I recently started back at our local CrossFit gym here in Winchester - S3. I am in my third week back. Loving the place, the people and the work. But I have found myself asking this questions way too much: What do I want the work out to be today? This is a strange question, because in reality I have no formal or informal training on how to program a workout, and how the scope and sequence of workouts over a week, month, months should go. But I often, have been asking - what do I want? This is fundamentally the wrong question to ask.
Today as I was scanning the workout before going to the gym, I thought - it does not matter what I want, but the real question is this: what do I need? And the coach, the gym has a better idea of what I need than I do. They have training and experience and know how.
In short, I need what I need even when it is not what I want.
This got me thinking about all the other areas I work in and live in and have relationships in. Am I judging any of those areas or people based on my wants and not my needs? If so, how quickly could I disturb and mess with the best thing, because I want something else, something less.
As my time working directly in the church is coming to a close, I have been struck by how many times I have seen this battle between wants and needs sink ideas, projects, and people. When someone is doing what is needed yet it is not that which is wanted, tension arises. And since we do not know we are talking about wants and needs, chaos ensues.
I assume we are on same page when defining a need. A need is a legitimate items or thing that is necessary for health and wholeness, fullness and fulfillment. In other words, needs are needed for a human to live well. Needs are the best thing people can experience. It is not a preference thing, it is a principle thing.
So personally, can I invite you to think on:
What do you need most in your life right now?
What type of folks do you need around you?
What type of work, exercise and diet do you need?
What types of practices will ground you and connect you with the Creator?
You see, as soon as I hold my needs up against what I want everything changes. Back to the gym, do I want to run, row, lift, do a ton of burpees and repeat that for 5 rounds? No. I do not want that. I want to eat lunch and watch a movie in the AC. But, I need to do the work. That is why I go, and show up. Not because I want it all the time, but I do need it all the time.
Is this making sense?
Where does this hit home for you?
What decisions do you need to look at and examine in your own heart and life today?
Post script:
This got me thinking:
What am I offering to other folks?
What they need or what they want?
Right now, I preach every week - am I preaching and teaching what people need or what they want? It is is easy to want to be liked so you give people what they want, right? But in reality they need to hear what they need?
Here is the thing - you can hand people what they want, and they will take it, because at some level it is easy and it fits with their lifestyle. People do not always receive what they need.
If you offer another person what they need - they must choose to receive it. It is not a given that anyone will take what is needed just because it is needed. They have to choose, right? You know how I know this?
Because I have to choose to take that which is needed above what is wanted.
Thus, I must offer, that which is needed, even when another is not ready to receive it.
Needs > wants.
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