Hello all. I am taking a chance at blog suicide, and moving to www.crmooney.com . For awhile, to help transition, I will be making partial posts here that will link to my new site. Thank you all so much for visiting.
– chris mooney
Head to my new blog, http://www.crmooney.com!
Like it or not, the NFL ruled the last second touchdown by the Seattle Seahawks against the Green Bay Packers to be the correct call. You didn’t see that in the headlines did you? (story link)
For the first three weeks of the NFL season, it seemed that the games were a side note to the officiating. While some despise the mishaps of the replacement referees in the first three weeks of the NFL season others found that they added an entertaining an unpredictable aspect to the games. Either way, they taught me a few things:
1. Do the best you can, we all make mistakes. The regular refs were on strike and the NFL found what they believed to be the most competent replacements. I’m sure being thrust onto the biggest stage in the world was overwhelming, but they found a way to get the job done.
And sometimes we feel the same. Pressures mount and stress is added at every point, but just do the best you can. Take what knowledge you have and apply it. Will you always get it right? No. Learn from the mistakes so you don’t repeat them.
2. Give the other guy the benefit of the doubt. I don’t believe anyone wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror, and says, “I’m going to be a jerk today and tick off as many people as I can.” Likewise the refs didn’t start each game with the mindset of blowing calls. I need to remember that people on the other side of the aisle from me are trying their best to be great at their work, that the customer has a right to be upset if you messed up, that service reps can have bad days too.
When in doubt, just treat the other guy how you would want to be treated if you messed up: with compassion and understanding.
3. Don’t make excuses. The post-game press conferences were full of players and coaches calling out the missed calls (that went the other teams way). They had a right to be upset, but a bad call is rarely the only reason a team loses a game. There are scores of missed opportunities: a pass that was thrown to hard, a hold on a block that calls back a touchdown, and missed tackles.
Bad things happen that are out of our control. In the end we need to take responsibility for our decisions and let the cards fall where they may. The alternative is repeating failures by blaming others for our missed opportunities.
4. Even if the world is against you, show up. I can’t imagine being one of these guys. It seemed every round of games, these they were less popular with the public. Regardless, they showed up. The world rejected them, but they didn’t run, hide, or quit. They clocked in and did what they had to do.
It’s the same for us. Sometimes we aren’t going to win the “Most Popular” award at work or home for the decisions we make, but that doesn’t mean we shrink into a hole. We must stand up and be proud of what we do. Half of the road to success is simply showing up.
What did you learn from the replacement refs?
I keep notebooks; it’s an OCD thing for me. I like to write things down, what can I say. In January, I was looking through a notebook from 2008 and the entry went something like this:
“It’s almost December, and I really wanted to have TSDI (a book I was writing) done before the end of the year. I’m only half way. I just can’t seem to find the time.”
Looks like I never did find the time, because four years later it sits unfinished at page 108.
Spending more time with Beth and the kids and exercising are other things that I have not done much about for the past few years. And why not? Again, I could not “find the time.” It was as though some mythological time keeper had stolen the extra hours I needed to write a novel, run a few miles, take my wife out to dinner, or get a couple of credit hours in. If I could but locate them I would be able to do these things.
It’s a lie. A farce. Those extra hours don’t exist, so stop looking. You will NEVER find them. Depressing huh?
A tad, but what is more depressing is the amount of hours I wasted every day. Whether it was TV, just chilling, checking facebook, or fantasy football/baseball, I let these pointless activities rule my life. It’s not that I didn’t want to get up and accomplish something of meaning, it’s just that writing a novel is hard. It takes time and mental focus. It’s, dare I say, w**k.
If you follow me at all, you know that I am spending quality time with Beth, writing, and exercising regularly. Did I find the time gremlin and beat him senseless until he gave me more time? No.
I made time.
I have the same twenty-four hours per day as always, but now I am intentional. My life is measurably better than before. Where I could find no time before for the things of meaning, I now make time for Beth, spend 3-4 hours a week to exercise, and 5-8 hours a week to write. That’s over a twelve hours a week I am more intentional about. Even now, as I write this, the TV is off. The old me reacted to life, the new me takes action and gets things done.
You can do it too! Here are a few tips on making time for the important things YOU want to do. (Please leave any tips you have in the comments!)
1: Turn the dish/cable off. This was huge for me. It used to always be on in the background and before I knew it, I was watching absolutely nothing of merit. We have Netflix now so we can watch movies now and then, and a few TV series, but it no longer has the control it used to.
2: Be productive on your breaks at work. I get get two fifteen minute breaks at work in an eight hour day. Before I used to surf the internet or walk to the post office, but now I used that time for non-novel writing. Monday and Wednesday I work on posts for this blog. Tuesday and Friday I work on short stories. Thursday I write posts or add new publishers to my writing blog (christianwriterscorner.wordpress.com).
3: Make time for things that matter ten years from now. For me, it’s exercise. I must exercise 3-4 days a week. Why? Because when my kids are teenagers, I want to be able to run around a basketball court or soccer field with them without going into cardiac arrest.
4. Motivate yourself. Find what motivates you and put it in front of your face every day. My motivation is that I want to end the cycle of of being a dreamer in my life so I don’t pass it on to my kids. I want to encourage them to dream huge dreams, but not to stop there. They need to do the work. I don’t want them years for now to start things and not finish because I never did. I want to show them that it doesn’t matter how smart you are, or how much potential people think you have, if you don’t work hard and finish you won’t get anywhere in life.
5. Do it now. This used to kill me. Beth would tell me something needed to be fixed, and I never found time to do it. My kids wanted to play ball, but something else was going on, so I would put it off until later. Now, if at all possible, I stop, and get it done. I may not have an hour to throw the ball with Jaivin, but he’s never complained about me saying, “Get the gloves, but I only have a few minutes.”
Remember, you’ll never find time for anything. If you want to get it done, you will have to make time.
What are some of the ways you make time for the important things in your life?
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I wanted to leave you not only with a question, but with some quotes that I hope will motivate you the way they have me:
In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking.
~ Sir John Lubbock
Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.
~ Denis Waitley
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
~ Steve Jobs
Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.
~ Charles Caleb Colton
He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out the plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.
~ Victor Hugo
For disappearing acts, it’s hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.
~ Doug Larson
Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.
~ Napoleon Hill
Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.
~ M. Scott Peck
Yesterday is a canceled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have – so spend it wisely.
~ Kay Lyons
Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein.
~ H. Jackson Brown
If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got.
~ Lee Iacocca
Sometimes kids have a way of wording things that is unexpectedly profound, a way of asking a common question that colors a simple thought differently than you have seen before. In October of 2005, my daughter Laila asked such a question and from that day it has changed the way we pray.
Our family supports The Voice of the Martyrs, a group that helps persecuted Christians around the globe (click the pic to get to their website). Along with that support comes a newsletter that tells of different people who are currently being jailed, beaten, or otherwise persecuted for their faith. The picture for this post is part of the cover from that October issue, and I had left it on our coffee table. My daughter saw it and asked, “Daddy, why are those people in a cage?”
Wow. It is obvious they are in prison, but in a cage? I hadn’t thought of that. So I explained to my children that not everyone is free to worship God (Jehovah) and that they are sometimes put in prison, or cages, and we started praying every night with our children for “the people in cages.”
It also inspired us to pray for them in different countries, and it got hard to tell what we had already prayed for, so I bought a world map. Now, every night, one of the kids picks a country, and we pray for the people of that country to come to know Christ, and for “the people in cages.”
This isn’t to make us out to be awesome or super spiritual. I mostly wanted to tell you so that you can see a simple way to show your kids that being a Christian is more than church on Sunday, it’s more than our own country, it’s a worldwide family.
Is there anything you do with your family that might encourage others? Let me know!
I love the disciples. At times, they remind me of me. Especially when Jesus gets done teaching, and they are still lost, and He has to explain it to them. I think they got it right near the end though.
I was reading today in Matthew 26, the last supper, and noticed something. Jesus tells the twelve that one of them will betray him, and instead of pointing fingers at who they thought may be the weakest of them, they all asked, “Who, me?”
Wow, if I could only get that one right in my life, and teach it to my kids.
God, when things go wrong, help me to see my own weakness, and the fault in me, and not to point my finger and judge other firsts.
Here is the text:
“When evening had come, He sat down with the twelve. Now as they were eating, He said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.’ And they were exceedingly sorrowful, and each of them began to say to Him, ‘Lord, is it I?’”
I got to sleep in this morning. Our company takes Martin Luther King Jr. as a holiday. I cannot simply just mentally check out for the day, I have to remember why I have the day off. not only that, I have an obligation to my children to explain to them why daddy gets the day off. So, this morning we took a half hour remembering Dr. King.
I have five kids, ages two through nine, so it wasn’t easy. For them to really understand, I walked them through how Christopher Columbus came over, and how many Europeans followed him (eventually including my Irish ancestors), then we forced them off their land for our benefit. Soon after that, we found that there were people in Africa that we could buy or steal, bring them here, and force them to work for us. many were treated worse than animals, and were bought sold, and disposed of like property.
Eventually some leaders in our country realized this was horrible, and that our founding fathers new that God created us equally, so we should treat all people that way, so we had a war. After the Civil War, the slaves were free to own property, and work for themselves, but in many ways were still treated as less than human.
They had to use different bathrooms, restaurants, and transportation. They were not allowed to have a voice in Washington DC, because they were not allowed to vote. There were many people who started to take a public stand against this treatment, including Dr. King. He took a stand, and as a minister, tried to remind people that God made us all, and we are to look at the heart of a man, and not the color of his skin.
For this, we was shot and killed: for the love and passion if a dream. He is an example to us. No, a hero. He is a beacon to show us that no matter how dark our world may seem, that one man, yes, only one, can make a difference. One can change the course of a nation, or the world, and that one could be you or me.
Also, this is a day where we can examine our own hearts. Are we treated others as we ought to? No matter their skin color, ethnicity, or religious grouping? Are we loving them as God has called us? Even to the point of laying down our pride and selfish ambitions and putting them before us? I know I still have work to do.
With that, here are a couple of videos we watched today about Dr. King. Please watch them and remeber, so we don’t walk down this road again.
Follow this Link to the History Channel’s video:
Gray Matter – David Levy, MD.
One of my favorite TV shows is House (NBC), so when Tyndale Publishers gave me the opportunity to review a book by a neurosurgeon, I couldn’t pass it up. In Gray Matter, Dr. David Levy documents his journey of adding care for the individual’s spiritual needs into his medical practice.
He begins with asking patients if he can pray with them before surgery, progresses to talking some patients through forgiveness and releasing bitterness as part of their overall health. Each Chapter recounts several surgeries with incredible detail, and how patients and colleagues react to the unexpected request from Dr. Levy to pray.
Dr. Levy also gets quite personal, sharing some of his failures, and how he coped with not being able to help everyone, despite his best efforts. His stories are filled with faith and hope and have inspired me to step out and ask those I am in contact with everyday if I can pray with them.
Thanks to Tyndale House Publishers for providing me with a complimentary ARC of Gray Matter.
Mark Your Calendars! Light the torches and gather the pitchforks!
Tuesday, June 22nd at 7pm, EST we will storm the Cybergates of Amazon.com and seek to propel Venom and Song to great heights on the Amazon Bestseller Chart!
Last year, we Blitzed for Curse of the Spider King, and the ranking went from 73,000th to 365th in one 24 hour period! And that thanks only to my generous readers, their friends and family.
This year, we are defining and actual time to shoot for. This will concentrate the effect of book purchases and hopefully launch Venom and Song into the top 100 or even better!
If you are planning to purchase Venom & Song anyway, would you please consider purchasing it from Amazon.com. It’s very important to have the purchases fall between 7-8pm on Tuesday, June 22nd. This maximizes the jump up on the Bestseller list.
Why do this?
Books that hit high on Amazon’s bestseller list get seen by a LOT more people. That exposure tends to generate LOTS more sales, which of course, starts a wonderful cycle. High purchases in the first week of release also tells Amazon that this is a book to push, so Amazon tends to include it in their eMailings, etc. And better still, the opening sales tells the publisher to plug in more marketing muscle to a book that is succeeding. So please consider joining us on June 22nd for the 2nd Annual Amazon BLITZ.
http://www.christopherhopper.com/2010/06/storm-amazon-com-with-us/trackback/
This is a re-post of an article I wrote for my new blog, www.crmooney.com
I love the story of Robin Hood. The best version I have seen (though I haven’t seen the new movie) is the cartoon. I still whistle the little ditty from the narrating rooster, lol. I love the characterization: Robin Hood as a fox standing up for the poor rabbits, the adviser to the king is a snake, Little John as a giant bear, the clumsy guards as vultures, the sheriff is a wolf, and get this, the priest is a badger. A Badger!
What’s not to like with this guy, right? He’s a handsome critter with a persuasion toward sticking up for the little guy, an incredible marksman, has a go-get-em attitude. He’s so amazing a character, that we forget he’s an outlaw in all of this. Yes, the king is away fighting a war, and his nephew is quite the tyrant, but Robin is still robbing from the rich to give to the poor. We are empathetic to his cause though, aren’t we? It’s only fair right? We want this wonder boy to come in and save the day, right the wrongs, and stick it to “the man.” We want him to break the prisoners out of jail and take back what was theirs. We stand by and root him on, “Go get ‘em Robin!”
It ends great. Robin gets the fair maiden and King Richard returns to restore order to the kingdom.
It’s a great story, but that is it. A story. The problem starts when we bring this to reality, and we make Jesus into Robin Hood.
While I do not know if he was any kind of marksman, I know Jesus was no thief. But we do expect that he will use rich people to give to the poor, and that somehow, we who do not have much to give are not expected to. We turn ourselves into spectators. Instead of getting into the action, we stand in the crowd, and cheer on Jesus and his Merry Men. We want him to be the one to take up arms against the tyrants in our lives and restore to us what we believe was wrongfully taken (relationships, money, status).
I think that God requires more than that from us. Jesus tells a story of a man in need, a man who was destitute. He was beaten, robbed, and left for dead. Even in this state, there were people that passed him on the roadside, and left him in that condition. People with status, and the ability to help him walked by in their arrogance, feeling it was beneath them to assist.
Finally there was a man who helped. His heritage was such that the Jews called his kind half-breed, and treated them such. This hurt man, under different circumstances, may have called him a dog and spat on him. He was a Samaritan, and he put aside all these differences, put the man on his donkey and took him to town to get the help he needed. And he didn’t just dump him at the ER, he paid for the expenses, and told the help that if it wasn’t enough, he would pay the rest when he came back to town.
This is what God expects from us, no matter our situation, or how people have treated us. We are not to be the victims waiting for a Robin Hood to save the day. We are to be like the Samaritan. No matter how much or how little we have. It’s high time we (mostly talking to myself here, so “high time I”) stop waiting for someone else to make a difference. We can’t think that because we do not have the resources to help everyone, that we cannot help someone.
Someone needs what you have.
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.
There's Something Deep Inside 