A catalyst is one that sparks something. The catalyst speaks from experience and enables others to move forward more freely. These articles are written to act as a catalyst in your life.
This week’s word of the day is discipline. Now there are two ways to look at discipline. There’s a negative connotation that says if we step out of line we’ll be met with discipline or punishment. Then there’s the positive spin on the word that indicates hard work, persistence, and dedication.
I’m going to focus on the second one for now. The positive use of the word discipline isn’t always seen positively by some however. I really think a lack of discipline is causing some major issues in our culture today. From diet and exercise to school attendance and productivity at work to parenting to grades in school and even performance in sports – discipline is essential. Unfortunately, in many cases discipline is seemingly lacking.
If you look at some of the GOATs in life (greatest of all time) regardless of their field, you’ll notice that they pretty much have one thing in common. They were disciplined. They didn’t let a failure or misstep prevent them from continuing. They knew what needed done and they did it. Even when they didn’t feel like it.
Discipline is the ability to intentionally and carefully control the way you work, live or behave especially in an effort to achieve goals.
Being disciplined really isn’t hard. It just takes, well discipline. I know. You’re not supposed to use the word in its definition! But what other word should we use? It takes work. It takes dedication. It takes tenacity. It takes intentionality. It takes the ability to push through hardships to get the job done.
A lack of discipline is why many have already abandoned their New Year’s resolutions. Lack of discipline is a major reason people can’t stick with a diet. It’s why gyms are already less full than they were just a few short weeks ago. A lack of discipline is why we give up on things or bale when life gets hard.
What is an area of your life that needs a little discipline? What’s an area where you need to put in a little extra work?
To make it a tad easier pick an area where you are passionate. Find an area of your life that needs to change. Make sure you care about this area of your life. Make sure accomplishing it is something that will bring joy and excitement to your life. It will be hard to get yourself moving if you don’t really care about accomplishing this task.
Then when you make strides toward accomplishing it, find ways to reward yourself. If you’re not a naturally disciplined person, then you might need to bribe yourself to becoming disciplined. At this point, do what it takes to get yourself moving. Just take sure your reward is something that makes sense for your goal. So don’t reward yourself with chocolate cake when you’re on a diet goal.
Celebrate small wins. Keep focused on the end result. You’ll get there. Just keep going even if you have to force yourself for a while.
The phrase Robust Dialogue became an easy favorite of mine in 2020 and 2021. I liked this phrase so much because this was something we didn’t have the chance to engage in nearly as much as we should! Robust dialogue is that conversation style that allows two differing opinions to sit down and talk through something. The goal of robust dialogue is not to convince. It’s to leave with a greater respect for a differing point of view.
Unfortunately this isn’t really a staple in our culture. We can barely get people to sit and talk face to face anymore much less engage in anything resembling robust dialogue!
But why can’t we do it? Why have we abandoned this heavy and rich conversation style?
I really think it has everything to do with being offended. No, I don’t mean that we don’t want to give offense toward anyone. We don’t want to have hard conversations because we don’t want to be offended.
Look I get it. Being offended by someone hurts. When someone doesn’t see your point of view it can be hurtful if you think you have something to prove. But the point of robust dialogue isn’t about proving anything. It’s about explaining how you see life. It’s your personal view of a situation or scenario.
Through the years of 2020 and 2021 we weren’t really given a lot of opportunity to speak what we believed because it seemed as if everything was offensive to someone. I really believe that we created more trouble than really existed simply because we wanted to offend people and see how they reacted.
Robust dialogue can be a tremendous type of conversation! I’m not the kind of guy who is afraid of conflict, but I don’t seek it out either. I don’t always go around stirring the pot just to get people all angry. But if someone comes to me with a different view of life, you better believe I’m going to voice my thoughts.
In those challenging years during the pandemic, I got a visit from a friend almost weekly. We didn’t see things the same way on a lot of issues. Every time we got into a conversation, the topic of something we disagreed upon came up. In the end, we would shake hands, or do the whole awkward elbow bump for a while, and leave as friends.
Robust dialogue didn’t kill a friendship. It actually forged it into something a bit stronger. I have some amazing respect for people who have strong values and stick to them. I value people who believe in something enough they want to share it with everyone, but have courtesy enough to let other people have a differing mindset.
I’m not saying to go pick a fight, but have the courage in your opinion to be able to talk about it with people who disagree with you. Don’t do it to change their mind. Do it to strengthen the friendship you have. If you really are friends, you can handle seeing something differently. If you can’t handle a disagreement, then you probably weren’t as good of friends as you thought in the first place.
Now don’t read that as a just get over it kind of statement if you happen to be offended. Offense takes time to process. The point here is to be ok with seeing ideas from two differing sides. We need to be ok with having conversations, rooting for different teams, voting on different sides of the aisle, going to different churches (or not even going) and still being able to talk to one another.
Iron is hardened in fire. Robust dialogue can be the fire that forges relationships when it’s handled with care.
To be totally transparent, there’s really nothing new or earth shattering that can be said about leadership. It’s probably already been said by someone, somewhere. But I recently heard something on a podcast I was listening to that made me pause for a minute. Here was the definition of leadership they used.
Leadership is disappointing your own people at a rate they can absorb.
Wow I love that definition and I hate that definition at the same time. I don’t like it for obvious reasons. I don’t like to disappoint people. No one does really. I’m typically the bull in a china shop who is willing to try new things to accomplish new results. I don’t cling to the way we’ve always done it forever, especially if that way is no longer yielding results. But I still don’t like to disappoint people.
That said, I do love this definition because it describes the life of leadership so very well. The longer you’ve been in leadership the longer you’ll realize that some people will just flat be disappointed with you. More than that however, some people will take that disappointment one step further and sabotage the work you’re doing. I’ll unpack that later.
Why are people so easily disappointed? It really comes down to comfort. We don’t like things to change from the status quo so we experience friction when things start to change. Friction is uncomfortable and that is disappointing to us.
It disappoints us when someone sits in our chair in church. We get disappointed when the style changes from something we’re used to…to something we’re less familiar with. We are disappointed when the leader doesn’t take our suggestion exactly the way we proposed it. I could spend the rest of this post listing out ways people get disappointed but that would benefit no one!
Part of leadership is knowing the people you’re leading. That means you have to know the things that are important to them and the things that they could care less about. How well you know the people you’re leading will help you know who to disappoint and who not to disappoint as often. But if you’re a leader, then you’re going to disappoint everyone at some point.
Back to knowing your people. Not everyone you lead thinks, acts, believes or finds important the same things. Knowing what makes them tick will help you know who to bring into which team and at what stage in their life. Timing is key to minimizing disappointment.
Some of you might be scratching your heads still over the idea of sabotage. When disappointment persists there will be sabotage. Now I don’t mean that they’ll plant explosives in your car or intentionally derail the thing you’re doing and make you look like a fool publicly. Although with some people I wouldn’t rule out that second one! Sabotage often has a more subtle approach. And every leader has experienced sabotage at some point.
Often sabotage looks more like digging in heels to stop progress. Sabotage is when a person is more attracted to the status quo than the transformational change being implemented. Sabotage will sometimes look like bickering and fighting. It will look like division. Sometimes it even looks like abandoning the organization, the leader, or even a friendship for something better.
I’m not going to go airing dirty laundry here but I’ve experienced my fair share of sabotage moments. People who claim to be friends but when they don’t get what they want just bail on you. That sucks if I’m able to be blunt, and since this is my blog I can be blunt.
Part of leadership is being prepared to be sabotaged. Unfortunately we don’t prepare people to be treated like this. We tend to paint rosy pictures of beautiful landscapes where everyone gets along nicely. I don’t know what world those people are living in but it sure isn’t the world I live in!
Look I’m not saying that sabotage is evil perpetrated against you. It’s not some evil plot by bad people. Actually it’s simply the normal reaction of people who get overwhelmed by their own anxiety. Disappointment and sabotage happen. There’s nothing you’re going to do to stop either one of them. But you can change how you react to them. And that’s how leaders are formed.
Life can seem so unfair can’t it? I mean your best friend has a boyfriend when you can’t seem to even land a date. Your neighbor drives a new car every year and you can’t even afford to put gas in yours. Your coworker gets the promotion you’ve been working so hard to achieve. It just seems like everyone else gets what you’re after and it’s just not fair. You have illness after illness and people around you are always healthy.
When we compare ourselves to everyone else, or anyone else, life just seems unfair. But sometimes it’s hard not to compare. People love to post their instagram lives for the world to see. No one posts the bad stuff. Perfectly posed. Lighting is staged. Tummy sucked in. Standing on a box to look taller because everyone knows you’re short (ok maybe that would be me if I actually cared enough to post pictures of myself!) I mean does she always dress like that? Are his muscles always that defined or is the lighting just right in that pic? Comparison is a terrible enemy that can lead us to a place of brokenness and despair.
I want to introduce a different way of seeing things. It’s not easy and it’s something that I am working on myself. Instead of asking why can’t I have this thing or be like that person, try asking what if it’s just not my time? What if my time is yet to come?
The idea behind it’s not your time is that even though someone else gets the blessing or the good day that you have been praying for, working toward, and expecting for years, your time is coming.
Maybe it’s a job that you have applied for but didn’t get. Maybe it’s a significant other that you have been trying everything you can to find. And everyone around you seems to be married and you can’t even land a steady date. Maybe it’s having a little bit of extra cash to go out on the weekend with your friends and you can barely scrape two nickels together. Whatever it is maybe it’s not your time. Maybe your time is coming.
I know that doesn’t take away the sting of not having it. I know it doesn’t make today any easier, but when you realize that it’s not about your timing or your plans, it does make moving forward a little easier.
And lest anyone think I haven’t had my “it’s not your time” moments, please come talk to me sometime. I will gladly share with you the plethora of moments that things didn’t go the way I had planned and I wondered the same thing you’re asking right now.
So does life seem unfair? Yeah it sure does! I know that some days are going to be far worse than others. But when we shift our focus to a realization that my time is still coming, things tend to look different.
Here’s an exercise I do to keep me focused when life seems a tad unfair. Take a deep breath and look at your own life. Really look at it. Not looking at what you don’t have but what you do have. Make a list, even if only mentally, of the things you have in your life today that you didn’t 1, 3, or 5 years ago. They are examples of the it’s not my time principle in action. Three years ago it wasn’t your time to have those things but here you are enjoying them.
Again, I’m fully aware it’s not going to make a husband magically appear to your non-dating doorstep or a million dollars appear in your empty bank account, but it will shift your mind from scarcity to abundance.
It’s not your time, but imagine how great it will be when your time finally arrives! That will be a day to celebrate for sure!
Now admittedly the title of this post will likely mean some won’t even read it. Maybe you’re not a person with a church home and think there’s no way this will mean anything to you. Well if you’re still here, I’d like you to just keep going because while this is going to reference faith in God, there are some transferrable elements here to any belief structure.
There’s a book titled The Critical Journey where you can get more details on these stages. I’ll do my best to offer a very high level summary of my findings on these stages and how they apply to our lives today.
Submission
The book calls the first stage Recognition of God, but I want to go with a slightly different name. The idea is that in this stage you recognize you’re not in control of your life. There’s something or someone out there who’s guiding your life through. Some call it the universe which to me is a tad sci-fi. I call it God, and the way he does it is through the work of what the Bible calls the Holy Spirit.
In the first stage, we surrender or submit our lives to God. We acknowledge there are things we don’t know and things we can’t control. We recognize that God ultimately has our best interests at heart. We still live our lives. Not much externally will change here but inside there’s at least an acknowledgment that something is different.
Learning
The second stage is called Life of Discipleship and focuses on the growth of learning that takes place. As we have this recognition that God exists and is untimely for us, we then turn to learning more about who he is and how he functions. The Bible calls this discipleship, which is what the book uses as well.
The idea here is that the ways of God start to become more ingrained in who you are and how you live. The character is God is something you look for around you. Your learning is sinking in and shaping how you see the world around you. The transition to the next step then becomes easy the more you learn.
Achievement
The third stage of faith is when the submission and learning become doing. This is the Productive Life stage. There are things on the outside that start to change a little. We shift our time around to be in worship on Sundays. We set aside some of our household budget to give to the local church. We try to cuss less. You know all those things that happen when you’re not living your life just please yourself.
This stage is marked by outward expressions of our faith. We’re definitely not there yet as the saying goes, but we’re letting the learning start to chisel away the rough edges of our lives.
Reflection
There’s generally a time when we’ve done a lot of learning and started to become more active at church when we feel a need for something more. This is the Inward Journey stage.
Here we spend time meditating, praying, reflecting and wanting more than just surface level stuff. Sunday morning worship is great but we long for something more. We recognize that we need to take the Sunday morning event and move it into our relationships and darkest corners of our lives. There’s generally time spent in counseling to help dig deep into our inner lives to see what really makes us tick and how this whole faith thing will make a difference beyond an hour a week.
Journey
Sometime during the reflection stage and before we get to the Outward Journey stage we’re going to hit a wall. This is the place where the chaos of life hits us square between the eyes. It generally happens with a conflict or significant loss. The wall is found in an unexpected divorce, job loss, major conflict with friends. It happens when life is upside down and inside out. As we navigate the wall in front of us, the reflection stage will either loop us back to the beginning or propel us on a journey of outward expression of faith.
This fifth stage is all about living out in a very intentional way the elements of our faith that are critical. For Christians, this is changing the motivations of hearts to love. We often will continue to do what we’ve been doing, but now it’s for a different reason. Our motives become pure in light of the inner faith journey we’ve been through. We’re not perfected in love and we still struggle, but the fifth stage is really all about intentionally walking in the faith we claim.
Love
The sixth and final stage the book proposes is really living a life of love. That phrase is a bit sappy sounding but it’s not really all touchy feely, crying and hugging kind of love. The highest level of faith development is when the love for Christ and love for neighbor propel all of what we say and do.
Of course there will still be hiccups along the way. Of course we’ll falter and even fail in this process. The overarching idea however is that we have arrived at a place where the message of God’s love and mercy has been so internalized and applied to our relationships and struggles that it just oozes out of us everywhere we go.
Unfortunately, many people or perhaps even most people never make it past stage three. They get stuck in the achievements of faith section. They volunteer at church and show up for worship. They sing or perform or help on teams, but their level of faith is never really internalized or lived out in real time.
There will be some who make it to stage four but this and the wall associated with it normally serves as a strong roadblock to going further. Perhaps knowing the stages will be helpful in progressing through the cycle. Maybe if we know there can be more than just knowing God and his teachings then we’ll long to find a way to do that and it will shape how we live.
Wherever you are on the cycle, there’s always room to grow and mature. There’s always another step in the journey. Where are you?
Something a lot of people may not know about me is that I’m a huge fan of tradition. I grew up in a historic church that was steeped in tradition. There was so much tradition that they often got stuck in the we’ve never done it that way loop. But there is a tremendous importance to recognizing the accomplishments of the past, the foundations of our identity, the parts and pieces of our history that got us to where we are and that still hold us together.
When people look at how I lead and the things that happen as part of the church I serve, many think that I am anti-tradition. But there’s a false dichotomy that’s often drawn in many circles. It says if you’re willing to try new things, then you must hate the traditions that got us here.
I think this is an absolutely ludicrous way of thinking, but it seems to be where some people are in life. Do it differently and you’ve abandoned the past. New is the enemy of old. Innovation is the killer of tradition. I just don’t get that assumption. But then again it seems to be an assumption and we all know how the saying goes with regard to assumptions.
Innovation doesn’t have to be the enemy of tradition.
Before a change is made or a new thing is started, it’s important to take the time to evaluate what history is behind the current situation. I’m a pastor so a lot of my illustrations come from that world. Here’s one I see a lot.
I talk to a lot of pastors who ask how to reach their community. We talk about different strategies for impacting the neighborhoods around their church building. We talk about starting new ministries, planting new churches, and pivoting to find a creative or innovative way to connect with people not yet connected. But before we make plans on the new thing, we have to take time to celebrate the history.
The parts of our past that got us to where we are today are things we need to recognize and celebrate. We need to champion our history. It doesn’t matter if that history is 10 years or 175 years, it all matters. History is history.
I will often talk about the man who served as pastor before I arrived at the church I currently serve. If he had not been there before me and done the wonderful job he did, I couldn’t be where I am today. If your organization, or if your past, didn’t go through the things it went through, you wouldn’t be where you are either.
Tradition and Innovation don’t have to be enemies. They need to respect each other. They need to build off of each other. When we let our tradition shape our innovation and our innovation celebrate our traditions, we set ourselves up for a thriving future as an organization.
We can find wisdom just about anywhere, if all we do is look with open ears and eyes. One of the places we can find some of those wisdom nuggets is in the lyrics to songs. Maybe some of the new songs have that wisdom but I’m an old guy with a limited bandwidth for music, so I don’t spend my time listening to much that is of the modern generation.
Some of the most memorable music in my life happened when I was a kid. I think this is true for most of us actually. Through most of my middle school years, I spent countless weeks every summer riding shotgun as my grandpa drove across the country. Indiana one week. New York the next. Texarkana for the periodic extra long trips.
There were a few songs that we’d play over and over again. The theme song to Smokey and the Bandit was a sure favorite as we went east bound and down, loaded up and truckin’. I still play that from time to time on long road trips!
Another was the song The Gambler by a music icon, Kenny Rogers. Now some of you are likely saying something about that being a country song and you’re not a country music kind of guy. And you’re right. I don’t listen to a lot of country music. But this one is a classic and it has some real wisdom. Take the chorus as an example.
You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em. Know when to walk away, know when to run. You never count your money, when you’re sittin’ at the table. There’ll be time enough for countin’, when the dealin’s done.
Yep I sang those lyrics in my head as I typed them. And if you didn’t you need to listen to the song! In all seriousness there’s wisdom in these lyrics that compare life to a poker game. You’re dealt a hand. You need to figure out how you’re going to play it, because everyone has to play the hand they’re dealt.
Some days when you’re playin’ the hand you’re dealt, it’s easy. You throw your cards and toss your chips. Money flows like water. But other days you need to hold those cards close to your chest. You don’t let people see what you have. You don’t flash your hand to anyone because you just don’t know what they’re going to do with the information you share.
Still other days, those cards you’re dealt are just no fun and frankly destructive. So in those life moments, you need to know it’s ok to fold. Stack your cards in a pile facedown. Push your chair away from that table and excuse yourself from those sitting around it.
Then there are days when you don’t really even have time to collect yourself that much. You just toss the cards on the table. Grab your chips. And run. As fast as you can you get the heck out of dodge.
The moral of the story here is be aware of the cards in your hand. Know the players at the table in your little poker game we call life. It’s ok to hold those cards close for a season. It’s ok to fold and walk away. It’s even ok to let go of those cards completely and never look back.
I’m not sure what season you’re in and whether it’s a warm summer evening or a cold winter morning, but the game goes on. So learn to play your cards. One day as you sit alone on the sideline of life, then you can take time to count the payoff. But for now – hold ’em, fold ’em, walk away or run. However you do it, you have to play the cards you’ve been dealt.
A simple thought. An easy word really. But do we say it enough? Why is it so hard at times to say thanks?
Ok so it’s not that it’s hard to say, it’s that sometimes we forget to say it. At least that’s my biggest problem with today’s word. But did you know the more you say thanks, the harder it is to complain?
It’s a fact. You can’t be disgruntled about something and thankful at the same time. It’s like being blinded by light and in total darkness simultaneously. It just can’t happen!
Gratitude should probably be the word for today, but thanks is so much shorter of a word. A simple thank you can totally change someone’s day. And no I don’t just mean the person to whom you’re speaking either. I mean you. It can change your day.
Saying thank you over and over again for things will condition your brain to look for things for which you can be thankful. The more thankful you are the more you’ll say thank you and the more you’ll see things for which to be thankful. It’s like this crazy cycle of goodness!
Here’s a little secret as you try to implement this one in your life. You don’t always have to be overwhelmed with thanks to just say thank you. I’ve said thank you at times when I wasn’t really even sure that I was thankful. I did it because it felt like the right thing to do. I did it because I knew if I said thank you eventually my heart and head would catch up to my mouth. I don’t mean to be disingenuous by any means. But sometimes you have to say it out loud before you can feel it deep inside.
Today’s word comes with a challenge. What are some simple things that people do for you consistently that you could slow down long enough to thank them for today? Maybe it’s your spouse always making sure there’s food in the house – that should probably be one of mine. You know I can’t remember a time when I went to the pantry or the fridge and it was totally empty! And honestly I don’t know if I’ve ever said thanks to my wife for doing the whole people thing and going to the grocery. So here it is, in public for anyone who cares enough to read this, Thanks Dear for always making sure there’s food in the house!
I want you to walk with me for a few minutes. This walk will take you back in time a few years in my personal life. I’m going to bring you along for some key moments that make me a bit vulnerable, so be kind. This walk is not for any other purpose than to give you a window into my heart. I could go further back in time, but I think a couple of years will be sufficient.
We’ll start in the early summer months just a couple years ago. I received a phone call that I knew was coming but didn’t really want to receive. My grandma, who had been suffering for years with the debilitating disease known as Alzheimer’s, was moving into her final moments. I jumped in my truck and made my way to their house.
When I got there my family was already inside. They were smiling, crying, laughing, sobbing, reminiscing, and did I mention crying? These are normal reactions in a situation like this, so don’t read that as anything other than statement of fact.
I came in the house and said my hellos, told my grandma I was there, then took my place. That phrase took my place should sound odd because it kind of is. I took my place off to the side, out of the way. My feet were shoulder width apart. My hands tucked behind my back clasping one another. It was my official stance, in my official place. No tears. No emotion. I was there.
I see this moment and many others like it, like a piece of workout equipment at the gym. It’s like a sled that sits on the ground. There’s a picture of one above. It has handles standing up so you can push or pull it across the room. You add weight to make it more challenging. You can even attach straps to it and drag it like one of those strongest man competition kind of events where they pull a semi truck across a parking lot.
As I stood in the corner of the room, my family was talking and crying and wondering when this was going to happen. I stood there with the harness on my shoulders, down in my stance, ready to pull the sled across the room. All emotion was shut down in that moment. Something I’ve grown far too good at doing.
I watched closely as her breathing slowed. I’ve learned that breathing rhythms change as one starts to transition from this life. I felt the eerie presence of what I’ve come to know as death settle in the room. I looked at my mom and nodded as if to say It’s time. I did what we call the commendation of the dying, basically our version of last rights (kind of). When I finished, I told my family they probably had a few minutes to do one last goodbye. Sure enough, the breathing stopped. Everyone knew it. No one wanted to admit it.
The tears flowed. Words were lost. They really didn’t know what to do. The hospice nurse helped contact the funeral director to come gather the body. When he arrived, he didn’t have any help so he asked me to help move the body to the gurney. I’ve done this before but didn’t even think I’d do it in this situation.
I lowered my stance. Grabbed the harness on my shoulders. Dug in my footing and pulled. This is what it felt like. My emotion was shifted to drive. Instead of tears falling down my face, my hands lifted her body from one bed to another. I know they didn’t think this but the looks on my family’s faces were just simple shock. How can you do that and it not tear you up? Are you an animal? Alien? Robot? As long as I’m in my drive stance, there isn’t much room for emotion. My sadness turns to drive. My joy turns to drive. It’s really all I know at times.
Nearly a year later my grandpa died, then my other grandpa, then my wife’s grandma who was like a grandma to me as well. All of them gone within a couple year span of time. I didn’t cry at any of them. I conducted their funeral services with not so much as a tear. And no that’s not bragging. That’s the point of this post. I didn’t know how to cry. I just knew how to push, pull, drive.
A year later a great family of close friends left to pursue new endeavors in a new area. We had grown pretty darn close through our time shared, but now they were gone. My feet dug into the ground. The sled kept moving. As long as my legs didn’t stop moving, the sled would continue. As long as my feet kept churning, the pressure, pain and struggle wouldn’t seem so bad.
In all of that, my son left for service in the US Army. I didn’t know what it would look like or how it would end. I was wrecked inside. When I was in public my feet dug deeper into the ground. I pulled like I’ve never pulled before. But I didn’t realize that all of these things, and so many more I haven’t mentioned, were weights added to the sled. As long as I kept moving, I could pull it.
My wife, unfortunately, bore a heavy load through all of this. She saw me fall apart when my son left. She saw me flat on the ground (literally) unable to hold myself together. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t keep food down. I couldn’t even workout. The weight had gotten too much. I couldn’t keep it together anymore and since home was my safe place I fell apart. She was worried. I was a mess. But when we left the house, I got in my stance, grabbed that harness, dug my feet in the ground and started pulling. I was moving slower this time but I thought as long as I move I’ll be ok.
Ok now take a breath all of you. This is not a post about my ability to push through. It’s not a post about how strong I am. It’s a post about my faults and my brokenness. It’s a post about weakness and a major flaw. I’ve told you all before that I can drive. It’s part of my personality. That theme song from a few weeks ago tells the story of my drive, but what is easily missed in that song is the reason for the drive. But what I didn’t spell out for you specifically is that drive isn’t fed by personal ambition. It’s often fed by an inability to properly process emotion in public. I couldn’t do it because I felt weak. I don’t like feeling like people can’t count on me and when I was feeling broken I felt like I was letting the world down. So I tightened the shoulder straps of that harness, lowered my center of gravity, used my hands to balance, and dug in using power and energy that I really didn’t even have.
Why do I share this? Simple. Don’t be like me. The apostle Paul said to follow me as I follow Christ. I’m telling you don’t do life my way. It really isn’t good. Yeah I can push and pull and drive, but it doesn’t always end well. If you’ve been on the road around me in the midst of one of these emotionally charged moments, you’ve probably seen it. You might have even been hit by the sled I was pulling. It wasn’t intentional. Some days I’m way better than others. Some days are…well let’s not talk about those.
Why do I share this? The power of the church is that you (and I) don’t have to live this way. The church is the body of Christ. It’s the collective strength of every part of who God called us to be. This is likely why the writer of Hebrews says not to give up meeting together. The more isolated we are, the harder life is. The more distance we allow to grow between us, the more challenging life is for everyone. Get together. Find people you can trust and ask if they’ll help grab the sled with you. Maybe they’ll even help you by lifting a weight off of the sled so it’s not so hard to pull.
We all have to drive at times in life. But we don’t have to do it alone. When it’s time to pull your sled, remember there are people around you who want to help you. And if you happen to be one of those people around me, be patient as I try to figure out how to convert some of this drive back into a healthier alternative.
I learned a lesson when I was selling cars that I believe is transferrable to just about every other field. Never make a significant and permanent decision as a result of a huge need.
Ok so that’s a tad vague so let me put some skin on that skeleton. In the car sales world, the easiest person to sell a car to was the one who came in saying My car just died and if I don’t get something today, I won’t be able to make it to work tomorrow!
Yep that actually happened. More than once! You know what that does to the sales person? There is a huge flashing neon sign above that person indicating they are a for sure sale. And it meant they were no longer in a position to negotiate on price much at all because they needed to buy more than I needed to sell.
The transferrable principle I try to live by is to never make a decision, or hire someone, when you’re feeling desperate and needy. The more needy we are, the more likely we will choose someone for what they can do instead of for the character and skill set they bring to the table. And this can be very dangerous!
Imagine for a minute that you need to hire someone to fill a critical role in your organization. You just fired half of your sales team because they weren’t performing and now you need to bring on more sales reps to handle the traffic that you know will be coming. A critical role in your business was just vacated by someone who left for another company or was removed for unethical practices. This can even be the case with volunteer teams when we just look for warm bodies instead of people who epitomize the character and values of our organization.
When we make a massive decision, like bringing someone onto the team, in the midst of a tremendous sense of desperation, it almost always ends really…really badly!
A better approach that I’ve found works fairly well in both the nonprofit landscape and even in for profit entities with which I’ve worked is to fill the gap for an intentionally temporary season. This means you might hire a sales person for a 3 month probationary period. Bring in the interim CEO to manage your growing company. Appoint an interim to fill the position at your nonprofit or ministry team.
When we make these massive shifts out of a sense of desperation, we often are so clouded by the need that we can’t see the reality in front of us. If the rest of the team is strong, then even a critical loss can be managed for a short duration of time by the rest of your competent staff.
Take a breath. Slow down. Look for a potential short term solution to give yourself a little room to make a clear headed decision.
