1/11/21 - Ways to Focus on Monday

Well, welcome back and let's get started with Made for Mondays. Let me tell you one thing. As I get started with the day today, I'm really excited if you guys can tell the audio is a little bit different and that's because I have a brand new microphone. I'm really excited about this new microphone that will assist us in having even better audio and hopefully something that will enhance your experience here at Made for Mondays. Thank you all for joining in with us today. So here's a couple of questions I want to ask you and some challenges I want to give you and things that I personally do every single day to get my day started. Well. And so today's questions are not necessarily questions for the week. They're questions for the day. Last week we had some questions about the week, and if you didn't get a chance to listen to last week's podcast, please go back and listen to last week's podcast. We talk about what to do for the week. Today is more about what you do, how ways I suggest, and things that I personally have done to help me begin the day. So the first thing I want you to do, first of all, number one, what is the message you have for yourself today? What is the message that you have for yourself today? What is it that you want to tell yourself? Maybe today you just want to encourage yourself and say, you are the boss, you are the leader. Maybe today is the day. You're saying, today I'm going to accomplish xyz. What is your message to yourself today? The second thing I want you to write down are what are the things that absolutely must be finished today? What are the things that absolutely have to be finished today? When we talk about actionable items and attainable deadlines and attainable due dates, what are the items on your list that you absolutely, positively must complete before you leave out of your office or close your computer down or shut your zoom off today? My suggestion to you is not to have more than three. It's almost impossible to think about having three large goals today. What are three things that you absolutely, positively must complete today? So here are three questions I'll give you and then we'll go on to our review for today. Number one, what is one thing you can get excited about today? When you look over the course of your day? Is there a meeting you are looking forward to? Is there an interaction you're looking forward to? Is there something happening after work that you're looking forward to? When you look at your week? And these are questions I ask myself personally Every single day. Every day. What's one thing you can get excited about as you begin your journey today? Number two, who is somebody who needs you on your A game today for you to look at your entire staff, you look at all your co workers. Who's someone on your team who needs you to be absolutely at your best today? What is it about that individual that elicits your best? What is it about that person that draws the best out of you? Why did that person come to your mind? I want you to ask yourself that. Who needs your A game today? I'll give you four questions today. I asked myself 10, but I'll give you four. The third question I would suggest asking yourself is a situation that can stress me out or trip me up. Today is. And the way that my best self can handle it is what is a situation when you look at your day to day that could stress you out or trip you up and how can your best self deal with that situation? Now the reason that's so important is it allows you to have a bird's eye view of your life and not react. If you can see that coming down the line is something that's going to stress you out, if you can see coming down the line is something that's going to cause you to run away from who you are, what situation is that and how will your best self or how should your best self deal with the situation that you already know is going to stress you out? If you have a meeting, if you know there's something you need to bring up, if you know there's something that you need to say, what can stress you out and how will your best self win that situation? This is a personal practice that I really started the last couple of months where it's assisted me in going into every single day with a different type of mindset. I know that a particular meeting is going to stress me out. I know a particular situation is going to cause me to think differently about myself. And so instead of going and reacting to that situation, I go in proactive. This is going to cause me stress. This is going to cause me to have to think deeply. This is going to cause me to be in a reactionary position. And now going into it, anticipating the wait allows me to then make sure I'm strengthened going into the meeting because my best self is dealing with the situation and not my worst self. Right. One situation I'll bring up to you. A couple of years ago at our church we had a very contentious business meeting over some decisions that I had Made and some individuals who were not really a part of our church came to a business meeting and were very, very frustrated with me. And I never will forget, I was sitting there and there was this. We had the meeting scheduled the same day as the first time the Milwaukee Bucks had been in the playoffs since 2001. And so me, I was looking forward to watching the Bucs game. And so we're sitting in this meeting and there was a woman who got up and literally cussed me out in our church sanctuary. Cussed me out to high heaven. Called me everything but a child of God. Cussed people out. People stopped her. People told her to stop and sit down. It was an ugly meeting. And I was calm. I was at peace. Because for me, I was already looking forward to watching the Bucs play basketball in the playoffs for the first time since 2001. And I want to give that to you as a story, because it was a way I began to approach our meetings and things I knew would stress me out. I knew it was going to be a difficult meeting. I knew it was going to be a contentious meeting. I knew people were going to show up that never came to church. I knew that there were some uninvested people that were going to come and act invested on that day. I knew that was going to happen. But I approached the meeting differently. I knew it was going to stress me out and had already prepared something joyful on the other side that I could not let the stress of a temporary situation cause me to have lasting effects going into the rest of my evening. And so I left out of there with joy because I was happy. The inner 11 year old who went to the game when I was 11 years old. And I remember going to the game and watching the Bucs play the Philadelphia 76ers against Allen Iverson and going and watch the Bucs play Reggie Miller and the Indiana Pacers in 2001 when we made the playoffs, when Glenn Robinson and Sam Cassell and Tim Thomas and all of them, when I remember Darwin ham playing in 2001, and that inner 11 year old was much bigger than the 30 year old who was stressed out by a meeting of people who wanted to cuss you out because the organization's going to go forward. It's whether or not how I respond, how I engage with my leaders, my team and the people that trust what comes out of my mouth. So therefore, I want to challenge you. You know, stress is going to come. One of my mentors said something very powerful to me. He said, justin, embrace conflict. What conflict tells you is that people are invested in the organization. Conflict tells you that there is a passion, there is a deep well. The challenge that people have that they haven't mastered and that our responsibility as leaders is, is to ensure that we share with them and give them language to what they're passionate about. Conflict is going to happen. And if you have employees that when conflict arises or when you manufacture conflict, when you name conflict and they shirk away, that tells you they're not invested. Uninvested people shirk away from anything that's going to give them feedback or grow. Invested people dive into the deep wells of who we are, what we do, and how we do it. So if you know there's conflict coming down your way, if you know there's stress coming down your way, what is it? And how will your best self, how should your best self respond to it? The last question I'll give you today is if you were your, your own life coach, looking at your life from a high level today, what would you tell yourself? A practice of mine that I haven't, I don't really share often, because it makes me sound a little crazy, is whenever I'm envisioning something, whenever I'm stressed out by something, whenever I need to figure out something, I imagine I'm talking to a group of young pastors and I put myself on a panel at a big conference and I'm talking to pastors about this particular situation. For example, we had a situation at my church where we were talking about expanding our facility and expanding a building and going to purchase another facility. And before I brought it to my church, I imagined myself, I was sitting in my office at home and I imagined myself sitting on a panel talking to a bunch of young pastors about how I handled purchasing another piece of property. And I named them the successes, I named them the failures, I named them. The good moments, I named them, I named them the bad moments, I named them. Where I succeeded, I named them. Where I failed, I named them. I named to all these young pastors how I approached it and how the first conversation went. Mind you, this was before I had any conversation with my church. This is before I had any conversation with anyone outside of a core leadership team that before I casted the vision, I took time to say, if I was my own pastor, how would I talk about this situation? Where did I succeed? Where did I go wrong? What is good about my communication style? That helped. And so I want to challenge you to go into every one of your days if you were your own life coach and you had a chance to call yourself and tell yourself how to handle what you knew was on your calendar and what you knew you had to win today, what would you tell yourself? Would you tell yourself, you got it? You tell yourself to go work out? Would you tell yourself to drink some water? Would you tell yourself to make sure you stop at Starbucks today? Would you tell yourself, listen, you are the leader? Would you tell yourself, listen, you need to reach out to someone because you cannot handle the situation. Would you tell yourself to change your mentor? Would you tell yourself to just simply pat yourself in the back? Would you tell yourself to make sure you go buy lunch at your favorite restaurant today because you have a stressful day? Would you tell yourself, listen, today is one of those days where you can chill and sit back and let your staff do the work. What would you coach yourself to do today? That's a way you can win Mondays. So I give you these four questions in a way and hope to encourage you and I hope to share with you some practices I have myself. Because you are made for Mondays, Mondays don't own you. You can own your Mondays. Alright, so now for a sweet treat, we're going to transition for a moment into our wine reviews and hopefully you enjoy this one. This is a different type of grape I never had tried before, but I enjoyed it. So let's jump into Justin's Wine review. Welcome back to Made for Mondays. Let's jump into Justin's wine review today. Today I'm reviewing an F. Stephen Miller Sweet selections Orange Musket 2019 wine. Now I have a I used to have a subscription to nakedwines.com which is an independent local independent wine conglomerate out in Napa that grabs wines from a lot of different places, particularly just really across the country, particularly in California. And they support small local wineries out in California and across the across the world. And so for me, I like my subscription to Naked Wines. I wanted to try out another one this year and buy some more things that were local. But I had a big shipment of Naked wines that came in a couple of weeks ago. And so I wanted to review one of the wines from Naked Wines. And so what they had done was it was a tastemaker's pack, which was a six pack of wine that came from Naked Wines. And this tastemakers pack really grabbed a hold of my own taste buds, the things that I like. And so I wanted to try more white wines. And because I like bold flavors and because I like big flavors, your cabs, your ganaches Your really. I love Bordeaux red Bordeaux. I love Northern Italy and Burgundy. Really. Oh, my God. If you have a Pinot from Burgundy, your life is made. And so I enjoy sweet wines, not really dessert wines, but this in particular was a dessert wine. And. And it was a different type of taste for me, and I wanted to share that with you as well. So the wine itself is an orange musket grape. It was a different type of grape. Never had that before. And the market price for this wine is $19.99. So it's a $20 bottle of wine. And honestly, it tasted like a $20 bottle of wine. It's similar to a Moscato. It's similar to a Vouvry type of wine. You can tell it has some because this one was from California, but it's going to taste like your German whites. It's like your German whites. So this particular one, when you open it up and you smell it first, you're gonna. You're gonna smell some oranges. You're gonna smell really orange zest. And, like, right when you open an orange, you're gonna smell that. It's gonna taste like. When you put it, when you drink it, it tastes, honestly, to me, like Laffy Taffy. And it's not in a negative way. It's a smooth, easy sipping wine that I really suggest you enjoy with a cupcake. You don't want to drink this by itself. It's not a wine you drink by itself. You want something sweet. It's a fun. It's an upscale, fun wine you want to have with your friends. It's a different wine, different wine. In terms of orange musket, that was my first time trying it, knowing more about F. Stephen Miller. I like F. Stephen Miller's suggestions. There's some others I'll talk about later this year, but this one in particular, you can tell, was given a lot of care. It was a 2019, so it wasn't a vintage. It was fresh. So it was grown last year and bottled last year. So it's a simple wine, but it was a very sweet wine. It was tart. It was to the point. And I think you would enjoy it if you like sweets. So if you're going to try this F. Stephen Miller, I suggest you grab a cheesecake. You grab apple pie. I ate it with cupcakes and frosting. It's a good wine for that. The other way it could work, that my wife paired it with actually, was. We had some Gruyere. We had some blue cheese that was not sour, sour blue cheese and we had some brie and along with that Gru blue cheese and brie, we also added some simple rosemary salt crackers for a charcuterie board, some basic salami. The salami did not go well with this wine, but the Gruyere and the crackers went really well with this particular wine. It just cleanses your palate and you're able to enjoy the wine and grab all of the taste out of the wine. The last thing I'll tell you, for this wine, the alcohol level is 12%. So it's not too high. It's not a wine you're gonna. If you're drinking to get intoxic, the wines we're going to talk about this year are not wines to drink to get intoxicated. These are not wines for that. These are wines I'm simply talking about taste and enjoyability. So it's 12% alcohol. One or two glasses is absolutely fine. It's that thick. If you're drinking to get intoxicated, don't drink the wines we talk about this year because the wines we talked about this year are not for that. So that's my review. If I were to give it A out of five star rating, I would give it probably four. In terms of it being a sweet wine, in terms of it being a wine for people who want something sweet and just something to wind your day down with and wind your cheese tray down with or start your night off with whatever it is, it's one of those type of wines and it's. You enjoy it. You probably only going to have a maximum of two glasses because it's that tart, it's that sweet, the taste will overpower it. I let it sit overnight. I have a stopper here at home and I let it sit overnight. And as it aged just for one day, as it oxidized a little bit, it still tasted good two days later actually. So it's a good wine. Let it and enjoy it. So that's Justin's wine review of F. Stephen Miller orange musket grape from 2019. Alright, let's say our affirmations for the day and let's go on about our day. If you simply repeat after me, just say, I am me, I can be me and no one will stop me from being me. This year. For me, as you guys have learned, I let you in on a big part of my life and that's. I enjoy traveling through and understanding wine. And so this year for me is this is what you're going to get from me. You're going to get my full self, finally. And it feels really great to bring my full self, and I know bits and pieces of it will be rejected. I already have gotten some emails from individuals who listen to last week's podcast and cannot believe we're talking about wine as a pastor, but it's something I personally enjoy doing, something I enjoy traveling with and grabbing a hold of. And I believe that when we bring our full selves into all the spaces we're in, we don't have to hide anything. Because the moment you start hiding is the moment a lot of things get hidden and then our authentic selves are hidden. So this is what you're getting from me. I will pray that you have a wonderful day. Bring your full self everywhere you go. Because you're worth it. You're needed, you're necessary, and who you are matters. Have a wonderful day. You were made for this. Go win your Monday. This has been Made for Mondays with Justin Lester. Be sure to follow Justin online at MrJlester and online at www.jluster.com. see you next week. Go win. You were made for this.