Your Thoughts Guide You

The words of James Lane Allen, an American novelist, are as haunting as they are instructive: “You cannot escape the results of your thoughts. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain or rise with your thoughts, your vision, your ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.”

God Dreams, Will Mancini and Warren Bird

What do you think about? When everything is quiet, when the world is on mute, when you finally get a moment to yourself, where do your thoughts lead you?

This is a harder question than it seems on the surface. In part, because we can’t simply find a moment of peace in our lives. The world is too noisy. We’re all busy. We all have a dozen plates spinning in our lives. There’s an endless to-do list of things that need to be accomplished. It can be a bit much.

But, every once in a while, we find a moment of peace. We get a little bit of time to ourselves. We can finally stop and think. In those moments, what fills your thoughts?

I’ve tried to be a little more intentional about mindfulness lately. I’m not doing a great job at it. I need time to stop and think. I need time to look ahead and plan. I just don’t take it very often. That’s the thing, though, it has to be taken. It won’t be given to you – at least, not on a regular basis.

So, how can we do it? How can we clear the space for these guiding thoughts? Three suggestions from someone who is still struggling to learn it himself.

Schedule It

One of the things that we have more control over than we think is our calendar. Sure, there are things that we can’t avoid. Standing meetings. School events. The schedule for your favorite sports team. We don’t have a lot of control over some of that kind of stuff.

However, we all have margins. We all have white space that we can block out. Don’t think you do? How much time do you spend watching television (or streaming services, as the case may be)? Certainly, we need a break from reality on occasion, but many of us take more breaks than we really need, if we’re being completely honest with ourselves.

In fact, if you find yourself constantly taking breaks from reality to get lost in the fictional worlds of the tiny screen, might I suggest seeking some counseling? I don’t mean that flippantly. Sometimes, we spend our down time avoiding things that we should actually be confronting. I know I have found myself getting immersed into a fictional world to avoid realities that need to be faced. I’m sure that I’m not alone in this.

Anyway, if you want to take some time to work on your thought life, you are going to have to schedule it in the same way that you schedule anything else. In the times that I have been intentional about this, I’ll add something to my calendar and call it “balcony time”.

This concept comes from Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linksy’s work Leadership on the Line. They talk about getting on the balcony to get the big picture. It’s only when we get above the fray that we really begin to see how things are unfolding. But, in order to do this, we have to be intentional about it.

Be Regular

This goes hand in hand with the first one. Not only do we need to schedule it, but we need to schedule it with regularity. What does that mean for you? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? Annually? You get the idea.

It really boils down to how much time you think you need. Notice, I said, “how much time your think you need,” not “whatever you can get away with doing.” This is perhaps an area where I’m better in theory than practice myself.

As a person who preaches on a regular basis, one of the things that I need to do is set aside regular time for sermon planning. I’m not a “sit down and figure it out the Monday before” kind of preacher. I like to have a plan.

Adam Hamilton has a great book entitled Unleashing the Word in which he talks about the importance of sermon planning. And this is something that he shares from experience. Hamilton (at least when he wrote the book) tries to have three years worth of sermons planned out. Now, this is planned, not polished.

He doesn’t have 150 sermons written out ahead of time. What he has is an idea of where he is going. This gives him more time to work on and refine his preaching. There’s a reason why Hamilton has an extensive list of publications credited to his name, and it’s this preparation.

So, how can you have a similar approach in your life? How often do you need to schedule this time? How regular do you need to be?

I would recommend, at a minimum, a monthly approach. Maybe schedule an afternoon (or even an entire day) once a month to do this balcony work. Make it a regular habit, and I think you’ll be amazed at the difference you’ll see in your life.

I do know of some people who prep their weeks on Sunday evening before going to bed. It’s a smaller segment of time, but it’s essential to make sure they accomplish what they want to accomplish for the week.

Keep a Notebook

This is probably one of the most underrated ideas that I’m working on for myself. Writing down this stuff is important.

I know we all carry some kind of digital device that helps us record our thoughts along the way. Maybe you use Evernote or Notion or some other kind of notes app for an idea capture system already – and that’s great. But there’s something about putting pen to paper that helps us remember. Maybe that’s because we have to slow down and actually think about what we are writing. Maybe because it seems like such an antiquated approach, I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that it is effective.

Believe it or not, I do a lot of my sermon writing in notebooks. I jot down thoughts and ideas. Eventually, I’ll type it all out, but I’ve found that my most effect approach has been to start off by writing in my notebook. Some weeks, it’s just an outline. Other weeks, I’m writing out full paragraphs. What I have found is that this is vastly more effective than simply sitting down in front of a blank word processor.

Now, let me be clear, these are just suggestions. I’m not saying this is THE way to get it done. I’m constantly tweaking my approach. This is my current goal/idea/approach, and I offer it up as a suggestion for you.

The bottom line, however, is that where your thoughts go, the rest of you will follow. So, do some thinking about your thinking, and help yourself become more of who you want to be.