A Rising Tide

The Excel Still More podcast is heavily invested in self improvement. We want these episodes to help you be disciplined, make great decisions, and reap incredible benefit.  But let's be clear, none of this works if I am only concerned with myself and my growth.  A much more rewarding goal is to help others around you grow.  What if you could make changes that are designed to create an environment for change? As a result, not only do you grow, but you make it possible from every member of you family to grow with you?  

- How does the rising tide life all boats?

- Should you focus more on that tide or on your own boat?

- What happens when people invest in environments that are better for all?

- Why is focus on just myself a big miss when it comes to Christianity?

- How can you make change possible for your family, your church, your friends, along with yourself?

Transcript

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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 deepen your faith, build stronger relationships, and do the most with your life in Christ. Thank you for joining. Let's get started. I am really glad that you've joined today, and I'm thankful that I get to share with you one of my all-time favorite phrases. I think you're going to love it. I'll tell you a little bit about its background, but most importantly, I want you to be able to use it all week long. Listen, it is great for you to be working on personal goals. Everything you put into improvement and accomplishing things, that's terrific. But that has to be about more than just you. If the things that I am doing to get better only make me better, then I've missed the point. Look, as a Christian, it's great that you want to self-improve. You put in the work, you take responsibility, and you're looking for results. I want that too. But it has to be about more than just me getting something out of my work. Christians don't think like that. We have a much more communal approach to things. We want to see everyone around us improve as we improve. We are always looking to encourage other people to make their situation better. It doesn't mean that we ignore our own needs, but we aren't super focused on only our own needs. And the beautiful thing is when we get this right, everyone receives benefit. It's not like you have to deny the things that matter to you in order for the people next to you to do well. You do well and so do they. And to help understand the way that works, here is our phrase of the week: a rising tide lifts all boats. Let me just be clear. That may seem super simple, but this basic imagery has power. And if you are willing to make just a few small changes in the things you are doing and for whom you are doing them, get ready to reach new heights. Except it won't just be you who reaches a new level. You and everyone associated with you enjoys those same benefits. Think about this imagery for a moment. You have a boat, or maybe metaphorically, you are the boat and you want to reach some new level so you can get to some new port. Well, you can work on the boat all that you want, but unless the sea level rises, unless the situation around you, the environment around you, unless there is improvement in that, there can be no improvement for you. But here's what's really cool about that. If you can help the tide to rise, less focus on your boat, more focus on the environment around you, you get exactly what you want. Except, so does everybody else. Every other boat in the same port receives the same lift, and they get to reach new places as well. Now, you may not like that. You may say, no, forget that. I'll focus on me and my boat, and I'll get what's mine. And I don't think I should be working on something that just unilaterally benefits everybody else. I do the work, I get the payout. Well, I'll just be very honest with you. That is an incredibly worldly and self-centered way to think. I don't think Christians should think that way. I believe a Christian can focus on what they want and the work they are willing to do to get it, but never at the expense of others and never in hopes that you receive more than others. So today I want to give you several examples on what that looks like, but let me begin with a little history lesson. Our phrase, a rising tide lifts all boats, was first proclaimed publicly in the early 1960s by a senator from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy. He was favoring an economic package for their region. There was a dam or something they were building. It was an infrastructure investment. And those who were criticizing it were saying that it wasn't going directly to the people and the money wasn't going to help the families who needed it. And in order to rebuttal that, he gave a speech, and his speech writer borrowed the phrase, the one we're using today. He actually borrowed it from a Chamber of Commerce in the New England area. They were the first ones known to use it, but he borrowed it to make the point that look, if we can make this infrastructure better, if the economy in Massachusetts improves, every single family associated with it will benefit. Now, if you are heavy into politics, then you may know that JFK was a Democrat and you may not like that. And you may say, hey, that sounds very socialistic. Well, let me just give you this then. In the 1980s, another man borrowed the same words. His name was Ronald Reagan. And again, he was saying, stop focusing just on you and your pocket and your boat. We want to create an economic system. We want to put rules in place that builds this beautiful infrastructure so that the entire economy of our nation can improve. And the idea was if the economy improves, every single family that lives in it will also improve. So, in that example, the economy is the ocean and every American family are the boats. Now, what this does is it gets people to buy into, sometimes literally financially, buy into a communal project, knowing that that project can help me reach my goals and also everybody else at the same time. Now, listen, I don't want to talk about government this whole time and policies and all of that, but I wanted you to know where it started. And I want you to see that companies have used this same ideology with their employees to great results. For instance, let's say there is a sales company and they pay bonuses to employees at the end of the year based on individual sales only. You go out and make the sales, you reach the benchmark, you get the reward. It doesn't matter what the guy next to you does or the guy in the other office. In fact, it's better if they don't get the sales so that you do get them and it becomes very self-centered, cutthroat, and not at all team-oriented. Now that can work. Now you're probably thinking, ooh, I do not like that. That's not fair. Well, maybe it's not fair to some, but it changes the mentality for all. Now the mentality is we need to raise the tide in this company. We need this entire company to be a more cohesive sales force. We need to share information and help each other. It's not just about me and my boat, it's about the environment in which I and everyone else am floating. And so you start pairing up and teaming up and sharing contacts and creating better office rapport and a generally more positive environment. At the end of the year, the entire group produces this great sale number and every boat is raised the same amount and they get to celebrate it together. Now, again, I know there is someone listening right now who's like, man, I didn't know Chris was like a socialist, liberal, left-winger. I am none of those things. But I am someone who studies people. And when one person values their gain over everyone else, a lot of times they do make great gains, at least in the short term. But the people around them do not. And I am having an increasingly difficult time matching that up with what it means to be a child of God, to be a part of Christ's family, to be a servant in the church, wherein I want to grow and I want my boat to be raised, whether that's me personally or my family, but never to the neglect of or to the expense of anyone else whom God has put in this bay next to me. So what if my thinking changed? I still had the same personal and family goals, except instead of just pouring all of the attention into me getting that thing, I started pouring it more into getting other people involved and creating a better, more positive, more hopeful environment wherein we can all work together. Would that help me get where I want to go? The answer is yes. Let me give you one more practical example, and then I want to start applying it to your faith, your family, your fellow believers. So I live in a neighborhood with maybe 50 other houses or something like that. And in that neighborhood, every family wants to keep their home nice. Most of us pour money each month into maintaining our landscaping, our yard, our paint, whatever it is, because we want the value of our home to grow. I want that for my house, so does the guy next to me and all of the other 48 houses. Let's say each and every one of us put $200 apiece into our own home. But maybe in our case, there is a community problem. You see, our streets are developing potholes. We don't have any stop signs up at the intersections, and there are no street lights for nighttime. The netting on the tennis courts at the entrance of our neighborhood are rotting, and the gate that you pass to go in doesn't even work. So what I could do is just forget about all that. Who cares about that? I'll keep pouring the money into my house. You do the same for yourself. If I sell it in a few years, hopefully it will go up in value. But what if we tried a different approach? What if I decided to go knock on all of the doors for everybody in the neighborhood and said, you know, let's each contribute $100 a month to a homeowners association. And we will use that money for street lights, stop signs, the whole thing. And maybe I start putting in some real work on this. And I want you to note that work is not just on my boat or my house. Instead, I focus on the whole neighborhood. And maybe I get everyone on board and we start using $100 a month just fixing up the neighborhood. We still put money into our own homes, maybe just not quite as much. How do you think that looks three years from now? My property value will have gone up far more than if I had just, you know, painted the house or something. The appeal of the entire neighborhood would draw more buyers and I would do much better. But do you see the point? It wouldn't just be me, would it? My neighbor would get much more for his house. In fact, every single boat in the bay is now at a higher level because I poured time and attention and money into our community project and not just my own home. I want you to spend some time this week thinking in that way. Let me give you some examples that are a bit more spiritual, maybe hit a little closer to home. I think about our local churches. I'm reminded in Acts 2 and in Acts 4 how they shared their goods with one another. They worked together, they pooled things together so that every single person would have their needs met. In this case, when families did not just focus on themselves, instead, they gave of themselves for everyone's benefit, everyone benefited. I would tell you this: anything you and your family put into, the growth, the attitude, the work of the local church where you attend will benefit you and everyone there. A good example may be our kids. If you have kids or grandkids, it's important that you teach your kids about God at home. And if other families aren't doing that, that's something they need to do better. But what if you took some of that time and energy that you were pouring into teaching your kids at home and you got with other parents at church and said, you know what, let's rebuild our church curriculum. And you got with the elders and they said, Yes, we will finance anything you guys want to do. And you totally renovated the classrooms and the curriculum, the material, and what the children were experiencing in their Bible study. And I know it took some attention away from your home and your kids, but what's the benefit? In the end, your children get a better education in the scriptures when they come to Bible classes, but so does every other family. The effort you put into the environment created a better situation for everyone involved. Now that doesn't mean that everyone will participate. Some parents might not bring their kids to Bible class, but the point is this you've created an environment where everyone around you can benefit from the work that you've done, including yourself. It will of course be up to them whether or not they will have their boat in the water as the tide is rising. Listen, I've been thinking about this on a very personal level. A lot of what we do with the Excel Still More episodes is help you work on you, self-improvement. And while I am a big fan of that, that can't be all this is. It's just not worth it if you are the only person benefiting from all these episodes. I need you to think more communally. You still get all the benefits, but you won't be alone. Honestly, I think I've been making this mistake at home. I've got my journal that I do in the morning and in the evening. I'm getting my Bible study in, I'm getting the prayers written, all of the goals are being laid out, but a lot of times my family is not a part of that at all. I do it in the morning in a room by myself, at least here lately. And while it's working for me, it's not doing very much for them. What if instead I decided to do that in the living room and ask them to read the chapter with me? What if I create an environment wherein at dinner we talk about one great thing we did today for the service of the Lord? Now I do that already, but I usually do it in private. I'm just me working on my faith. I think I can do better. I'm going to do better. And here's what's really awesome about this. Whatever energy I pour into my entire home, into my living room, into what happens around the dinner table, I'm still going to get all of the same benefits the Bible reading, the planning, and the prayer, except I've now created a more spiritual and inclusive family environment so that, in this illustration, each and every member of my family is their own boat and they get to be raised right along with me. Or at least I make that possible for them and not just for myself. One of the things you have to see here is that serving others and serving yourself are not mutually exclusive. You're not doing one or the other. At least it doesn't have to be that way. You can be doing something, putting in some time, energy, or effort, and it's about us. It is neither self-service that forgets everybody else, nor is it serving others to your own demise. I don't buy into that zero sum business where the only way for you to go up is for someone else to go down, where there can only be winners if there are also losers. I think that's ridiculous and humanistic and not the way a Christian should think. Speaking of being a Christian, let me end this podcast with some communal wordage from the New Testament, Philippians chapter 2. Listen carefully. Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Notice he said, one purpose, not one person. He goes on in verse three to say, Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourself. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. He goes on to say, Be like Christ. Christ did deny himself, but not to his own demise. He denied himself for the benefit of others, and in the end, talk about the raising of all boats. He rules in glory and he protects all who are his. So, how great is that? You don't have to focus on you or someone else. You can focus on things that you can sacrifice to do that will benefit yourself and the people in your life. Rejoice in that and work towards it so that you and everyone you love can enjoy the benefits of a rising tide. Thank you so much for joining in today. If you enjoyed this program, consider sharing it with your family and your friends. As always, you can go to excelstillmore. And remember this whatever you choose to do today, in the name of the Lord Jesus, excel still more.