Mentors, Models, Coaches & Friends

Tag Archive - personal development

Mentors, Models, Coaches & Friends

April 12, 2011 in Community, Friends, Leadership, Relationships with 12 Comments

I’ve spent a lot of time lately considering the close relationships I have in my life and how each one has impacted, influenced and shaped me. Talking about the importance of community, I recently heard Rick Warren say:

Mentors, models, coaches & friends. The quickest way to change your life is to change who you’re close to.

I don’t know where it originated, but I’ve often heard the following statement and believe it to be true:

Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.

This same theme is echoed in a more cautionary tone in the Bible:

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. – Proverbs 13:20

There’s a lot to be said about who you surround yourself with. What this particular Proverb is saying is that, to a great extent, we become amalgams comprised of the voices we ascribe worth to and give permission to speak into our lives. With that realization comes with it a great responsibility to steward our hearts on a relational level.

When you’re young and invincible, it’s easy to take for granted the life lessons and wisdom flying through the air like radio broadcasts, yours for the taking if you’re paying attention and dialed in to the correct frequency. But sadly, we spend many of our younger years scanning the dial in relational oblivion, often not realizing the long term effects of how we allow others to invest into the moments of our lives. The older I get, the more I’ve not only seen the need for all of those varied voices in my life, but the more I’ve felt the weight of not having them as life assumes different shapes, regularly handing me new and diverse challenges and opportunities to grow.

I also realize that the more I’ve become intentional about anything, the more I’ve seen that thing change. The more intentional I’ve gotten about investing in these kinds of relationships, the more I’ve seen my life take shape and bear fruit resulting from the investment of others. At the same time, the more I’ve embraced this perspective, the more I’ve found myself on the other side of the equation and filling these various roles in the lives of others.

I’m thankful for those who give big picture counsel, live the blueprints, shout ring-side blow-by-blow instructions and speak wisdom and truth into my life. It’s a combination of the presence and selfless investment of all these voices that are constantly shaping, developing and investing in me, pushing me forward to a better version of myself and speaking to the trajectory of my life as much as to the next step.

Do you actively engage the presence of mentors, models, coaches & friends in your life?

What It Isn’t

April 4, 2011 in Leadership, Personal Development with 7 Comments

A couple weeks ago at Cross Point, during his message about the dangers of Leaving God Out of marital relationships, Pete Wilson made the following statement:

If you constantly feel the need to tell your family you’re the spiritual leader of your house, you’re probably not.

BAM. Go ahead. Pick yourself up off the floor and read that again. I’ll wait.

I can relate to that statement in a very personal way that it wouldn’t be wise for me to go into right now. Just suffice it to say, I know that statement to be all too true.

But it’s not just about being a spiritual leader in your home, it applies to a lot of things.

If you constantly feel the need to tell people you’re…

an influencer…

an innovator…

a leader...

etc…

… you’re probably not.

The people I know who are truly influencing, innovating, leading, etc, are typically too busy actually influencing, innovating and leading to stop and identify themselves as such. Truth is, there is much more to being a leader, an influencer, et al than simply calling yourself one. The “be called a leader” line is long, while the “actually BE a leader” line is much shorter. A lot of people want the title, while far fewer are willing to commit to the work. The grind is the grand differentiator.

Along similar lines, lately I’ve been thinking about how there seems to be an unending litany of resources aiming to tell us what things ARE. Books, blogs and bold headlines shout from newsstands and our computer screens at every turn, touting the secrets of “what leadership is”, “the truth of innovation” or “flexing your influence”.

Far more rare are the cautionary, but equally vital, voices that whisper things like, “don’t do that”. In my experience, along with every lesson I have and am constantly learning about what something like leadership IS, comes with it other, often more subtle, less-obtrusive and easily glossed-over lessons about what it ISN’T.

Many love to bask in the glory of the win, but I want to hear more chronicles of lessons from the loss. Most opportunities to learn and grow don’t come from the win, anyway. They come from disappointment, confession and humility; from watching game tapes and going back to the drawing board. There is often more perspective, truth and wisdom to be gleaned from a loss than a win. As such, sometimes winning looks like losing.

Wins may exalt you, but losses shape you.

I need more of those voices in my life… balanced and seasoned voices from the sidelines, coaching me to embrace the reality of what something isn’t just as much as what it is…. voices from just outside the winner’s circle whose limping stride is a character receipt… voices that might still tremble when recounting their stories of recklessness, recovery and redemption… voices that exhort and refuse to let me settle for simply being called a leader without fully engaging my heart in what it means to actually lead.

Do you have any “what it isn’t” moments or voices in your life that have shaped you?

Observations Of A Transition

April 17, 2010 in Faith, Life with 31 Comments

This is how I feel right now.

It is 2:00am and I cannot sleep.

So I’m writing.

Observations of a transition…

… like a trapeze artist, you swing and you swing…

… gripping tight, your focus forward…

… your mind calculating every millisecond…

… the next destination seems as close as a touch yet as far as the moon…

… but always just barely out of reach, for sure…

… so you swing…

… and wait…

… and swing…

… and wait for the perfect timing…

… when you know you have to let go of what brought you to this moment…

… what you’ve been holding on to…

… you know it’s impossible to fully grasp what’s next when your hands are still full of what’s been….

… you know you have to jump…

… so you do…

… your heart pounds as you let go…

… the instant your fingers leave the bar, reality hits you…

… you know you can never go back…

… you can’t tell if you’re stuck or flying because it feels like both…

… all the training you’ve had tells you you’re about to be caught…

… and that’s cool…

… but for now…

… at this precise moment in time…

… the clock stops…

… your breath escapes you…

… and there you are…

… in the middle…

My friends, I don’t feel that I have already arrived. But I forget what is behind, and I struggle for what is ahead. – Philippians 3:12

Gonna try to sleep now.

The Middle

March 16, 2010 in Faith, Life with 8 Comments

For as long as I can remember, I have felt like I was in “the middle”… no longer “here”, but not quite “there”; one hand in the past, one hand reaching to the future. Not sure where I was headed.. somewhere between where I started and where I’ll eventually end up… just… in the middle.

By definition, a “transition” is

the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another.

Transitions are often great, but it is usually our perspective of the transition that gives way to fear, discouragement and disillusionment. This is understandable, but the challenge of a transition is understanding that the “middle” is necessary.

Transitions aren’t really known for making you look all that good. You don’t really fit where you used to be, but haven’t yet locked into where you’re headed, and that’s a tough spot to be in.

One of my favorite scriptures for the “middle” is Philippians 1:6…

There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears. (The Message)

When I think of “the middle” I envision a cocoon. That is the place where something emerges different than how it entered. You can’t look at a caterpillar in a cocoon state and see the transition happening inside, but it will be seen by all soon enough. Apart from what we already know about nature and biology, no one would look at a caterpillar and believe that it possessed everything it needed to become a butterfly. But keep your eye on the cocoon.

Somewhere between the cradle and the grave, whether it is personal, spiritual, financial, relational, emotional, geographical or professional, you are probably somewhere in the middle right now. Know that the middle is purposeful and has come to transition you, develop you and challenge you to become what’s next. You are not stuck. You are being groomed and grown, pruned and primed for what you have yet to become.

In my experience, I have found God more in “the middle” than at any destination point in my life. I believe He lives in the tension between… between here and there, between what we are and what we shall be, between what we see and what we don’t see.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. [2 Corinthians 4:16-18]