Monthly Archives: August 2012

“Making Myself Behave”


When I wake up in the mornings, time is already moving, in fact it was moving all night long. The only thing that I can do is to get up and move with it. You hear a lot of talk about managing time, and not to look down on the topic, I just want to talk about it in a different light. Time management seminars, classes and practices are very beneficial. How many people would come to a “Me Management Seminar” or “Me Management Class?” In reality, at the end of the day (or beginning hopefully) we are not really managing time as much as we are managing ourselves.

I have never actually seen time stand still, although there may have been times when it felt like it was standing still. I have seen clocks stand still, but only because the batteries were dead. In fact we have a clock in our kitchen that just stands still, it never moves. But even with a clock standing still or a person standing still, time keeps on moving. If time never stops them maybe, just maybe, our concern is not about managing time, but about managing ourselves. That challenge is one that sometimes becomes a difficult task.

You only get 24 hours in one day until that day is gone. Time is your greatest resource; it may be the only resource that you cannot get more of. Being a great manager of yourself will help you to become a more productive person allowing you to eliminate the excuse that “you didn’t have time,” because you will focus on the more important things first. You will also learn to make time work by making yourself accountable to plan before you get started.

Here are my thoughts on managing YOU:

  1. You must plan ahead, knowing what you are going to do with YOU in the time that is given.
    1. Managing YOU is telling YOU where you will spend your time before the hours arrive.
  2. You have to be disciplined to make sure that YOU do what you planned.
    1. Remember that time is going to pass whether YOU use it or not, so you have to be disciplined to use time correctly instead of wondering why nothing got done.
  3. Know and plan that everything will not work in the timing that was planned.
    1. Not planning for this will get you discouraged and off your plan quickly.
  4. Keep a log of where YOU spent your time.
    1. We are creatures of habits, but you cannot change what you do not measure.
    2. A log of your time will tell YOU what you with the time that you spent

What are your ideas concerning “You Management?”

What do you take away from this?

What do you have to add to it?

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Are Your Priorities Straight?


When things don’t get done; one of the great tendencies is to say, “I just didn’t have time.” While I do think that this can sometimes be true, most things don’t get done because they were not a priority in our lives.  We get up in the morning and do the things that are the most important to us and the things that don’t get done; well let’s just admit that we didn’t make them a priority.

We are about to enter into a crazy time of our life, as far as time is concerned. Two kids, the 4 year old starting preschool. My wife is working full time, being youth pastors and both of us going back to school full time. It is not that we cannot handle the work load, but it does require us to look closely at our time and purposely decide how we are going to use it. To clearly define what the priorities are and what things are not priorities.

We all go through changes in life, some are simple shifts and some are more dramatic. And it is safe to say, that every now and then it is a good idea to measure your time and see where your priorities are in life. Seasons change in your life and cause you to have to evaluate and to re-evaluate your priorities.

John Maxwell talks about living life with intention; he says “A lot of time thinking on the front end, reflection on the back end.” With that in mind  here are the ways that I started to evaluate where my time is going to go.

  1. What thing do I absolutely have to do?
  2. What things do I have to do based on my values?
  3. What things do I want to do, but my values do not insist I have to.
  4. What things do not make the cut of being important or having a priority?

Someone once said; “the only certainty in life is change.” I do not know if that is 100% accurate, but I do know that change comes. Sometimes we initiate it and sometimes it just comes to us. In either situation we have to re-evaluate where the priorities in our lives are.

Never say, “I don’t have the time” again. Replace it with, “I’m choosing to prioritize here.” – Roxanne Emmerich

Have you had a change in your life lately? How did you deal with evaluating and re-evaluating your priorities?

Why I Write


This is my official hello blog post; my name is Brian Ives, husband to a great wife, father of two great kids, a Youth Pastor and someone who loves to think.  I thought I would take a post and explain why it is that I write.

I would have to go back many years to find a time when I did not have a thought running through my head. Sometimes they have been hard for me to get them on to paper. To get them to a place where they can be hashed out, defined in a clearer manner, and could be stored, but for years the thoughts have been there.

I think it makes a big difference in people’s life when they write or use some form of communication to record their thoughts.  I believe that everyone has beneficial information to share. One man suggested that every person has at least one book in them; their autobiography. But I do think it makes a difference in why we write.

For me, I write for several different reasons, here are the 5 I value as of now:

  1. It helps me to think through and remember the lesson(s) that I am currently learning.
  2. It helps me to understand how I feel about those lessons and be able to look back on them for years to come.
  3. It helps me to clear up my thinking and sharpen what I have to say.

Michael Hyatt says: “Thoughts disentangle themselves over the lips and through fingertips.”

One of the best things I have started lately is Twitter https://twitter.com/BrianKIves

Where else do you get a strict diet of 140 characters to say what you got to say? It has been a challenge for me, but one that I am enjoying.

4. It helps me to be a better communicator and a better preacher.

Most of the time when I preach it is hard to “hear” myself getting off of my topic.  But when I write I can clearly see when I start getting off subject.

I will never forget the day I learned this lesson.  I was proofing a devotion I was writing; I realized that I had gotten off subject for about 5 or 6 lines. I had to erase a few lines and start back up the paper. My thoughts had the chance to become like an arrow shot at a defined target.

5. I hope people read my content, my stories and the lessons that I learned and be able to learn from them also.

So there are the reasons that I write, I understand that most of the reasons that I write sound like they are just for me, but I do hope that it impacts the people that hear me speak and the people that read what I write.

So do you write, and if you do you find that it helps to see clearer the thoughts that you have in your head?

Back Adjustments and Life Change


Often we become impatient concerning the changes that we want to see. It matters little whether those changes are in our own lives or in the lives of someone else. We want change to happen quickly, instantaneously; we want to start something and get immediate results. When we do not get results quickly enough we get frustrated. This has happened in my life several times, whether it was an exercise program, a new reading plan, a study plan or something else that I wanted to make into a new habit.

           

The most powerful lesson I learned about change came from going to the chiropractor. I started going when I was about 18 years old, and still continue to go at age 36. What the chiropractor taught me; though it took me a few years to catch on to it; was that the change that I desired was not going to come in one visit.

One chiropractor said: “It’s true there are rare instances in which a single visit can produce the pain relief that many patients seek. However, the effect is often short lived”. He went on to say, “A single “miracle” adjustment rarely produces permanent change”.

If I had to paraphrase what I learned (finally) from my years of chiropractor visits, it is this: the change I am wanting will not come in one big visit. On the contrary it will come because small changes were made consistently over a long period of time.

I believe that the same thing is also true in many other areas of life. The change that we want to see, most of it is not coming in one big moment. See, I do not believe we have a problem of working for change; it is just that change takes so long. If we could do a workout program for a day or two and be changed we would be happy. Unfortunately most changes don’t come that quickly and we give up.

Most changes come when we make small consistent corrections, over a long period of time. The majority of changes that happen and stay have come this way for me. It is more of a lifestyle of change, than a one – time moment.

I believe that all people can change, at the same time I also believe that most of the changes that we so long for take a little time. Most of them take more time than we would like. But, if we can be patient, change will come.

In conclusion I am not saying that big change cannot happen or that we cannot change something in one moment and never have to deal with that situation again. I also recognize that there are times when we really need big change quickly and we have to be certain when those times come. I am just suggesting that that scenario happens far less than what we would like, and it would be wise to be patient waiting for change.

What are your experiences concerning change? What is your experience will big instant change? What is your experience with small long waiting time change?