We all face enemies in our daily lives, whether they be minor ones who try our patience or major ones who seek the ruin of our souls. These never-ending struggles can make us weary. In this episode of By Your Life, we talk about how to find the strength to persevere in the face of constant challenges.
Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/2019/19_10_20.mp3
Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time – October 20, 2019
Welcome to the eighty-second episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life. If you haven’t already, please sign up for notifications, and if you know of someone who can benefit from By Your Life, tag them, share it, like it.
My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.
In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time. As I read them, I couldn’t help but think, “Life is hard.” Life has always been hard. It was hard for Moses, hard for St. Paul and St. Timothy, hard for the apostles and it is hard for us.
In the first reading from the Book of Exodus, “Amalek came and waged war against Israel.” (Ex 17:8) We too face enemies in our daily lives, whether they be minor ones who try our patience or major ones who seek the ruin of our souls. At work, pride and limited resources lead to internal battles and turf wars. Externally, we are always fighting the competition for customers and market share. These never-ending conflicts can make us weary.
I met with two different clients this week who were concerned about the impact negative and toxic people were having on the rest of their teams. In both cases, they told me about all the things they were doing to create a positive work environment that recognized and rewarded employees for doing a good job and that most people were happy and engaged. But, there were also a handful of employees who complained about every little thing, bad-mouthed positive initiatives, refused to contribute to them, and put down anyone who did. These “Negative Nellies” were starting to bring down the rest of the team. My clients tried to fight the negativity with positivity, but it didn’t seem to be effective, which was extremely frustrating and draining their energy.
The answer for these clients is the same answer we received in this week’s readings. “Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed,” (2 Tim 3:14) and “be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient.” (2 Tim 4:2) But this is easier said than done. This is in fact what my clients were trying to do; to stay positive and remain steadfast in sharing and honoring their values, but it was wearing them down. They felt like they had done everything right, but it wasn’t working.
So, what do you do when you’ve tried everything, and it isn’t working? You do what they did when they called me, and you do what Moses did, you ask for help.
In the first reading, we heard how Moses kept his hands raised to God to support Israel in the fight against Amalek. “Moses’ hands, however, grew tired; so they took a rock and put it under him and he sat on it. Meanwhile Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side and one on the other, so that his hands remained steady until sunset.” (Ex 17:12) In the same way, we need to support each other.
Peter Cunzolo, CEO of Execujet Charter Services, and one of the CEOs I highlighted in my book, The Value of Core Values, emphasized the importance of helping each other to be persistent and remain faithful. He said:
“If you have a group of people who are familiar with one another, and they have backed each other up and have mutual respect, when someone has kind of fallen off the wagon, so to speak, you can pull them aside and say, “This isn’t like you. What’s going on? How did this happen?” Speaking the truth in love is hard to do, but it’s so valuable. People know that you’re not just picking, but that you really care. You care enough and respect them enough to tell them the truth.
I get it too, which is nice because that’s accountability for me. If I’m having a low day, my directors will catch me and say, ‘What’s wrong? You aren’t yourself today. Any way we can help? We need you to step up.’”
A lot of times, employees expect that everything must come from the top down, including correcting or appreciating another employee. And while it is important for an individual’s supervisor to do that, they aren’t the only one who should. If you see a teammate doing something wrong, whether it is not following a procedure, or violating a policy, you should tell them so they can learn the right way. Most people want to do a good job, they either don’t know or don’t know-how. Tell them. Teach them.
The same goes for when they do something right. It is a good thing for the supervisor to recognize an employee for good work, but they aren’t always there to see it. One of my clients said that while he appreciated all the systems his company had in place to help him recognize employees, with over 30 people in his department it was hard for him to know everything that happened when it happened. So, don’t criticize the boss for not being as appreciative as he should be. There is no policy that prevents you from appreciating each other for helping, recognizing each other for solving a problem or thanking each other for stepping up and taking responsibility for getting things done.
Life is hard. We need each other. Does your work environment and your company culture encourage mutual respect, support, and appreciation? If yes, awesome! Do your part to contribute to it in a positive way. If not, do your part to create it and contribute to it in a positive way. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.It is essential to create a strong, positive internal environment because as a business, you’ll face countless negative influences from the outside world. In a competitive marketplace, there will be many temptations to violate your values in order to succeed. Again, our second reading reminds us to “remain faithful to what you have learned and believed,” (2 Tim 3:14) and “be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient.” (2 Tim 4:2) When talking about these kinds of competitive pressures, Peter Cunzolo said:
“It’s not always easy to live or work by your values. There are times—it happens a lot—when we have to turn down business because the conditions would cause us to contradict our values. Customers may want us to do things that are unsafe or would go beyond our certification and liability limits. For example, we might be asked to take someone who isn’t ambulatory. They might tell us they’re medically okay, but we know they need an air ambulance flight.
Most of our competitors will take those flights without a second thought because they want the cash flow. They’ll put oxygen on board and take off. But what happens if something bad transpires? Have they really behaved responsibly toward that customer? We don’t take that kind of business. It’s not right for our employees, our company, or our customers.”
In the midst of day-to-day struggles to achieve legitimate business objectives, you’ll encounter countless temptations to compromise your values. The most difficult thing about these temptations is that most will present themselves as shades of gray. Lying in the gray area are trade-offs between common industry practices and ethical business practices—You know, like not paying a bribe to a foreign official to further a business deal because it would be violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Instead, you do what everyone is doing and pay a ‘facilitation fee’ to do business in that country. Or, in that gray area there is the trade-off between what is material and what is right—like the example I shared in episode 078 of By Your Life, where I was tempted to ignore paying a tax because it wasn’t material and it would have cost more than what I owed to process the payment. No one would have known, but it still wasn’t right.
When “everyone is doing it” becomes your measure of whether it is right, you’ve lost your way. Everyone else owns their behavior and will one day be held accountable for what they did or failed to do. Don’t let someone else’s bad behavior become justification for yours. You own your own choices and you will be held accountable for them.
Don’t let someone else’s bad behavior become justification for yours.For this reason, we are reminded to be persistent in prayer. Moses stood on the hill with the staff of God in his hand. (Ex 17:9) St. Paul encouraged Timothy to hold tight to what he was taught in Scripture. (2 Tim 3:14-17) And in the Parable of the Persistent Widow, (Lk 18:1-8) the Lord reminds us of the necessity “to pray always without becoming weary”(Lk 18:1) and God’s faithfulness to those who “who call out to him day and night.” (Lk 18:7)
This is how Tom Vande Guchte lives. Tom is the CEO of Storr Office Environments, another company highlighted in The Value of Core Values. Storr sells office furniture, lab furniture, floor coverings, and related services. At the time I interviewed him the company had four stores in the Southeast and more than 225 employees and annual revenues in excess of $75 million. Storr’s culture is based on three principles: 1) Do what’s right; 2) Do your best, and 3) Treat others as you’d like to be treated. Tom said:
Those are our foundational values: integrity, excellence, and relationships. They’re easy to say, but it’s harder to live them every day. We talk about our core values when we hire people. We want to make sure candidates are a fit before we hire them.
I don’t try to force my personal faith on anyone. We hire people from all faiths. When we pray before company meetings, I tell the people, “I’m not here to offend anyone. I do this because I personally believe we’ve been tremendously blessed, and I want to acknowledge that blessing by thanking God for it.” Then we pray briefly and move on.
In a secular business world, prayer isn’t the first response in thanksgiving for success or for strength to face challenges, but it should be. Perhaps you don’t own the company like Tom Vande Guchte, so opening your meetings with public prayer isn’t possible, but nothing is stopping you from praying in private and there is certainly nothing keeping you from praying for each other.
Jay Fechtel, CEO of The Fechtel Company, a high-end, high-quality custom home builder, told me a story about one of his team members that is just priceless. The man’s name is David and he takes a sincere interest in the subcontractors on their job sites. He regularly asks them how they’re doing and how he can pray for them.
One day David went over to talk to the guy who was there to clean the port-o-potty. These guys typically come at random times to do their work and the construction team normally doesn’t interact with them. You know how seedy a port-o-potty can get. People only go near them out of necessity. Nonetheless, David approached the guy and asked if he could pray for him.
Well, this man was extremely moved by David’s offer to pray. It turned out that his son had Down syndrome and he and his wife had been struggling with this issue for years. David shared this with the construction team and from then on, several people started checking in with this man and praying with him whenever he was on site.
This man appreciated the care and concern shown him by the construction team so much, that they had the cleanest port-o-potty in the state. I’m talking about clean! He scrubbed those things down and put in these tablets to make them smell great. Instead of a stench, you could smell a fragrance twenty feet away!
Life is hard. People need each other. The construction team couldn’t change the man’s circumstances, but their prayers could help him persevere as he dealt with the challenges. We need to help each other physically, by doing extra work, emotionally, by listening when someone is troubled, and spiritually, by praying for each other. Life is too hard to go it alone. We need God and we need each other.
Life is too hard to go it alone. We need God and we need each other.At the end of Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus challenges us with the question, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? (Lk 18:8) What evidence will he find that you are living your faith, not just on Sunday, but every hour of every day each week? Will you be convicted of having faith and trust in God, or will you be convicted of trying to go it alone?
It has been said that it is easier to love our Lord than to trust in Him. When we face our crosses, doubts naturally emerge. “Am I doing what is right in God’s eyes? Can I discern the right path on my job, with my family, and in other matters when there seem to be so many forks in the road?” Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us by praying this prayer from the Divine Office:
We beseech you, O Lord, to direct all our actions by your holy inspiration, and carry them on by your gracious assistance so that every prayer and work of ours may begin always from you and through you be happily ended.
This prayer emphasizes the importance of how we should begin and end the events of our lives. At times our work and our prayer don’t arise out of God’s inspiration but rather through our own willfulness. By this prayer, we are asking God to truly inspire us, to guide us toward what is true, good, and beautiful, with confidence that the Holy Spirit is always available as we make decisions that shape our lives and affect those we encounter throughout our day.
I encourage you to be persistent in this prayer. If you do, I am confident that God will bless you abundantly and you will glorify the Lord by your life.
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