The basics of life are simple. Or are they? Maybe they were simple. But now they have been made complicated. So if they have become complicated, then are the basics still basic? What are the basics of life?
John Wooden Thrived on the Basics
John Wooden, the greatest basketball coach ever, thrived on the basics of life and impact from consistency. See more on John Wooden – click here.
Wooden was known for coaching to the basics. More than half of his coaching behaviors were based on pure instruction such as what to do or how to do it and how not to do it.
Shooting, dribbling, passing, footwork, rebounding, and defending are key basics of basketball. Wooden would instruct in two ways on these and any other basics – how to do it, and how NOT to do it. Every year, no matter what was accomplished the year before, each new year started with the basics.
Oh, another interesting thing that Wooden didn’t do. He didn’t talk about winning. He believed success and winning would follow when working on the basics consistently.
The Secret to the Basics
I want to know the basics, don’t you? I need it spelled out short and simple for me to follow. So I started researching it. Here are the basics of living – food, water, and air. Okay, that’s pretty basic. But then I found more.
There are basics to any sports and basics to any work or business. Those basics depend on the job, the business market and industry, the organization, the people, the person, and so much more. So I found there are no basics of the basics. It’s all relative.
Kung Fu Panda’s Dad Knows
But what did I find about life in general? I think if I had kept researching it I could have found as many different answers in as many articles that came up in my searches.
So here it is, are you ready? Watch this short Kung Fu Panda movie clip first about the Secret Ingredient to the Basics of Life:
The bottom line is there is no silver bullet, secret sauce, magic pill, easy fix, shortcuts, or otherwise.
Let’s see if we can build a foundation to work from here. I like what Luke said about Jesus. First, it’s great to have the basics modeled for us. As I understand, Wooden was great at doing this. So a great model for us would be Jesus himself.
Jesus Set the Example
Luke 2:52 AMP
And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and men.
My translation of this, it’s a journey. “Keep increasing” mentally, physically, spiritually and socially. These things are the basics.
Wisdom
The first one is wisdom. We must keep increasing in knowledge and experience. It is key to learn and keep learning. Growing mentally is a basic necessity.
Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom
Stature
The next one is stature. We must keep increasing in taking care of our bodies. This includes the basics of eating right and exercising. Taking care of our earth suits while we are here on this earth. See more about earth suits at Welcome to the Costume Party.
Do Not Cut Your Life Short
Favor with God
And next, favor with God. Well, the favor with God starts when we say Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, and that we will be saved. We now have favor with God. You can read more on this from the post, Favor.
Romans 10:9-10 NIV
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
And now with that favor, we keep increasing our relationship with Him in our everyday life as we walk step by step with Him.
…our relationship with Him in our everyday life.
Favor with Men
And fourth, we keep increasing our favor with men (mankind, people). Odd for this to be added because I’m an introvert. God knows this! But He also knows we all need each other. He designed us as a family, as a body to work together.
So God wants us to increase socially as well. I know several folks who have very low emotional intelligence (they don’t connect with people well). The nice thing is that we can all grow our intelligence emotionally. We can learn to connect socially. So growing our EQ (Emotional Quotient) is possible. That’s good news.
We need each other.
The Christian Basics
When I think of the basics of being a Christian I think about these things…
- Spending time (praying/talking) with God (growing in favor with God)
- Reading the Bible and applying God’s word (Growing in Wisdom)
- Going to Church (Growing in favor with man/people)
- Being able to do what we need to do. Taking care of our body/earth suit (growing in stature to accomplish our purpose in life)
These things are the very basics of our life as Christians. Listen to 4Him with their song, The Basics of Life…
Challenge of the Week
I want to leave you with an actual assignment as the challenge. It’s called the Life Wheel. You may have even used it before. But what the life wheel does is help you to focus on having a well-rounded (shape of a wheel) life by thinking through and scoring yourself on the basics. There are various versions of this. Try this one to start – Wheel of Life. Some are more detailed than others. Reply below if you would like a document of my version. Root your basics on the foundation of God’s word. Use Jesus as an example. Can’t go wrong there. So be it.
