It’s Time For Blessing

Click to hear, Abundance by Kevin Shinn, ©2005

 

I’m currently binging on the NPR podcast, How I Built This. The premise is the same for each episode. Enter an entrepreneur that started a well-known company from a meager beginning in his or her dorm room or garage and hear first hand how it was built up to what it is today. Some efforts, like Gary Hirshberg at Stonyfield Farm, who began with one cow 30 yrs ago, took years of blood, sweat and tears to become established. Others, like Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger at Instagram, rose to a billion dollar valuation in two years.

Stories like these can provide a source of inspiration to anyone who longs for an opportunity to make a difference with an idea. But it’s also possible for cynicism and envy to seep in and steal away the original desire to make the world a better place.

This kind of mindset injures only the one envious, and ultimately might prevent that next great idea from emerging and becoming reality.

I’m adopting a new practice if I begin to feel the pinch of jealousy about what someone else has accomplished. I turn it on its head and use it as chance to make a difference in my own mind. I think positively about it. I assign an affirmative response instead of a negative one. I offer support and gratitude.

This little exercise works in other areas. When someone flips me off because I’m driving too slow, I offer a little prayer for a person that’s easily upset and is in need of patience and peacefulness. I’m learning the futility of an eye-for-an-eye response for everything. Offer kindness for anger. Exchange a negative thought for a positive one. Give hope where there isn’t any. Put away cursing,

It’s time for blessing.

One Comment

  1. So true Kevin! I know I struggled with as a church planter with jealousy as I watched other church plants thrive. I was like Linus who waited in the “most sincere pumpkin patch” wondering where was the Great Pumpkin?!