Always looking to get better

In case you missed it, this past weekend when the San Francisco  49ers beat the Detroit Lions, the two head coaches had a heated exchanged after the game.  Take a look…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEx4tjNXUkQ&feature=related[/youtube]

Immediately after the game, during his Post-Game News Conference, 49ers Head Coach Jim Harbaugh apologized for being too aggressive in his handshake and that he was just over excited.  Then, on Monday, when asked if he thought he should tone it down after the game, he said this –

“Yeah… I think you can get better at everything, you know? We’re always striving to get better as a team at everything we do. And personally I can get better at the post-game handshake and we’ll attempt to do that.”

Ok so he may have been joking a little bit on this, but I loved that he brought up that he is “always striving to get better” and that “we’ll attempt to do that”.  So here’s the question, if Jim Harbaugh can strive to get better at making a handshake, what can we be striving to get better at?  Are you always striving to get better at everything you do, both personally and professionally?  Or are you just good with the status quo?

When we choose to make ourselves better at all that we do, everything and everyone around us get better.  For instance, here is a personal and ministry example.

As a personal example, say the status quo for you and your family has alway been that Saturday morning breakfast (or choose any 1 particular meal during the week) is a serve yourself, you’re on your own type of breakfast.  What if, instead, you make a big breakfast every Saturday morning, maybe where everyone chips in and makes it together as a family, and you sit down and enjoy it together as a family.  What do you think that would do for your family? I would like to hope that it would build a sense of “family”, togetherness, participation and unity.  You all can sit down and talk about how the week was and what are you looking forward to, etc.  It could be great…actually, it is great because I have done it with my family many times (not as much I would like to, but it has been a great experience each time we’ve done it.).

I know that Saturday mornings are busy for your average family with sports, sleeping in, home improvement projects, etc. But if Saturdays are a free day for you, try something like that and see what happens.  If Saturdays don’t work, try a different day or time like dinner time on Wednesday.  The point is to not just remain the same, but be different and always try to improve family gatherings and interactions.  Again, it may be hard but what do you think your children will say 10, 20 years down the road?  Hopefully they will say that those times together were some of the best they had with the family, something they relied on and appreciated and something they hope to do with their families when they have children.  Always striving to get better doesn’t just make us better, it makes everyone around us better.

For ministry, say the status quo would be to do your program a certain way.  Youth Directors, you know how it is, start with a game, then do worship, followed by a message and then have some small group discussions to wrap things up.  Do you have a normal format in your program?  Well, instead of keeping to your normal format, why don’t you change it up a bit and make it different, maybe even a little better. Instead of doing just an icebreaker, why don’t you have 2 leaders (either students or adult volunteers) come out to loud music dressed up as “characters” to promote the icebreaker.  As they lead the icebreaker, all they do steps up the level of excitement and energy in the room which in turn makes the icebreaker better, gives your program a uniqueness and creates an experience that is different from what students would normally expect.

These 2 personal and ministry examples are just some of the many different ways we can all get better at what we do.  Whether it is something small like a handshake or something big like a programmatic change in your ministry, we can always improve somewhere, somehow.  But I want to warn you.  If you choose to step up your game a bit and strive to make things better, it could cause higher expectations from your family and youth.  So don’t strive to get better unless you are going to alway strive to improve.

So right now, TAKE A MINUTE and think through, what do you need to be getting better at?  If you are having trouble thinking of one, spend some time talking to God about it and ask Him to reveal some things that you can be getting better at.  After all, if Jim Harbaugh can work at getting better at post game handshakes, I’m sure there is something in our lives that we can get better at as well.

SOURCE: Thanks to The Mercury News for Coach Harbaugh’s quote!