3 Step Guide To Better Decisions In Life

TRANSCRIPT

I'm glad you're here. I have got something super interesting to share with you all today around this whole thing of advice, timeless advice for troubled times. Number one, timeless, right? So this is going to help. Doesn't matter what stage of life in, it doesn't matter what you are experienced before, this is timeless.

It's going to be from the oldies to the youngins. So listen up. And advice, life hacks, right? We all love a good life hack. I love those, you know, on Instagram, the life hacks. I'm like, I never knew I could do that to open an egg. Wow. My life has completely changed. And troubled times, whether you know it or not, you're living in it.

You're amongst it. We are in troubled times. And so, you know, advice is a really funny thing, isn't it? Now I'm going to be completely honest with you here today. I'm the sort of person that doesn't really love unsolicited advice. I'm happy to go and ask people about advice. You know, I have my select people that I trust and I admire and I'm like, I'm going to ask them some advice, but if someone comes to me and maybe wants to give me some advice.

Not always the biggest fan. I don't know if you're in the same position as me, but then there's some people they just absolutely love it. They're just like, Oh, I got to go and ask that person about that. Oh, I can't wait to ask. They'll even be happy to ask a complete stranger. That's not me, but maybe that is you.

And that's totally fine. And did you know, back in the day, there was this thing called an advice Now it still probably happens today, but publications aren't really around a lot nowadays, right? These print publications, but advice columns. I did a little bit of research and the first advice column actually was in 1690.

And there was this publication and it was called the Athenian Mercury. And a first time writer, long time reader penned in a question into the Athenian Mercury. Asking a question to this one woman who worked there and she responded back and people loved what she had to say. So then everyone started writing in to this one lady and she became an instant expert on everything.

The very first advice column. Nowadays we get to live in the world of the digital world. Advice columns don't necessarily come up a lot. But we have the opportunity to ask anyone about anything at any time just by simply typing it into different types of apps. If you have ChatGPT, which they talk about all the time, I'm not going to lie to you, I actually have never used ChatGPT in my life.

I feel like I'm maybe one of the only ones, but Chad GPT, you can type something in and a whole bunch of other people's ideas on that particular topic can come up and present for you. And of course, Google, you can go into the Google search bar and you can start typing in a question and you are going to get a All the answers you ever desired.

I'm not going to tell you they're good answers, but you're going to get lots of answers there. But one of the funniest things, I don't know if you've seen this, when you go into Google and you start typing into this, the search bar, it'll predict for you what it thinks maybe you're going to be looking for, just based on what everyone else has written around that same thing.

So I wanted to share a couple with you today because I find this quite hilarious. All right, here's some that I did. Why does my wife yell at me, hit me, hate me, fart so much, sleep so much, resent me, answer a question with a question, always disagree with me, blame me for everything. There's a lot of angst in there, fellas.

Okay? Why? Alright, let's have a look at another. Why does my friend smell like fish? Please, why do they smell like fish? Why do they copy everything I do? I love this one. Next one, because at the bottom it says, why does my friend annoy me? Why does my friend copy me? Why does my friend keep copying me?

Everyone has friends that copy them, apparently. They're writing in. I need some answers. This is, everyone's got the same problem. I'm so pleased. How about this one? This is one, I didn't actually pop this in, but this came up on one of the biggest searches. Why don't, they literally just put D. Why don't dogs have belly buttons?

Hmm. Good question. I've always thought about that. Why don't dogs get colds? Why don't dogs get sick? Why don't dogs live longer? Why don't ducks freeze, people? Why don't ducks freeze? Why don't diodes obey Ohm's law? Now that's quite high up there compared to the others. And the last one we've all been losing sleep over.

Why don't ducks quacks echo? Why? Right? It's funny, isn't it? But one thing that we can see, it doesn't matter. Like, you can look at this stuff. Human beings are interested in making a right choice about something and they're interested to go out and seek advice. They care. They care. And the reason why so many of us care about making the right decisions is because we have our life's playlists of the highs and the lows.

I remember my highs and lows. The playlist is there because we have all reaped the benefits of good decisions, but we've also had the consequences of bad ones. And so through this whole series, we're coming to offer advice, not rules. Like you can actually take or leave what I say to you here today. That is your choice.

But we are hoping that we can bring advice nonetheless that will hopefully save you from maybe some of those uncomfortable consequences. Maybe it's going to stop some of these bad consequences that are hitting your playlist as you head into the future. And this advice, we want to present this, not from the point of like, this isn't just coming from my own brain today from wisdom.

Advice based on wisdom and the wisdom in knowing that life is connected. The things that happen and the decisions that happen in my life, the actions that I choose to make, there are consequences for that. And it's connected to the rest of my life, whether that's positive or negative. Now Newton's third law was every outcome Action has an equal or opposite reaction.

Now that was in relation to forces, but you can understand the consequence, the correlation there, there are consequences for the things we do. My actions and my choices do influence my future. And so today with looking at this particular advice, we're going to turn into one that I think is perfect for Mother's Day, learning to listen.

And as a mom for all my moms out there, I think some of the highest parts of my vocabulary. Kind of lay sometimes in the, is anyone listening to me? Did anyone just listen to what, is there words coming out of my mouth? Am I speaking another language right now? Did you listen to my eyes slightly twitching in the corner?

Maybe all the mums can relate to maybe some of the dads can relate as well. Okay. And some of you right now are sitting there going, just enough for us. Oh, listening. This is fantastic because I'm an excellent listener. So today is going to be a sweet, sweet ride for me. And I'm just here to say, perhaps today it might be a little bit more challenging than you might expect, because it was for me as I was preparing and dwelling on all of this throughout the week.

Because listening is actually easy when it's what we want to hear. Listening is easy when we want to hear. what we're hearing. It's really easy to think about my final goal and go, that's what I want to get to. I'm going to make sure I ask people that are going to help me get to that place and I will listen to those people.

It's easy. This is why you don't generally hear these sorts of things being said in conversations. Oh, we just stopped eating the healthy food. All right. Binge on the junk food. Everybody knows that's what you do. What's? Oh, look. Yes, you have 30 pairs of shoes in the cupboard, but you need to just hurry up and go buy that other pair.

You need 31 pairs of shoes. Yes, those are extreme red flags. Probably the reddest flags I've ever seen, but you really should call that person back. You really should. They're the sorts of things you don't hear people say to you because they're not the things that you want to hear. And so we get to listen to the things that make us feel good about our predetermined choices.

And that is easy. We gravitate towards the people that are going to tell us what we want to hear. And a lot of the time we actually avoid the ones that we don't want to hear from. We know what they're going to say. So like, yeah, I'm going to go over this direction. There's a few smiles on the faces. So I know this is hitting hard today, which is great.

Listening is easy when it's what we want to hear, but listening is hard. when it isn't what we want to hear. And I'm going to put my hand up for this one myself. Listening is hard when it's not something that I want to hear. And so today we want to challenge this whole area about, why is it hard to listen to stuff that I don't want to have to hear?

Why is that difficult? And we're going to have a look at the fact that we need to start to challenge ourselves. We need to look to stop, to look, and to listen. Or if you are an early childhood teacher, stop, look, and listen. That's how you would know it. Well, my teaching friends are like, yes, I've used that one before.

We need to stop heading just in the direction of what we want. We need to look at what maybe is lying down underneath the surface. And then we need to listen to maybe what we don't want to hear. That is learning to listen with maturity. So you can listen, but learning to listen with maturity, you'll be glad you did.

And it's not easy. Like we're all armchair experts, right? We're happy to sit back. We can observe other people doing different things. And like, I've got my opinions, I keep them to myself. Sometimes some people share their opinions with other people behind those other people's backs, right? We sit back and we think, you know what?

This is so obvious. How do they not see this? I've got all the answers for this person, they're just going along, they don't even recognise it. How do they not see this? And it reminds me of a show that I used to love, it was called How I Met Your Mother. And throughout the whole entire series, from the very first years it started to the end, there was this recurring joke where they had interventions.

And every friend would have something that they did over the course of the years that everybody else could see was super irritating and annoying. And so they'd have an intervention. One of them was one particular girl. She just loved eating lots of cheese all the time. And they're like, okay, we need to have an intervention for that.

Another one was speaking in a British accent all the time. Intervention. We need an intervention. Another one was pyrotechnic magic. But they kept making everything burn down. We need an intervention because it's easy to look from the outside and say there's an issue, but it's difficult when the issue is something we don't want to hear.

And the reality is, is when we're on the other side of that, if I was on the other side of an intervention, please don't, just putting that out there to my friends. This is what happens, refusing to listen to what we don't want to hear. Even though we need to hear it, it becomes a gateway decision. A gateway decision is like a sliding doors moment.

Okay. It's the chance to make the wise choice or to enter into a situation that I can never undo. There's a sliding doors moment. There's a gateway decision that's going to happen. And none of us are Dr. Strange. Some of us are strange. We just don't have a doctorate in You can't go back, you can't flip forward, you can't go to change anything in your life.

You only have the chance to make right decisions and then hope for the best. And hopefully you're not having to live with the after effects of a decision that comes back to bite you. Those gateway decisions can happen. So when we meet with people in our world and they're trying to speak into our lives, into a certain situation, and it's not something that we want to hear.

This is what generally happens. A wall comes up and we start to feel funny on the inside. Because attention starts to come and you need to start to learn to pay attention to the tension. It's there for a reason. Pay attention to the tension. Stop, look and listen. You need to pause. We need to start asking ourselves some of these questions.

What's actually going on? When I feel that tension, what is actually going on? What is this reaction really about? When I'm hearing someone tell me something, what is this reaction really about? Why am I pushing back so hard, really? And what's going on inside of me? Because a lot of the time when someone's trying to give you advice, it's more about what's going on in here than what's going on out there.

Stop, look, and listen. Now, historically, there was a man, his name was David. Some of you might know him. Killed, killed a big giant? Okay, David, he was a king. And in his royal lineage, as is the same now, whenever a king dies, the son then gets to take over the kingship. So in this particular case, we're going to have a look back in.

When King David died, his son Solomon became the new king. And at this stage, when Solomon became king and David died, Solomon was 20 years old, a mere 20 years old. Now, I I love our 20 year olds in here. A hundred percent. spend a lot of time with them actually. But can you imagine, I'm putting myself back into 20, being thrust into being a king or a queen at that particular age.

No thanks. The knowledge needed to run all the things. Like at 20, I think I was like just trying to figure out how to get to university without a car. I have to catch a bus. Public transport. Right. So he's the king at 20 years of age. And a biographer wrote about him. And he recorded that Solomon had this particular prayer.

And this is a prayer that this young 20 year old cried out when he knew he was going to become the king. And we can read it in 1 Kings, where it was recorded, 1 Kings chapter 3. And it said, this is Solomon, now, Lord, my God, you have made me your servant king in place of my father, David, but I'm a little child and I do not know how to carry out my duties.

I'm just a baby. I'm just a baby. He was speaking from a place of humility, he's like, yep. Now I'm the king and humbly, I know I don't have what it takes to do this. And so this is a great position to come into leadership, to be honest, to recognize, I don't have what it takes on my own to do this. And so Solomon, he has this.

And then in the next part, he says this, so he's crying out to God, please. So give your servants a discerning heart to govern your people. And distinguish between right and wrong. For who's able to govern this great people of yours. He knew that he needed to learn how to discern. Discern is having good judgment.

And he also needed to learn how to distinguish between what was right and wrong in those circumstances. And you know what? It's actually really hard to discern and distinguish between information if you don't have more things than just your view available to look at. How do you distinguish if This is what I've decided.

You've got nothing to compare it to. You actually don't have the sources to then make a wise decision. You're just going with your my way or the highway type thing, but it leaves no room for perhaps making a wiser choice. And so the result for Solomon, it was then recorded in 1 Kings chapter 4, and it said this, so God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore.

I've been to Burley Beach recently. That's a lot of sand. That's a lot of understanding. It was gifted to Solomon because he came humbly and said, I don't know what I'm doing. And God said, that's okay. Because I can actually step in and I can help you. And then it went on to say, and his fame spread all the way down to the local IGA.

No, his fame actually spread to all of the surrounding nations. A 20 year old kid started making the waves on whatever was back then. They heard about the fact that this young kid was making the wisest choices that a lot of Kings had ever made. And they're like, how does this happen? The word started to spread because they saw that he stopped, he looked and he listened.

And then from that place, he was able to make the wise choices and the decisions that would help everyone. And I'm sure that Solomon being 20 years of age, some of the stuff that he said, this is the decision that we're going with probably wasn't his own personal preference. There's probably stuff that he's like, you know what guys, I can see that this is the wisest choice.

It's not maybe what I want to do, but this definitely is the wisest choice. We're going with that. And that showed a maturity in itself. And I think a lot of us can learn from that. And because he learned so much along this process, he became so passionate then about trying to help the everyday plebs.

That's me. I'm not the wisest person that ever lived. But he wanted to write down, here's some stuff that will help you to be wise in making decisions. And I know this because I've lived through it. And so he wrote down a whole bunch of things. In this one, Proverbs, this is what he wrote himself. Proverbs 1 verse 5, it says, a wise person will hear an increase in learning and a person of understanding will acquire wise counsel.

Wise people We'll look for help and input from outside of themselves. They don't have to wait to be asked to go and do that. They don't have to be persuaded. They recognize the value in going to wise counsel. Now, remember wise counsel. You can tell the people in your life that are the wise counsel. You can tell the people in your life that you're like, Oh, listen to what you say out of being really polite.

And then I will decide as to what you have to say, whether that actually fits in line. But wise counsel, people you trust, people you respect, people in your villages, people within your circles that you have done life with, you listen to them and that will help you make the wise choice. In fact, if you get to the point where you're thinking in a situation, you have to come to a decision and you're like, I got this sorted.

I don't have to listen to anybody else because I already know exactly what to do. Good times. It's probably when you need it the most. It's probably when you need it the most. When you think you have it all sorted, you probably need to just go and talk to somebody else and double check. Get some other ideas from other people that you trust and see.

if you think you really are on the right track. Cause when you don't want it, is when you need it. When you don't want, and I'm talking to myself here, right? When you don't want it. It's when you actually need it. And if there are people in your life that you trust and love, and they're actually trying to come and help you and challenge you on a situation, and then you still make another decision that might affect yourself and them, it's actually quite selfish.

And I know that sounds harsh. But it really is. When we look at self, it's just about thinking of myself before how everything is connected. And so we need to take into account if there's people that love and care about me and they're trying to tell me something, maybe I need to listen to them because it is going to affect them in some way or other down the track.

And those same people, if you have a decision you have to make and you're purposely not telling them. Because you don't want to hear what they're going to say to you, you definitely need it. Because deep down inside that tension is there and you're not paying attention to the tension and that could be hurtful for you.

And so this is exactly again, what Solomon wrote in Proverbs verse 12. He then wrote down this and he said, the way of fools

I got this sorted. I don't need to ask anybody's help. The way of fools. But a person who listens to advice is wise. Fools go into situations thinking they know it all and have it all sorted. And it's the ones that seek to get help and listen to others that they trust that are known as wise. Mr T, he so eloquently put it, right?

We were all thinking it.

But I'm, I'm going to be honest, I find it very difficult to sometimes feel sorry for somebody who stepped into something when I've encouraged them not to. So I do pity them, but also no greater strength is there than a person that holds back and I told you so. Right. It is difficult. And I know many of you today might be in the midst of decisions for your own life, whether it be small decisions.

What am I having for lunch today? It's a huge life decisions, but for the number of people that are in this room, that are online, that are participating in wanting to find out more, there are so many of you that will be in this stage of, you know, there are decisions at the moment that you are needing to make.

It might be in relation to relationships. It could be in relation to business. It could be in relation to subjects at school. It could be in relation to families. It could be in relation to finances or your frustrations, your dreams for the future that just you're not getting there. And you have to make decisions like how, how do I get to those places where I'm feeling that I'm meant to go?

Because we are all just sitting on the edge of the seat of our next adventure of our next big thing. Every person is just always on the seat to the next thing. And if you're not, you've gotten too comfortable. You need to pick your butt up a little bit and have a look. Right? Don't be content at staying the same.

There's too much in your life to be done, to be enjoyed, to be experienced, and for other people's sake than to just stay sitting and be comfortable. And some of you have experienced the absolute highs of the greatest decisions of your life. Those great moments you're like, wow, that was just, I'm so glad I did that.

I'm so pleased that I chose that. And then others of us, we're still kind of a little bit scarred from the lowest points of our life. The things that happened to us, the decisions in our life that were low down, still causing a scar. And then for a lot of us, we fit into both of those categories. We've had the most highs and we've reached the lowest as well.

And so this Series is something that is for everybody, regardless of whether you are exploring a faith, like I talked about King Solomon before and whether you believe there's a God or whether you're exploring that. Obviously here in our faith community, we a hundred percent believe that God is with us and leading us and that Jesus is for us.

But for you, you can't, you can't deny that this is good advice. Making wise choices, choices is a good advice for your life. And so we need to stop, look, and listen. That's all I want you to take from today. Stop, look, and listen. If that helps you remembering me. Stop, look, and listen. When you have to think of Meg, stop, look, and listen.

Might put you off thinking about stuff, but.

So tip number one, stop. Multiple things that we can stop. We can stop thinking we know everything. Stop, When I was a kid, I loved to go roller skating. I roller skated a lot. I haven't roller skated now in probably 35 years. If I went back there now, I'm not going to be good at it. I just know. It's not about your age and experience.

Sometimes it's about the way in which experiences have been evaluated. that makes you wiser. And so there could be people younger than me that could give me advice because they have evaluated an experience I've never been through and that could speak to me. So I need to stop thinking I know everything and I need to stop avoiding uncomfortable conversations because it makes me feel tension y.

when you need it the most. I need to, number two, tip number two, look, look at what's going on inside of you, like we already talked about what is going on inside of there and look at who is trying to speak into your life. We do tend to have biases in our life. Okay. We'd be like, I wouldn't listen to that person.

Thanks for that. This is probably me talking about this earlier. Thanks for that advice. Who does she think she is? It's true. I need to stop thinking about judging where an information comes from because you can miss some excellent advice because it came from an unlikely place, but you chose not to listen to it.

So you need to look at who's trying to speak into your life because it might just be merely a human talking to you. But what if it was God? What if it's God working through somebody to tell you something you actually need to hear and you've dismissed them because it didn't fit into your list of who I will accept to listen to?

We need to be really careful about that. And then number three. Listen. Sounds easy. And I, I looked up to listen, it says the definition to listen is to give one's attention to a sound. To actually truly listen, I need to give attention to the information that's being presented to me. I need to avoid shoving it down, dismissing it too early.

I need to avoid just making an easy choice. I need to make the wise choice. And I need to listen, listening with maturity. And some of you here today, maybe you've been a little bit stuck in your life. Maybe you've hit a bit of a stalemate. You've been sitting in the same holding pattern for a while. And some of it maybe isn't due to your own reasons, and unfortunately things have happened for you which have placed you in that position.

And then for others, you've actually chosen to stay stuck in a position because it's comfortable. And I just want to say today that truly listening Enlisting you with maturity, it's risky. It's risky. It can be uncomfortable. It can make you challenge your own perceptions. It may take you to places that you're not actually prepared for mentally.

Doesn't mean you can't go there. Just because you didn't prepare for it doesn't mean a way isn't going to be made for you. But, and I love the fact, God has been working through this throughout the whole morning. You need to come humbly and start to let go of control. You need to come humbly and go, I don't know everything.

I need to let go of control. And I joked earlier that I don't like getting advice. Maybe there's some big EHS reason for that. But I actually know the reason for it. It's because I don't like being out of control. I don't enjoy it. It makes me feel uncomfortable. The tension in me is real when I feel like I'm not in control of a situation.

And I have been learning for years now that that's okay to not be in control of myself. I deserve a sticker or something, right, for that one. I've been learning. It's okay because my controlled life, and this is what I've learned, some hot tips guys, for myself, my controlled life that I'm controlling for myself is actually never going to be as free as the one that I let go.

I think that I've got freedom because I'm like, I'm in control of my life. Actually, no, I'm not being free because I'm actually keeping myself in my own personal prison that I think is the best for me because it's based on my small brain. In fact, I could let that go and all these new things start to occur.

And I'm like, wow, okay, maybe I didn't know everything after all. And so while I joke about that, I don't like getting advice. I have actually been learning to step more into that over quite a few years now. And it's been, I've been better for it. I've been glad that I did guys. It's not just a clever phrase, okay?

And then for some of you here today, I know maybe you're just exploring God. And so for you, having a surrendered life where you're letting go of things, that might actually just look like expanding your sphere of influence. And maybe not judging where you're hearing wisdom from. For example, maybe you hear today from a faith community, and you're like, Oh, churchy people.

I don't really listen to churchy people. Challenge yourself. There could be something very important for you to hear. And then for those of you who actually confess and profess that Jesus is the Lord of your life and that God actually cares enough about you that he cares about the little things in your life, that he sent his son for you.

He literally put his son to die so you can have this communication with him so he can give you advice and he can lead you on the way. Then for you, that is going to be the leading of the Holy Spirit. That is where you are going to start to have that space to surrender and see what comes next. And if you're currently not in that space, well, are you truly maturing, maturely listening to him?

Are you reading his word?

Are you reading his word? Are you being challenged by what it says to you when you start to apply it? And if not, why are you avoiding it? And I can say this because I've done this. Sometimes I avoid reading the scriptures because I know I'm not going to like what I read. Anybody else in the room or is it just I'm the unholy one on the stage?

All good. Hey, thank you. Right. Are you giving yourself some quiet space from the noise of the world to actually hear what God wants to say? These are the things that I want to challenge you in as you listen.