It's been a minute - 45 lessons from my 45 years of life
It has been a minute since I posted here. In large part because I have been focusing on my newsletter (which you can subscribe to on the home page). I very much intended to publish those newsletters here but blogging and newsletter writing are two different voices more often than I assumed they would be. With that being said, here is a throwback from an old newsletter that you might find useful, encouraging and a wee bit random!
I love to learn! If I could, I would be a professional student, but alas, I have not found that job, yet!
With that being said, most of us know that school is not the only place to learn, and that there's tremendous value in lifelong learning. So in honor of my 45 years of life here's 45 lessons I've learned over the years. They cover a wide variety of topics, some with explanations, some without, some my own thoughts and some inspired by others, some that are controversial and some that you'll love. Regardless, I hope they challenge and encourage you as you learn something new in this season and remind you that opportunities for learning are everywhere!
You don't have to accept the invitation to every argument you are invited to, whether online or in person.
Presence matters. Showing up at birthdays and Christmas gatherings and game nights matter. Presence is the foundation of meaningful relationships.
Forcing people to share in a group doesn't build trust; rather it destroys it. Vulnerability is earned and can't be demanded.
Flexibility and planning are not opposites. In fact a good plan makes it easy to flex!
If you care more about defending your past decisions than apologizing and admitting wrong, it's doubtful you've actually learned from them.
If you care more about your past successes than you do about improving, you are telling me you don't really care about your future success.
Emotions are great barometers - they can tell you where things are at in your heart and spirit. But emotions are horrible compasses, they shouldn't be dictating your direction. Acknowledge your feeling and those of others but don't let feelings determine your direction.
You don't have to go as hard as other people do on anything - vacation, planning, work, exercise, etc. - but you also don't need to criticize them because you don't want to work as hard as they do. Working hard to chase your goals and dreams doesn't make you a workaholic or obsessive. Prioritizing how your efforts make you look to others does.
If everything is problematic, not good enough, and needing to be fixed, you are going to end up overwhelmed and nothing will improve. I am all for continual improvement and that there's always room for growth. But you can't work on everything all at the same time. We have to decide what's good enough and doesn't need to be criticized and picked apart and what actually needs to be improved. Pointing out the flaws in _everything_ as an individual, organization, or society, is unproductive at best and downright manipulative at worst.
We have approached the people of the Bible as the heroes of Scripture, and not examples to learn from. God is the only hero of the Bible. Period.
Ultra runners (those who run marathons or longer) have a saying, “forward is a pace.” This is a great mantra when we are in the “messy middle” of our goals; that spot where we have put in decent effort but the results seem minimal and the finish line still far away.
Leaders, you will inevitably anger people in your leadership, but work hard to maintain the friendships you had before you were a leader, especially if those are in the same organization. It's incredibly hard to regain friendships and restore the broken trust that is often the cause of damaged relationships and in a leadership role you need the trusting voices of longtime friends.
Canceling people because of their beliefs is probably more a sign of your arrogance than their ignorance.
Students and learners- your education is not an on demand service. You can't just tune in when it's convenient. It's disrespectful to your teachers and shortchanges your learning.
There's a difference, and a pretty big one, between being creative and artistic. Creative people think outside the box and come up with ideas that challenge the status quo. Artistic people craft beautiful music or experiences or physical expressions of the human condition. One is not better than the other and some people are gifted with both, but beautiful things are not always creative and creative things are not always beautiful.
A lot of people want to complain but they don't want to do anything to fix the problem. A lot of people want to cast blame but don't look in the mirror and own their own faults. If this is you - and we all find ourselves in this season at some point - it's time to make a choice to move on or work to fix the problem. Because continuing to criticize from the sidelines is unfair to those doing the work and unhealthy for your spirit.
How you: treat others, handle challenges respond when things aren't fair or going your way are often reflections of your character. Choose to be the type of person who handles life's hiccups with grace, a big deep breath, and a can-do attitude.
We have all been uniquely wired with passion and talent to build God's kingdom. And growth in those gifts gives the Lord our potter more clay to work with. What we become is God's purview (Romans 9:21) but as beings made in God's image we have the privilege to partner with God in the process.
You are responsible with how you treat people, you are responsible to treat people with kindness and respect. You are not responsible for how they react.
Don't mistake criticism for someone being critical. Criticism from the right mind helps your plan work. Complaints from a critical person lays out why your plan will fail without solutions. Leaders must learn to distinguish the difference.
If, “because I said so” is your go to reasoning for why your kids should listen to you, you are not teaching them to respect your authority, you're teaching them to avoid logic.
If we only care about things that are unfair or unjust when they impact us, then we care less about fairness and more about our own comfort. (And no, I don't expect you to care about every injustice–humans do not have the capacity.) We should make sure our standard of what's unfair applies to those we agree with and those we don't.
A leader who has little transparency is often leading scared. And a scared leader rarely leads well.
Give me deep authentic praise and the equally valuable constructive criticism that comes with it over surface level platitudes.
Restraints create more fun and contentment than a life without boundaries. Think about the bar on a roller coaster. A roller coaster can be an incredibly entertaining experience but you wouldn't want to ride it without the bar. That is what discipline does in our lives. It helps us to have fun and enjoys the things that matter most like our family and meaningful work. Discipline puts priority on what I want more over what I want now.
Reality (what actually happens) minus expectations (the pressure we place on ourselves or events) = happiness.
We have 15% of the control we think we have. As humans, we want to try to control our lives and our circumstances. Of course, as our lives progress most of us recognize that our control is limited. The irony of course is that the circumstances in which we have the least control, we often find ourselves struggling the most to enact control. And that manifests itself by fearful, illogical actions that give us the feeling of control without any progress.
Bullying people into being kind isn't. If you force kids or demand others to be generous, kind, or polite is it authentic generosity, kindness, or manners? If your comfort causes others discomfort is it kind? Demanding people love you by completing certain task isn't very loving.
If you are more concerned about controlling those in your charge, rather than encouraging, motivating, and coaching, you are a manager not a leader. Crisis is no exception to this rule, but crisis will magnify your priorities.
If you are part of an organization and agree with every point or stance of the organization, and feel the need to vehemently defend the leaders of the organization against any counter arguments or disagreements you are either in a cult, limited in your ability to think for yourself, or both.
Leadership development is all well and good and has its place but it's meaningless if you never let those you are developing actually lead.
History is not the study of good and bad people, but rather the study of humans making good and bad choices. Some of those decisions are good, self-sacrificing and even heroic. Some of those decisions are wrong, selfish, and even morally reprehensible. If we approach history as the story of heroes vs villains then we are likely to start lumping our contemporaries into the same categories. If we look to history and expect those who we admire to be perfect we will quickly find ourselves with no one to look up to. Instead we must view history as the story of people and their decisions that left a mark on the world. No one person -past or present- will get it all right.
This idea that people EVERYWHERE have to accept our WHOLE selves is a little self-serving. Yes, we should have our people who accept all parts of us, but to expect everyone to take our good, bad and ugly on first meeting is a bit unfair. Part of becoming a member of a team is being willing to fit-in. Be you! Be true to you. But be willing to play nice with others.
It might be accurate to blame others for your challenges, struggles, or situations. However it’s rarely if ever effective in actually addressing the problem. Follow the motto of President Truman and in your life let the buck stop with you.
This life involves risk. Living every moment trying to eliminate risk is a sure fire way to limit growth and prevent accomplishing your mission. I personally would rather die living than live trying not or die.
Knowing your why is important! But knowing your who is important as well! Who you belong to, who you’ve been designed to be and who you need to be for those you care about are all equally important to know and articulate.
Parents, it’s not good to let your kids win every battle. It’s also equally ineffective to make them lose every battle. It’s a hard road to build confidence in an individual if every time they have an idea or objection they are shut down. Teach your kids that compromise is important, and that every hill is not worth dying on by modeling to them that not every hill is worth dying on.
It’s easy to criticize those in leadership. It’s also equally simple to blindly follow people we like and fail to acknowledge their faults. The challenge is learning how to acknowledge people‘s short-comings while still maintaining enough respect to follow them. Conversely, one must learn to acknowledge one’s own faults and still know when it’s time to walk away from leaders who are no longer healthy for you to follow. In some cases, this is an individual, not a universal decision, but it’s rarely an easy one.
Children will do things from time to time that will hurt our feelings as adults. Our job as adults is to model how to respond, not react on their level.
It never sits well with me when people say they have no regrets. I wonder if that means they were simply too scared to try anything that was risky, or if they’re too prideful to acknowledge their mistakes? I think it’s OK to acknowledge and reflect on our regrets from time to time. We don’t want to dwell on them but if we don’t take the opportunity to reflect on past decisions with the clarity the passage of time offers we might be limiting our growth.
We often set up this overly simplified false dichotomy that we have to choose between people and task. People clearly matter to God, but Scripture indicates the details do as well. Otherwise, why would God spend 15 chapters in Exodus laying out the details of the tabernacle? Not only specifying the directions but how the directions were followed? Excellence is often in the details of our tasks.
You have heard it said, stand for something or you’ll fall for anything. Likewise, if you stand for nothing you’ll soon find yourself standing alone. If no one knows where you stand people don’t know who you really are. And if people don’t know who you really are it’s impossible to be really loved.
The problem with the idea that we can “have it all“ is that time is a finite resource. We are going to have to make choices. The key to reaching our goals is realizing we must consciously choose where we invest our time in order to get there. Otherwise the series of choices we make every day will lead us somewhere, just no place in particular that we intentionally tried to get to. And in the process of defining our focus, the only persons we need to apologize to or ask permission of are ourselves, perhaps our family, and ultimately Jesus.
It’s not a servant’s heart to approach every relationship seeking what you can get out of it. Yet many of our healthy relationships, especially our volunteer and professional ones, have a level of reciprocity to them. If we oversee employees or volunteers it's partially our responsibility to make sure that they are benefiting from the relationship as well. Otherwise we are just using people.
Some of us have an inner monologue that is way meaner than we would ever let anyone speak to those we love. Learn to speak kindly to yourself.
Bonus : You disembark a plane front to back. We all have places to go and connections to make. We are all a little anxious to make our connections but if we all wait our turn it will go the quickest it can. Like returning your shopping cart, how you exit a plane is a reflection of your character.
