The Sky Is No Limit

The Sky Is No Limit —

This article may seem long — less than a ten-minute read. It is encouraging. If you are hesitant to read such a long article, then please ask yourself this question, “How much encouragement do I want?”

It is very common for people to limit their plans and dreams, thinking that they are not able to accomplish so much. Others say, “the sky’s the limit” to encourage us to dream big. I know what they mean, and they mean well, but I would say the sky really is no limit!

What are the limits to what God can do? Jesus is the Head of the Body of Christ, The Church. It is The Church that God works through to carry out His plans on Earth. So, what are the limits to what The Church can do? If you are part of The Church, then there is not much limiting you, other than the barriers in your own mind. We are not to do evil, but God can do great good through us. That is how He works. The sky is no limit.

Throughout history, it has repeatedly been Christians that have changed the world for the better. God lets us in on His secrets. We can do things that have never been done before. We can make new discoveries. We can do all of these things to the glory of God.

Jeremiah 33:3 Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.

Becoming

The person you become, in the process of successfully achieving a growth lifestyle, is a better person. You will like yourself better. Others will like you better. Your life will be more rewarding in many ways. Everyone can find ways to improve themselves, and these are improvements that are especially valuable.

There are many areas of life in which each of us can improve. I am not saying I am a better person than you because I have learned this principle of life. It is like I am telling you about, for example, a restaurant that I really like, because I think you will also like it. Though it is more like a country than a restaurant, because you can go and live there.

Personal growth — becoming — upgrading yourself. This article will focus on two major factors that you can employ to enhance your growth, fulfilling more of your potential in life, and developing a mindset towards vitality.

1. Daily Investments
2. Taking Action

Daily Investments

If you were a full time student, you could spend all day Monday studying maths, every Tuesday studying history, Wednesday science, Thursday theology, and every Friday you could study art. That would work. It would work even better if you studied a little of each topic each day, even if you spent the same amount of time in total. Why is that? We know about a couple of the reasons, but there are probably more.

It is somewhat like learning to swim, while you sleep! If you knew nothing about swimming, then it is probably feasible to learn in a day or two, if you worked on it full time. That would be very fatiguing. But, if you instead spent a half hour a day, then your muscles would have time to recover from the exertion, and the lessons would be far more enjoyable and effective. Also, your muscle memory would have time to become established and integrated between sessions, especially while you are sleeping. So, this too would increase the effectiveness of the training.

You might have noticed, when studying one topic for hours, that it is refreshing to think about something else for awhile. It is like our brains need a rest from that exercise by using some other “brain muscles” instead.

When we spend some of our time on something, we are making an investment. We are investing our time. Some things are more important, some less. Some things are more urgent, some less. For many people, the vast majority of their time is spent on urgent stuff. This is understandable because those urgencies are in your face, or they are chasing you down, or they are fires that need to be put out.

When we consider time as an investment, we must do those things that are both urgent and important, or we will lose, but the return on investment is quite low. Where we get the best return on our time investment is in the important things that are not urgent. So, how can we invest more in that section? The key is to schedule time for it. You know for yourself, from your own experience, that when you recognise something important that needs to be done and tell yourself, “I will make sure and do that when I get some time,” that is the thing that never gets done, isn’t it? One of the beautiful benefits of scheduling time for important things, is that the very least important things automatically get pushed out of your life, because you don’t have time for them — you are booked.

Once you have booked time for the important stuff, you will find that, over time, fewer urgent things will be happening. This is because you are investing more time thinking, planning, reflecting, designing your life, which prevents many emergencies. You will never get to the point where nothing urgent ever happens again, but this progressive reduction in the need to spend time fighting fires will give you more time to invest preventing fires. Your life will progress towards more investments with better returns.

Taking Action

It is not possible to know the future. A plan, based largely on projections and estimates of future metrics, is worse than useless. It is counter productive to base plans on guesses about the future.

We do not wait until all of the lights turn green before we leave the driveway. We do not plan and document every degree and duration of every turn to get to our destination. It is best to leave the details to be addressed at the time they need to be addressed, rather than getting analysis paralysis and delaying the launch.

As any good military general will tell you, planning is critical, but plans are useless. Instead of a typical plan, we need purpose, values, leadership, strategy and, yes, preparation. Part of that preparation comes from the experience of taking action. As the following anecdote will address, we need to move forward in order to learn what we need for the next steps forward.

The Ford Motor Company did some market research to help decide whether it would be good to introduce a new feature to their cars. This feature was called power steering. Of course, they asked their customers. At the time, early in the age of motor cars, it was rare for women to drive cars, so they were asking men, “Would you like power steering?” Whether consciously or subconsciously, the men translated this question to, “Are you strong enough to drive your car?” So, they soundly rejected the idea and Ford did not introduce the feature. You know the rest of the story. Later, someone introduced the feature, as a test, instead of asking. Power steering was so popular that it soon became a required feature in order to sell a car. This is not an isolated incident. It has been found that this is the norm. Asking such questions generally does not work. Instead, take action with the purpose of learning.

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