by Andy Wood on May 27, 2009
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One of our inside family jokes has to do with a certain child of ours who had the hardest time simply apologizing or admitting she was wrong.
(This same child, as a two-year-old, used to wear a t-shirt with the picture of a well-known TV character who had a similar problem. The most he could ever do was say, in his coolness, “I was wr-r-r-r-r.” I wonder if the t-shirt rubbed off somehow.)
Anyway, the conversations would go something like this:
“You need to tell her/him you’re sorry.”
“But I didn’t mean to.”
“It doesn’t matter – you did it. Say you’re sorry.”
“But I didn’t mean to.”
“But you did it.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“SAY IT!”
“I DIDN’T MEAN TO!”
Where Could She POSSIBLY Learn Something Like That?
To this day, we haven’t really understood what a simple apology symbolized to this child, but she wasn’t buyin’. But let’s face it. We all come by our reluctance to admit fault pretty honestly. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on March 25, 2009
I have a confession to make. I can’t pass a mirror without looking at it. Call me weird, call me vain, just don’t call me when a mirror is close by. I probably won’t hear you.
Sometimes I primp. Sometimes I frown. Sometimes I actually impress myself and sometimes I just sigh. But whatever the reaction, it won’t cure me of wanting to take another look next time.
I have a hunch that I’m not alone. A lot of people spend a lot of time looking at themselves in the looking glass. Mirrors are an important part of our culture. Some people cover their walls at home with them. Michael Jackson once recorded a song about it. And where would we be without that fairy-tale question, “Mirror, Mirror on the wall…?”
Did you know that mirrors can lie? [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on October 27, 2008
We pass a word around our office that my associate once used to describe me, and it stuck: Crispy.
He used it a few years ago when he and our office manager decided they’d seen enough of me in the state I was in and informed me that I was taking my wife on an R & R trip to the mountains. My reservations had been made, and they weren’t taking “no” for an answer.
I hope to God you have somebody who looks out for you like that. I wasn’t aware of how emotionally and physically fried I was. The sad truth about stress, crispiness, and burnout is that often others see their effects on us before we do.
It wasn’t the first time I’ve been crispy, and it probably won’t be the last. But there’s a further step that can be devastating. Burnout, in a clinical sense, means you have completely exhausted every form of energy necessary to continue. More than just losing interest (“I’m sort of burned out on jazz these days”), I’m talking about those times people go to their wells and find them completely dry. Times when people shock those who know them best by walking away from relationships, careers, or wisdom.
“Stress makes people stupid,” a management consultant once told Daniel Goldman. Burnout reveals it to the world.
So how do people get in such a state – past stress, past crispy, all the way to emotionally nuked? Let me suggest three quick and easy recipes for complete emotional, mental, or spiritual exhaustion: [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on July 24, 2008
I haven’t said anything about the current political scene for a variety of reasons, but this scares me. I haven’t seen fawning like this since I escorted W. A. Criswell into a Baptist pastors’ meeting.
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Something’s wrong when the same people who want to make sure terrorists get equal time and a “fair and balanced perspective” do this kind of drooling. And something is even more wrong when the people whose vocation is to report the facts and to ask the tough question lose their calling to a thrill running up their leg. Good grief, Chris, have some dignity.But this isn’t about politics or the press so much as it is about healthy leadership. I’ve seen the same kind of crap surrounding pastors, business leaders, and celebrity-types who never had to give an account to anybody for how they influenced people.
When leaders create or inherit an environment where nobody asks the tough questions, they are setting themselves and their organization (or nation) up for their own demise.
[click to continue…]
