In this enlightening episode, Angie Austin is joined by Jim Stovall to delve into the themes of procrastination and urgency. Jim shares personal anecdotes about creating timeless works like ‘The Ultimate Gift’ and reminds listeners of the importance of acting at the right moment. Through the lens of farming, Jim illustrates how delaying essential tasks can escalate situations to a state of urgency, reinforcing the adage ‘be quick, but don’t hurry.’ Together, they explore how doing the right thing at the right time can lead to meaningful achievements.
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hey there, friend. Angie Austin and Jim Stovall talking about his Winner’s Wisdom column. And this week it’s procrastination and urgency. And I’m a little bit in that first column of procrastination. But Jim, I first wanted to congratulate you because I got an email from you last week that says that your book, The Ultimate Gift, which was written some time ago, is still on the charts among the best-selling Christian fiction. And you were kind of thanking friends and readers around the world.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s pretty cool. Yeah, I originally wrote that book in 1999. Wow. And then the current edition was released, I think, in 07, and it just stays there. And, I mean, when I look at things like The Shack and C.S. Lewis, and, I mean, you know, he’s one of my true heroes. I mean, when I’m ahead of him, you’re having a good day. So I am very grateful, and… And it allows me to serve more people and do what we do. So that makes me happy.
SPEAKER 05 :
And in that book, pardon me, that book then was made into a movie. And that’s been your most popular movie, hasn’t it, out of the nine networks?
SPEAKER 03 :
It has. It has. It has. And that was the guy from the Rockford Files? The book, yeah. Yes, yes, James Garner.
SPEAKER 05 :
James Garner. I loved him. He was really – was he as funny in person? He seemed like he’d be funny.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, he was and – But I will never forget being with him. We came down to… And for those who have seen the movie or go watch it on Netflix or something, there’s a scene at the very end of the movie, and it’s three or four minutes long, where he says goodbye to his grandson. And he is giving a farewell message to him via video. He’s already passed away. And Garner… You know, he said, could I talk to everybody? And the director said, sure. Well, that’s about 75 people, camera people and boom mics and technical people. And everybody gathers around. He said, guys, I’ve been making movies for a little over 55 years. This is going to be my last one right here. And this is my last scene. And I’d like to do it straight through. No cuts, no nothing. Just let’s do it. One shot, one take straight through. Start to finish. and you know we i’m sitting there and i i don’t know i mean i maybe you do it that way so the guy says action and he does it straight through just like you see it in the movie and when he was done um everybody was afraid to talk everybody was afraid to move and so he he leans over says jim what do you think i said i think that’s a cut that’s a take and uh You’re my hero, man. You did it. And I never seen anything quite like that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, that’s really cool.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I just, you know, it’s better if you can do it that way. It’s just who can do that?
SPEAKER 05 :
Right, right. Of course. Right. Especially, you know, I mean, and then you might have like a big ego actor that wants like their perfect take, too. So they kind of run the show if they want to redo things or whatever.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, he was great. So, no. Many, many, many blessings with the ultimate gift, and it continues to do its thing.
SPEAKER 05 :
Love that. And so that’s the book of the best-selling Christian fiction, like, of all time, right? Like, not recent, not the top 25 or whatever. It’s of all time. That’s pretty cool.
SPEAKER 03 :
It just keeps going, yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Keeps on going. All right. Well, today we’re talking Winner’s Wisdom, and you turned these columns into books as well. And this week we’re talking about procrastination and urgency. So let’s talk about that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, you know, it’s important to know what to do, why to do it, where to do it. But the most important thing often is when to do it. And so many great lessons come from… our farming community, because we can all see what happens. You know, there’s a time you plow and you plant and you fertilize and you harvest and you do all these things. And, you know, but you’ve got to do the right thing at the right time. You can’t just go out there in the spring and say, you know, I think I’ll just harvest first this year or whatever. You have to do things at the right time. And so often, either in our professional or personal lives, We know what to do. We just procrastinate to the point where now we’re dealing in urgency. Now we’ve got to go do this. These columns I write every week. I don’t actually write them every week. I’m about seven or eight weeks ahead. And then occasionally something will happen in the news or it’s timely, and I’ll think, okay, yeah, I want to talk about that, and we’ll squeeze it in for the next week. But for the most part, I don’t think the creativity process – is enhanced by pressure and deadlines. I just don’t think it works that way. You know, give me a masterpiece by noon today. I just, you know, I don’t think that works well. And, you know, there’s a thing about being efficient. There’s a thing about being, acting quickly. My late great mentor and friend, Coach Wooden, often told his players, be quick, but don’t hurry. And I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this. You’ve certainly done more than your share of voiceovers, but when we first started Narrative Television, I had to do these little spots that went to hundreds and hundreds of our TV stations, and then you have to tag them. Right here in Phoenix, Arizona, Channel 17 in Columbus, Ohio, and you just say these one after the other after the other after the other. Well, I was having trouble getting some of these into the time slot we’d left, you know, it’s 30 seconds and I can’t quite get it in there. And I’ll never forget the director, Barbara Henry, who really knew her business. She came over and said, Jim, take a deep breath, take your time and do it faster. And I said, that doesn’t even make sense. She said, just relax and do it a little faster. And wow, it actually works. You know, it’s, Getting more frantic and hurrying doesn’t work. Just relax and be quick. And it works fine. And it just, you know, there’s something about that. But, you know, we live in a world today where we’ve got so many devices and you can schedule anything on your calendar and it’ll remind you. And there’s just no reason not to take advantage of it. This time of year, I see so many people, they start doing their taxes and then they realize, Wow, I left a lot of money on the table. I could have put into my 401k, or I could have given money away in December, and I didn’t. And, you know, I have to tell you, I came close to that one year. Didn’t make a mistake, but it would have been my fault. And now I have, I mean, my meeting is already scheduled with my investment people and my accounting people. for the second week of December. It’s scheduled, right? Wow. You know, I want to know where there’s an opportunity before the opportunity’s gone. I mean, it just doesn’t do any good. You know, all it does later after the first years, it just makes you feel bad, and there’s just no reason for it. And then the other thing is once you get it scheduled, you can forget about it. You don’t have to worry about it. And for those who are not technical like me, I run a number of businesses and a program at a university and keep up with all of my personal correspondence and all those things out of a calendar that Beth writes in ink on paper. And we reduce every day to one page in a legal-sized yellow pad that this is what Jim is doing today. And so, you know, you can still do it. You know, the old-fashioned way. You could still do that. Works just fine. It’s just a matter of prioritizing the things that matter and prioritize them before, you know, you miss the opportunity.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, I already, we’ve already done our taxes for the year and we brought our son in to do his too because he’s, you know, got his business and he files his business taxes, etc. So, yeah, we got all of that done. And, yeah. It, it just feels so good. Cause I’m normally not a person that gets ahead of things, but that’s just something I feel like, like, like you said, with the farmers, it’s like, we know we have to do it. And so let’s just get this, you know, done because there’s no getting around it. And I never thought of it in the, farmer connotation that if they do procrastinate, they’re just out of luck, as they say, as my mom would say it with a different word in front, blank out of luck. And if they don’t meet those deadlines, just forget about it. They can never catch up. If you don’t plant on time, you can never catch up.
SPEAKER 03 :
And I was talking to a guy the other day, an otherwise intelligent guy, And he said, wow, it slipped up on me. I didn’t realize tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Well, it’s kind of there every year, you know. And, you know, I hope I got something nice for Crystal. But at least, I mean, you don’t have to go and say, you know, I completely didn’t think about you. You know, I mean, I forgot it. You know, come on. Come on, guys. We can beat that. And, you know, these things that happen every year or, you know, when people’s, you know, anniversaries or birthdays or those things matter to people and it’s just easy to do. And then, you know, the students at the university, I always tell them, wow, if you wait till the last minute, you are going to get burned. You’re going to wish you hadn’t. Because things pile up on you and stuff happens, as your mother said.
SPEAKER 05 :
And I think that, you know, with like my son, he gets to start working, got clearance to start working again after his surgery and his accident like four months ago. So he got the clearance and I said, you know, this weekend you might want to get ahead on schoolwork because you’ve been not working enough. And all of a sudden, you’re going to be working 25 hours a week and going to school and running your business. So it’s going to be a whole new world for you. And lately, Jim, I’ve been reminding the kids because they kind of act like, oh, what I did was a long time ago. And, you know, like I don’t understand how hard it is for them. And the girls aren’t working during the school year. They lifeguard in the summer. They have sports, though. I didn’t have sports. So, yeah, I’ve been at 10 o’clock at night. I’ve been messaging them saying, hey, this is when I’d be getting home from my job because I work seven days a week through high school and college. And this is when I’d be getting home. I got off at 10. So I get home about 10, 15, 10, 20. And this is when I’d start my homework, like as they’re going to bed, because they’ve been kind of like poo pooing the other day, like pooing. I had six things to do and then I came home and took a nap and one of the kids said one of the other kids called me lazy. So I wrote in the family text, I said, you know, I don’t know anybody else in the family that worked seven days a week until they were 35 and graduated with honors from both high school and college. And so then I started sending this text at 10 o’clock at night, just a reminder. This is when mom would get home from work, like to like drill it into their heads. Like, are you kidding me? Do you know what I went through to get you where you are? That I was in low income housing and you’re living in like a very, in a very affluent neighborhood driving, you know, a Lexus. My daughter drives a Lexus. My son drives a Lexus. My husband drives a Tesla. Are you kidding me? Like we drove an old Buick. that we didn’t even have enough money sometimes in the bank to get it fixed our phone got disconnected all the time you know when our rent was like a couple hundred dollars because they took 30 of what my mom made at the factory she went through 10th grade like they don’t get it at all and so anyway i just have been re-reminding them over and over about that that how how how good they have it but I think my son really does get it. He’s a really hard worker, and he did not have good grades early in high school, but he’s really caught on that, like, wait, you don’t have to be a genius to get straight A’s. You just have to work hard.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and, you know, in fairness to them and everybody, what we grow up with becomes normal to us. And I’m doing a little work with an organization that works with people in prison. And people that have been in prison for decades, they get out. Their comfort zone is actually in prison. It takes a while to get used to the stuff out here. It is amazing that we can normalize almost anything. What we grew up with seems normal. If it’s affluence, if it’s poverty, if it’s strife, if it’s success, it doesn’t matter. that becomes normal to us.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, that’s true. That’s true, because I never really thought I had it that hard. Well, I guess I did in high school, but prior to that, I was just like, you know, I was used to being poor, which is what it is. JimStoval.com, always a fun conversation with you, my friend. Thank you. You’re the best.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 06 :
Cheyenne, Wyoming is tuned to the mighty 670 KLT Denver.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hello there, friend. It is Angie Austin and Grace Fox with the good news. And today we’re talking about God’s consolations. Hey, Grace. Hi, good to hear you again. Well, good to hear you. Last week, we talked about your new book and your travels and your new Bible study video series. So we didn’t even get to our fresh hope for today devotion, which was God’s consolation. So let’s do it today. Tell us about this one.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay, so I wrote this one based on an incident that I had while traveling in Poland. So my husband and I were going from point A to point B. At point B, a really good friend was going to pick us up and take us to his home for a couple of days. But that bus ride in between, it was like, oh, like a long six-hour ride. So we were only halfway there. It was a hot day. There was no AC on the bus, and the windows, Some people just had them shut and some people had them opened. But even if they were open, they only opened a crack. And I mean, like maybe two inches was about it. So it was hot. I remember sitting there in the first seat by the stairs, you know, where people come up the stairs into a bus. We were right there on that side by the stairs. And I leaned forward and put my arms on that rail and put my forehead down because I thought, I don’t know that I’m going to survive this ride. And we didn’t take water with us because buses there usually stop. And you can just step off and go into a little shop there and pick up a bottle of water. So we just, you know, didn’t take it. But the bus didn’t stop. So in six hours, it was like a couple of times. And mostly just to let people know. get off the bus and have a cigarette if they wanted that. And so, oh, I just remember thinking, God, I don’t know that I can do this. I just don’t know that I can do this. And the only thing that got me out of that frame of mind of thinking I was, you know, can’t do this anymore was that he brought a favorite worship song to mind. And as I, I just really had to intentionally focus on that song and on the words. And that was what got me out of thinking, I can’t do this anymore. So it was a change in my thinking. And that is what helped get me through. It was a very difficult ride. But boy, how often we need to do that, don’t we? Because we can get into that mental space where we think, I can’t do this anymore. And we just have to turn it around and worship in the midst of it. And that changes our outlook.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, I’ve never been like that hot and without water. And I have to be honest with you, I’m like so paranoid about even being on a plane and being thirsty that I usually have like, if it’s not one of those big water bottles, right, then I’ll do like the cheap plastic one, right, that, you know, you’ve emptied. And it’s just like the one you buy at the store, the sheet plastic bottles. And then I’ll refill that before I get in the plane. And I have to tell you, no one else in my family does it. So every single time that I do it, and sometimes I’ll bring two because I’m like, well, everybody else is going to forget, right? So if we’re traveling with my mom, it’s six of us. And they all are like… Oh, we’re so thirsty. Can we drink your water? So then I usually end up without water anyway. Right. And I think, as you know, that’s the role of a mom and you’re a grandma, like you’re always bringing like the sunscreen, the water, the snack, the Advil, like, you know, you’ve got the, you’re the one, the supplier of all those things. But, uh, I always bring that cheap little water bottle. And when I, I don’t, I so regret it because even in a plane, which is completely comfortable temperature wise, sometimes you get a little parched, but I can’t imagine six hours sweating so much that my clothes are wet it’s dripping off my face and you know you’re leaning over on the bar in front of you and they’re only stopping on the roadside for people to stretch their legs and have a cigarette they’re not stopping anywhere with water like were other people dying too
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, well, the Polish people, I guess, knew better than we did. And so if they’d ridden that route before, they knew where the bus was and was not going to stop. So they came with water, and they didn’t look stressed at all like we did. I’m sure that my face was beet red. When we showed up at the destination place, our friend met us right there. We got off the bus, and he took one look at me and went, oh, grace. And it must have just been written all over my expression that I was just done, you know, just done. But, yeah, so they knew better. They had their water and just didn’t look like they were stressed over it at all. So here we were, the foreigners, in this situation, and I guess it showed.
SPEAKER 05 :
So the consolation is this song.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, a worship song that came to my mind, and it was just a matter of… prompting me to count my blessings. And that just changes everything. When we are in that place of, again, like I said, I can’t do this anymore, that type of mentality, counting our blessings changes everything. And if it’s just simple, like, God, thank you for the blessing of oxygen. We’ll call it oxygen because I’m still breathing oxygen. Thank you. I got out of bed this morning. I’m standing on two feet. Thank you. I’m able to walk. Thank you. And it might be things like that at first. Nothing super spiritual about them, but it’s just we’re looking for things that we can count blessings and there’s always something that we can come up with.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, I can’t think of many instances where I felt like I couldn’t make it through something. As I think I’ve told you, I worked seven days a week through high school and college and probably till I was about 35 because I do two jobs when I worked in Los Angeles and I drive back and forth between Santa Barbara on the weekends and then L.A. during the week. And then I did San Diego during the week and did L.A. on the weekends. And so I’d be driving back and forth or I’d have an overnight job on the NBC assignment desk. And then I did like a producing job for this psychiatrist who had a call-in show in Los Angeles. I’d, you know, work on that during the day. So I would just sleep for like an hour on this couch or like, I remember Friday nights I did, um, I got off at midnight on the assignment desk at NBC and then I had to do weather the next morning. So I could only, I only had like three hours. Well, it took an hour to get home and an hour to get back. Cause I lived in at the beach, and I worked in the valley. NBC was in Burbank at the time. So anyway, I would sleep on the Tonight Show couch. The Tonight Show was Johnny Carson and then Jay Leno after that, and they had, like, I could get the security guard to let me into one of the dressing rooms, which sounds real glamorous. It was not. They were mice and, you know, it was just cold and just in the basement of, you know, NBC and blech. But anyway, I would just go in there for like two and a half hours or so. And then I had to get up and do my makeup. So I really didn’t sleep much. But I remember those times feeling like maybe I couldn’t get through. But I guess the best example that I could compare yours to is sports. And I only did swimming because I worked all through high school. But when I was younger, I did swimming. And I remember that feeling when you’re in that race and you could see somebody next to you and you felt that burning, you know, and I would never give up academically. I always had to be the best, like in my class and have the highest grade. But when it came to sports, I’d be like, oh, my legs are burning. I don’t care if this person beats me, but my kids aren’t like that at all. They’ll tell me like they’re doing a race and some of the, have you ever heard of the IM, the medley where you do, um, um, back butter breast free. So you do all the strokes.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, I haven’t heard of that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 06 :
But you know what you’re talking about.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, the individual medley. So it’s really hard. And as you get older, you have to do a longer and longer race. So like, let’s say it’s a 50. So it’d be two links of butterfly, two links of backstroke, two links of free and two links of breaststroke. Well, the butterfly is grueling. Like even the two links of butterfly, like you’re dying right there, right? Like you can’t, you feel like you can’t go any further. And my kids have really learned to fight through like that burn. And my kids are strong Christians. And I know they rely on different scriptures. They love, of course, Philippians 4.13, that all things are possible through Christ who strengthens me. But I didn’t have that same drive to win at sports that I had to win at academics. It’s interesting to me because they definitely feel they have to win in sports and they don’t feel they have to win at academics. Although I have to admit, as they’ve gotten older, my son’s, you know, had straight A’s the last two years, but he really struggled in school the first few years. And I always wondered, like, why don’t they have that academic bug I have like that? They’ll just go through anything. I’d stay up all night if I had to get an A. I didn’t care. I’d just take no dose. And if I had to stay up all night long and go to school with no sleep whatsoever so I could get an A, I was like, well, I would do that. And my kids would never do that. We’re just wired differently. And I wanted a kid wired like me. But then again, I wasn’t as competitive as they are with sports. It’s interesting how God makes us different and then gives us different ways of coping with our pain or our struggles, as you mentioned.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s right. Yeah, he does. And so for some, some people might just be able to plow their way through it. And for me, I just found that I had to turn and refocus because I turned my brain a whole different direction and focus on something positive, focus on those blessings to get me through that time where I felt like I wasn’t walking in a blessing. I was walking in In something that was just too much for me.
SPEAKER 05 :
I think, you know, I just listened to this woman who was a Jew in a concentration camp and talked about how one thing she never lost was hope. Did we talk about this last week? I know I talked with someone about it. And she said that… She’s in over 100 now, and she said she never lost hope. And I’ve heard about people who could, in their mind, whether it be a prayer or concentrating on something, that they would concentrate on something else and put their mind in a completely different place. In order to not give up hope. And she said that her, I think it was her niece, kept wanting to die and destroy herself. Ella Blumenthal. That’s it. I’m going to send you the video. Ella Blumenthal. And she said she just didn’t ever give up hope because she, and she didn’t want her niece to give up hope. And she just said one more day. We’ll throw ourselves on the electric fence and kill ourselves tomorrow, but just one more day, okay? We just have to make it one more day. And I believe they were the only two that made it out. But I think the mind can be a very powerful thing. And if you can combine that with your faith, I think it can help you get through just about anything.
SPEAKER 06 :
I think you’re really bang on about that because our thoughts will, what we continually fix our thoughts on will actually shape our beliefs. And our beliefs, will influence our behaviors. And our behaviors will ultimately determine our destiny or our outcome. So the power of the mind, what we habitually fix our thoughts on, is absolutely critical to where we end up.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right, I’m going to see if I can play her for you, okay? Because I think she’s so moving. Okay, here we go. All right. I’m a little slow.
SPEAKER 04 :
People to remember. is that throughout my suffering and fight for survival, I never, never lost hope. When I was in Auschwitz, I had already lost my entire family and survived only with my niece, Roma. She begged me, to end our suffering by throwing ourselves onto the electrified fence because she said that the only way out of Auschwitz was through the chimney. I convinced her to wait one more day and then again to wait another day. because I wasn’t ready to die. I wanted to live. I am now 103 years old and I have lived my life always believing that tomorrow will be better than today and that I will never give up No matter what, my name is Ella Blumenthal. Remember this.
SPEAKER 05 :
I love her. And hope, that’s what she talked about at the beginning. She talked about hope. You always give me hope. GraceFox, GraceFox.com. Thank you, friend. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
