph.D.

Date Posted: Monday, 30 April 2007