Performing

Learning Goal: Develop the ability to achieve personal goals and approach tasks with a growth mindset.

Course Purpose

Marketing 2 students will be responsible for their own personal devotion and energy towards the project.

Orientation of our Goals

The goal of this lesson is to focus on the person. We could go about a 1,000 directions so I will simply hit the issues I believe to be the most important. Ultimately, I just want you to think more deeply about who you are, how this is reflected in your life, and how you can ensure the best possible life for yourself.

Here is Tim Keller’s summary and commendation:

James K. A. Smith’s You Are What You Love provides a user-friendly introduction to the sweeping Augustinian insight that we are shaped most by what we love most, more so than by what we think or do. If sin and virtue are disordered and rightly ordered love, respectively, and if the only way to change is to change what we worship, then this will lead us to rethink how we conduct Christian work and ministry. Jamie gives some foundational ideas on how this affects our corporate worship, our Christian education and formation, and our vocations in the world. An important, provocative volume!”

You Are What You Love

Here is Tim Keller’s summary and commendation:

James K. A. Smith’s You Are What You Love provides a user-friendly introduction to the sweeping Augustinian insight that we are shaped most by what we love most, more so than by what we think or do. If sin and virtue are disordered and rightly ordered love, respectively, and if the only way to change is to change what we worship, then this will lead us to rethink how we conduct Christian work and ministry. Jamie gives some foundational ideas on how this affects our corporate worship, our Christian education and formation, and our vocations in the world."

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Prov. 4:23). This is the biblical foundation for Smith's writing. The heart flows into the hands and head. In education, we would say the belief flows into the doing and knowing. The point is how we orient our lives intellectually and practically will explain what we love the most.

The starting point of this conversation is to analyze what it is that you love. Achieving personal goals and positive persistence only have hope if we are passionately committed to them.

A Focal Point - From Jordan B. Peterson's - 12 Rules of Life

[We cannot navigate, without something to aim at and, while we are in this world, we must always navigate. We are always and simultaneously at point "a" (which is less desirable than it could be), moving towards point "b" (which we deem better, in accordance with our explicit and implicit values).

We always encounter the world in a state of insufficiency and seek its correction. We can imagine new ways that things could be set right, and improved, even if we have everything we thought we needed. Even when satisfied, temporarily, we remain curious. We live within a framework that defines the present as eternally lacking and the future as eternally better. If we did not see things this way, we would not act at all. We wouldn't even be able to see, because to see we must focus, and to focus we must pick one thing above all else on which to focus.]

Where do you do from here? We now have Pederson and Smith asking us to orient our lives around one thing that will guide what we do and know.

Steve Garber discusses the notion of our purpose (telos) being connected to our behavior in The Fabric of Faithfulness. Garber says our belief about the way the world works (worldview) will ultimately define how we live out life in the private, personal, and public.

Peopel are created for the glory of God, as stated in Isaiah 43:7. Will this be your pursuit?

Embracing Struggle and Discipline

A healthy mindset focused on growth has to embrace the struggle. Theodore Roosevelt once stated, "Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering." It is in struggle that we learn to do things we could not do before. This ranges from learning to walk to playing catch for the first time. As we learn to walk there are more falls than successes early on. Over time, toddlers gain their balance and stop falling. The point is this, the only way to learn how to walk is to struggle.

The only way someone can keep a growth mindset in the face of reality, is to understand that struggle does indeed prepare us for great opportunities to grow.

Gary Rogowski discusses struggle and discipline in his book titled Handmade. Rogowski is an acclaimed woodworker and the book is a bit of an autobiography on his craft. He states, "Not everyone wants to practice. Not everyone has the discipline necessary for practice. If you are skilled or want to learn something, it is the only thing that allows you to get better and to develop your skills. Most people do not want to practice. They want to skip the work (struggle) part and just be great. It takes discipline and struggle to become skilled."

He goes on to discuss how he fell in love with his work (woodworking) by appreciating its nuances through failures. His desire to learn and develop master level skills had no contract that he signed off on. It was simply committing to a life of constant development and struggle.

Personal Approach to Performance

In his book Good to Great Jim Collins says that exceptional leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. “It’s not that [they] have no ego or self-interest,” says Collins. “Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious – but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.” These amazing leaders, Collins found, “are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless.”

When Smith became CEO of Kimberly-Clark, the paper company’s stock had fallen 36% behind the general market. In 20 years of his tenure, Smith transformed the brand into the leading paper-based consumer products company in the world. Under his leadership, Kimberly-Clark generated cumulative stock returns 4.1 times the general market and surpassed its direct rivals. In retirement, Smith humbly reflected on his outstanding performance saying simply: “I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job.”

Summary

While we could have discussed this topic for years, we are resting the following points:

    1. You must orient your life to a purpose and pursue it in all things. For the Christian, this purpose must be exclusively God over and in all things. This is the point of Ecclesiastes, everything is meaningless if God is removed from the equation.
    2. A mindset that embraces struggle will enable you to become skilled in what you are pursuing. Setting goals is easier than pursuing them.
    3. Accomplishing great things is possible if you are humble and willing to allow others to take some of the credit along the way.

Lesson Information

Student Activity

Questions

    • Review (from Marketing 1): What is your vision and mission of the good life?
    • Where do you have habits of discipline in your life?
    • What are your personal goals for this semester?

Sources

Reading