Step by step, a path unfolds,
Through whispers brave, the journey molds.
With a steadying stride, the way appears,
Beyond the doubts, beyond the fears.
In simple acts, progress stays,
A rising dawn, a brighter day.
Though mountains loom, press hard, and climb—
Headway made one breath at a time.
This week, a strange word crept into my thoughts about leadership, project completion, and making progress every day. It’s a cementing word that projects through a mission, vision, objective, and goal. It gives feet to a plan and momentum to life, and without this word, you may slip backward more than you gain your next step.
Word? Strategy. 1
Though the concept of strategy may revolve around actions to take in the face of a project or struggle, it is also: “an adaptation or complex of adaptations (as of behavior, metabolism, or structure) that serves or appears to serve an important function in achieving evolutionary success.”
Strategy For Success
My thought today is about having a strategy for success even when there are impossible odds, daunting issues, or storms and tragedies that flood the future. I think it’s even more important in everyday life than we give it credit. From successfully completing a goal to tying up loose ends before taking a vacation, there is a strategy we apply to the moment. It says a lot about who you are, what you focus on, and how you let life bog you down in a quagmire of indecision.
We were taught, “Finish what you start.” We separated ourselves from so many started tasks that the floor became littered with projects we never finished. There was no strategy. We felt guilty enough to start living with only what we knew we could do and not tackling new projects because we feared never completing them.
What if we had a strategy to test ourselves and see if something new fits our life before we make a commitment that becomes another failure point? Before you buy an expensive car, rent it for a few days and see if it fits into your world. Before you jump ship from a career, test the waters with questions and analysis of the new world.
This list could go on. But the concept is valid. A strategy for dealing with life will help you make better decisions as you age through another trip around the sun.
This morning, I was reading an article about C.S. Lewis. He had been in the trenches of WWI, but he was also a scholar with lofty goals. In between the negative and positive, he self-identified as an atheist. For 30 years, he could best anyone with an argument that “no God exists.” But he also lived with a heart of ongoing deep sadness. Spurts of Joy but continued sadness and heartache.
One writer described it as a “profound longing” for something he couldn’t have
and didn’t know exactly what he was longing for.
Feeling doomed, he chatted with a good friend, J.R. Tolkien, a devout Catholic, who gave him a remedy: “Your sad heart is looking for God.” Lewis could not accept this answer, but continued conversations (after all, he is a scholar) with Tolkien and another friend, Hugo Dyson, turned into an all-night stroll around the campus of Oxford, where Christianity and Mythology were the major topics. Lewis would use mythology to help identify his need and even consider Christianity as a mythology that might help him also.
His friends affirmed the mythology of Christianity with the caveat that it was not a myth; it was truth. And Christ had happened.
Through his continued search strategy, he realized that everything he had to study pointed to ONE truth: “…the books in which we thought beauty was located will betray us if we trust them; it was not in them, it only came through them…”
Mythys couldn’t heal his heart because they were not true, but they could, and did, point to the truth.
C.S. Lewis became a devout Christian and wrote many deep stories, some in a mythological format, to help others understand the truth of Christ.
He penned, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.“
Lewis found his strategy. Using what he had experienced, and where his mind was bound to roam, and the studies he loved so much, he sought for the truth. He found it.
Another writer (Sean Berube) analyzed it like this:
- Faith without reason is blind.
- Faith without love is cold and cruel.
- Faith, however, grounded in a love for truth, is the key to flourishing.
- Joy, in other words, is having faith that the truth will set you free.
- The joyous life is not blind faith, nor pure rationality – it’s an impassioned heart and a curious mind.
- To love the truth with all your heart is to begin a true walk of faith.
- Only the truth can see you free, and if you follow this stories example, you may be “Surprised by Joy.”
Strategy.
I have a life strategy to see the good where others see the bad. When others want to rail against something, I search for understanding. When I wrestle with what’s next, my strategy will see me successfully forward while others will continue to moan. This strategy often makes me seem like a slow mover, but it’s the surety of my next step that I find confidence in my speed.
Strategy. I have a new feeling for who I am, where I’m going, and how I’m going to get there.
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(Below, you may find other topics similar to this one. Please read on!)