A Signpost on the Road to Significance

This past weekend, after giving a talk on thinking through how each of us uses our money, I found myself in a very strange conversation.  A woman came up to me and asked to speak with me.  I assumed she was going to discuss the topic of the speech.  I challenged the crowd to think through how they use their money.  I suggested that there were three ways to use money:  Share it, Save it or Spend it.  I encouraged the audience to make their first priority sharing, because no matter how bad things were getting, there were others around the world who had it much worse and could use your help.

I figured she wanted to tell me about how hard it was for her to prioritize sharing as she had so many bills and really needed to save some money for the future before she even considered sharing.

Well, I could not have been more wrong.  In fact, she spoke to me more as a prophet than as a person.  She challenged me with a word that has played over in my head ever since…”Rectify”.

She told me that my message and my words were impactful and that they needed to be heard.  But she also looked into my soul and said that I need to rectify my soul with my heart and my head.

How did she know?  How could she tell that as passionate as I am about living a life of significance, more often than not, my heart, my head and my soul are not fully rectified.  Often my head wants to travel the road of success.  Go back to building my kingdom and building up my bank account.  I often figure, “What the heck, everybody else does.”  At times, my heart wonders why should I sacrifice for others, isn’t better to just take care of me and my family and not worry about the rest of the world.  My soul is the only constant; it is in the service of others that true living begins.

For the past several days, I have wondered how many other people live a life that is not internally rectified.  Do we all live a life where our hearts and our minds are conflicted with our souls?  Does your mind continuously fight with our heart?  I know for me, this has been a battle that rages on a daily bases.  In fact, a lot of my energy is spent in fighting this battle. 

For me it is the battle of success vs. significance: a battle of self-focus verses others focused, a battle of my kingdom or a kingdom greater than me.

What is your internal battle?  What needs to be rectified in your life?

Maybe it is your desire to be a loving husband or a caring wife, but your actions just do not seem to match your heart.  Maybe you have longed to be an involved parent, who has time for your children, but day after day, you find no time to spend with your kids and the years seem to pass by without anything changing.  Maybe you have been thinking about getting involved in a philanthropic cause but have yet to pull the trigger.  You keep saying that service is on your heart, but work and making money has crowded out everything you have ever dreamed of.  Maybe you have wanted to support someone who has decided to make their life about serving the poor and they need your help but you just can’t seem to write the check because you are worried about the future of the economy.

What ever it is, I believe that we all need to get to a point where we rectify our hearts, minds and souls.  I know for me, I would eliminate so much anxiety and save so much energy if my daily life was rectified with who I hope to be.

Now I am not deceiving you or myself by proclaiming that this is easy.  But then again, the road to significance is not easy.  Just like all roads, there are signposts that we need to pay attention to.  This weekend, I ran into a bright neon sign on the road to significance, it was disguised as a woman in the crowd, it has continued to flash in my head…RECTIFY.