Let me ask you a question, and I want you to actually answer it. How much do you want?
Not how much do you want to look like you want. How much do you really want out of your life? Your marriage, your health, your work, your faith, the people you love. How much do you want to live, and how much do you want to give?
Most of us would say "a lot." But if we're honest, a lot of us are not growing through life. We're going through it. And there's a big difference.
The clock is ticking whether we notice or not
Here's the challenge. We almost always think we have more time than we do. I don't know how much time you've got. I don't know how much I've got. Nobody does.
And because we assume there's plenty of runway, we lack urgency. We put off the conversation, the workout, the change, the reset. Tomorrow. Next month. After the holidays. After this busy season, which somehow never ends.
That's not a guilt trip. Today is more about awareness than anything else. You can't change what you won't notice.
What drifting actually looks like
Drifting doesn't feel like drifting. It feels like normal.
You wake up, you get busy, you put out fires, you scroll, you crash, you do it again. Then you look up and it's Sunday night and you feel the same way you felt last Sunday night. The first of the month comes and goes. More month left than there is money. Another year ends up roughly where the last one did.
We stay busy being busy. A lot of us are stressed, some of us are flat-out overwhelmed, and many of us feel more disconnected than ever, even with a phone in our hand all day.
And a big share of what runs through our heads today is the same stuff that ran through it yesterday. Same thoughts, same patterns, same results. You probably know the line about insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Drifting is living that definition without realizing it.
Me too. There are plenty of days I'm very busy and not very productive. Days I'm constantly distracted. I have to train this stuff all the time. I'm not writing this from the finish line. I need it as much as anyone reading it.
The sneakiest kind of adversity
When we think about adversity, we think about the big hits. The diagnosis. The loss. The job that goes away. Those are real, and they're hard.
But here's the thing - our mindset isn't trained in those moments. It's revealed in them. Whatever we've been putting in day after day is what shows up when the hard day comes.
That's why I believe the mundane, day-to-day grind is one of the most deceiving kinds of adversity we face. It doesn't announce itself. It just slowly keeps us in our existing patterns. And those patterns are often not getting us where we say we want to be.
There's even a third kind of adversity most of us don't see coming: success. Some of us don't respond well when things go right. We coast. We get comfortable. And comfortable is a fast way to start drifting again.
The compound effect works in both directions
Author and publisher Darren Hardy wrote a whole book on the compound effect, and the idea is simple. Small choices, repeated over time, add up to big results.
What we forget is that it works against us just as faithfully as it works for us. If we're not doing anything intentional to grow something specific, we're not standing still. We're drifting, whether we realize it or not.
The good news? The same math works in your favor the moment you start putting in better reps. Not huge ones. Consistent ones.
One of my early mentors, Jim Rohn, said it this way: what's easy to do is easy not to do. Growing a little every day is easy to do. That's exactly why it's so easy to skip.
Grow on purpose
So what does growing through life, instead of going through it, look like?
It starts with clarity of direction. For me, that's about where God wants me to be. For you it might be where you want to be. Either way, you need to know which way you're facing before you can move.
Then it's a simple process I come back to over and over: seek wisdom, think better, grow through, serve well. Seek wisdom from people who've been where you want to go. Use it to think better, moment by moment. Grow through the hard stuff instead of just getting through it. And then use that growth to serve the people around you.
Because remember, great leader, pastor and author Craig Groeschel says you do what you do because of what you think of you. If you want to stop drifting, it isn't just about doing more. It's about becoming someone who doesn't settle for drift.
You're the only you there will ever be. Nobody can compete with you at becoming a better you. That's your job, and nobody else can do it for you.
Your One More Rep: 14 minutes and 24 seconds
Here's your One More Rep for today. One percent of a day is 14 minutes and 24 seconds. Give that to yourself.
Grab a pen and paper and answer three questions:
- Where am I drifting right now - in my health, my relationships, my work, my faith or my finances?
- Where am I actually growing on purpose, with clarity?
- How much do I really want to grow, and what's one thing I'll do this week to prove it?
Don't pick five things. Pick one. If you try to fix everything, you won't fix anything.
Then do that one thing tomorrow, and the day after that. Let the compound effect start working for you instead of against you.
You don't have to have it all figured out. I sure don't. You just have to decide that drifting isn't good enough anymore. You are worth it, and you have what it takes.
God bless. Have a great one.
