Middle

“There’s a chapel in Kansas standing on the exact center of the Lower 48. It never closes. All are more than welcome to come meet here in the middle.  It’s no secret the middle has been a hard place to get to lately.  Between red and blue, servant and citizen.  Between our freedom and our fear.  Now fear has never been the best of who we are and freedom is not the property of the fortunate few.  It belongs to us all.  Whoever you are.  Wherever you are from.  It is what connects us and we need that connection.  We need the middle. We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground so we can get there.   We can make it to the mountaintop, through the desert, and we will cross this divide.  Our light has always found its way through the darkness. And there’s hope on the road up ahead.”

- Bruce Springsteen, in Jeep’s “The Middle” 

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The narcotics are still working their way out of my system, one day home from a weeklong stay in a hospital where some emergency surgery kept me on my back for most of the week. The television in my room didn't come on for even a second, I kept entirely off social media, and our nation's political and social unrest was even more distant than it has ever been.

But we had some family over this afternoon to take in a portion of the Super Bowl. We're not very big fans, and neither or they, but it is an excuse to get together, and I hadn't seen them in over a week. We halfway paid attention (the way we typically do) until this Jeep advertisement came on the screen. I happened to be sitting alone when it did, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

I love the commercial's aspirational ideas and the even the hopeful "Reunited States of America" at the end, but I am having a hard time finding much hope there. We are encouraging the leaders we work with to think about their lives in the context of a worldview that transcends all that. Ironically, one that is very consistent with the values espoused in this ad.

This country has a middle, a center, a heart. It isn't geographic and won't be found in two disastrously divided parties getting along. It is a set of beliefs woven into the foundational documents that launched our nation and seem nearly forgotten by everyone we've entrusted to lead our country.

It is about caring for one another.

It is about welcoming everyone.

It is about honoring the ultimate Authority.

It is about relationships.

It is about hard work.

It is about doing the right things.

The commercial uses a church as a metaphor for the "middle." If that is how they will define the middle that we need to get back to, then I think they are right on point. In the absence of reverence of our God, we live in fear. We fear everything. The antidote that the Christian worldview offers us is freedom. It is the primary deliverable of the gospel. It is what we are all collectively groaning for.

That center, that middle, has never been more critical. We've lost that middle, and we better find it fast because it is the only answer.

Consider

• What worldview lens are you viewing the world through?

• How does that affect the way you see the world? The way you lead?

• Will you take a minute to watch this ad, think about your deepest beliefs and convictions, and change something about the way your living and leading?

Allegiance

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God’s.”

- Jesus of Nazareth

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This new teacher is being very disruptive.  He has come to overturn empires.  Every empire.  Even the religious ones.  He is making everyone very uncomfortable.  He is fierce, courageous, and true.  Has there ever been one more so?

The religious elite is trying to trap him in his own teaching.  Get him to say something that will incriminate or discredit him.  Something that will expose him.  Tiberius Caesar is not too comfortable with him either.  He sends his minions to try to trap him in some illegality of encouraging others to not pay taxes.  He responds with Kingdom language.

“Give Caesar what is his, and give God what is his.”

His answer not only avoids the trap but transcends the question.  But this is not a referendum on paying taxes, ignoring the government or the authority it carries.  This is an answer dripping with appropriation and the priority of authority.  It highlights a couple of important principles.

We should acknowledge the government’s authority, pay taxes, etc.

We should not put our hope, allegiance, or priority in the government.

Even when it applies to the predominant conversation of our day.  Even when it seems like the world may come to an end or find magical restoration with the election of one candidate and the loss of the other.  Even when it feels like everyone else around us is hanging their hopes on those people and the outcome of those decisions.

When Jesus responded to their questions about Caesar, their reaction was “mouths hung open, speechless”.  And even in our day, when someone you encounter who is really excited, anxious, or even fearful about what is going on politically, it is no different.  If you are unwilling to enter the political maelstrom of our day, people are pretty incredulous.

Jesus wasn’t saying disregard or move to disobedience, he was reminding us that we should “seek first the Kingdom of God.”  He is saying that our hope should only be sourced from him.  That God is our only answer.  That the only citizenship that really matters is the one we have in His Kingdom.

That transcends our government.  It has been true, is true, and will always be so.  Keeping that in proper priority meant the difference between life and death in his time.  And in our day, it is crucial to our healthy survival as well.

I love the term “God and country”.  But for me, anyway, it was causing a blurring of a line.  I think Jesus would likely say, “God, then country”.

Pay attention.  Cast your lot.  Pay your taxes.  But who gets your allegiance?  Where does your hope come from?  It comes from the Lord.

Consider

• Are you seeking first his Kingdom?

• Does your sense of hope confirm that?

• How good of a job are you doing at “rendering” unto Caesar, but keeping your eyes fixed on the Kingdom?

Power

“All power comes from the Lord, which is why dunamis demonstrates the power, strength, and force of the Lord God at work in His creation and the lives of His people. The power of God is at work in His people to bring Himself glory.”

~ Christianity.com

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One of our South African partners introduced us to the Greek word “dunamis” in some of our discourse recently.  He was describing a miraculous movement of God he experienced in a dream.  The literal definition of dunamis is power, force, or ability.  It is the root of words like dynamo, dynamic, or dynamite that you may be more familiar with.  Paul uses it in his second letter to Timothy when he says, “…for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

One of the gifts of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus is authority.  In fact, all the power and authority he was granted by God is passed to us under the direction of his spirit during the ascension.  That is both an incredible privilege and responsibility at the same time.

It is an entrusting.  

I can think back over the times in my life when I was trusted with something of great value.  A new position, an extended set of direct reports, a ministry post, and even the hand of a woman in marriage.  The sense of both privilege and responsibility that rose in me because of how that was bestowed completely changed me.  It was rising to the occasion prompted by the incredible honor of the entrusting.

One of the great questions for leaders: What have you done with your power and authority?  Or, how have you managed the incredible gifts you have been entrusted with?

Dallas Willard suggests, “The primary work of God is finding men to whom he can entrust his power. And the story of most men is being entrusted with power and it bringing harm to themselves and those in their care.”  I am sure many leaders, both male, and female, came to mind as you read that statement.  Sadly, most of us have suffered under bad leaders that didn’t handle their power well.

As coaches, we feel like we have a responsibility to challenge leaders in both of these ways:

1. Raise the level of nobility, honor, and privilege of a leader’s authority.

2. Raise the level of accountability around how they administer that privilege and authority.

Ironically, most leaders we work with already carry a tremendous amount of guilt associated with how they administer their privilege and authority.  We don’t have to spend a ton of time on the second issue.  They know they could do better and suffer inside when they don’t.  

The real work we have to do is to introduce them to the nobility, honor, and authority already granted to them.  We focus mostly on the first point.  It is an extreme raising of the bar, but it is also an appointing that makes becoming a more “generous governor” (life-giving leader) easier.  When we walk in the full authority granted us, it makes every step of our leadership journey easier and more meaningful.

Consider

• How clear are you on the power, authority, and privilege of your leadership?

• How are you handling that power?

• How might your leadership change if you understood and accepted the authority offered to you in the ascension?

Stallion

“What stood before me was the greatest stallion I have ever seen, silvery white but with a mane and tail of gold.  It was smooth and shining, rippled with swells of flesh and muscle, whinnying and stamping with its hoofs.”

- C.S. Lewis, from “The Great Divorce”

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Our worldview contains an enemy. One intended to be an angel among angels broke fellowship with his creator and took on the role of the chief antagonist in the biblical narrative. One of the most beautiful, glorious, and mighty in God's angel army changed teams. Humanity has been battling against this opposite and not relatively equal force since the garden of Eden.

If your worldview doesn't contain this character, very little of what is going on in your world will make any sense. The only other two obvious conclusions are not only wrong but very destructive. One assigns every kind of difficulty, hardship, and pain to our failure, and the other rests the blame entirely on a God set against us.  

We have a hardened enemy set against our every step in God's direction. He is the source of more of the difficulty in your life than you realize.

In the "Great Divorce," C.S. Lewis illustrates that reality and gives us a glimpse into the power of what the rescue looks like. A shrouded, dingy character encounters an angel. And while the character consents to a meeting with that angel, the lizard on his shoulder resists. Ultimately, it comes on the condition of its' silence. The angel immediately recognizes the problem of the lizard and offers to destroy the beast.

While the lizard is the whispering source of every doubt, fear, and lack of confidence, it has also become very comfortable and familiar. The central character isn't sure he could survive without it. And when the angel increases his offer to destroy the lizard, it breaks its' vow of silence and makes the last attempt to save itself and maintain its' captivity over the subject.

The angel persists and his destroying the lizard produces two incredible outcomes.

1. An almost angel sized man with similar glory emerges from where the dingy shrouded character once stood.

2. The lizard left for dead on the ground transforms into a magnificent white stallion of equal proportions to the fully realized man.

The scene ends with the fully restored man riding off on the stallion in all its' transformed glory. This is a beautiful picture of what was meant for all of us.  It even shows us the original intended glory for the fallen angel that became our spiritual enemy.

All of us feel the impact of that whispering lizard. It is the source of our fear, our lack of clarity, and our reluctance to make decisions and lead well. It is experienced by every person we lead and every person in our homes. It shrouds and clouds the original and intended glory of all our lives and our leadership.

While all of this may seem like it shouldn't fit in a leadership curriculum and experience, we believe it is not only powerfully helpful but, if left unchecked, may completely inhibit your ability to apply any leadership or business teaching from any source.

At a recent offsite, we got to watch a leader, shrouded with a lack of clarity, uncertainty, and fear, rise to his original intended glory and ride off into the sunset on a white stallion that had hours before been his tormentor.  It is one of the more glorious things we get to experience as coaches.

Consider

• Are you aware of the whispering serpent in your life?

• What is it saying to you? What result is it producing?

• How much more free and clear would you feel without it?

Linear

“God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.”

~ Paul, to the church in Ephesus

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We prefer the path of least resistance. We have been conditioned for the immediate and the quick. Everything in our lives seems to come with a tyranny of the urgent embedded. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line and all that.

Funny how that seems to be completely the opposite of how our God works.

We had someone proclaim a story from Ezekiel over us. It is the one about the temple and how water is shooting out from underneath and growing into a river. It is living water that produces lots of fruit along its’ banks and turns a dead sea into one teeming with fish. We’ve drawn a lot from those verses and their interpretation.

But even something so aspirational, organic, and life-giving doesn’t escape my desire to expedite. In my imagination, it runs down a valley in a perfectly straight line to be most efficient and reach that dead water most quickly. But our non-linear God operates very differently.

Almost every origin story of every great product or brand started while trying to create something completely different than where they found ultimate success. Making significant career shifts often lead to short-term engagements that illuminate the possibility of something even further afield. The false summit of many climbs is necessary to see the obscured higher destination.

While toiling in the obscurity of what most of us do, we all have the hidden desire to matter. To have a more considerable impact than what we are experiencing. We felt like there was a more significant and more intended for all the work we were doing—a broader audience than what we were experiencing in our local context. Our handful of coaches seemed to pale in significance to the other organizations we heard about that had hundreds of coaches.

God kept telling us that there was more. That he was protecting us and allowing us to iterate, refine, and prepare for his grander intentions. If all we ever did was to continue to service the dozens we interact with here, it would be a far greater purchase than I would have ever believed was possible, but that sense that He was up to much more in us never wavered.

His non-linear multiplication has been humbling and affirming. 

One of our partners in Africa, who is aggressively moving our work forward quicker than we could have ever imagined, told us something recently that shook us to our core. He said, “SummitTrek needs to be ready to train 250 coaches in the next few years.” That’s God-sized math—certainly not our own.

He isn’t doing it in the way I thought he should. He didn’t choose the straight line I would have. It isn’t as much as I hoped or as quickly as I would have liked. It is far more than I could have hoped, guessed, or dared request. 

Consider

• What are you trying to “make happen” right now?

• What is not happening as quickly or as significantly as you would like?

• Are you open to the “far more than you could guess, request or imagine” that is available?

Extraordinary

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

~ Jesus of Nazareth

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We all surrender to the tyranny of the urgent.  One of the ways we bring value to our clients is to help pull them out of those weeds.  We help them discuss the bigger issues, determine solutions, and then walk them through the execution of those newly formed plans.  Sometimes those challenges have implications that play out over years.  And sometimes they have a generational impact.

Seven Simple Steps for Making Decisions with Generational Impact

1. Get somewhere beautiful, evocative, and stirring. If you need to make extraordinary decisions, get out of the ordinary. The office and conference room where you wrestle with the day-to-day won’t allow room for the more imaginative thinking required for this kind of exercise.

2. Gather with some like-hearted kings or queens, trusted advisors, or coaches that you engage. Hopefully, you’ve got someone that identifies as all three of those.

3. Benevolently detach, consecrate, and set aside all the things that distract you and keep you from thinking clearly and being open to new and extraordinary ideas.

4. Give yourself the room to remind yourself of who you really are. Remember what being a co-heir of a Kingdom is all about and reclaim the unique aspects of the Divine’s glory you were created to offer.

5. Align yourself with the rhythm of heaven. Ask for God’s direction, clarity, and understanding. Intersect with the wisdom of eternity to transcend the confusion of the days.

6. Discuss the issue at hand. Excavate to uncover the deeper reason. Chase the root of that reason until you find the root. Pull the thread that unravels all the rest.

7. Allow the benefit of third party perspectives, the clear air provided by distance, and the spiritual cleaning out of the environment to create clear, simple, and inspired solutions.

This isn’t a frequent thing that pops up regularly on our calendar.  But for good kings and queens who we really love that are living in the same direction, for the very few that are honest, vulnerable, and open to the inspiration of their creator and the experience/discernment of others, we always make time for this incredibly rare occasion.

Most recently we drove deep into the hill country and gathered at a small ranch.  What felt confusing, unclear, and anxious at the beginning of the day dissolved into the process of those other steps.  We left clear, invigorated, and certain of the path forward.  The decisions we arrived out at will have generational implications.  We took the uncertainty and fear of a really good king and replaced it with the easy burden and light yolk promised by the scriptures.

We were humbled, honored, and thirsty for more time with like-hearted kings and aligning with the rhythm of heaven.

Consider

• What are you doing with the really big challenges facing you and your future?

• What kind of advisors have you surrounded yourself with?

• Is it time for you to get away from the ordinary and find extraordinary solutions to those challenges?

Certain

“This is what I want you to do: Ask the Father for whatever is in keeping with the things I’ve revealed to you. Ask in my name, according to my will, and he’ll most certainly give it to you. Your joy will be a river overflowing its banks!”

- John the Apostle

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A friend of mine told me an incredible story.  He had this dream about a trip he would take with his daughter.  It would be a uniting and initiating trip that would define their relationship for many years.  It would be an epic adventure.  In his mind this trip was very specific and so was his wish list.  He was clear on:

• Where they would go

• What they would do

• How long they would be there

• What type of person would guide them

• And what the trip cost had to be

The more he investigated and planned, the more impossible the trip seemed.  Meeting one or two of his conditions were possible, but all of them being met within his budget was not going to happen.  But on he prayed and on he dreamed with the importance and expectation continuing to grow.

And then the clouds parted, the calendar opened, the person became available, the cost fell into alignment, and everything he hoped and dreamed became a possibility.  But it ended up being different.  It was so much more.

“God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.
”

— Paul to the church in Ephesus

He was telling us the story over some margaritas, ceviche, and some nachos last week.  He asked a very simple question, “What are the odds that all these coincidences could culminate in this perfect trip?”  The answer rose in me immediately.  And it was so emphatic and came from somewhere so much deeper that I knew it wasn’t my answer, but God’s.

“One-hundred percent!”

We were invited to go to South Africa about a year ago.  We led business workshops for five dozen or so leaders in three cities.  The reception and our experience were more than we could have hoped.  We met many amazing people but four particular like-hearted kings emerged that desired to advance the teaching we had offered them.

These are amazing men with big hearts, incredible gifting, and tremendous intentionality.  Truly, one-in-a-million.  Rather than driving the expansion of our work there ourselves, they took up the mantle more beautifully and powerfully than we could have believed.  In fact, they did “far more than (we) could ever imagine or guess or request in (our) wildest dreams!”

We met for many hours with them via zoom.  We handed over our content and trained them in our methodologies.  Last week they met with dozens of leaders at three venues and have plans to offer a monthly meeting similar to what we provide here in our country.

Next, we are supposed to head to Russia to offer similar workshops and replicate a similar expansion.  One of the men on our team identified that the crucial ingredient in this mission has been identified and it isn’t our content, methodologies, or training.  It is aligning with God’s plan and finding another one-in-a-million four kings in that country as glorious as the ones we found in South Africa.  

He asked a very simple question, “What are the odds that we will find another Trevor, Kyle, Darren, and Ryan there!?!”

The answer this time is sourced from beyond me like the first, but is now my conviction as well, “One hundred percent!”

Consider

• What big “asks” is God stirring in you?

• How comfortable are you asking and expecting the miraculous?

• Are there miracles and coincidences you’ve experienced that are actually 100% confirmation of what he said he would do if we asked in his will and in his name?

Wonder

“This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance!”

- Paul to the church in Rome

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The first 40 years of my life carried a question, “Why me?”  Poor me.  Pitiful me.  Why was life so difficult?  Why did I feel so alone and why did life seem so unfair?  Everything seemed like such a struggle and when I compared my life to others it felt so unfair and unjust.

The last 15 years of my life, I have been asking the same question, “Why me?!”  Why do I get to enjoy such an incredible life?  So full of friendship, mission, and glory!  Such privilege and possibility!  Why do I get to walk with such expectation of more and better just around every corner?

Ironically, only one thing changed, my perspective.  When I step back and objectively look at all the circumstances of my life, I can’t really point to anything else being significantly different.  Knowing that I am unconditionally loved and delighted in by my Father changed everything.

We were sitting with a group of leaders.  The leadership video we were watching made an incredible distinction; there is a big difference between childish and childlike.

childish - folded arms, temper tantrums, frustration when things don’t go exactly our way, and an irrational fear of the unknown

childlike - innocent, expectant, questioning, the belief that good and better is possible (and maybe even likely)

Which one do you identify with most?

Having grandchildren gave me an incredible window into one of these.  If you had asked me before, I would have said it would have been the former.  We were over a decade away from diapers and tantrums with our youngest child when the grandkids arrived on the scene.  I wasn’t sure how my 50-year old self was going to handle all that again.

Older men and women told us that the glory of grandkids is that you got to enjoy them like your own children, but without the diaper changes, behavioral challenges, or sleepless nights.  That seemed to summarize what they thought was so great about them.  And that is true.

But Paul more accurately identifies the glory of grandkids.  The childlike wonder that he expresses to the Romans is supposed to be the natural and obvious reaction to what was accomplished for all of us by the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.  And he’s not just talking about little kids.  In fact, it is how we are all to approach life regardless of age or circumstance.  

In the next paragraph, Paul tells us why.

“That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times.”

Because we know we are loved unconditionally and that there is a glorious inheritance coming, we should approach every day with that changed perspective.  The difference between childish or childlike and even which version of “why me?” you live with is simply a matter of changing our perspective and owning our inheritance.

Consider

• Is your current posture more childlike or childish?

• Do you think your employees and family would say the same about you?

• What do you need to do to recover a more childlike perspective?

Gestalt

“In the simplest terms, gestalt theory is based on the idea that the human brain will attempt to simplify and organize complex images or designs that consist of many elements, by subconsciously arranging the parts into an organized system that creates a whole, rather than just a series of disparate elements. Our brains are built to see structure and patterns in order for us to better understand the environment that we’re living in.“

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We’re all trying to find some sort of order in all the chaos that seems to envelop our lives and leadership.  That has never been more true than the age we are in currently, but maybe it has always been so.

Gestalt theory is often referenced with this idea: the whole is greater than the sum of its’ parts.

I was at a non-fiction writing conference one time and they were talking about how this applies to marketing.  If you leave a negative space where a symbol or word (as part of a phrase) would logically go, it is a powerful way to engage the brain.  If we hear or see something we have a thousand times, it barely registers.

But when you leave out one letter from a word, one word from a phrase, or an obvious symbol, your brain engages to fill in the blank or the negative space.  Kind of like when you see one letter burned out on a sign at night.  You don’t reinterpret the meaning of the sign’s new spelling, you add in the missing letter.

I was in a meeting with a very gifted graphic designer yesterday who was employing this idea while rebranding an international ministry we have been working with in Africa.  He reminded us of the power of the gestalt theory.  The work was inspired.  (The team at RedDoor Creative continues to exceed the incredibly high standards they have already established!)

When we craft vision statements for clients, they are astounded by the power of that experience.  Most people’s idea of a vision statement is a more ethereal version of their mission or purpose statement.  Ours is a very detailed picture of what the company will look like when it is fully mature at some point in the future.

• What will culture look like?

• How many employees?

• Locations?

• Nature of the product mix?

• How much sales?

• How much profit?

• How will the company be known?

• Technology?

• Reputation?

• Processes?

• Procedures?

• Etc.

Once the picture of the future is clear, we help them craft the organizational design of the future.  What will the future team ideally look like?  And we do that without any names in the boxes.  We are designing what is right without any constraints on how we are structured now or who is currently on their team.  So much freedom and possibility.

Then we start to fill in all the negative space of those boxes representing positions.  What current team members fit in that future?  What training and growth will they need to fit there?  Who won’t fit in our future?  We start to map some to that future.  We create a development plan for others.  The courage of our conviction is forced and we determine those that need to leave.

It is sad how few companies utilize current or future org charts or the incredible clarity and power they offer.

The negative space of those empty boxes forces us to fill in that negative space with endless possibilities that not only clarify all our next steps but confirm that this inspired future will actually happen.

Consider

• Do you have a clear picture of what your company will look like in the future?

• Do you have a clear understanding of the team you will need to realize that future?

• Do you know who needs to stay, who needs to grow, and who needs to leave?

• What is it going to cost you in time, money, and frustration to not stop and figure this out?

Purview

“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.“

- John

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We start all our corporate engagements with a two-day offsite.  We help the folks we work with settle on the right executive leadership team to attend.  Some already have them and are based largely on tenure and many, to our surprise, don’t really have one formally established.

In order to change their perspective, you have to change their environment.  There is a lot that happens there, but one of the more philosophical objectives is to get them thinking beyond their current circumstance and expand the horizon of their thinking.  We help them actively capture and simplify their current challenges.  And then we set it aside.

We dramatically overestimate what we can get done in the next 3 days and underestimate what we can get done in the next 3 years.

Getting that clear as well as a clear vision several years into the future creates the delta that strategic planning needs to solve for.  If you can force yourself to think with a bit longer time horizon, things start to find a less stressful perspective.  It provides for an elevated, hopeful, and far more actionable view.

What if your perspective were not just today, this quarter, or even the next several years?  What if your perspective was eternal?  What if the way you saw things transcended your circumstances and took on an almost unfathomable timeline into the future?

In the worldview we operate within, it says our God has an incredible breadth of understanding (as far as the east is from the west) and that his perspective extends all the way into an eternity we can’t possibly grasp.  And with that kind of perspective, things look so much clearer, hopeful, and right.

We’ve been asking God really big questions and getting a taste of that transcendent understanding.

When praying through a new pandemic-impacted budget, we prayed for guidance.  He said, “You will have everything you need to do everything I have for you to do.”

We prayed for a client who was wrestling with whether or not to accept a newborn baby offered to him through a foster-to-adopt journey.  He said, “I am not in your pride of doing the right thing and I am not in your shame of not doing what others think is right.  I am for you and will walk with you regardless of the decision.”

And when we asked for perspective on the racial tensions gripping the land, He said, “My heart is for the rioter and the racist.  They are both in pain, broken-hearted, and they are my children.”

Neither my gut reaction, my intellect, or my best attempt to say the right Christian-y thing could have possibly conceived those answers.  And while His purview (the range of vision, insight, and understanding) is beyond what I can fathom, it is completely accessible.  

And while I spend a lot of time challenging my clients to look beyond their current circumstances for clarity, hope, and understanding, I spend too much time doing the opposite.  But I am learning to not lean on my own understanding.  I am starting to get more comfortable sourcing the wisdom of eternity.  And it is completely changing my perspective.

Consider

• Do you feel overwhelmed by your life and leadership responsibilities?

• Are you having a tough time looking past your day to day challenges?

• When is the last time you got away to look a little further down the road?

• When is the last time you asked God for his perspective?

Alone

“I will never walk alone another day in my life.”

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My life was based on a great lie.  It was fashioned in my childhood, confirmed through my own selection bias, and whispered by an enemy set against my soul.  It is part of the cultural religion in the state I call home and is a pretty big part of our national consciousness.  It has been incredibly costly for anyone who has perpetrated that lie in their own life.

I spent a lot of energy trying to convince others that it is true and it became so familiar that it almost felt more real than anything else.  The lie was that I don’t need anyone or anything from anybody.  I didn’t need help, support, or even encouragement.  I’ve got everything under control and I can handle it all on my own.

So costly in my leadership journey.

So debilitating in my marriage.

So toxic in my friendships.

But I am making progress.  I am getting better.  I have more than a decade in the field alongside intimate allies.  They have fought for me well and earned my trust.  They have made it very easy for me to come out of hiding.  They have forced me to be honest.  Their reliability has made me get comfortable being vulnerable.

• I have a work tribe with over a decade together fighting in the same direction.

• I have a life tribe with over a decade of almost weekly gathering and lots of missions under our belt.

• And I have a long suffering wife and collection of kids, three decades in, that have allowed me the space to get better.

I am so much more powerful a leader and bring so much more to every table because I am not doing anything alone.  I feel the strength, encouragement, and collective wisdom of many in everything I do.  I have had to work hard to cultivate all that, but it has been a humbling and transformative journey.  It has been worth every step.

The last two new leaders I met with were asked the same question: 

“How can I help you?” 

And both ultimately summarized their need the same way:

1. I don’t need more information, but a clear path to take my business down to find greater success.

2. I need a way to comfortably integrate my faith and deepest beliefs into the fabric of my company.

3. I need a tribe. I am completely alone in my leadership.

Of course you do.  We all are just working in our businesses and not on them, without deep purpose and meaning integrated into our daily work, and doing it all on our own.  And once we get a taste of living with all three of those propositions solved, we’ll never go back.

I spend every day of every week helping others meet those three great needs.  And I could have never built a business doing that if I hadn’t first found it for myself.  And it has completely changed the way I work and live.

In Colorado at a life-changing retreat in October of 2002, I swore I would never walk alone another day in my life.  I didn’t know how I was going to make that happen, but the journey I have taken to change that in my own life has helped many others find the same.

Consider

• Are you walking alone in life or leadership?

• Do you feel like every responsibility and every burden is carried by you alone?

• Are you ready to do something about it? (I can help.)

Trivial

Parkinson’s Law of Triviality is the tendency for individuals and organizations to over-focus on trivial problems while ignoring or devoting few resources to far more serious problems.

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The Law of Triviality is based on the mythic story about a leadership team charged with discussing two investments: a nuclear power plant and a bike shed.  The committee chose to spend more time discussing the bike shed to their great detriment.

Ridiculous, right?  Except that it happens in every company I’ve ever worked with, including my own.  We live in a culture that is driving us to simplification, convenience, and what is easy.

It is why we play video games instead of fighting for what really matters in life.

It is why we watch adventure television instead of pursuing real adventure.

It is why so many turn to pornography instead of investing in the deep intimacy and connection that comes from real relationships.

We focus on the trivial and avoid the essential.  An author I love calls these the “less wild lovers of our soul.”  We want to find real adventure, fight for what really matters, and pursue true love and intimacy.  We settle for far less.  And in a similar way, we admire our biggest problems and spend our days grinding on the less important ones that never result in real change.

When we start working with clients, we go through an exaggerated process to brainstorm all issues and challenges, filter them to get to the most important ones, and then summarize the list into the essential few items.  And the teams are never surprised by the results.  There is sort of a “duh” moment, but there is also a collective conviction about those few things and a renewed hyper focus to get them resolved.

And that is important because we all have a master’s degree in bike-shedding and have a natural predisposition to not want to deal with the nuclear power plant.  Real organizational change comes from identifying, discussing, and solving our “nuclear power plant” issues.

If you somehow survived this last economic cycle, you likely had to pivot in some way.  You had to simplify, reinvent, and possibly even shift to a start-up mentality.  This next year is not going to be easy either.  

You had better be really clear on the essential few things that you must focus on and resolve.

You had better have a team that is equally clear and focused on resolving the same issues.

You had better build a clear strategic plan around resolving those issues.

And this is the time of year to be doing that sort of thing.  The next 12 or so months hold infinite possibilities.  We often say that everyone arrives somewhere, but very few people arrive somewhere on purpose.  And far more than most leaders realize, you have a greater ability to determine where you arrive than you believe.

Consider

• How much time are you and your leadership team spending on the bike shed?

• Do you clearly know what your “nuclear power plant” issues are?

• Is your team clear, convicted, and focus on those essential few things?

• Do you have a plan to resolve them?

Trusted

“In the context of building a team, trust is the confidence among team members that their peers' intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group. In essence, teammates must get comfortable being vulnerable with one another.“ 

- Patrick Lencioni

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I am a numbers geek.  A childhood disability that required surgery and then long term therapy put me a bit behind the other boys at a formative age.  I didn’t dream of being a baseball player, I dreamt of being a sports statistician.  I memorized lifetime batting averages and other statistics from the baseball almanac.

My dad gave me a book on speed mathematics by a Swiss mathematician and my ability to get answers for pretty much any calculation gave me a great head start on any math discipline.  

It is probably why I ended up an institutional investor where finding correlations, patterns, and using mathematics to determine a more predictive future, is so valued.  It is all about using probabilities to gain trust in the decisions you are making.

Lencioni, in the context of team building, describes trust in a very different way.  It is about vulnerability and the comfort level with being honest about their challenges.  It requires getting a “yes” to several unstated questions:

1. Are you for me?

2. Would you never do anything to hurt me?

3. Do you have the best intentions for me?

If the answer is “yes” to all three of those propositions, then you can say pretty much anything to others.  And being really honest about where others are doing well and where they are not is invaluable to a team.  It is the level of vulnerability that comes in a great long term friendship or healthy marriage.

Another leader describes trust as:

The probability that someone will do what they say they will do

minus

The probability they will do something to hurt you

I like that he incorporates the traditional understanding of trust but he factors in the newer Lencioni concept of trust in the context of a team.  Both matter, but most people overlook the latter.  And ironically, when I sometimes hear someone say that they don’t “trust” someone in a leadership circle, they are almost always referring to the second variable in that equation.

And who doesn’t want to be trusted?  I would love to think that the probability that I can be trusted is very high because I do the things I say I am going to do and my intentions with everyone are always to help and not hurt.  That my heart toward others is good.  But everyone else gets to do the math about me and calculate their own answer.

And in reality, for some, I probably score very high and for others, I likely don’t.  And knowing how I am rating with others is super helpful.

But don’t be confused, in every office, family, and team, everyone else’s trustworthiness is being calculated,  whether they are math geeks like me or not.  Everyone has an unstated but continuously calculated “trusted” coefficient.  We raise that average by doing what we say and lower it when our behaviors show others we don’t have their best interests at heart.

And it doesn’t take much of the latter to completely erase the value of the former.

Consider

• Do you think people trust you?

• Do you think most people on your team are viewed as trusted?

• What have you done to create that kind of environment?

• Do you understand the incredible value of creating one if you haven’t?

Defense

“They say the best offense is a good defense.  False.  The best offense is offense.”

~ Dwight Schrute, from The Office

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I used to avoid difficult conversations.  I didn’t see that modeled in my home or pretty much anywhere else I have ever been.  Who likes having those?

But some of my coach training showed me the incredible value of having direct and challenging conversations.  I was actually taught that part of my job (that benefits my clients most) is to help them “mine” conflict.  Not only I am not supposed to avoid it, but actually, go looking for it and use it as a mechanism to force teams to find uncover resolution to their problems.  And I have gotten much more comfortable with this idea.

When I attended my first LifePlan retreat, one of the more surprising personal core values that magically appeared out of the process was “disruption”.  I defined it as “asking the questions and saying the things no one else will say, in the service of good.”  Some people tell that I have become a pro at “disruption”.

But in a world so full of anger and hatred - one where it seems everyone is exhausted from judgment, accusation, or doing or saying the wrong thing, being direct has become precarious.  We’re all a little exhausted from defending our thoughts, opinions, and actions.  People are way less ready to receive even thoughtful directness in the service of good.

Another coach training taught me to ask a question that has changed pretty much every direct encounter.  It is showing up in a growing percentage of my conversations.

Are you open to hearing something a little challenging about you?

or

Are you in a good place to hear something a little difficult?

The initial quote from Dwight Schrute above is actually referenced to Jack Dempsey, the heavyweight boxing champion in the twenties.  I understand why.  With so much challenging stuff going on around us in the world and in the leadership roles we have, I was pretty much living every day with my fists up ready to defend.

And so, it appears, is everyone else.

But asking that question changes everything.  It takes someone from doing everything in their power to refute the challenging news about them, their company, or their leadership, to being open to receiving it.

From defensive to receptive.

From closed-door to open.

From dukes up to fists down.

From “how dare you” to “tell me more”.

I think it is a necessary kindness.  We are all buckling under an enormous amount of difficulty.  We all need to know things that we don’t want to deal with or hear.  Tough love means not always saying or giving people what they want, but offering them what they need most.

Asking people permission is not only appropriate before offering that tough love it is the clever device that helps them receive it best. 

Consider

• Do you feel like you are walking into the ring each day instead of the office?

• Do you think are generally fists clenched with a defensive posture when others bring challenging information?

• Are you finding the same when you challenge others?

• Are you open to trying this question on a spouse, friend, or someone in your company?

Attention

”If you’re not paying for the product, then you’re the product.”

”It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in our own behaviour and perception that is the product.”

- The Social Dilemma

“Pay attention.  Be sober and alert.  Our enemy prowls like a roaring lion waiting to devour.”

- 1 Peter (paraphrased)

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It used to be that we just tracked sales.  

(A measure that actual business has taken place.)

And then, we started to track clicks and time spent on pages.

(A measure of engagement that leads to transactions.)

Now they are tracking our attention and impressions, measured in nanoseconds.

(A measure of what might be unknowingly deposited in our subconscious.)

Conservative measures list the number of targeted items vying for our impressions at 5,000 a day. And money is being made on every one of those. If you want to understand that a little better or possibly become a bit terrified about it, check out the "Social Dilemma" documentary on Netflix. An incredibly well-done film about the age in which we live and the impact of technology on all of us.

The real issue is about what we are giving our attention to daily. If we have our nose in the various deliverables of technology and social media, we should not be surprised that this is happening. If you believe the information shared in "Social Dilemma," our beliefs and understanding are carefully manipulated through our impressions.

If we focus our time on relationships, the outdoors, and deep questions of humanity and faith, that is imminently less manipulatable or monetized. It produces something completely different.

One of my favorite quotes is from Elizabeth Browing:

“Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.”

In essence, the creation all around us is evocative of a Creator and that creator's glory. Us noticing it or not doesn't make it any less glorious, but the recognition of it can completely change our lives and perspectives.

Most of our coaching engagements require helping our clients acknowledge the progress and good that is going on all around them. Maybe it is all that manipulation through those 5,000 impressions, but it is nearly impossible for them to see and acknowledge the progress and glory unfolding all around them.

It requires intentionality. It requires removing distractions. It requires focusing on the right things and maybe having someone else in your life to help you with that focus.

Mary Oliver says those three simple things:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

She has now passed and did most of her writing in a different age, but what she is encouraging couldn't be any more relevant to our age. And what we are finding with our clients is that it is essential to their organizational survival.   

If a leader isn't paying attention to the right things…

If they aren't astonished as a result of having the right focus…

If they aren't celebrating and telling their teams, clients, and most importantly, themselves about it…

Their ability to survive is in question.  

The assault on our attention, our impressions, and the inglorious intentions of those working to harvest them will not leave us astonished, but deeply discouraged.

Consider

• What are you giving attention to?

• What is the result of all those areas of focus?

• Are you feeling encouraged, able to acknowledge good, and the potential for good in your life and business?

• What has to change to reclaim the focus of your attention?

Stakeholder

“External stakeholders generally don't have ‘skin in the game,’ meaning they haven't invested any personal or organizational funds to the company. These stakeholders don't vote on company decisions. However, the external stakeholder is concerned with decisions a company makes and may meet with leadership or present information to the board of directors to review ideas, community concerns, and other issues.”

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There is an excellent story in the bible that redefines the concept of family. Jesus is hanging out with the disciples, speaking to a crowd, when his blood relatives (brothers and mother) show up and ask to see him. He turns to his disciples and says, “Here are my mother and brothers. For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

He is clearly defining family as more of a spiritual construct rather than a biological one. And this isn’t the only time; he is continually talking about the Kingdom of heaven and how things are defined differently there than the way the world thinks.

When we talk about our coaching business, we are starting to define things similarly. Who has equity in our company or who is employed by us is beginning to matter less.   Who is invested in what we are doing is starting to matter more. The words of Dan Allender, frequently quoted here, are taking on a life of their own:

“Find like-hearted kings living in the same direction. 

Sign treaties with them.  

When they are at war, you are at war.”

Our tribe is growing, can be found on several continents, and transcends any legal definition of ownership or employment. But these stakeholders all have a Kingdom vested interested in where our business goes next and how it gets there. They are feeling what we would like them to feel, a sense of ownership.

A few weeks ago, we had our first of many gatherings. While we have ad hoc ones with one or more of these stakeholders, this meeting was designed for this express purpose. We had no real agenda until that morning. God visited us very early in the morning and shared with us what he wanted us to do:

• Honor them and let them know how we feel about them

• Invite them into the larger story of what God is up to

• Remind them of the crucial hour we are living

• Pray for them

• Invite them to pray and offer discernment for us

It was one of the more precious and powerful gatherings I have ever experienced—so much sense of Kingdom. Discernment, clarity, and confirmation were flowing freely. We have such a deep affection for everyone on our team, and every stakeholder gathered. Both kings and queens. Sitting around that table felt rare, uncommon, and holy.

My other thought was that I want everyone to be able to experience something similar. I will likely begin recommending that my clients start to create similar tribes around them. To start identifying the people who believe in them, are interested in their success, and align around the things that truly matter.

It has always been valuable. 

It is becoming essential.

Consider

• Do you know others living in the same direction as you?

• Are you aligned with them formally?

• Have you ever gathered with them and sought their discernment and advice?

• Do you think that would be beneficial to your business?
  

Multiply

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

- Jesus of Nazareth

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I had a conversation earlier this week with one of the most disruptive men I have ever encountered.  He is quiet and unassuming but makes the boldest faith steps of anyone I have ever known.  Each one shakes the others witnessing to their foundations.

At one point in his journey, he sold his business and all his assets, traveled the country in an RV (homeschooling his kids along the way) for a year to fully unplug and discern from the Father what he was supposed to do next with his life and work.  And that is just one of those bold steps.

He ended up building highly automated self-storage facilities that created a lot of passive income and required very little of his time and intervention.   He hired a young man to run each and deeply invested and discipled each of them to prepare them for the next leg of their journey.  That sometimes included forcing great employees to move on because they had become too comfortable in their life/work and needed to take their next step.

Years later, he sold everything again and moved his family to California in order for his wife to go to seminary along with their two kids and be able to sail up and down the West coast.  He was motivated partly by this quote by Oswald Chambers.

“If you do not cut the moorings, God will have to break them by a storm and send you out. Launch all on God, go out on the great swelling tide of His purpose, and you will get your eyes open.”

I always walk away from my interactions with him with questions and motivation to find their answers.  In this conversation, he talked about math.  He said Christians…

Know how to subtract, take away, minimize, and leave.

We know how to add, overcommit, and put too much on our plates.

We are really, really good at dividing (no explanation required!)

But we are not particularly strong when it comes to multiplying.

And he said that multiplication was kind of the point.  One of the leaders in South Africa we are working with said this:

“I feel like you have almost like been to us what Jesus was to the disciples.  And the comfortable solution would have been for Jesus is to just keep hanging.  We’re loving what you are imparting.  We’re loving the wow moments.  We’re loving having seen the miracles. But at some point in time, for it to really be a movement, there has to be multiplication.”

There has to be multiplication. 

There has to be multiplication. 

There has to be multiplication.

I have to keep repeating that line.  The tendency of my personality type is to control.  To keep my hands on things.  To not cut the moorings.  To make sure they go the way I think they should.  But the Kingdom is all about multiplication.  It is about releasing.

For this recovering control freak, it is terrifying and uncomfortable, but invigorating.  And multiplication is happening right before our very eyes.

Consider

• Are you good at math?

• Are you better at adding, subtracting, dividing, or multiplying?

• What are you holding onto too tightly and not allowing it to find the multiplication that is possible?

Fast

“Sometimes you have to go slow in order to go fast.”

- Paul Nadeau

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We all like to go fast, right?

We work mostly with business owners, senior leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs.  The only better idea than the one they have is the one they are going to have next.  And as a coach who has run companies and teams, I always say:

“I’d rather spend my time bridling someone than kicking them in the tail to get them to move.”

I choose to work with these types of people because it is invigorating, fun, and they are the kind of people that change the world.  (Cue Apple’s Here’s to crazy ones commercial from 1997).  There is a tremendous multiplier effect.  I like leverage.

But there are inherent tendencies in these types of leaders.  There are tensions to manage.  Like a squadron of “top gun” pilots, they move quickly, change directions abruptly, and are hard to slow down once momentum takes hold.

It is in those moments when Paul drops that simple, but arresting statement.

“Sometimes you have to go slow in order to go fast.”

We all inherently know it is true.  It lands like scripture (written on their hearts) even if they aren’t operating from a Kingdom worldview.  We all know we are going too fast and most entrepreneurs have experienced enough pain, as a result, to know it is true immediately.  It doesn’t even require much explanation.

While the various map features on our phones have idiot-proofed most of our travel, we wouldn’t embark on a trip without having spent a lot of time investigating and doing some planning.  It is amazing to me the incredible detail some people spend on planning a vacation, while doing a relatively small amount of the same before they launch into a new idea or in a new direction with their business.

Our methodical way of forcing a business leader to go slow so that they can go really fast later has cost us business.  Many leaders we encounter just want help in defining and executing the company’s strategic plan.  Our process forces a slightly slower route.

1. Identify the right core team.

2. Have that team define culture.

3. Craft a future vision of that culture lived out over time.

4. Build a strategic plan with goals, initiatives, and actions steps to most efficiently realize that vision.

They say you can’t put the cart before the horse.  We wouldn’t do it even if you could.  

We operate from a decidedly Kingdom worldview.  We disclose that to the degree we feel our clients are comfortable.  It is a Kingdom of goodness, order, excellence, and abundance.  It has been defined, explained, and modeled by One who taught us that we need to go slow in order to go fast.  Get still, quiet, thoughtful, and connected, so that our impact can be multiplied and change can happen exponentially.

Consider

• How much has going too fast cost you in the past? 

• What are you going fast on right now?

• Have you spent enough time “going slow” in order to be clear on your direction?

• What do you need to stop and figure out before you move forward any further?

Circles

“When you reap the harvest of your land, don’t reap the corners of your field or gather the gleanings. Leave them for the poor and the foreigners. I am God, your God.”

- Leviticus

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After an exploratory trip to South Africa in the Fall, we agreed to conduct a virtual Executive Board meeting to determine the viability of launching additional groups in the new year.  A dozen or so of the 60 leaders we worked with in the Fall met with us over Zoom for four months beginning in March.

The experience, their commitment, enthusiasm, and encouragement to plant similarly in the other five continents we are not on has exceeded our wildest expectations. 

They have been so kind. 

So generous. 

So effusive.

We paused to catch our breath, get their feedback, and talk about the right paths forward.  They divided themselves into teams and are working on go-forward strategies and ideas for first, second, and third Africas.  Our next call will feature their presentations of their plans/ideas.  I am so stoked to gather with them again and hear their plans!

As each of them provided responses to their experiences, it felt other-worldly.  Their words were steeped in confirmation and evidence that seemed to come straight from the Father’s heart for us.  It was very emotional for our team to receive the debt of the Father’s love and support through what they were saying.

I could provide pages of the notes we took and the transcriptions we captured from the recorded Zoom call.  But several registered particularly deep.  

“I love in old testament scripture, people were commanded to sow in squares but reap in circles, leaving the outskirts for those who don’t have.  And I feel like that is what you have for us.  You have sown in a square, but you’ve reaped financially only in a circle.  And we’ve been the beneficiaries of that extra.”

— Trevor

In summary, he added this.

“You are giving Christian business people, not only handles to be far more effective, but you are giving us a vehicle to invite more people to see the church being relevant.  And I keep getting this picture of Jesus…he took the Kingdom into the marketplace, he didn’t leave it in the temple.  And I think what you and the SummitTrek team are doing is taking the Kingdom to the marketplace.”

And, of course, this is not really about us but is wildly confirming of what God wanted to do with us, through us.  Through sound business principles, organizational, and leadership development.  

Our purpose is:

Restoring leaders and organizations to their original intended purpose through coaching.

Restoring them to an intended glory.

To be the coheirs of the kingdom.

Part of his Kingdom at hand.

To be the generative governors of this world.

To become something particular and glorious that reflects some portion of the divine’s glory that nothing else can.

He has been maturing and refining what he would have us offer to leaders and organizations.  

For such a time as this.  

For such a place as that one.

And apparently, many places beyond.

I used to think of crop circles as hoaxes perpetrated by farmers to encouraged those with some pretty wacky ideas about space and visitors from beyond.  Now, when I think of crop circles, I think of South Africa with a big smile on my face and tear in my eye.

Consider

• Where are you sowing?

• What portion are you reaping?

• Who is getting the extra?

• What role were you and your organization created to play in God’s Kingdom?

Choice

“It is the ability to choose which makes us human.”

- Madeleine L’Engle

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One of the interesting things I've observed during the pandemic is how many people, moms especially, have reflected on their pre-COVID life with utter confusion. They look back and wonder how they kept up the pace of life that they did. School, soccer practice, band practice, birthday parties, meetings, emails, church, carpooling, cooking, sleeping, working, etc. How were they doing so much and still functioning as humans? And to what end?

In a podcast with Essentialism author, Greg McKeown, he talks about a conversation he had with his wife where they were trying to figure out the logistics of taking their son to baseball practice several times a week. They had signed him up because they thought he’d be disappointed if he didn’t get to play. In the middle of the discussion, McKeown called his son into the room to test his hypothesis: 

“Son, we’re thinking about this baseball season. We’re wondering what your thoughts are about this - if we did it or didn’t do it?” Instant reaction: “Oh, it would be fine with me if we didn’t do it.”

Well, that solved it. No need to put forth all the time, effort, and money it would take to support their son playing a sport he wasn’t even really interested in playing. Why not put that time and energy into something he was excited about? From that point on, they became much more intentional with the things they put on their calendar. The clarifying question became: "Hold on.....Why are we doing this?" 

I've noticed the same thing happening in my life. Over time, I can forget my ability to choose. I can blindly adopt the "I have to" mantra and operate as if I am a helpless victim of my current or past circumstances and required to simply go along with whatever comes my way. Sure, our options may be limited; during this pandemic, some of our options have been completely wiped out. But as McKeown mentions in his book:

"Options (things) can be taken away, but our ability to choose (free will) cannot be."

After that sobering conversation with his wife and son, he even started to exchange all of his “I have to’s” with “I choose to because…” so he could start taking ownership of his choices instead of pinning them on someone or something else. 

Life is uncertain right now. In some ways, more than ever. But it's a great time to remember you still have the ability to choose how you spend your time, and how you respond to the people and the world that's around you. That ability has not changed, but it's likely been forgotten. 

Does connecting with God help you? Make the time. Do you need to let go of something? Make the choice. Do you need to have a conversation? Make the call. With every deliberate choice, you'll remember how good it feels to be human again. And you might just get your life back in the process. 

Consider

• In what area of your life have you forgotten your ability to choose?

• What do you find yourself complaining about the most lately, and is there something you can do about it? 

• Is there something you need to add or remove from your calendar? What is it and why?