Archive for leadership
Cultivating Discipline, Part 4: Habit-forming…
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I am a creature-of-habit… There are restaurants where everybody knows my name and that I drink Dr. Pepper… But I’ve found a pattern:
It takes more time and purposefulness to develop a good habit (like going to the gym) than to develop a bad habit (like eating a whole bag of chips in front of the TV)…
Maybe you experience the same struggle: the inertia of the status quo makes forming new, better habits hard… it’s work… and when I’m honest with myself, I don’t really want to do the work…
And here’s the circular logic that I get tangled up in:
Cultivating discipline relies on forming better habits and forming better habits is an exercise in cultivating discipline…
A few tips that I’ve gleaned from the www:
1. The 21-Day Rule… Everybody is different and some research in the UK has indicated that there may even be people who are “habit-resistant,” but the average person will form a new habit by repeating the desired behavior for 21 days.
2. It’s OK to Get Help… There is a reason that Alcoholics Anonymous is successful… It relies heavily on the esprit de corps (“spirit of the group”) to help group members form new habits, relationships and coping skills. Having a workout partner or Bible study group can make forming a new habit more challenging and more fun.
3. Attitude is Everything… Optimistic people are 4 times more likely to achieve their goals. If you are a generally pessimistic person (you will know this is you because you like to describe yourself as “a realist”) then your first goal should be to discipline yourself toward positive thinking. It won’t make your rich, beautiful or thin overnight, but it will open your heart to the possibility of substantial changes.
4. Remind Yourself… If I decide today that I’m going to drink 8 glasses of water everyday, I have got to remember to do it TOMORROW… Forgetting my goals is a real problem… Write it down, tape it to your bathroom mirror, or the fridge, or that bag of Oreos… Re-commit every time you see it… Decide everyday to do it again.
5. Suck it up… Sometimes, you need to just get to work… because nobody pays you to believe in the power of your dreams. Sorry to sound harsh, but some of the most pivotal times in my life have been those moments when someone cared enough to kick me in the butt…
You might find this website helpful: Habit Watcher helps you track your progress toward multiple goals…
What habits are you trying to make? or break? What tools have helped you?
NEXT in this series: Suck It Up…
Cultivating Discipline, Part 3: Character and Discipline…
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As a particularly undisciplined person, I have often shrugged-off the connection between discipline and character… But lately, I’ve sort of been challenged to do things that only a person of great character could do…
And I don’t wanna…
I’m not whining, just generalizing in a way that I hope will challenge you to think about this…
Jesus told his followers that this world would throw hardship and trouble at them (John 16:33) but “take heart,” He said, “I have overcome the world.”
Could character be fueled by the discipline to do things that are difficult, painful or heart-killing?
This promise that Jesus overcame the world sometimes seems hollow in light of the very real pain that the world dishes out. But the same power that fueled Jesus is alive in those who follow Him…
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
- Paul, the Bible (Romans 8:35)
When Paul wrote these words, he was facing tremendous persecution, in the next verse he says that he faces the threat of death continuously… Then he goes on to answer his question:
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. (above, verse 37)
So, there is a supernatural work going on inside that gives us the potential to more-than-conquer (overcome even) some pretty extreme hardship… But I find that I am often way-laid by some simple slight… or thrown off-course by someone’s harsh words… or discouraged by the decisions of those in leadership…
Where’s the disconnect? What happened to all of the overcoming and more-than-conquering that I was supposed to experience? After I pray and repeat the promises to myself… After I conjure all of the spiritual-sounding jargon that has ever been thrown at me… If I’m still way-laid or off-course or discouraged, what am I missing?
Discipline?
Really?
I’m throwing this out for your consideration… I think I’m onto something life-changing. You see, lately I’ve been discouraged and it effects every aspect of my life: I don’t feel like writing, don’t feel like balancing the checkbook, don’t feel like doing anything around the house, don’t feel like taking my daughter to the library… You get the idea, right?
But when I push past the feelings and do these things (that’s discipline, right?), something cool happens: I find that I have just a bit more “feeling” for the next thing… and the next thing… and the cumulative effect:
I’m overcoming that discouragement.
I think this is why Paul compares the life of a Christ-follower to the life of a distance-runner:
Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training… I beat my body and make it my slave…
- Paul, The Bible (1 Corinthians 9:25, 27)
There is a balance between the work that Jesus did (when He overcame the world) and the discipline I need in order to access that work (to overcome obstacles in my own life)… Does that seem right to you? Do you see a similar truth in your own life?
NEXT in this series: Habit-forming…
LeadershipIssues: Collaborate or Die…
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I’ve been looking at the array of media that churches are putting together these days… Some of it is really impressive. For example: Church on the Move in Tulsa has the beginnings of a really top notch media ministry. You can watch some of the highlights on their YouTube channel. I’ve probably watched their Father’s Day tribute, Dad Life, fifty times. It’s that funny and well-done and it inspires me to do something:
Collaborate.
The truth is that all of us experience limits in our skill-set… I actually have lots of limitations in mine… I often need to surround myself with a team of experts in order to realize the considerable potential of my vision.
Dad Life is a prime example of a collaboration that could not have possibly been accomplished by a individual’s effort. In the one 2:50 video, we see the combined talents of songwriters, comics, actors, editors, audio technicians and videographers… The quality at every level of production demonstrated the expertise of a team.
It is a symphony of gifts… and no one can whistle a symphony…
To reach this level of excellence in artistic expression, we need teams… and those teams need to be composed of people who respect, trust and rely on one another.
How can we cultivate these teams? What are the challenges inherent in building teams of creatives? What have you been able to accomplish through team effort?
I’d love to hear your thoughts…
Cultivating Discipline, Part 2: The Fallow Ground…
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Jesus told a story about seeds that fell on different types of soil… The seeds that fell on the path were trampled by the careless or eaten up by birds and never put down roots or produced a crop (Luke 8:4-8). And while Jesus was not talking about cultivating artistic discipline in that particular context, the lesson is the same for us:
Your gift will die before it gets a chance to grow if you don’t prepare the soil of your life… You’ve got to give your gifts a safe and satisfying place to be nurtured and grow…
I think the imagery of the path is really appropriate in our context: there is a tendency in life to fall into habits… we pace over the same bit of ground long enough and we wear a path there. For me, this is a particularly intense struggle…
I could eat at the same restaurant every day… Camp in the same park… Hike the same trails… Visit the same attraction… It’s a kind of joke between me and my wife: If I ever say something crazy like, “Let’s try that new Mexican restaurant,” she will mock me relentlessly.
The “paths” in my life are well worn and tightly packed… I like them that way. These ways are safe… they are comfortable. There is little risk in walking these roads, unless you consider it risky to avoid my own potential.
Because sowing the seeds of my potential on this well-packed soil is pointless… It will either be trampled on by passers-by or consumed by scavengers.
So, for me, breaking up the fallow ground starts with plowing up my comfortable path… or leaving it altogether and casting my potential onto the fertile soil of risk…
This metaphorical outlook points to a single, profound principle:
I must develop my character in a way that gives my gifts a safe place to grow and be fruitful.
See, this is the place where our leaders failed us… We received the most applause when we performed or produced or succeeded. This is especially true of kids growing up in church. I was 8-years-old the first time I sang a solo in “big church.” People started talking immediately about Tim-the-Music-Minister. It would be 20 years later that I first heard the suggestion that talent-alone was a poor substitute for substantial character…
Here’s another example:
As creatives, we have a tendency toward pride… In fact, most of us will always dance on the fine line between self-confidence and arrogance. The first gives boldness and voice to our work, the second brings opposition from God Himself (James 4:6).
Pride packs the soil of our lives in the same way that routine does… and we have to plow it up and abandon the path in the same way. In this example, humility is the fertile soil where our gifts and talents will grow and be fruitful…
What has packed the soil of your life into a well-worn path? It could be fear of failure or a critical spirit or deceit… It might be 2 or 3 of these examples or one that I haven’t listed…
NEXT in this series: Character and Discipline…
Cultivating Discipline, Part 1…
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Discipline is the anti-art…
Where we creatives like to live on the right side of our heads, the suggestion that we lack discipline is met with a shrug… “So what?” we retort. Of course we lack discipline. Isn’t that the point?
We get it in our heads that talent, charisma and awesomeness is all we need to have a fantastically successful life… well, that and a good agent…
But there’s not a single success-story out there that hinges on talent, charisma or awesomeness… Not one that I’ve read, anyway.
Every successful author, performer or artist that I’ve ever read about has a story that hinges on discipline… the singular capacity to stay with a task until it is complete; the unwavering drive to take on the insurmountable obstacles that life seems to throw at talented, charismatic and awesome individuals.
I’ve now quite a few talented, charismatic and awesome folks that failed to launch… it’s sad really… a waste… but it happens all the time…
At some point or another in our lives, we must choose the path of greatest resistance… We have to weather storms and pass through dark valleys… We simply have to learn to discipline ourselves.
This is where it always falls apart for me: discipline isn’t something that I can just wish for or purchase or conjure. If that were possible, I’d have gotten it by now. Discipline must be grown…
More than that, really, discipline must be cultivated.
In horticulture, cultivation is more than planting seeds, more than watering or feeding plants… It is the entire process of growth and harvest… Learning the process is the only road to success as an artist or anything else, really. If we are going to produce a harvest (to extend the metaphor) that is 50 or 100 times greater than the seeds we sow, we have to persevere through the entire process…
Every time.
In the weeks ahead, I’ll be sharing the process with you… As I work through a few projects that require a high level of discipline (including the continuation if this series), I’m going to spill out my struggle to you guys…
Could be messy…
NEXT in this series: The Fallow Ground…
