My Resolution? Talk Less, Listen More, and Stay Positive!

While read­ing the book ​“Let­ters to the Church” by Fran­cis Chan over the Christ­mas hol­i­day sea­son, I was remind­ed by the author of how easy it is for peo­ple (all of us) to be crit­i­cal. Thanks to the pow­er of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, we can express our opin­ions more eas­i­ly today than ever before. Social media in par­tic­u­lar makes it a cinch to share a neg­a­tive review, expe­ri­ence, or opin­ion for just about all areas of our lives: reli­gion, pol­i­tics, fam­i­ly, and so forth. 

Fran­cis Chan obvi­ous­ly point­ed out ways Chris­tians need to real­ly be care­ful of how they express them­selves online and in person. 

This is not a book review, but it did make an impact and leave me with this take­away: be more pos­i­tive in 2019. 

Here is one thing I’ll be work­ing on in my own life this year: I don’t want to be as quick to give my opin­ion. I want to lis­ten more, ask good ques­tions, and, when the time is right, offer an opin­ion. This is some­thing I’ll be work­ing on in both my per­son­al and busi­ness life.

If you are a busi­ness own­er or man­ag­er, per­haps you’d ben­e­fit as well from slow­ing down and giv­ing few­er opin­ions. Instead, let your team mem­bers fig­ure things out on their own — ask­ing good ques­tions is always a bet­ter way to run a suc­cess­ful busi­ness. It is just a bit too easy to jump in, give an opin­ion, or be imme­di­ate­ly critical. 

You and I can make such an impact and dif­fer­ence in our busi­ness and on the peo­ple around us when we com­mit to stay­ing pos­i­tive when it comes to our inter­ac­tions and opin­ions. I am always pret­ty care­ful of what I say on social media, since I am in that line of work, but hav­ing a sub­tle reminder here and there nev­er hurts. 

It will take some real work for some of us (I’m point­ing at myself here). But, as James 1:19 says, “…let every per­son be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” 

I am a detailed per­son and tend to be very order­ly and have my ducks in a row. While this may be a pos­i­tive, it does mean that I can be crit­i­cal of oth­ers who don’t line up or do things the way I think they should be done. While read­ing Chan’s book over the hol­i­day, and through­out a series of events in 2018, I began to real­ize how impor­tant it is for me to work on how I treat those around me. 

Cre­at­ing a pos­i­tive and encour­ag­ing com­pa­ny cul­ture is what I’ve always want­ed to do and have been striv­ing to do, but I think I lost sight of that in the midst of 2018’s changes, dis­trac­tions, and busy sea­sons. Now that I’ve set­tled down a bit, caught my breath, and looked back, I want to refresh my com­mit­ment to build­ing rela­tion­ships that are built upon me being an encour­ager and an enabler — not one who is quick to be critical. 

I hope you find my hon­est post help­ful as you start 2019.