Unconditional Respect

I just finished the book titled Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs and wanted to share some thoughts I had about it.  I didn’t agree with the whole book but did like certain aspects of it, including the emphasis on respect for the man in the marriage.  Seems like most marital problems try to be solved by counselors by just focusing on love, love and more love but neglecting the man’s need for respect.

Women need respect too of course but it really seems to fuel a man’s drive to succeed in the workplace and at home.  He talked about the idea of unconditional respect which sounds absurd to our postmodern ears.  People have to earn respect we yell back, but he brings out some good arguments from Scripture.  Just like women would balk at the idea of having to earn love, the same notion applies to having to earn respect.

Even if your man doesn’t do much that you find worthy of respect, if he is a good-willed man there ought to be something you can find that is worthy of respect.  Even if not, it’s commanded in Scripture so we can’t simply excuse ourselves even if we think no one can respect that man.

Same goes for loving a woman.  People might be tempted to say, “No one can love that woman!” but that’s simply not true.  She may drive you crazy to be sure, but if she’s a good-willed woman at her core than we must admit there is something to love about her.  Also, the same goes for the commandment part of it, loving your wife isn’t optional.

He also brought up how many men withhold love hoping it will gain them respect.  Many women withhold respect hoping it will gain them love.  Neither of these strategies work.  Then we get on what the author terms the Crazy Cycle and the man withholds love and the woman withholds respect.  Both should take the initiative rather than saying the other should make the first move.

I read this book more as preventative maintenance.  I read books that interest me and that I hope apply to my life.  I figured since I’m married now this book would apply.  There are some good principles to apply both now and in the future.  Thankfully I feel like I love Steffani well and she respects me well.  It comes naturally as of now.  It may not always be that way so this book will be useful if we ever find ourselves on the Crazy Cycle as described in the book.  I would recommend this book to anyone who is married or engaged.  It didn’t address all parts of marriage but I really don’t think any marriage book would be able to do that.  For the parts that it does address though it has some great thoughts.

Smarter Faster Better

Yesterday, I finished a wonderful book titled Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg.  I’ve written about another of his books that I read earlier in the year titled The Power of Habit.  If I can leverage what I read in this book like I did from the other book I will be much better for it.  As I said in my previous blog I’ve started new healthy habits, largely due to reading The Power of Habit.

Back to the main idea, my reflections on this book.  This book is about productivity in life and business.  There were several universal truths that most anyone can apply in their every day lives.  I want to focus on just a few that really hit me the most.

One is the idea of disfluency.  It’s in the last chapter that talks about how to absorb and use data.  It’s the idea that making data harder to absorb in the beginning actually leads to a deeper understanding later on.  He even mentioned as an example that if you’re reading and find something interesting you should stop what you’re reading and talk about it to someone around you.  Steffani was not thrilled with this statement as I do that frequently to her anyway and it can tend to drive her nuts when it’s about things that she cares nothing about.  Oh well, maybe she’ll find them interesting some day, right?

The idea of disfluency is brilliant if you think about it.  We’re bombarded everyday with truckloads of data that we often don’t know what to do with much less where to start.  They gave the example of using it in a failing school and how it helped turn it around.  I can remember when they introduced using loads of data at my school and how I hated it with a passion.  Perhaps if I had stuck with it though it would have made me a much better teacher.  It’s hard to say at this point; I definitely would have needed to be better guided through how to interpret and apply the data to improve my teaching.  They tried this but it was so new to everyone that all our heads were reeling those first few years.

Another idea he shared in the book is that of an idea broker.  An idea broker basically uses something he’s learned in one area of his life and applies it to a different situation in another area of his life.  For example, Disney’s animation team has their animators draw on their emotional experiences to come up with good story lines.  That’s why a lot of people relate to Disney story lines, because they’re drawn from people’s own emotions, albeit exaggerated for the movies of course.  But if you can get across that raw emotion that people feel about certain subject matters, you’ve gone a long way towards striking a chord and having a decent chance at a blockbuster.

One of my favorite chapters was about SMART goals and stretch goals.  I’d heard of both of these, just in different terms.  The SMART goals was the classic Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and a Timeline.  The stretch goals are designed to help you not fall into the trap of setting goals that are really too easy and give you a false sense of accomplishment when you haven’t really done much.  Another term I’ve heard used are BHAGs; big, hairy audacious goals.  If you have only SMART goals, it’s easy to fall into a rut and only achieve small victories.  If you have a stretch goal though, that really gives you something to shoot for.  They have to be goals that seem almost impossible without actually being impossible.  That’s a tough line to draw but can in fact be drawn if you sit down with some discernment, wisdom and time to think about it.

There were many other chapters that were awesome as well.  Looking back I should have written about each chapter as I was reading through but hindsight is 20/20, right?  I don’t want to write about each and every chapter though because I want to suggest you go get this book.  Thankfully my library had a copy already which is surprising because it just released in March so I was pleasantly surprised to find out they had it.  Even if your library doesn’t have it, I’d still suggest buying it because it’s that good.

Update on Goals and PD

I haven’t written a blog in what seems like forever.  So, for the two people who actually read this thing, I apologize  :)

I wanted to share about two things in my life that are interrelated.  Those two things are my yearly goals and my personal development plan.  Earlier this year I learned about the benefits of having something called a personal development plan.  It basically means what you do to develop yourself in whichever area you want to improve.  The important thing is that you do whatever it is consistently, otherwise your progress in those areas will be minimal at best.

My personal development plan (pd plan) is fairly simple.  I try to spend a half hour doing the following activities: engaging with God, reading professionally and exercising.  When I first started these habits I made it 45 days before I broke my streak.  That’s roughly 44 days longer than I’ve stuck with anything else in my life.  Maybe it’s because I read a couple books on habit or because it’s so simple to remember.  My streak was broken at day 45 but they are well established in spite of that, meaning I typically do at least 2 of those every day.  Exercise is the one that gets neglected most often.

Now, for the update on my annual goals.  I didn’t share these at the beginning of the year as there are conflicting ideas on whether you should share your goals or not; this year I decided not to.  Now that we’re about halfway through the year though, I feel like I can share them and not blow it.  Every year I try and make goals in different areas of my life.  The key is to have 1 or maybe 2 max per area of your life.  The areas I’ve tried to focus on the past few years are spiritual, financial, career, family, intellectual, social and physical.

I’ve listed my goals below and shared how I’m doing on each of them thus far.

1. Debt free by 12/31/16  -  on track
2. Fully funded by 7/1/16 - really close, matter of fact made it to 100% of our monthly but only momentarily.  Regardless, it gives me confidence that God will provide for us in order to go overseas
3. Weigh 200 pounds by 12/31/16  -  not even close on this one
4. 2 dates per month  -  on track; sometimes it’s dinner out, sometimes something as simple as a picnic, other times just going to the beach
5. Babysit for supporters 1-2 times per month - haven’t kept track, certainly tried to earlier on and had a couple of responses to our offers but not as much as we were hoping to.  Won’t be able to for the rest of the summer due to travel and probably not in the fall as we will hopefully and prayerfully be in Spain this fall.
6. Read 1 book per month  -  miles ahead since I started reading a half hour a day, my reading has skyrocketed since I implemented that daily habit.  
1. 21 books so far this year, I’ve started keeping track just so I can remember which books I’ve read over the year.  I’ve been amazed at what a half hour of focus has done for my reading.  I’m a super slow reader too which makes it all the more amazing.  I say this not to brag but simply to attest to what a daily habit can help one accomplish.
2. Best books so far are The Happiness Advantage, The Power of Habit, Better than Before, Mindset, and Infidel.  While all those are great for various reasons, Infidel is by far the most engaging book I’ve read in I don’t know how long, I highly recommend it.
3. I meant to write review of all these books but blogging has been put on the back burner, perhaps because I didn’t make it a yearly goal.
7. Lead 1 person to Christ  -  not yet