You remember the phrase, you are what you eat? I wonder who came up with that one? I remember being a child and would be told that phrase to encourage me to eat my vegetables. I grew up before the age of Veggie Tales but even if I didn’t, I didn’t think I ever wanted to grow up to be broccoli.

The heart of that maxim is meant to get across the idea that what goes into you affects what your body’s health. Another great maxim in that vein comes from Solomon, one of the great kings of ancient Israel. Solomon called in the Bible one of the wisest men to ever lived wrote thousands of maxims. One of my favorites, and I hope will become one of yours is “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” That is found in Proverbs 23:7.

The heart of that verse has a lot for us in our day to day lives especially our business relationships. I had a friend in college named Matt that lived out this verse well. Where most college graduates where thinking about their short term plans, Mat in his 20s was thinking about the last 30-40 years of his life. He had a goal and a destination. He was a missionary kid and when he made it back to the states for college he started the process of also getting his pilot’s license.

After the graduation ceremony was over, Matt looked at me and said, “you want to go flying?” I didn’t tell him but that sure beat my plans for going home to clean out my apartment. We took off about an hour after graduating and that was also the first time I ever flew a plane. Matt was clearly in charge of that little plane but when we got high enough up he looked at the gauges and said “it’s your turn.” It really is quite thrilling to fly.

Our altitude was high enough that if I made a mistake it wouldn’t be catastrophic. I didn’t really know my latitude and longitude to where I was going in relation to any other planes or for that matter the ground well below us but Matt with his headset on tied to the various control towers knew exactly all that pertinent information. Flying is incredibly fun especially when the real pilot knows where they are going. Matt’s plan was to join the Air Force. He wanted to work for them for 20-30 years and retire to begin his real career as a medical missionary pilot.

Matt’s heart was trained with a goal. He thought about his future and made a plan to get there. Matt was a pilot marrying his passions and his mind was set on getting him to his destination. How about you? What’s your mind set on? How is it effecting where you want go and who you are now?

Next time we will continue thinking out how our attitude affects all aspects of our lives.