A lot of businesses use auto-renewals on their payments now. When you sign up, you are set to keep going, until you make an effort to stop the payment, and it usually requires at least a 30 day notice. You sign up for personal vision insurance and it renews the next year. You sign up for Sirius satellite radio and it just keeps charging you. Many businesses do this because it’s easy for them to create consistent cash-flow and many of us forget that we had auto-renew or don’t know how to get out of it.
Why don’t they ask clearly, if we actually want to auto-renew?
How can I use auto-renew in my own life?
I could charge my children a fridge fee. Every time they open the fridge, I get $1...make that $10...
I could charge my Junior high boys Sunday school class each time they talk. I would be rich!
Here are some better ways, I think…
Why don’t we auto-renew forgiveness? Why don’t we just plan to forgive immediately after someone hurts us, or fails us, or harms us in anyway? Wouldn't that be cool? We would no longer be upset, or have any bitterness in life. Can you imagine how much better our lives would be?
Why don’t we auto-renew thankfulness? We could make it our plan to thank everyone for what they do in our lives. We could thank the employee at aWl-mart. We could thank the church member who came faithfully. We could thank the ushers who encourage visitors at church. We could thank our neighbor for keeping heir place looking nice. We could thank the postman for delivering the mail. What a difference we could make in peoples lives, just by being thankful.
Why don’t we auto-renew helpfulness? We could set our lives in motion to be helpers whenever we possibly could be. It seems, to me, that lots of people need some help. We could help the elderly neighbor with some yard-work. We could help a Sunday school teacher with a lesson. We could help a friend when they are hurting financially. We could help the stranger when we see a need. Wouldn't it be amazing if we all pitched in and helped, just for the sake of helping?
I think I started off looking at auto-renewals the wrong way in this post, but it could be a good thing if we put it to proper use, like charging my children - I like that…
Lessons Learned: We can impact others, but we have to make a choice, in advance.
Thoughts: What other areas can we apply auto-renewal?
I need to auto renew being aware of visitors at church, having meaningful conversations, encouraging my adult children in their role as parents, keeping in touch with old friends.
ReplyDeleteStan - what an excellent application of auto-renewal - thanks for consistently reading...
ReplyDelete