The follow through. One of the toughest lessons to learn and one that is sometimes tougher to teach is how to follow through on things.
So many times we’ll have a party or have an event and the invitations go out, the text messages follow the invitation saying please let us know if you’re coming or not.
But the phone calls come after that and all the effort leading up to the event is expended and then the event happens. And then it just ends.
The follow through is after an event and typically isn’t very much fun for a party or a church event it’s cleaning up and sending out thank you notes or thank you text messages and emails.
It’s the notes from a meeting with the date and time for the next meeting highlighted at the top and the bottom.
It’s the survey afterwards to find out what people thought, what could have been done better.
It’s funny because it’s not usually a hard thing, it’s just not always the most fun thing.
An example from my own life is I get a Christmas card every year from a guy named Yonathan. We bought a minivan from a dealership and he was the salesperson. We bought it used and it was a good deal for us. It replaced a full-size conversion van that we lost in an accident. But that was almost 20 years ago. And Yonathan’s follow-through was to put us on his list of people that get Christmas cards every year. If I remember right, he was Muslim, so it’s really kind of different. But I understand that his hope is when we think it’s time to buy a car, we’ll think of him and the relationship that he’s developed with his follow-through.
I’m not really a sports guy, but… I understand the follow through in sports. The ball moves by being forced through the air and let go at a certain point in a throw. If the person throwing or kicking the ball just stops right there at the point of impact, the ball will travel, but it won’t travel very far and usually won’t travel with a lot of accuracy because the effort stopped at the point of impact. If the person throwing or kicking the ball follows through and pushes that effort through the point of impact or release, the ball tends to fly further and go more to where the person was aiming. Lessons with children are much better with a follow through.
My wife and I raised four children. There were lots of challenges over the years. And if we threatened some sort of discipline or response, if certain things continued or if certain things weren’t done and we didn’t follow through with the thing that we threatened, the kids understood that we really didn’t mean it and they could just keep doing what we were doing.
That’s why my oldest son didn’t get to go to a couple of birthday parties. That’s why my third child watched as I crushed his mobile phone under the tire of my car. I had to follow through on a lot of different things.
And while the event and the moment are so very important and it’s important to show up for those things, it’s also important to do those invisible follow through things that nobody tends to think about but have such a huge impact.
Always follow through with what you said you would do or more. It helps make you unstoppable.
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