Conventional Wisdom

I have been leading a series of discussions on Wednesday nights with the college kids about "conventional wisdom" type sayings and their validity. Specifically we have been looking at those sayings through the lens of scripture and seeing if they are fact or crap. It has been some good discussion of late.

Our topics have included:
"God will never give you more than you can handle"
"Everything happens for a reason"
"He's in a better place now" (after someone dies)

The main point of doing these discussions is to get the college students to challenge "conventional wisdom". Sometimes that which is commonly accepted is a bigger pile of manure than we might think. In other words, just because "everyone" believes it, doesn't make it true.

If you are a Christian, I challenge you to do a little digging into these commonly accepted tenets. You might be surprised at how easy it is to provide a valid challenge to them.

If you are not a Christian and someone delivers one of these "wise" sayings to you, I ask you to be polite and thank them for the encouragement. Often people say things like these because there is nothing else to say. They feel that it would be rude to say nothing, so they fall back on "conventional wisdom" that seems to be profound.

Whether you are a Christian or not, I ask you to consider the words you say to people when THEY are in crisis. What you think could be profound may actually prove to be an annoyance or possibly even offensive (think about "he's in a better place"--a spouse passes away unexpectedly, wasn't sick or anything, maybe a car crash, does the surviving spouse really think that the dead spouse is in a better place than right there with his or her family watching their kids grow up--doubt it).

Hope all is well for you. Would love to hear your thoughts on these sayings and any others that I could maybe use for my class.

The Lie--You MUST Go to College

Ok, parents and teachers don't kill me over this one. I know it may not be popular. I have fought against this lie for many years--including the 4 years I taught high school. I met some opposition sometimes! This one is pretty simple though. College is NOT for everyone. Young people need to hear that. Our society--from the president all the way down to individual parents--puts an intense amount of pressure on the youth. There is this pervasive mindset that college is THE ticket to success, wealth and happiness. This is a LIE. Plain and simple. College will not make you happy, wealthy or successful.

First, lets address the idea that college is necessary for success. College will not guarantee your earning potential. It does help (to some extent) give you an edge. There are some jobs that will require a college degree. Many of those jobs do pay more than jobs that don't require a degree. That said, there is an endless supply of exceptions to this rule. Compare the salaries of a diesel mechanic and an elementary school teacher. The other flaw here is the definition of success. I have discussed this on several occasions but it is always worth reiterating. Success should NEVER be measured by salary--NEVER.

So what does impact your earning potential? I think it is a combination of several things. One, you need a marketable skill set. For some, this comes with college. For others this comes from a technical school. Still other acquire this skill set from experience and experimentation. All are viable options as long as you can market them. Two, you need the drive to leverage your strengths. If you can't sell your skills, they get wasted. Be proud of your abilities--they are gifts from God. Three, you have to be able to differentiate yourself from others with the same skills. Maybe this means you connect to groups of people that are underserved, maybe you tweak your product to make it different or better. I don't know. But you should. Next, you have to find your calling. If you are doing the work God put you here to do, you will be successful, period. Finally, you go DO IT. You can make plans and scheme all you want but if you never put any action behind the plan, it is a waste.

Don't misunderstand me, I think college is valuable. I think many, many people benefit from it (even those that don't graduate). I think if you don't know what you want to do, college is a good place to "find yourself" (sometimes). Just remember, college is not for everyone. It's ok if you want to go to a tech school. It's ok if you want to go to Nashville Auto Diesel. It's ok if you want to join the military. There are lots more options out there. This country needs people at every level of the employment chain. The important thing is that you develop some kind of marketable skill and put it to work.

Two Observations

So, this is a blog I wrote several weeks ago and never published for some reason. I will go ahead and publish because I think these are some thoughts we should consider. Please, read and respond.

Ok, I have two observations to share. One is deeply spiritual, the other is work related.

1) Work related--I was thinking about some of the Realtors that I have met through my experiences so far. Many of them are hard working people. Some are not all that hard working but are good folks that just don't have a ton of motivation. Some, are in a different boat altogether. Those are the ones I am focusing on in this posting.

Today Marty Reuter spoke to our sales meeting. He is the top dog in charge of franchises for the entire Weichert Company. One thing he said was that it is extremely important to put the client ahead of the commission. When he said this, it really hit home because I know that I do this. Often I have encouraged buyers to look at a lower priced home because it is a better home and a better fit for their budget. I have heard stories, however of my colleagues pressing the higher priced home no matter what. Then I thought about the ones that complain constantly about the state of the housing market. It occured to me that these are probably the same people. You see, it takes roughly the same amount of work to sell a $100,000 house as it does to sell a $300,000 house. There is, of course, some variation to this rule but, basically, if you have a home priced right and you do a great job of presenting the home, you can sell either home with virtually the same budget and virtually the same amount of effort. I work hard on my lower priced listings and I work hard on my higher end homes. Obviously, the payoff is higher on the higher end homes. I think the Realtors that constantly complain forget that they are also allowed to sell lower priced homes. I think they may have forgotten this because they feel that if they expend the energy, they should get a higher payoff. Just a thought. In other words, I am willing to go for the quantity, even if it means I work twice as hard to earn the same amount of commission (two houses to one).

2) My second observation occurred on Friday at the In Tents Worship weekend with the teens and college kids from Church. I watched Doug and Hunter playing in the river. They were trying to get to this rock that was upstream. In order to get to this rock, they had to fight against a pretty hard current. I thought about how the Bible frequently speaks of God and God's love as water (pouring out on us, etc.). Then I thought about how the river was like God's love. It just keeps flowing and is pleasant but extremely powerful. Then I thought about how we set arbitrary goals that pit us against God's love and plans (like reaching the rock in the river). We fight and fight and fight to get to our destination. All the while the love is around us, flowing over us and trying to sweep us away and we just keep fighting and expending energy. When we finally get to our goal, we feel pleased but tired and realize that we fought for no real reason. All the while, if we had just "gone with the flow", life would have been much more pleasing. Not only would it have been pleasing but we would have been blessed because the flow would have had us see things we would have missed like the random rope swing. I challenge us to go with the flow and be careful about setting arbitrary goals, especially if they pit us against what we know God would have us to do.

It Just Grinds My Gears

Ok, so I know that the last blog was a bit of a rant. Here is another one. You know what bugs me? We have a county with well over 200,000 people and in this county we have the largest undergraduate university in the state. What bugs me is that other than a very small handful of businesses that might have a little bit of stuff on their signs outside, you would never know about the university!!!! If you drive through Knoxville, there is NO mistaking that the University of Tennessee resides in that town. For those of you who didn't know, MTSU football is poised to have a very successful season this year, for the second season in a row. Doing so would propel the program into a very nice position nationally. Before you get all up in arms and say that "we focus too much on academics, yadda, yadda, yadda," remember that football is (aside from tuition and state funding) the biggest money maker for a campus--period. If the football team stinks, the entire university is seen in a different light (I am not debating on the rightness or wrongness of this fact, I am simply stating it as fact). Last season was a good one. A lot more people started coming to games and wearing blue. It was a really nice shift that occurred among the fans. The crazy thing is, I did not see that shift occur among area businesses. This entire town should be painted blue. Every business from I-24 to Rutherford Blvd. should be flying blue flags and saying "Let's Go Blue" on their signs. It is time for Murfreesboro businesses to wake up and acknowledge the 25,000 plus students in their midst. Perhaps they wouldn't all go home on the weekend if they thought you wanted them around!! In the meantime, support the university and show some pride in the home team!! I don't care if you like UT, fly your orange and hate Lane Kiffin. Just show some pride in what we have RIGHT HERE also. NOW IS THE TIME--SHOW SOME MTSU HOMETOWN PRIDE!!! 
LET'S GO BLUE!!!!!