Winning the Week

We kicked off season two with an episode on January 6th - Building Your Ladders.  You were encouraged to think BIG! To come up with awesome ideas of who you would like to become, and then identify big year long goals that would certainly prove that progress.  We talked about how you break that down into ladder rungs, monthly rungs, and work you way through the year.   However, many have tried that approach and failed.  Why?  In short, because they are losing weeks while trying to win the month.  If you learn how to Win the Week, using daily momentum and progress, to work toward greater goals, then you will be unstoppable!  God has set up a beautiful seven day cadence for your life.  Listen in to learn how to use that to your advantage, maximizing time usage by working daily frogs and highlights on a weekly cycle.

- How do I reach monthly checkpoints with no stress

- Why do so many people fail to reach their yearly goals

- What is so special about a single week

- How has God set me up for success in a seven day cycle

- Why is frog eating and daily highlighting crucial to winning the week

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello, welcome back for season two of the Excel Still More podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I'm here to encourage you with tips and strategies to help you build stronger relationships, deepen your faith, and just get the most out of your life. Thank you for joining. Let's get started. Hey, welcome back for the second episode of the 2020 season. I would say that these first two fit together as a blueprint for the year. If you're looking to reach that next level, if you want a game plan that you can carry throughout the entire year that is virtually guaranteed to provide results in your life, both of these episodes work together. Let me give you the extremely swift recap of episode one, since you can always go back and check it out. Firstly, I just want you to imagine what a better you looks like. A next level you would be better in what way? Would you be a better spouse, a more faithful Christian, more connected to your kids, in better financial control of your life, whatever it would be. Then once you've gotten excited about that, you have to pick something specific for each one of those things that if you accomplished, it would prove that you really have changed. So for instance, if you want to have better financial control, we talked about the Emerson family paying off the van. Or if you want to be a better Bible student, maybe you read the Bible through this year, you pick a big project that will take all year to do. That's your ladder. Now, that ladder can only be built if the rails are on the left and on the right, and that represents the presence of God. So you have to pray about this. Talk to God about what you believe to be important and ask that He providentially stays there with you and guide you along the way. And then lastly, you really just take that big goal and you divide it into 12 pieces, 12 rungs. You look at January and say, How much do I need to accomplish just this month with my time, my energy, my finances, to accomplish enough that I can put that first rung in, something manageable, not too stressful. And then, of course, if you can just repeat that simple approach month after month, the rungs go into place, and by the end of the year, you're there. Now listen, that approach will work for you, but not unless we zoom in a little bit and look at some specific things that you need to do inside of that month to make it happen. Because we want to avoid the usual outcome. The usual outcome is this. In January, you get it all done. You know what you had to do and you do it. In February, the month kinda gets away from you a little bit, and maybe you barely get it done at the end of the month, but it was stressful. By March, the month just runs out from under your feet, and the whole thing is doomed, and these two rails stay there all year long with only three rungs in them. That's a pretty common outcome. But we're going to beat that. We will win this battle, and we will use a simple, time-tested, powerful approach to do it. If you learn how to do this, you will hit those monthly goals, and you will easily get to that next level by the end of the year. Simply put, it is this. If you win the week, you win the war. Now maybe you're not a war analogy person, but I think you will agree that growing as a person, learning new things, doing new things, becoming something else can be a battle. It's a war sometimes against yourself. In fact, most of the time, the person who defeats me from the things I'm passionate about doing is none other than myself. That latter isn't sitting there unfinished because someone else would not let me whittle on the wood. It was me, and I've experienced that in years past. But in 2019, I came upon an approach to the year that has enabled every goal set to be achieved where God has continued to bless the opportunity. Win the week, win the war. Of course, everyone knows that a year has fifty-two weeks in it. But do you know how special a single week is? There is a cadence to a week. There is a natural flow to it. It has a beginning on Sunday, it works its way through for many of us a typical work week. It ends on a Saturday, which is different than the five days before it, and then you wake up on Sunday and you do it again. It has a flow to it, there is a predictability about it for most of us. In other words, you kind of know your schedule. If you're anything like me, then Sunday is a day of worship and family and rest, and right now football, go Texans. Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, work days, momentum days, start a project, build on it, try to get it done. For me it's sermons, for you it's something else. There's a hump day there in the middle, an assessment period on Wednesday. And then hopefully you get to the weekend Saturday. And if you have planned well and carried momentum and not gotten stopped throughout the week, then Saturday is a time when maybe you spend more time with family, you can engage in a hobby or whatever. I know that some people have shift work and schedules that are very different than what I've just described, but even most of my friends who work in that way, there's still a cadence to the week. There's a way that it typically goes and then resets and then goes again and then resets. If you can learn to take full advantage of that seven-day cycle, that flow, so that you restart, you work your way forward, you restart, you work your way forward. If you can maximize the week, you will have zero issues hitting that checkpoint at the end of January and March and April, all the way through to December. And it is phenomenal, the things that can be accomplished. It's people who are wasting the week. It's people who get caught in the daily grind and they're unable to find some way every day throughout the week to just work forward. They are the ones that do not hit those monthly budgetary checkpoints or time management points, and they look at you and they say, This is impossible. Well, it is impossible if we're not making the most out of every week. I want to talk to you a few minutes about the way God designed you and me. Really, he laid out this concept of a week and the seven days in it, and the usage of those days way back in the very beginning. When Moses recorded the creation week story for the Israelites to read, he used the language of day one, God did something. He didn't try to do everything, he did something. And then at the end of the day, he was done. And on the second day, he did a little something more. He added another piece to that, and then he stopped. Day three, more. Day four, you know, sun, moon, stars, day five, birds and fish, day six, man and animals, what a mix. You know, and the whole thing, the whole story. But the point is you can see it. It's it's all going to happen in a in a week, and it has this cumulative something every day approach to it. And then he gets to the last day, and he doesn't just start working on something else. He looks at how far he's come, he says, Hey, this is very good. This came together very well, and then he rested on the seventh day. Now I'm sure you are aware that this corresponded directly to the Israelites in their week, which would have begun on a Sunday with work and ended on a Saturday, which would have been the Sabbath when they did not work. So this became the life of an Israelite. They would begin with some progress and then rest and then build on that the next day all the way throughout the week, and then with a great amount of satisfaction and peace, they enjoyed a day of rest, a day of full trusting God, a day with their family, and this became the weekly cadence for a fruitful Israelite life. Now, for you and me as New Testament Christians, we know that that has been altered a little bit. Mainly, of course, in that Sunday now, the first day of the week, is the day of rest and worship. It's the day that God's people put aside the work of the week from the week before and they start fresh. We assemble with God's people, we partake of the Lord's Supper with God's people, we remember Jesus and sing and pray. At our church here in Lyndale, we do that in the morning, we go home, we enjoy our families, we get some rest, we come back that evening, we make the entire day about these very peace-centered, God-centered ideas. Then you take the momentum from that and you start on Monday. You don't have to do it all on Monday, but you need to get started. And you really just go about winning the week by doing something of value every day. You probably kind of know what the next seven days will hold, and you can put things in that matter. Hopefully, you feel like you're making progress all week long so that when you get to Saturday, you can enjoy in peace the fact that this week has gone well, and you can prepare yourself for a beautiful day of worship as it all begins again. If you and I learn how to make the most out of that, listen, there is nothing you cannot do. No year-long goal you cannot achieve, no month you cannot master, but you must learn how to win the week. No more wasted weeks, and by that we really mean no more wasted days. Every day is a part of a week's success. Although I would argue it this way, if you have an off day where you have to go do something and you get no progress done on things that really matter, or you're sick for a few days, or whatever's going on, that's no problem. That's not going to derail you at all. But if you start wasting weeks, let me tell you, those monthly checkpoints will catch up to you really, really quickly. So let me get down to the practicality of this. I have a journal that I write in every day. It's called the Excel Stillmore three-month journal. It's available if you want to purchase it at excelstillmore.life, though you may be able to very easily replicate this on a notebook at home. And I won't walk you through everything that's in it today, just a few specifics. First of all, at the beginning of every seven-day period, every week, there is a sheet that has faith, fitness, friendship, and finances on it, and I label at the top the week that's upcoming, and all throughout the week, as I make any progress or do anything each day that falls under the category of faith growth, financial wisdom, friendship cultivation, or fitness routine, I come back and I write it there at the beginning of the week. When I get to the end of the week, I want to be able to go back to that opening page and see how the week is gone. What is the cumulative effect of that which I have done? Now, as you go into every day, there are several things that get filled in, but I want to focus in on two things that I fill in every day. One of them is eat that frog. Maybe you've heard me talk about it before. It's something unpleasant, something perhaps even annoying, but it's a part of what I'm trying to build here. It's the less savory part of ladder building. I don't want to do them all in one day. So I spread it out. What do I need to do? I want to be a better husband this year. I've set some specific goals of things I want to take care of. On Monday, it may be taking my wife's car to get the oil changed. If I can just do a little frog thing every day that somehow fits into that greater plan, that starts to build and grow. And just by a little bit of daily frog eating progress, it doesn't take many days or weeks to realize you are killing it. And I mean that in a good way. You are really hitting those things regularly, a little bit at a time, without incredible amounts of stress, without letting it all get mounded up. Nobody can eat a bucket full of frogs, but anybody can eat one per day. Now let me tell you about another section that is also crucial to this winning the week. It's called your daily highlight. I have determined that every day in the journal, no matter what my work schedule is, no matter what's going on, this is at least one thing today, and sometimes I'm able to write in two or more, but I will do at least one thing today that contributes to growth that really matters. Maybe it's my work as a Christian, so today I'm going to send out some study material to some friends. Maybe it's growth in my marriage. So I'm going to take my wife out for dinner. Maybe it's growth in my spirituality and connection with God. I'm going to have 15 minutes of solid prayer time, or I'm going to read in a book that has to do with the Holy Spirit or something. Most of the time it has to do with people, service. Today I'm going to go visit this church member because I know what they've been going through. The point is this that's all important work that used to just not get done. No more. I will devote myself to Sunday, a day of worship, family, and rest. I will get the momentum going. Monday I'll eat a frog and I will accomplish something of real value in my life. I will repeat that on Tuesday a little more, Wednesday and on through. Tag on some things on Saturday that are unique to whatever your Saturday environment is like. Still, there will be a daily highlight. If I've been documenting that on those first pages for the week, I can look back and see what has come together and be very thankful that God has been with me this week, then take that into another day of Sunday worship and start another optimistic week. So I really want you to think about this this coming week. We started in episode one with yearly goals broken down into 12 checkpoints. Still valuable, but we need more. I will put all that in a drawer and check on it every once in a while. But the real progress occurs when I zoom in a little tighter and I decide that I'm going to start winning the week. Start it the way that God says to start it on Sunday. Make sure you make progress every day in what matters. Document it and get excited about doing that again and again. And as you start to see the results coming in, how you're changing, how you find something for God in every day, well, it's just a rewarding way to live every day and a nearly unstoppable method of meeting your yearly goal of reaching the next level. Let me finish by giving you an example that I've been thinking about a lot this last week. So I decided after episode one that I want to be a better father this year by spending more quality time with my kids. So I decided that I would devote 100 hours this year, no cell phone, not doing what I want to do, just being with them doing what they want to do, watching a movie they enjoy, shooting hoops out front, whatever, going to the park, things that would connect with them on their level. Now, the math was easy. I divided that by 12. I said, hey, eight to ten hours a month. I can do that. Eight to ten hours. But I started thinking about how easily that could slip away. Can you imagine it? Eight to ten hours a month seems like nothing, but if I don't really know where I'm going to put it, maybe on the 10th we'll do something. Maybe on the eighteenth we'll find some time. Then before you know it, it gets too difficult to maintain, even something that you really, really want to do. So then I started thinking about using my daily highlight section for it. Here's where it's going to happen. That really breaks down to just a couple of hours a week. Now I'm on a manageable scale. So when I get up in the morning and do the one great hour, the morning journaling, I write in things that day if the schedule allows it that the kids and I can do together. Today, my daily highlight will be watching Aladdin with the two littles. Or today, my daily highlight will be taking my teenage son and watching his basketball practice. And by thinking daily and small but intentionally, well, we're really already off to a great start. And I have no doubts that if I just monitor this weekly and make sure that that movement forward is consistent in every week, that we will blow past that 100 hours, and this will be the best year ever for my wife and I and our four wonderful children. So there it is. Decide who you want to be, be specific on a big goal, divide it by 12 to set up your checkpoints, and then prayerfully, willingly, and intentionally make a little progress every day and reach your goals by winning the week. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you enjoyed the program, please remember to share with your family and your friends. Also, you can go to excelstillmore.life to sign up for emails, order the three month journals, or just catch up on old episodes. So until next time, let me leave you with this. Whatever you choose to do today, in the name of the Lord Jesus, excel still.