By Brian Altman, Vice President of Leadership Development
In April’s message from our visionary Co-Founders, you heard Ray and Kevin’s words ring with a sweet harmony of increased momentum happening in our great Company. A contagious excitement resides within FreeLife’s hard-working Leaders as “the big mo” is catching up to the efforts and discipline of Leaders working the fundamentals of our business over sustained periods of time. To say it another way, the tremendous gains we’re experiencing as a Company are all “consequential.”
As Leaders, it’s important we understand how consequence impacts our business momentum and our lives. Are you familiar with Aesop’s famous tale about the ant and the grasshopper? This famous story is about a consequence principle called “sowing and reaping.” It goes like this:
There’s an ant who works hard every day whether rain or shine to build his house and store up his supply pipeline for the cold, hard winter months that eventually arrive. The ant has a buddy who’s a grasshopper. The grasshopper thinks his ant buddy is foolish to work each day. So he goofs off, plays, and doesn’t build a house or fill his pipeline for the coming winter. Seasons are hard to predict and winter comes early that year. The ant and his clan are safe, warm, and they have a full pipeline. But the grasshopper didn’t expect winter to show so soon. Consequently, he’s left outside in the cold all by himself and eventually freezes solid.
We’re never too mature to hear this story and we’re never too old to pass it on. There are actually two lessons to this story:
1. The ant took responsibility.
2. The ant understood a principle of consequence called “sowing and reaping.”
The principle of “sowing and reaping” says the decisions we make today will impact our lives tomorrow. The impact will be either positive (experienced by the ant) or negative (experienced by the grasshopper). The principle of sowing and reaping is a universal law. It’s not unlike gravity. Just because we can’t see or touch gravity, we still have to respect it. If we fail to respect it and decide to test it, our failure to believe would produce significant impact in our life, especially if we decided to test it without a parachute.
So, here’s stating the apparent: “Whether we realize it or not, we’re sowing and reaping every day as it relates to our life, leadership, and FreeLife Business.” In the New Testament, Paul wrote: “do not be deceived. . . for whatsoever a man sows, so shall he also reap.”
As Leaders in FreeLife, the principle of sowing and reaping transforms the way we live and how we build our Businesses. It has to because just as in life, we’ll face opportunities in our FreeLife Businesses that usually manifest themselves as a result of not comprehending this law of consequence. As Leaders, when we fail to comprehend, there are consequences for our behavior (or lack thereof); our Businesses tend to run amuck.
Here are three takeaways relating to the principle of sowing and reaping:
1. We need to be sowing all the time. Our time is best spent sowing new Customers, Marketing Executives (MEs), and Star Directors into our Business. This is especially true when momentum is high.
2. We determine the harvest we have. If we plant (sow) optimism and hope for a better future throughout our Teams, we’ll reap optimistic and hopeful MEs. If we enroll people with Quick Start Packs and Pro Packs, more of our Team will enroll with Quick Start and Pro Packs in their Business.
3. We have control over our future. Like life, our FreeLife Business doesn’t just randomly happen. We have the right to make responsible decisions each day that make lasting impact on the future we desire to experience.
There is a new wave of momentum in FreeLife today. As Leaders, we have direct control over the speeding up or slowing down of this momentum. We must assume responsibility for the momentum and elect to speed it up even more. We need to teach the law of consequence to our Leaders and back it up by acting like the ant and apply the principle of sowing and reaping into our Business every day. Because when winter comes, as every season does, there will be consequences to acting like a grasshopper. Today, we choose to have an awesome April!
