Author: Andy Stanley
Publisher: Multnomah – 143 pages
Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram
Taking care of family needs (not just material ones) while living in today’s busy and complex world can and does put time pressure on working people. This book by Andy Stanley, a pastor, can help you set priorities in your life and help you reduce tensions, whichever aspect of your life they are in.
As many of us know there are four types of tasks we all have: the important and urgent tasks; the important but not urgent ones; the unimportant but nonetheless urgent tasks; and the unimportant and not urgent tasks. You choose what category your task belongs to and take the appropriate action on it.
The author offers this book as a way to help you transform your life from “time-crunching craziness to life-changing success.” He helps to look at your world and help you reorder it.
Andy Stanley is senior pastor of the campuses of North Point Ministries, including three churches in Georgia, where more than 20,000 people attend services: North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Buckhead Church in Atlanta, and the Browns Bridge Community Church in Cumming. He is the author of these other books: Visioneering, The Next Generation Leader, The Principle of the Path, It Came from Within! and How Good is Good Enough?
In this small book of less than 150 pages organized into just two parts and 10 chapters, Andy Stantey offers you a simple plan to take a look at your current situation and determine that if you are on a collision course with major conflict at the end of that path, you need to slow down or change your course.
In the Introduction Stanley states flatly: “Everybody Cheats,” which is also its title. What he refers to basically is cheating with by allocating too much of your attention and time on some matters while giving too little or no time and attention to other matters, thereby leading you on a “collision course” to an unpleasant event that you will regret.
In Part One entitled “Inside the Cheated Heart,” he takes you through your attention and activity path and makes you decide if and when your world needs “reordering,” if you’re on a collision course with an undesirable occurrence, how to deal with “failing rocks” and how to “pick up the pieces” of your life.
Then he points out towards he end of Part One out that usually, any problem a person has is due mainly to his or her own doing and should not be blamed on others. Life is in effect a double-edged sword. If you blame others for your problems, you’re in effect blaming yourself too, because the opportunity to change yourself and-or your situation is always available. You just need to take action.
Part Two, “Your Strategy for Change,” relates to you a tale of two kings, helps you make up your mind on what to do about your particular situation, create a plan for change, set up a test, and “trade places” if you’re spending too much time at work or in your business and not enough time at home with your family.
He cites the story of a person who was required by his boss to work six days a week in return for a share of the profits when the company was sold. But that person quit his job and started the same type business he was working in, in another part of the country. He prospered. He believed in spending an adequate amount of time in both of the main areas of his life: at work and with family. He achieved work-life balance and found happiness.
This is a wonderful, easy-to-read book with many examples of people who overcame their conflicts between work and family responsibilities. Pastor Andy Stanley has conveyed well the idea that we must achieve balance between our work and our family. But more importantly, he provides us the necessary tools to make that a reality.
When you read about the lives of many successful men and women, you find they not only have attained abundance, bountiful material benefits, and personal satisfaction in their achievements, but that they also have successful marriages, closely-knit families, frequent communication among all family members and in short a balanced, happy life.
