7 Habits Of Highly Ineffective People Part 1

HoHum:

There is the story of a woman who was a school teacher for 25 years. When she heard about a job that would mean a promotion, she applied for the position. However, someone who has been teaching for only one year was hired instead. She went to the principal and asked why. The principal responded, “I’m sorry, but you haven’t had 25 years of experience as you claim: you’ve had only one year’s experience 25 times.” During that whole time the teacher had not improved from her first year of teaching.

WBTU and Thesis:

Steven Covey wrote a book entitled, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I want to use a play of words and entitle these two messages, 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People. Share 3 of them tonight and 4 of them next Sunday night

For instances:

Highly Ineffective People are Not Good Time Mangers

“Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” James 4:14, NIV. We need to make the most effective and efficient use of that mist that we can.

“Be very careful, then, how you live--not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” Ephesians 5:15-17, NIV.

We can be more effective and efficient by doing 4 simple things:

1. Prioritize- What is important? Keep the main thing the main thing The Great Commandment

2. Plan our time- What should I do today to reach important goals? Map out the week and at least have a plan for every day.

3. Eliminate- Decide what to do and do it. Decide what not to do and don’t do it. Need to focus on a few things and do them well. Cannot do a great job doing many things.

4. Steal an hour a day- An hour of service, making friends, pray and read the Bible. Stealing an hour a day to do these things means we have an extra month. Pay mortgage every week have an extra month a year.

Television, internet, anything to procrastinate, need I say more.

Highly Ineffective People have a losing attitude

This will fail. Of course it will if we have that attitude. A man named Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, discovered this great truth in the midst of a Jewish concentration camp during WW II. While seeking to survive the horror of this imprisonment Frankl began observing his fellow prisoners in the hope of discovering what coping mechanism would help him endure this horrendous existence. What Frankl discovered was this... Those individuals who could not accept what was happening to them, who could not make their present suffering fit with their faith, who could not find it’s meaning in their world view...they despaired, lost hope, and eventually gave up and died. But those individuals that could find a meaning from their faith, were then able to find hope for a future beyond their present suffering, and so could accept what they were enduring as a part of their existence, and they tended to be survivors. Frankl made this powerful observation: “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:37-39, NIV.

“I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:13, NIV.

Two frogs fell into a can of cream- or so I’ve heard it told. The sides of the can were shiny and steep, the cream was deep and cold. “Oh, what’s the use?” said No. 1, “tis fate- no help’s around- Goodbye, my friend! Goodbye, sad world!” And weep still, he drowned. But No. 2 of sterner stuff, dog paddled in surprise. The while he wiped his creamy face and dried his creamy eyes. “I’ll swim awhile, at least,” he said, or so it has been said, “It wouldn’t really help the world if one more frog were dead.” An hour or two he kicked and swam- not once he stopped to mutter, but kicked and swam and swam and kicked, then hopped out, via butter.