“Maintaining Momentum”
What happened? What is blocking your drive? Your passion? Perhaps something is blocking your momentum. Momentum is defined simply as the measurement of something in motion. It is what’s needed in order to progress and go forward, whether personally or corporately. Momentum can also be defined as the quantity of motion of a moving body measured as a product of its mass and velocity. Let’s focus on the word velocity. It is the speed of something in a given direction. Vision points toward the direction in which something (organization, life, etc.) should be moving, and goals should be set along the way, right? What happens when movement toward the vision and the meeting of these goals is decreased? Momentum is lost because of what I like to call “momentum blockers.” Unnecessary busyness and the neglect of vision and purpose are perhaps some of the biggest momentum blockers.
We often get caught up in life’s traffic as we go about our days, and sometimes that’s beyond our control. However, we also get caught up in the excitement of planning things because we have so many wonderful ideas that we want to carry out, or we have events that we just want to be a part of. Before we know it, we’ve got too much on our plates. Then, we experience burnout and a loss of passion all because of this unnecessary busyness. Our hearts were in the right place, but we got caught in the excitement and in the moment. Doing, doing, and more doing can cause us to lose sight of the original intent and become like Martha (doing, planning, events here, events there) instead of being like Mary (the needful things, like prayer, training, etc.). Now this is the point where priorities get all out of whack, so the needful things are often what we choose to neglect (Luke 10:38-42). At this point, whether we know it or not, things have started to slow down. The drive and the passion for what’s supposed to be carried out is no longer there. Wemust weigh our plans, ideas, and desires so that we can also be consistent in moving forward.
Unnecessary busyness leads to the neglect of vision and purpose, which is a tremendous momentum blocker. We must maintain the drive to keep an organization or anything else that we are a part of growing and expanding. It could be family, relationships, or job skills. When momentum is lost, moving toward purpose and goals is decelerated because we have lost sight of what’s really important. Somewhere along the way, we may forget our “why.” If the approach that we are currently taking seems stale and stagnant, then it’s time to reassess what we are doing. Are things prioritized into the right categories? Do we still need to do that? What needs to be shifted? Let’s go back to the drawing board so that we can regain the vision and progress forward toward meeting those goals.
When we are too busy we neglect vision. We often blame it on the sake of “doing the Lord’s work” when in actuality, we are doing our own thing and God never told us to do that. We forget about the original intention for doing what we do, and these things slow down our momentum. If we are doing the needful things and momentum is still lost, then it’s time to reassess to see what’s needed and what’s not needed. Let’s be Mary instead of Martha.