Rights, Giftings & Blog Plans for 2015

 

We should be able to agree that all people have inalienable natural rights, rights we do not tolerate being stripped away by other people. Of this most Americans and many people’s around the world will agree to and would even give their lives to defend. As you know these rights include:

  • Life
  • Liberty
  • Pursuit of Happiness

Standing on the foundation of these rights are what I call inalienable gifts, these gifts are human activities that emerge from people when their natural rights are defended.  These gifts emerge from us naturally when our rights are ensured and defended, these gifts are built into our DNA and they include:

  • The ability and drive to create, to invent and to provide value.
  • The ability and drive to build community and family.

Creativity, as I’ve written about extensively in the past is a powerful force in this world and has been the primary topic of this blog.

In 2015 I would like move to the next primary topic of this blog which is ‘building and managing of households’.  Creativity will always be an important theme for this site but I want to also write about managing the family.  The fellowship that comes and is enjoyed by people among family or friendship groups is foundational to a civilized society.  There are households of families, there are households of faith and I believe that family gets to the core of why we are on this planet.

I’m not necessarily adding this topic because I am an expert on this topic but because this is where I am in life.  You may know that I am married with 5 young children, and am a member of a church. These two families are a huge part of my life.  As part of my new years goals for 2015 I am attempting to better align my blogging with my family life and create products accordingly.  I also plan to share my faith much more so on this site. Topics that I plan to write about and hopefully create products include: Household management, parenting from a dad’s perspective, children’s training and education (particularly science), healthy marriage from a husband’s perspective, family budgeting and healthy church.

Some of you began following this blog when I was writing about innovation and science, where this blog is headed I think is considerably different from this topic.  I may still write about this periodically but I understand if you un-follow, no hard feelings. This blog has been a several year-long journey of tweaks and adjustments and I have enjoyed every moment of it.

Any feedback? Are there particular family or church topics that you would like to see discussed?

PS: My home computer is down which means I can not edit podcast episodes, unfortunately until my computer is replaced podcasting for this site is on hold.

Families Also Need Leaders

 FamilyMeeting1

 

“My family comes first” – almost every father I know.
There is a ton of content out there for business leadership, for church leadership, for every type of leadership. There are books, consultants, coaches, blogs, podcast’s and even mastermind groups.  I consume some of this content and I have learned some good stuff.

 

Business and church leaders often work on leadership skills so that they can lead their business or churches more effectively.

 

Most would say that “family comes first”or “my family is the most important thing in my life”, we have careers to support our families. But think about it, how much planning, how much strategy, how many goals and how many meetings do we have about our family lives? I think most of us just allow our family lives to happen as they will.  What if we applied our leadership wisdom, skills and talents to our families? starting now!

 

Families need leadership as much or more than do businesses.  We can shape our children’s lives with our parenting skills. This can effect our children for a lifetime, for good or for bad. The concept of family leadership goes beyond parenting only.  Parenting is just one of subset of family leadership, because not all families raise children.  Family leadership embraces what is unique and special about a family. It doesn’t try to change or manipulate and make a family into something it is not.  It accepts the family for what it is, it helps and guides family decisions and focus for decades and for generations.  Families are the foundation of a civilized society and provide stability, so of course we should strive to lead our families well.

 

There are three things that the leaders of families can do to lead well.
Assumptions: there is a roof over the family’s head, adequate clothing on everyone, enough food to eat and plenty of love in the home.

 

  1. Define the family’s mission.
  2. Create a sense of unity and oneness in your family.
  3. Set specific goals for the family.
A family mission is that one most important thing that your family focuses on in the near-term. Perhaps it is improving relationships with one another, perhaps it is teaching our faith, perhaps it is doing something together like a big vacation, perhaps it is working on a financial struggle.  Don’t spend too much time on this, just pick something you can agree with and go for it, there are no rules and you can change things on the fly.  Is your family just existing, or does it have a unique mission? whatever you think that mission is or should be, start to talk about it, write it down, discuss it with your spouse, tell it to your children until they know it by heart.  I am just beginning this process with my kids and they seem to enjoy the guidance.
Does your family have a sense of unity and oneness, is your family united? do family members suffer alone with problems? Does everyone tend to dump things on mom? or dad? everyone should share the burden of life together, help one another, defend one another and forgive one another.

 

As part of that mission and unity it is a good idea to set yearly goals for your family. Set less than 10 goals and write them out, make them achievable but ambitious and make sure everyone in the family knows them.

 

These all sound great right? But how to begin?  We can start by coming up with a family mission then simply say it out loud often, talk about the goals for the year, start creating that UNITY that ONENESS in your family by teaching unity and expecting it from everyone. This wont happen overnight but with consistency over time we get there.

 

Family life is important, more so than is our careers, our businesses, even more than our churches, so lets strive to lead our families well.  Children are counting on us, our spouse is counting us. When death comes many years from now our family is what will matter to us, not our nest egg.
Don’t continue another day in an unhealthy or toxic family life, make effort to restore and to lead our family well. If necessary get marriage counseling or parenting counseling, there is no shame in that, determine to fix what is broken.

 

The only thing more painful than confronting and uncomfortable topic is pretending it doesn’t exist.

 

 

Most family members will respond to leadership and will freely follow…or will at least tolerate it.

What are some other ways we can lead our families well?

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