Last week I talked about the concept of “Reading the Signs” around and in front of you. I said that I had been reading a book for the prior couple of weeks and that there were numerous things in the book that were hitting me in such a way that I thought, “Is this a sign?” and then, “Oh my gosh, this is speaking directly to me. This must be a sign!”
I said the book was by someone who I have spent a lot of time talking about. I imagine you all guessed the author is John Maxwell. If you did, you were right.
However, he also had a co-author for this one named Rob Hoskins. He is the president of OneHope, a faith-based organization that seems to be doing incredible work helping kids around the world in difficult circumstances have better lives.
The book that Maxwell and Hoskins wrote is called, Change Your World. Not to sound melodramatic, but the title is certainly appropriate to me, as I believe it is doing just that—changing my world. I also believe it will do that for you, too. I highly recommend you read it.
This week, I had planned on talking about the book and some of the ideas in it. However, I realized last weekend as I prepared for Monday’s episode of the Great Quotes for Coaches podcast that I had WAY MORE information to discuss than what can be covered in one episode, one video, and one blog post.
So I decided that I am going to spend the next ten weeks going through each chapter of the book. It is a 9-chapter book, so I will cover each chapter and then for the final week, I will wrap up this little mini-series.
At that time, I will also reveal the major project that I had been thinking of and putting together in the most basic way that the signs in the book were telling me, “You have to do this!”
No Waiting Around!
The first chapter of the book is called, “We Can’t Wait for Change.”
Like the title would indicate, it is about the concept that we can’t wait for the changes that we want to see happen in our lives. We have to go out and make them happen.
We have to have the initiative to get started.
Maxwell says in the book, “Most of us are waiting for somebody else to do something about the problems we see. We want change, but we hope that someone somewhere will do something to bring it about.”
That usually gets us nowhere. It’s up to us to do something about it. As Gandhi said, “For things to change, first I must change.”
Have you ever found yourself hoping for a change of some sort in some capacity of your life, but you sat around waiting for someone else to do it?
Yep. Been there, done that.
There are a variety of reasons why we do that, and each of us probably has similar reasons in some ways and our own unique versions of them in other ways.
The key issue, though, is that we are waiting for someone else to take the action that we either don’t know how to take, don’t want to take, or are afraid to take.
And so the change never occurs.
But as Maxwell says, “The people who change the world are those who want to and don’t wait to.”
Take Action!
But no matter how much initiative and want to that we have, nothing happens unless we ACT on our initiative and our want to.
Maxwell says, “People who create transformation… don’t want to wait. They want to get something done. The feeling of urgency moves them to take action. Right now!”
That’s it!! It’s all about the action.
While the desire for change is a great thing to have, true transformation doesn’t happen without ACTION.
This is where we many of us need to change ourselves first. We need to become people of action.
So, like Gandhi said, we need to change first if we want to see the changes we seek in our world happen.
Speaking to Me
With each line that I read in chapter one, I started getting a sense that this book was speaking directly to me. The following lines, though, really started to make that more crystallized in my mind:
“It doesn’t matter how old you are. It doesn’t matter what you have or haven’t done yet. It’s never too late to do something to change your world.”
Whoa! I’m 62-years-old. While now that I’m that age it doesn’t feel that old to me, that’s old to a lot of people.
I’ve also done a lot of positive things in my career to help people—kids, in particular—have a better life through a great classroom and athletic experience.
I’ve also not done a lot of things that I have thought about doing that I would have liked to do to help people, serve people, and provide more value for them.
That line by Maxwell spoke directly to me.
He was saying to me, “So what that you’re 62-years-old. I’m in my 70s, and I’m still helping people around the world live better lives. You think you can’t do that at 62? You’re crazy if you believe that way. Get off your butt and start doing the things you want to do… NOW!”
Okay, maybe he didn’t use those words exactly… but those are the words that I heard.
And I’m grateful to him for doing so.
Because it’s time.
It’s time to make a difference.
It’s time to Change My World, so I can help Change The World.
Next week, I’ll talk about how to Become the Catalyst for Change that we want to be and need to be to change our world.
Until then, pick up Change Your World and start reading it.
You’ll be so glad you did.
And so will all the people whose lives you impact because of the actions you take from the inspiring messages you will read.