11 - The Need for Accomplishment
Episode Highlights:
“When we know our need for accomplishment, we know when we need to stop, we can be grateful for what has happened so far, and we can rest well in anticipation instead of dread.”
Needs of the Heart by Chip Dodd, page 53.
This episode on accomplishment takes us back to our roots so we can re-establish how we grow the fruits.
Accomplishment is not achievement.
Accomplishment is not about winning. It has to do with success. Success is desire plus pursuit that contends with challenges.
Accomplishment is being the turtle in the old fable, the Turtle and the Hare.
https://americanliterature.com/author/aesop/short-story/the-tortoise-and-the-hare/#google_vignette
Accomplishment is how to live fulfilled and successfully live one day at a time.
The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
Achievement reduces creativity, and the need for accomplishment advances and multiplies creativity.
Accomplishment has 3 movements or steps:
knowing when you have reached your limits; knowing when to stop.
celebrating the results of having given yourself to something that matters to you.
Resting well to allow you to begin anew as you move toward the completion of that which inspires or moves you.
If we don’t know our limits, and we continue to press on in spite of being tired, not creative, not ready, not prepared, we will put out the same amount of effort with less and less results that are productive.
We need to know when we have reached our stress point of being drained, empty, tired, finished, and reached our limit. Know that you’re not quitting; you are stopping so that you can continue to participate in excellence.
By acknowledging our limits when it’s time to stop, we are actually setting ourselves up for higher productivity or excellence.
A recovery term, HALT, stands for:
hungry
anger
lonely
tired
When you reach HALT,
You’re isolating from your needs.
You’re removing yourself from “life on life’s terms.”
You’re setting yourself up for relapse, “burnout” (wear out.)
We must face our limitations and stop when we have reached our limit.
After you become aware of your need to stop, take time to celebrate (that you gave your heart to something that matters.)
The Gap - If you have a vision for your life, a long-term goal, if you measure your daily success based upon how far you are from finishing the mission, then you will be miserable. You’re comparing yourself to something that hasn’t happened instead of assessing what has happened.
Celebration is assessing what has happened positively.
What did I do today?
What have I been able to do thus far?
Exodus 15, Moses and the Jews celebrate their journey thus far.
After stopping when you have reached your limit and celebrating what you’ve been able to do thus far, take time to appreciate the opportunity rather than experience the resentment of “having” to do it.
If you have a “have to” attitude, you may be seeing yourself as a victim.
Victims see their feelings as useless. Victims believe that if they share their feelings:
no one will care
I won’t be heard
nothing will come of it
it will just cause a problem
nothing will change
Often victims have, in the past, cried out for help and no help came, so they have given up on having feelings.
If your thought processes are about “having to” then you see yourself as controlled by everything and everyone else versus having agency of laying claim to what your real hungers and thirsts are.
Do you have an attitude of “having to” or “getting to?”
Fantasy is what we conjure in our brains to get away from dealing with the feelings of life. It is a picture we conjure up to escape having to have feelings.
Imagination is what we picture and plan related to what we are willing to do and want, that we’re willing to have pain over. It is picturing what we want and we are willing to have pain in order to go get it.
Passion is a willingness to be in pain for something that matters more than the pain.
Your passion has a purpose.
You have a long-term focus.
You develop plans related to fulfilling the purpose.
But, if your plans aren’t a calling, they become human-sized.
I can have daily sabbatical if I:
know when I have reached my limits; I know when to stop.
I stop and celebrate the results of having given myself to something that matters to me.
I rest well and this allows me to begin anew as I move toward the completion of what inspires or moves me.
These 3 steps prepare me to contend with the vision and mission the next day, one day at a time.
Accomplishment is the one need that sets us up to live life on life’s terms, one day at a time.
Know your limits, celebrate and find gratitude, and rest.
Rest allows us to reimagine. We start to picture again our vision for our lives. It’s re-envisioning the plan for our lives that is God-sized.
Achievement is more about “me” than it is about mission and vision. It is about ambition.
Ambition is rooted in achievement.
Achievement is rooted in aspiration.
Aspiration is climbing the ladder.
We have been trained in these 3 territories, but they will not take us where we are made to go.
Inspiration is what we are made to have.
Inspiration means we have breathed in the spirit of life.
You are in touch with how you’re made.
You’re in touch with who you’re made to be.
You’re in touch with what you’re made to do.
You are in your calling!
Accomplishment is how you go about fulfilling your calling.
Winning is how you compare and compete against others:
sporting events
how many books you’ve written
how much money you have
how nice is your house or car
how accomplished you are
how successful your children are
You don’t own your own life, everyone else owns it for you. (always comparing and trying to win or exceed.)
Your pursuit is to be the GOAT, “Greatest Of All time.”
You don’t need to be the GOAT; you need to be yourself completely in order to finish what you’re assigned to do.
Winning is not good enough, but success is.
Success is desire + pursuit that contends with daily life, obstacles, and challenges to arrive somewhere.
Successful people are the winners. Accomplished people have achieved. This happens through one day at a time. (the turtle that keeps on plodding along)
We must make the shift from “have to” → “get to.”
We get to live this life.
We get to have a calling.
We get to move toward a vision we will never accomplish.
We get to be on mission.
The only way that mission remains alive is through having the need of accomplishment met daily through: limits, celebration, and rest.
Accomplishment is a daily revitalizing of creativity.
God provides a “re-” life for us. He:
re-stores re-creates
re-awakens re-deems
re-vitalizes re-aligns
re-ceives re-members
re-generates re-plenishes
re-establishes re-freshes
re-energizes re-invigorates
re-connects re-enlivens
re-news re-purposes
When we fantasize about being in another life, we are looking for a place that doesn’t exist. Fantasy isn’t bad; it just indicates that we need to do something different. You need to be attending to yourself.
You need to address your need for accomplishment.
There is no such place as away. When you throw something away, it doesn’t disappear. It goes somewhere.
We do have a place called “re-” where we can find daily restoration. It is a place where we can fill our storehouses back up. It is a place to fill our empty cups.
“Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” Proverbs 4:23
Living Fully Until You Are Finished:
Life is happening while you’re making your plans. Are your plans God-sized? Do you have Passion → Purpose → Plan?
You recognize the athlete who doesn’t know when to retire. He/she doesn’t have the heart of knowing there’s more to life than his sports accomplishments. If the war you go fight to go achieve certain things is not something that’s made to bring you home, then you’ve missed it. The journey, climbing the ladder, becomes the “have to” not the “get to.” You don’t get to go do this thing that brings you home. You have to go do this thing because you’re trying to make a home out of what the world gives you applause for.
We have a society that doesn’t know completion. Everybody has a last day.
If your life is invested in how your heart is created, finding fulfillment through relationship, there is no time or place where quitting occurs. There is completion.
“To Dream the Impossible Dream” from The Man From La Mancha
(Your life is over when you’re done, and you’re done when you stop breathing.)
If your life is set upon human-sized plans, you’re done as soon as you’ve achieved your human-sized goal, but you don’t have any place to go, you don’t have a place to call “stop.”
It becomes a “have to” because you don’t have a “get to” because there is no home. You see yourself as quitting or you can’t stop. You wind up not living the great life, and the great life is never completed; it’s called relationship.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center
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