I love the Heath brothers I have read all three of their books. I like their books because they start with a hypothesis then do research and mix in person stories and application. Recently I read a book they wrote called Decisive. In the book Decisive they tackle the idea of how we make decisions in life and work. I found the book very insightful and helpful.
One of the quotes that stood out to me is when they were referring to what they call “Mental tripwire” They said this “We spend 90% of our time driving straight but it’s the turns that determine where we end up.” The basic idea of a mental trip wire is to wake you up from the numbness that routine provides. We do something so much and so often we switch to auto pilot and rather than turning when we need to we fly off the cliff of irrelevance.
Here are three mental trip wires you need to set in life and ministry.
- Make appointments trip wires for yourself with alarms on you calendar – Set an appointment with your self to exercise, think, pray, spend time with your wife and kids. If you don’t set aside time on purpose you will give it all away by accident. –
- Set feedback trip wires – Email out feedback surveys to those who attend, ask for feedback from those who attend your services, employ secret shoppers.
- Set evaluation trip wires – My friend Jim Wideman does this and I think is great either put on your calendar a question or use boomerang to send yourself an email in the future asking yourself questions you forget to ask. Is my passion for The Lord where it should be? Am I dating my wife? Am I leading with clarity or expecting with ambiguity.