Are you a linebacker or a balloonist? This question came to me listening to an audiobook while watching conference championship football. The book, The One Thing by Gary Keller, founder of Keller-Williams Real Estate, suggested that you need to blow up you current approach before you can be ready to move on to the one thing that will take you to the next level. As I am listening to this, I watch Rashaad Evans blow up the Florida running back at the goal line. In typical football speak the announcer says, “Evans really blew up that play and now Florida has to go for it on fourth down.” That’s when my thoughts and plans collided as well.
Keller suggests blowing up the habits and thinking that keep you from pursuing your dreams. And dreams take you to new heights. Balloons are something that you also have to blow up, and when you release them, they soar away to heights beyond where you can see. Furthermore, if you have taken a balloon ride, you know the wonderful sensation of soaring quietly at a height you have never known. Your perspective of your surrounding will be changed forever.
Keller’s goal is to show everyone how to live a life beyond what they currently see. He is a balloonist for your possibility. Most of us, and especially me, set our sights on just what we can see and fear imagining what life could be if we took our dreams on a balloon ride.
Of course the answer to my opening question is both. Before soaring, you must jettison some small thinking and heavy “waste of time” habits. That requires that linebacker mentality. Yet once the self-inflicted limitations are blown up, you can blow up your possibility balloon and really soar. And once you have that new view, going back to the old view just doesn’t cut it.
My goal this year is to BLOW UP TO GO UP. And I will start by dropping to my knees and asking my Master Linebacker to help me blow up my bad habits. Every balloon needs a name and pilot. Jesus is the Pilot of Isaiah 40:31.