Five Things that Hinder Growth in Life

Five Things That Hinder Growth in Life

Hey Team! All right, it’s another beautiful day. I’m out here on my deck early in the morning as usual, and I’ve been thinking about you guys. I’ve been doing some reading, got my reading glasses on, and I came across something. It’s not really a quote; it’s more of a list of things to think about. I want to give it to you, and then we will unpack it a little bit here this morning.

Ego prevents you from learning from others. Envy prevents you from focusing on yourself. Anger prevents you from seeing clearly. Ignorance prevents you from making good decisions. Fear prevents you from seizing opportunities.

I don’t know about you. I think about our core values when I read some of these, I think about our lives and some of the things that we’ve gone through in this last year or so. Things I’ve gone through over my life.

I can honestly say I have approached each of these things, and I can tell you that the statement is true: we need to get rid of these things in our lives.

Ego. I have had one; some people might say I still do. I’ve also been told that I’ve changed quite a bit in these last few years. I know that there is less of an ego thing in me because it does prevent you from learning from other people. It’s kind of like pride. You get into this place where you believe that you’re the best or you start thinking that you should be better than others. It’s hard to learn from anybody else when you have this ego that says, “I know it all. I’ve got it. I’ve been there. I have all the answers,” even when you really know you don’t have all the answers.

Envy. Why are they doing better than me, why is that company doing better than us? Why did they get that contract, and we didn’t? Thinking from an envious standpoint—why did they get promoted, and I didn’t? You start asking yourself those questions. You start envying what somebody else has, and it will prevent you from being able to focus on what you need to do to get better because you’re spending all your time worrying about why somebody else got something that you think you deserved.

Anger. It prevents you from seeing clearly. The Greek word for pride, one of the Greek definitions, talks about it being a fog. It clouds your vision and makes you not be able to see clearly. Anger stirs up inside of you. You get enraged; all you do is narrow your vision. Your blood pressure goes up, and you get a more narrowed vision. So, you don’t have peripheral vision. That anger can get you singularly focused, and you can lose your peripheral understanding of seeing things very clearly. That anger will prevent you from seeing clearly, and it can destroy a number of things in your life.

Maybe this resonates with some of you.

Ignorance prevents you from making good decisions. When you let some of these other things get into your life, you become more ignorant of your situation. It’s not always about book learning and studying; it’s about not being able to see clearly. It’s about that envy and ego. It can make you ignorant and not wanting to learn, not willing to learn. That will prevent you from making good decisions because you’re not thinking clearly; you’re not looking at things in the right way.

The last one is fear. I’ve had fear; I’ve experienced it. Anybody that says they’ve never been fearful, well, I think they’re lying. I’ve never met a person that hasn’t experienced fear in some shape or form. Fear prevents you from seizing opportunities because you get paralyzed from that fear. It prevents you from seizing an opportunity or going forward or moving into something that you should move into. You get analysis paralysis, where you want to analyze it so much that the opportunity goes by, and you never get to do it. You lose the opportunity because of your fear and your desire to just keep analyzing.

I’m not putting down people that analyze things and look at them from different sides. We have some great team members that do that and ask good questions. When we get together as a team and focus on things that way, we bring the best of the best to the table, and we make good decisions. But we can’t be fearful and never make a decision. We have to analyze it, move on, and hit the opportunity. When we don’t do that, it just shows that we’re being paralyzed by our fear.

I hope these help you. Something for you to think about this week: envy, ego, anger, ignorance, and fear. Let them resonate in your life.

Which ones do you need to work on? Which ones do you need to think about most? Where are you today? Tackle those things. If you need help with that, give me a call. If you want to talk about it, I’d love to hear it. I’m happy to resonate and work with you to get through these.

We all need mentors in our lives. We all need somebody else’s sounding board sometimes. Wisdom. I have those kinds of people in my life, and it’s a joy for me to enjoy having people I know I can go to and tell them, “I’m fearful. I feel ignorant. I’m angry. I’m envious of this or that. I think maybe my ego has popped back up again.” Or they tell me, “Chad, you know what your problem right now is? Your ego.” When I have a wise person, a mentor in my life, tell me, “Chad, your ego’s in the way,” it helps me. It really does. Because I’m willing to listen to that mentor in my life, and you need that too.

So, as you go forward this week, remember: let’s be valuable because nothing less will do. Let’s work on these five things in our own lives. Remember, God loves you, I love you, and the team loves you. So, let’s be awesome. I’ll see you guys next week.