Sep. 5, 2009 - Raising the Bar
Do Hard Things ~ authored by Alex & Brett Harris
Here is an excerpt from a book that I have read and have on my bookshelf. I recommend it as a fantastic read! If you need a little kick of motivation look no farther! The author is by twins Alex and Brett who have created the idea of Rebelution, teenage rebellion against low expectations. A new idea to a culture so accepting of immature teens.
After reviewing this chapter and deciding to share portions of it, I found convictions being brought up in my own mind. And standards that I want to put back up where they used to be. I am guilty of so much of this! I have a list of the areas that are being freshly turned over!
Raising the Bar
How to do hard things that go beyond
what's expected or required
The trap of “Just Do Your Best”
It's easy to be content with less than our best, especially when our halfhearted efforts seem to satisfy everyone else around us. And being “good enough” can turn into a special hazard. Those who could do a lot better or tackle a much bigger challenge seldom do so when they're already “good enough” by other people's standards.
What about you? Maybe you've procrastinated on a school project because you knew you could stay up late the night before the deadline and throw something together. Or maybe you've accepted your place in the middle of the pack even though you know that's not where you belong. In many ways you can deliver less than 100 percent and still get away with it-on a team, at work, at home, in your personal life and spiritual life.
We will look at one of the most important but challenging steps you can take to beat the tide of low expectations: reject complacency and choose to do hard things that go above and beyond what's required or expected of you.
This choice goes right to the heart of what it means to be rebelutionary. Without a doubt, pushing yourself to do more than is asked, expected, or required is nearly always a lonely choice. It can set you apart from friends, co-workers, other Christians, even family. As we'll see, the desire to do your best- even when no one around you requires it-takes a special kind of character. It puts you at odds with the accepted culture, which says “Just do your best” but means something very different.
Think about it. This common phrase, “Just do your best,” actually encourages the opposite, when someone says “Just do your best,” are you inspired to reach for more or does it feel more like permission to just get by? Before long you'll become blinded by complacency, which is defined as a smug feeling of satisfaction with who you are and what you've done. (“Hey I did my best...”) We slide into mediocrity and excuse making. The first symptom is satisfaction with things the ways they are. The second is rejection of things as they might be.
Proverbs 1:32 is even clearer: “The complacency of fools destroys them.”
Over time, refusing to reach higher, try harder and risk more robs us of the glorious purpose and wonderful future God has created us for.
Three Strategies For Stepping Higher
Do what's hard for you.
Be known for what you do (more than for what you don't do)
Pursue excellence, not excuses.
Do What's Hard For You
A rebelutionary takes the time to identify the areas where he or she could accomplish more by stepping across the line of what comes easily and coming out from behind past accomplishments, complacency, and low expectations.
Be Known for What You Do (more than for what you don't)
Lindsey is in her second year of high school-her first at a private Christian school. Even among other Christian teens at school and Church, Lindsey is the “good girl” who seemingly never does anything wrong. She won't watch R-rated movies, wears a promise ring that her dad gave heron her thirteenth birthday, and won't even date (or “court” as she puts it) until she's ready to get married. It doesn't make her highly popular among some of her peers, but she cares more about what the adults in her life think. And they praise her constantly-usually while they bemoan all the “bad stuff” other teen today are involved in.
She loves it when she gets compliments for being such a “wonderful girl,” but when Lindsey is honest, she knows she's become exceptional for what she doesn't do. She doesn't attend wild parties, cause trouble, or want a tattoo. But what does she do? Is the Christian life all about avoiding “bad stuff” or is it about doing “good, hard stuff” for God? Deep down Lindsey knows the answer, but she's already praised for being such a godly girl. Isn't that enough?
Bre, a high-school senior from Indiana, experienced low expectations firsthand. She, along with other young people, had participated in some community service projects and afterward gave a report to her church. Following the service she overheard a man saying, “Aren't you glad these kids aren't out smoking pot or drinking?”
“That comment just broke my heart.” Bre wrote to us, “because there truly is a level of mediocrity that has infiltrated not just our culture, but our churches as well.” Is it enough to be known for the negative things we don't do, or should we also be known for the positive and difficult things that we do?
Pursue Excellence, Not Excuses
God set His standards high so that that won't make the mistake of aiming low. He made them unreachable so that we would never have an excuse to stop growing. A commitment to growth kills complacency, we can identify it in our lives by asking the following hard questions and answering them honestly.
What areas of my life do I not care about that I know I should care about?
In what areas have I fallen short of God's standards and my own potential?
In what areas have I settled for just getting by when I know I could do better if I really tried?
In what areas have I decided that things “will always be this way” without ever putting in the kind of effort that changes things?
From Wimp To World-Changer
As a young teenager, Theodore Roosevelt didn't strike anyone as the kind of person who would become one of America's greatest presidents. From the time he was a toddler, severe asthma overshadowed everything he did. He was considered too delicate for school and too weak to stand up to other boys. On doctors' orders his father and mother rushed him to seashore resorts and mountain cabins in hopes that changes of air would help him breathe. The sickly boy seemed unlikely to survive childhood-let alone amount to anything if he did.
Of course we all know that Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt did more than survive. More than any of his contemporaries, Roosevelt led America into the twentieth century. He was a cowboy on the western frontier, a police commissioner in New York City, a military hero in the Spanish-American War, and the governor of New York. He was the first president to fly in an airplane, be submerged in a submarine, to have a telephone in his home, or to own a car. And in 1906 he became the American Nobel laureate, awarded the Nobel peace prize for almost single-handedly negotiating a peaceful end to the Russo-Japanese War.
How did a severely nearsighted, asthmatic kid who wasn't suppose to live past his twenty-first birthday go on to experience a life of such incredible accomplishment? The short answer is that as a teenager, Roosevelt chose to go beyond what was easy by reaching for what seemed impossible.
Shortly before his twelfth birthday, his father took him aside and challenged him to dedicate himself to the “hard drudgery” of building himself a strong body. Convinced and determined, young Roosevelt gave himself to it, spending hours each day lifting weights, hammering punching bags, and straining at pull-up bars. This was the beginning of the transformation-more than just physical-that would shape the rest of his life. Decades later, with conviction birthed in the “hard drudgery” of his teen years, Roosevelt said that the highest form of success would go only to the man who “does not shrink from danger, from hardship, of from toil.” Listen to what what he said about what he called “the strenuous life”:
“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of effort, of labor and strife; to preach that the highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.”
Of course, nowadays we don't talk the way Roosevelt did. But what would happen if we embraced the values he did-of reaching above and beyond what comes easy? And what would happen if a new generation of teens lived that way?
Start now.
