Stay The Course Academy

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If It Ain't Broke

Scripture

“He who guards his ways, guards his life.” (Proverbs 16:17)

Thought

We were officially one minute over the meeting’s scheduled end time, and one of my colleagues spoke for the first time all meeting, exclaiming, “if it ain’t broke, why fix it?!” It’s as if she had been holding onto this one liner for the entire meeting just waiting for the right moment to impart this wisdom.

Mind you, the entire point of this meeting was to open up a dialogue around changing for the better! So, I didn’t receive this pragmatic advice with the appreciation I think she was hoping for. In fact, my internal reaction was, “are you freakin’ kidding me?!!” Not broke? This team’s best performances are becoming a distant memory rather than a current reality. There was an obvious gap between who we thought we were and who we actually are.

The meeting was already a few minutes past being over, so I had to keep my thoughts to myself but this reminded me of an important lesson for all leaders.

Our lives are simply an accumulation of our activities. What we did, how we did it, and who we did it with. Our decisions guide our actions, our actions are us.

Thinking and doing are NOT the same thing.

Being something requires doing something.

Our way is all we have. Our way is completely our choice, but there are really only two options.

Be Better or NOT.

When we procrastinate on making this decision unbeknownst to us our confidence and courage slowly begin to drift to a point where acknowledging our own brokenness becomes nearly impossible.

It is much easier to resist change than it is to wrestle with the constant tension of progressing in a transformational journey that continually asks and expects a little bit ore from you with each passing transition.