Monday, September 15, 2008 - THINK
Years ago my professional career began with IBM, and they had a motto then which was conspicuously displayed all around the offices. It was one simple word: Think. Just “Think.”
I remember wondering why they would choose such a motto for the company. Doesn’t everybody think? I thought. Now I understand the importance of that simple one-word motto, because often we just don’t think enough. For example, how frequently are we engaging our mouths, saying things without thinking? And that usually ends up causing all kinds of trouble.
Recently a friend told me that her teenage daughter and she had agreed to each wear a bracelet that says “Think”, as a way to remind them to think before they speak. Well, I got to thinking about that, and decided that was a good idea.
Psalm 141:3 says, Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.
I want to give you an acrostic of the word think, to help you determine whether you should say what you are starting to say or not. We start with:
T – True
Is it true? Do you know for certain that what you are just about to say is true? If not, don’t say it.
If we think before we speak and determine that we’re not sure what we’re about to say is true, this will eliminate most gossip. Gossip is usually something we’ve heard but don’t really know for sure, but we freely pass it on. After all, it’s juicy and we just want to tell somebody that juicy tidbit. But if we start to think before we speak, and ask ourselves, “Is this true?”, we’ll go a long way to eliminating gossipy talk–and that’s a very good thing.
Also, it will keep us from imagining bad things that could happen, like “They’ll probably lay off a lot of us,” or “I think he is going to divorce her.” You don’t know those imagined bad things to be true, so don’t say them to yourself or anyone else.
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