8 Simple Minutes

During every 24-hour day we sleep roughly eight hours leaving 16 for eating, working, and playing. Hours are blocks of 60 minutes each, which means that you have about 960 minutes each day to do all of the things that get done during your day. Did you ever notice that the hours seem to fly past with increasing speed as your life gets busier?

But what if you could take just eight of those 960 minutes each day to change your life?

What if eight simple minutes could change the direction you’re going and set you on the direction your life was meant for?

What if what you did in just ½ of 1 percent of your day could totally transform your life?

Would it be worth it? Would you take those quick minutes at the start of each and every day so you could live the life you were meant to live?

I think you would.

But what would you do in those eight minutes that would make that big of a difference?

It’s not very complex. You don’t have to do 40 gyrations, 20 exercises, or even 10 important things.

You just spend two minutes each thinking about each of these four questions:

Who is God?

Who am I?

What am I supposed to be doing with my life? (Why am I here?)

What can I do about it today?

Let’s look at each one of these questions to get an idea of what possible directions each can take.

First, who is God? Why would you want to know the answer to this question? Perhaps because this is the most important question in life. For millennia the human race has struggled because they failed to answer this question. Often, we have failed to even ask it. Yet in this question and its answer are the most powerful factors of life. Without God, life is meaningless. We live, we die, and that’s it. With God, there’s meaning, there’s a purpose, I was put here for a reason, there’s a grand scheme of things, an order and system to the world and the universe. I might not understand it all, but at least it makes sense on some level. With God, I’m not just an accident and things don’t just happen accidentally.

So, who is God? That’s for you to discover. Start your 8 simple minutes with the first two minutes thinking about this question. Who is God? Is He real? What is He like? Where is He? What does He do?

Now, you may have had a bad experience with church or religion, or you may be a regular church-goer. It doesn’t matter which end of the scale you’re on, or if you’re squarely in the middle. You may say, “I already have this question settled. I know who God is. Or, I don’t believe in God. Or, I’m mad at God. Or, God’s mad at me.” Or, some other similar reason why you shouldn’t do this first part.

But stop and think about it. If eight minutes could change your life and there were only four things you needed to think about in those eight minutes, and this one would only take two minutes, wouldn’t it be worth trying?

Second, “Who am I?”

You have a name, you are the son or daughter of two people, you may have brothers or sisters, you may have children, you may be married or single, you may be male or female. But, who are you?

This question is important to follow the first question. Once you have spent time asking “Who is God?” any question about who you are has to relate. If in your thinking you discover that God is the ruler of the universe, that God is in charge of all things, that you are part of God’s plan and therefore God’s plan includes you – that gives you a snapshot of who you are. You’re related.

Just as important are those things about you that make up who you are.

What do you like to do? What revs up your engine? What gets you excited?

What, when you do it, gives you great joy, great peace, great satisfaction?

What skills have you picked up so far? What can you do that somebody else may not be able to do as well? What are you good at? (IMPORTANT THOUGHT: Often, what you’re good at is what brings you great joy, so these two may be the same.) Maybe you’re not the best in the world at anything, but what are the things you have learned how to do that you’re happy you learned?

What have you been able to do in your life? What have you been able to try? What have you got the chance to do that maybe someone else hasn’t?

What type of person are you? Do you have a generally sunny outlook on life or do you always spot the two clouds when the rest of the sky is sunny? Do you like to talk to other people or are you quiet? Do you think a lot or do you just like to go do? Are you kind to others? Are you forceful? Are you logical, do you like to think things through? Are you emotional? Are you creative? Are you friendly?

During your third two-minutes ask yourself this question, “What am I supposed to be doing with my life?”

Just as with the first two questions, you may not know the answer to this one. That’s okay, as the saying goes, it’s more important to ask the right questions than to have all the answers. The right questions lead you to right answers.

What ARE you supposed to be doing? Notice how the questions “Who is God?” and “Who am I?” lead you to this one?

Have you always felt that you were meant to do something, but just couldn’t put your finger on what that something was? Maybe you thought at some point that you would do something important. Maybe someone in your past told you that. Maybe you just want to do something important, or would like to. Maybe you have dreamed of doing something. If God is a big God and you are His child and He has a plan for you, then any big dream could be a God-given dream, in which case He not only wants you to do it but He has prepared you for it.

Asking yourself this question for two minutes every day gives you the opportunity to listen to what God has been trying to tell you your whole life. Here’s the plan, this is what I want you to do, see, I have prepared you to do this through your experiences and your abilities and your talents and your hardships and your lessons.

The last two-minutes are on this question, “What can I do about it today?”

So, since you have something to do, you aren’t an accident but you’re living and breathing today because your purpose continues today, what are you going to do about it? You can’t do everything today, but you can do something. What will that be? What could you do today? It’s probably a small step. It may not seem like much, maybe even a tiny step. But even a tiny step is more than no step at all. So, what you’re thinking about is what little thing can I do that will take me one step closer to what I’m supposed to be doing?