The Importance Of Uphill Goals And Downhill Habits

Bill Hybels talked a bit about some of the answers to those questions during the Global Leadership Summit. He gave us the example of a soldier in the war, saying that we need to live a connected life to Jesus and part of that is to think like a solider, constantly ask ourselves “where am I?”; “where is the enemy”, and “where is my buddy.” II agree with Bill and believe that asking ourselves these questions, being alert to ourselves and where we are can help us to redirect our lives to a healthy place where we can better gage if we are drifting, or if we are climbing.

Uphill Goals and Downhill Habits

Now we had started our journey discussing drifting. If you don’t remember, lets get back there. You are in a boat. That boat is on a river somewhere.

Down hill habits can include such things as mismanaging finances, treating others poorly, not partaking in self-care when it is desperately needed, the inability to execute or keep up with an initiative simply because of lack of organization or possibly mismanagement or mistreatment of the people we are leading. Other downhill habits can include, poor use of our time, our schedules, just about anything that gets lost or too difficult to manage in the busyness of a day, a hectic schedule, a fast paced high intensity role.

I can personally admit that I have several of what Maxwell called “uphill hopes and downhill habits.” I found myself quite convicted when he introduced that. How often have I planned and dreamed about my work in ministry, schooling, family and personal life only to find myself completely undone when it came to action items, wiped out and unable to make a significant change or impact in anything because of my down hill habits? As there are many down hill habits that I could talk about I am going to focus on, for the sake of this sermon, the downhill habit of not partaking in

Travis Bradberry explained at the GLS, emotionally intelligent. Emotional Intelligence according to Dr. Bradberry is “your ability to recognize your own emotional response.” I came to understand that so much of life is felt by our emotions long before anything can be pondered intellectually. Therefore, we, as humans, tend to respond emotionally prior to taking the time to think situations out logically. When someone is not of high emotional intelligence they can be harmful and reckless in their life, especially their leadership and this also can contribute to the lack of climbing, the inclination to