Status Quo Bias

Below are some general ideas I captured from a guy named Mark Batterson.
Status Quo Bias
A couple decades ago, a pair of psychologists named William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser discovered a phenomenon they dubbed the status quo bias. Simply put: most of us have a tendency to keep doing what we've been doing without giving it much thought. And on one level it’s harmless. People tend to settle in to status quo living. We are simply creatures of habit. But maintaining the status quo can become detrimental.

For example, a study was done on college professors who were part of a pension plan. And the researchers discovered that the professors picked a plan upon entering the program, and while they had the freedom to change plans based on life circumstances or market conditions or even the size of their portfolio, the median numbers of changes in their asset allocation was zero! In other words, most of them picked a plan and forgot about it. They stopped evaluating. By the way, what was even more telling is that many of the married participants who joined the program when they were single still had their mothers listed as their beneficiaries.

Have you have ever been offered a free subscription to a magazine for the first year? Why would we be offered something for free? It’s because magazine companies understand the status quo bias. Most of us will forget to cancel. And it’s not really that we’ve forgotten. We’re just too lazy to make a simple phone call or write a simple letter. Right? That is human nature! We tend to keep doing what we’ve been doing. And the problem with that is this: if you keep doing what you’ve always done you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten.

As we get ready to begin a New Year, let's challenge the status quo. I know there is nothing magical about midnight on December 31st. And not everybody has a resolution personality. But all of us need to make changes. Take some time to evaluate your life spiritually, relationally, physically, emotionally, and intellectually. What changes do you need to make? Is there something you need to stop doing or start doing? What do you need to do more or do less? I've always felt like New Years is an opportunity to reevaluate and recalibrate my life. The only other option is maintaining the status quo.

What New Year's Resolution are you making this year?

Call Waiting

I'm posting an article written by the Hebrew Professor that Jacob, Eddie and I had in seminary. My hope is that you will find hope and encouragement to "wait" on the Lord.

Shepherd2Shepherd on “Call Waiting”

No one likes being put “on hold”? Especially when the other person has initiated the call. Why call if you have something or someone else more important to deal with? We’ve never added the “call waiting” option on our phones, but recently the service became automatic. I confess that I now look at incoming call numbers and occasionally put someone on hold. Yes, even someone I’ve called in the first place. While I’d never condone the habit, I have realized the value of call waiting. Sometimes I’m trying to juggle several projects that are interrelated, and information from an incoming call may affect the current conversation. Sometimes it really is important that a person waits.

During the Christmas season familiar biblical figures repopulate our imaginations: Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, Simeon and Anna. And, of course, the shepherds. They were, like most Jews, waiting. Though Scripture tells us that Christ came “in the fullness of times” (Gal. 4:4), Israel was a community without such eternal perspective, put on hold in the forge of waiting and wondering. For four hundred years wondering if Anyone was on the other end of the line. Was God intentionally quiet, working on “related projects,” or had He forgotten the call?

The anxious wondering of the faithful has striking biblical precedent.

An earlier Israel was also put on hold for four centuries. Spiritually disintegrating in Egypt, ancient Israelites questioned where the God of their ancestors was. Hadn’t YHWH made promises to Abraham? Yes, He had. Promises that included a call to be at the center of God’s international mission. But God’s people were, for purposes known fully only to God, put on hold.

Abraham himself experienced call waiting. Only after responding to God’s dramatic call was he informed that generations would pass before the full blessings would arrive. One reason for the long wait: “the sin of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16). Apparently there was a related and interconnected divine project, broader in scope than the call of this man. And the maturation of Abraham’s faith was woven into the divine plan. He became a spiritual sojourner in a precarious solitude, “not knowing where he was going” (Heb. 11:8). His heavenly Shepherd broke the silence only rarely during the hundred years between Abraham’s first call and his death. It was apparently a perplexing silence, one that drove the patriarch at times to engineer his own solutions. He went to his grave with a call on hold, with virtually nothing in hand except a hope that sometimes failed him. He was buried next to Sarah in a cave he had purchased, ironically, in “the Promised Land.”

Abraham’s descendents living in the times of Egyptian or Roman rule – or in the 21st century – cling to promises and calling that easily fade into questioned memories. Like our forebears, many of us sojourn in silence, waiting for a conversation to resume, for God to speak once again. This month’s word of encouragement is dedicated to those spiritual shepherds who haven’t heard God speak for a long time. Shepherds I’ve spent time with who used to have clarity of direction but now, like Abraham, “don’t know where you’re going.” Wondering what to do without the Shepherd’s leading. We have no control over when God will reengage us explicitly. Living in that liminal zone of spiritual call waiting requires the daily discipline of hope – resisting despair which knocks incessantly at our door. May God give you the grace to wait with hope until He appears again.

He will. In His time.

“I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His word I put my hope.” (Ps. 130:5)

Family and an old cliche

What is that old cliché – “Family, can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”  I am sure none of us have any immediate or extended family members this cliché could apply to but what about your “other families?”  You know, your “neighborhood family”, your “co-worker family”, your “school family”, etc.  Odds are there are some of those “family” members that this old cliché might be true about.  Maybe after an especially long day at work or school, or maybe after your neighbors dog has kept you up all night.  But Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” John 13:34 (ESV).  WOW!  Jesus makes it perfectly clear who we are to “live with” and to top it off, He calls us to love them.  I don’t know about you, but if I am brutally honest with myself then loving some of the members of my extended family is not easy - much less members of my “other” families.  During this season of Advent, I just have to remember the tremendous love God showed us by sending Jesus to save us.  It is easy for me to see how God could have sent Jesus to save the “ones I can’t live without” but God sent Jesus to save “the ones I can’t live with” too.  I have just not been seeing the “ones I can’t live with” the same way God sees them.  I am going to constantly repeat this verse to myself as I prepare to attend some of my “family / other family” functions during this holiday season.  May God help me see everyone as “ones I can’t live without.”              

Reestablishing Habits And Priorities

Like many of you, I'm in a season of reflecting on the last year and looking ahead to 2009. It's a season of evaluating my: thoughts, actions, relationships, decisions, pace, commitments and purchases. The new year seems to be an opportunity to establish or re-establish good, healthy, habits.

I start with trying to understand what my priorities are. Not what I wish they were, but what they actually are, based on: my thoughts, actions, relationships, decisions, pace, commitments and purchases.

One of the keys, for me, is establishing habits that I will be motivated to do and habits that are sustainable as well. If I just say I want to "exercise more" that will never happen. I have to say "I want to compete in a half marathon" or ride in the "bike to the beach" or the "24 hours of booty" in order to see that habit come to life. For me, it doesn't become dynamic until it become specific.

The same is true for my spiritual habits. I have to be specific (set goals) and make room in my life for these new habits. Maybe a goal could be to read through the Bible from cover to cover this year. It might be to read at least 1 spiritual growth book a month. It might be to start the habit of doing a Life Journal (click here to read my Life Journal). Also check out how to start a Life Journal Habit.

Fasting seems to be a great way to reestablish habits and priorities. Fasting helps you kick start stuff and gives you great momentum and perspective. Consider it.

Lunch with Jeff

Tuesday's, I meet with Jeff Ward for lunch. We usually meet at the Sub-Way in Mooresville during his lunch break. It's a time both of us look forward to. The more we talk, the more open we are to the real stuff in our lives. There's not a need to pretend or make things sound better than they really are. I appreciate Jeff as a friend and I'm glad he and his family are Radiant Life-ers.

Who are you investing in? Who's investing in you? Is there anyone in your life, right now, looking out for you as a man, father, husband...? If your life was heading in a painful direction, who would alert you to that problem? Would you even be open to someone else investing in you? Would you be open to investing a portion of your life in someone else?

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Ecc. 4:9-10

Imperfect snowflakes

Today my daughter, Reagan, and I sat down to make some snowflakes to display on one of our doors.  You see, grandma had just recently visited and she had made a few for us so we were going to add to the pile.  But as my daughter and I sat down to make them, I realized that I didn't really remember how to make them.  I had not been watching grandma make hers and although Reagan tried to tell me what she saw grandma do, it was not registering with me.  My daughter ran to get Uncle Eddie, the craft expert (at least in her mind), and sure enough he helped us figure out the error of our snowflake ways.  He looked at the "mess" I had made and somehow understood what Reagan was saying about how grandma made the snowflakes and he figured it out!  Soon we were making snowflakes.  After we were all done, I picked up a few of the snowflake failures.  I tried to salvage a few of these ruined sheets of paper.  I made them into snowflakes but imperfect snowflakes to say the least.  

As I was cleaning up all the paper scraps and tossing away a few of the truly unsalvageable snowflakes,  I stopped and looked at the glass door now covered with snowflakes.  I admired mine, my daughters, and grandma's handiwork.  Something dawned on me.  God took nothing but dirt from the ground to make his most wonderful creation, humankind.  Due to the fall of man, humankind is now imperfect.  But just as I looked at what I thought were ruined sheets of paper and was able to salvage them into something beautiful like a snowflake - - God can do that to our lives.  He can take what seems "broken", "ruined", "flawed", and "imperfect" and turn it into something beautiful - - a life lived for Him.  That is what He offers everyone that is willing to follow Him.  He loves us and "admires us" as His creation even in our "imperfect" state.  

I will never be a "perfect" snowflake maker, but I follow the one that makes "real" snowflakes and He loves me - - imperfections and all.   

What keeps me passionate about God?

I am susceptible to spiritual droughts. Because I know my vulnerabilities, I work hard to keep my passion alive.

Here are a few things I try to do to stay refreshed:

• Take a Tuesday night and spend a couple of hours serving at Urban Restoration in Charlotte.
• Do my Life Journal.
• Get enough sleep.
• See God working in another part of the world. God is so much bigger than what we see week in and week out in our church.
• Visit an impoverished place, in the world, at least once a year. Some moms choose what to feed their children. Some moms have to choose which children to feed. Putting yourself in a place that crushes your heart keeps the passion alive.
• Fasting. I don’t know why fasting works, but it does.
• Develop friendships with non-Christians. Caring about people far from God helps keep me closer to God.
• Leading my family through a Bible devotion around our kitchen table or before bedtime.
• Devoted time to prayer. If I don’t spend time with my wife away from all the other pressures, it is hard for us to stay close. My relationship with God is the same. If I don’t spend time with Him, how can I know Him?
• Talking with Jenny about spiritual stuff and what we're learning about God.
• Give extravagantly. Something about giving big breaks the grip of this world and connects me closer to God.
• Cry. By God’s grace, as a man, I cry easily.
• Visit a cemetery. Seeing today in light of eternity always changes me.
  

What works for you?