Week four of my new DC Life. Four weeks without a paycheck; you know how a new job pay cycle is, one pay in the hole…OUCH! But, everything’s just fine. God is so good!

With prayer, good friends and a loving heavenly father who always provides, I realize that to a truly contented and enlightened soul everything in the world, which means the way the world is right now, is just fine. To the unenlightened and discontented soul this will sound like a massive avoidance. But think about it. Does the masterful actor go to the theater for their evening performance, and on entering the stage start shifting the backdrop, altering the scenery and moving the props around? Of course not, they are totally concentrated on the role they need to create and play to the best of their ability. And so it is with the world. The backdrop to our life is the way things are at this moment in time. The props are exactly where they are meant to be at this moment in time.

I must confess, I spent a lot of my life trying to change the backdrop and move the props around, little realizing the futility of the exercise. Yes we may succeed in altering an angle here, a minute part of the picture there. But all at the cost of the focus and the energy needed to put on our best performance. Little do we realize that if we fully focus on our performance and achieve our own highest standards of excellence, not only would those around us be immensely enriched, but the backdrop and the props of our life will change automatically, as the invitations roll in to perform our life elsewhere.

Excellence is a much more powerful influence in the world than discontent. So everything is fine out here for me in DC. No one said it’s perfect. But it is exactly the way it should be …at this moment. So here is the paradox of effective change – if you want to influence change for the better, then the most effective way to begin is with contentment with the way things are. The way things are, are the way things are meant to be!

So LiFeTrain passengers…Merry Monday!

All Aboard…The LiFeTrain!