Years ago, a friend of mine looked at me in a meeting and made a statement that I’ve never forgotten. “John,” he said, “ideas are like soap bubbles floating in the air close to jagged rocks on a windy day.”
What a vivid picture of how incredibly frail thoughts and ideas really are! Think about it. How many times during the day does a thought pop into your head that makes you stop and say, “I really need to write that down—that’s a great idea”?
Now, how many of those thoughts do you actually remember and act upon? Unless you’ve made an intentional effort to record your ideas as they come, I’m guessing the first number is far greater than the second.
We need to learn to land our thoughts.
I compare this process to landing an airplane. What is the first thing you do when the flight attendant announces that your plane has begun its descent? You fasten your seatbelt because you realize you could be hitting the runway hard and you don’t want to get hurt.
Now, if you were really afraid of a bumpy landing, you could beg the flight attendant not to let the pilot land the plane. But, in addition to attracting unwanted attention from airline security, that would defeat the whole point of being on the airplane, which is to get you to your final destination.
So you fasten your seatbelt, grit your teeth and prepare for impact!
The same principle applies to landing a thought. Any idea that remains only an idea doesn’t make a great impact. The real power of an idea comes when it goes from abstraction to application. And that’s where seatbelts (and perhaps some teeth gritting) are needed.
When you land a thought—either by writing it down so you can study it later or by expressing it out loud to the people around you—you’re bound to get all sorts of responses. The members of your audience (including yourself) might be receptive to your thought, but they also might be confused, skeptical, hostile or indifferent.
Such reactions aren’t reserved only for bad ideas. That’s why it’s so important to fasten your mental seatbelt before you attempt to land a thought. When an idea has potential, some part of the landing will probably be rough.
But a rough landing is OK, because this process has a way of honing, strengthening and clarifying good thoughts, thereby turning them into great ideas.
With that in mind, here are four observations about thinking that may help you hang tough when you’re trying to land a thought.
- Thoughts never begin fully formed. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a complete idea come to me immediately. This certainly would be a more efficient way of thinking, but it simply doesn’t work that way.
- Thoughts take time and other peoples’ input to reach their potential. Notice I didn’t say it takes time or others’ input to develop a thought. It takes both. Thought maturation works best when it occurs over time and with input from other informed, thinking people.
- Thoughts are very fragile in the beginning. The quote from my friend says it all.
- Thoughts only reach their full potential in a healthy environment. In this kind of setting, criticism is constructive, not destructive. Hard questions are asked to clarify and define an idea, not to attack it or tear it apart. Thoughts may be challenged, but the overall atmosphere is positive, not negative.
Even if you’re completely prepared for bumpy thought landings, there will always be times when your thoughts crash and burn on impact. In other words, they fail to survive the landing process. Here are two reasons why.
- They’re not good thoughts. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea. I grab the pen and writing pad that I keep by my bed and jot it down, certain that in the morning, I’ll be able to lift the thought to a whole new level.
But when I look at what I wrote the next day, all that comes to mind is, “What a stupid thought! What was I thinking?” These thoughts fail because they’re just not good.
- An unhealthy environment. I just stated that thoughts only reach their full potential in a healthy environment. So it only makes sense that an unhealthy setting—marked by negativity, excuses, and excess stress and busyness—would be detrimental to good thinking.
So, from now on, begin to think of your thoughts as delicate soap bubbles—full of possibility yet always in danger of evaporating—and handle them accordingly.
free monthly e-newsletter: Leadership Wired
available at www.INJOY.com.
John Maxwell grew up in the 1950s in the small Midwestern city of Circleville, Ohio. John's earliest childhood memory is of knowing that he would someday be a pastor. He professed faith in Christ at the age of three, and reaffirmed that commitment when he was 13. At age 17, John began preparing for the ministry. He attended Circleville Bible College, earning his bachelor's degree in 1969. In June of that same year, he married his sweetheart, Margaret, and moved to tiny Hillham, Indiana, where he began his first pastorate.
While serving in his second church, Maxwell began to study the correlation between leadership effectiveness and ministry effectiveness. On July 4, 1976, while preaching at a service commemorating America's bicentennial, John sensed that God was calling him into a ministry to pastors. Within days after that event, pastors began to contact him, asking for his assistance in nurturing their churches. Over the next four years, on an informal basis, John helped scores of fellow pastors. Then, in 1980, he was asked to become Executive Director of Evangelism for the Wesleyan denomination.
Though his time at Wesleyan headquarters was productive, John soon realized that his deeper desire was to help pastors from numerous denominations. He knew that desire would be unfulfilled if he were to stay at denominational headquarters. As a result, in 1981 John accepted the call to return to the pastorate, this time at Skyline Wesleyan Church in the San Diego, California area. But he did so with the church's blessing to pursue his vision. The Skyline congregation allowed him to continue mentoring and assisting pastors even as he led them to new levels.
In 1985, as he continued to equip and encourage other pastors, John took the next crucial step in leadership development. He founded a new company called INJOY and created the INJOY Life Club, featuring a monthly tape for leaders. The fledging operation, established in the corner of a garage, was soon bursting at the seams. The INJOY Life Club tapes were received with great enthusiasm, and the number of subscriptions quickly increased from hundreds to thousands. Simultaneously, the demand for other resources and seminars exploded. Pastors from coast to coast were responding, and their desire for help was even greater than John had anticipated.
As the years passed, INJOY began demanding more and more of John's time. In 1995, he resigned from his position as senior pastor at Skyline following a very fruitful 14-year tenure. The church had tripled in size and its lay ministry involvement had increased ten-fold. Dr. Maxwell is in great demand today as a speaker. Through his bestselling books, audio and video resources, and major conferences, he communicates directly with more than one million people every year. He is frequently asked to speak for organizations such as Promise Keepers and Focus on the Family, but his greatest joy and desire is to help pastors become better leaders.
Because the need for leadership development knows no borders, John established EQUIP, a non-profit organization which trains leaders in urban communities, academic institutions, and within international organizations. EQUIP is also spearheading a movement which has enlisted more than one million pastoral prayer partners who covenant to pray specifically for those who shepherd God's flock.
John continues to seek new opportunities to help churches and church leaders. He knows that one thing is constant: the only hope for the world is salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ, who gives life abundantly.