When Being Successful Pushes You Away From God
I want to be successful when I work. Sweating through a long, hard day and coming up with nothing at the end isn't my idea of a good use of time.
Success means different things. Maybe it means selling something, getting a new customer, coming up with a solution to some problem, creating a new product. Success comes in many forms.
Some of us have big goals for our work lives: how much money we want to make, some position we want to achieve, a book we want to write, some level of revenue we want our businesses to achieve. If we meet any of these goals, we feel we've been successful.
I you break down your goals into pieces (always a good idea), you may even have specific goals for each day. So at the end of the day, you know whether that particular day has been successful or not.
There's a lot of stuff out there to help you be successful. In face, there's a whole "success industry" - along with all sorts of "gurus" who will guide you to the promised land of success. They'll tell you how to be a successful executive, or professional, or business owner.
There's even a bunch of folks who'll tell you how to be a more successful husband and father, so this success stuff doesn't even have to be restricted to just work.
You'll find all this in books, online - everywhere. The main themes are success, self-improvement, or personal development.
Now, it's always a good thing to improve yourself. There's no excuse to just sit around, contented with whoever and whatever you are, and not try to make yourself a better husband, father, worker, boss, whatever. If you get too fat and happy, you'll just be mediocre, right? And that's not for us Catholic men. I mean, can you picture our Lord working in a kind of haphazard way in His workshop in Nazareth? Of course not.
So striving, trying to be more successful is good.
What about all those success products and gurus and all that? Well, some of that stuff may not be so bad. I guess if it helps you improve yourself and your work, it's not bad.
Then again, I wonder about some of it. I wonder if it doesn't make us too reliant on ourselves instead of God. And that is bad.
I think if the success stuff gets you to set goals and work toward them, then it's probably OK. But when it crosses over into a kind of self-focus that leaves no room for God, it's probably a bit dangerous.
Now that we're all facing a tough economy, improving our skills and striving even harder for success is important. So we'll all be facing the same challenge: how to work hard, take responsibility for our situation, yet rely totally on God.
It's not easy to do. In fact, sometimes, when you become more successful, it can even be worse for you. If you're head swells up and you start thinking what a genius you are, you may find yourself at the end of a cliff, ready to fall into the welcoming arms of - well, that other genius who decided he wanted recognition from God. You remember, don't you? You know, Lucifer.
Anyway, more on this coming...
Success means different things. Maybe it means selling something, getting a new customer, coming up with a solution to some problem, creating a new product. Success comes in many forms.
Some of us have big goals for our work lives: how much money we want to make, some position we want to achieve, a book we want to write, some level of revenue we want our businesses to achieve. If we meet any of these goals, we feel we've been successful.
I you break down your goals into pieces (always a good idea), you may even have specific goals for each day. So at the end of the day, you know whether that particular day has been successful or not.
There's a lot of stuff out there to help you be successful. In face, there's a whole "success industry" - along with all sorts of "gurus" who will guide you to the promised land of success. They'll tell you how to be a successful executive, or professional, or business owner.
There's even a bunch of folks who'll tell you how to be a more successful husband and father, so this success stuff doesn't even have to be restricted to just work.
You'll find all this in books, online - everywhere. The main themes are success, self-improvement, or personal development.
Now, it's always a good thing to improve yourself. There's no excuse to just sit around, contented with whoever and whatever you are, and not try to make yourself a better husband, father, worker, boss, whatever. If you get too fat and happy, you'll just be mediocre, right? And that's not for us Catholic men. I mean, can you picture our Lord working in a kind of haphazard way in His workshop in Nazareth? Of course not.
So striving, trying to be more successful is good.
What about all those success products and gurus and all that? Well, some of that stuff may not be so bad. I guess if it helps you improve yourself and your work, it's not bad.
Then again, I wonder about some of it. I wonder if it doesn't make us too reliant on ourselves instead of God. And that is bad.
I think if the success stuff gets you to set goals and work toward them, then it's probably OK. But when it crosses over into a kind of self-focus that leaves no room for God, it's probably a bit dangerous.
Now that we're all facing a tough economy, improving our skills and striving even harder for success is important. So we'll all be facing the same challenge: how to work hard, take responsibility for our situation, yet rely totally on God.
It's not easy to do. In fact, sometimes, when you become more successful, it can even be worse for you. If you're head swells up and you start thinking what a genius you are, you may find yourself at the end of a cliff, ready to fall into the welcoming arms of - well, that other genius who decided he wanted recognition from God. You remember, don't you? You know, Lucifer.
Anyway, more on this coming...
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