@. Chains

chain: anything that acts as a restraint

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=chain

How do we overcome the restraints that hold us back. I believe it starts with proper planning. My management book lists 4 steps in planning.

Analysing the environment:
Setting objectives and strategies:
Determining resources:
Monitoring outcomes:

In the first step involves determining what things affect our lives, and finding out why we do what we do. In the second step concrete reachable goals are made so we know where we want to be. Then it is necessary to find out what we need to reach those goals, which in many cases involves other people. And then monitor those goals so your can measure what your doing good at and what you need to give more resources to. There is lots of information available on tools like this but I find for things to change we need to make a sacrifices, and take a risks because I believe that change doesn't happen without it.

It turns out that these procedures are just that a tool. Allot like a hammer, or a nail gun they help you to build something, but whether you are building a house or a prison that is up to the builder. The tools just help you make the building faster and better. Logically there is only one difference between a house and a prison. In a house people are free to come and go as they please, a prison the person inside is forced to remain inside.

Sometimes I wonder if we are not building our own prison every day. So many times we make choices that close out the rest of the world. And by closing out the rest of the world we close ourselves in.

In the book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller he talks about his first Christmas where he realized that he had spent all his Christmas money on himself and had spent little money buying gifts for others and how he felt like Hitler. I take that to be an example of a way we close ourselves in, by focusing on ourselves.

Do you realize that we may be breaking chains but really we are just learning how to build ourselves a stronger jail to lock ourselves into. That's why we should spend time thinking about what we want to do, and I believe that is why we need God.

Do you catch that knowledge, wisdom, power, social status, money... etc. is just a tool nothing more nothing less. You can have a brilliant person who locks himself up, and a martyr who can't help but praise God, a poor and starving person who would share with you their last meal.

[Picture on opposite side: purpose = Contrasting either side ]
[ideas: house -> homeless mans' house, or not well to do house | prison -> high end home and some how show that it is a prison]

Management by Michael A. Hitt ... [Et Al.]. Canadian ed.
Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller