Tag: Health

Isn’t There Another Choice?

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Building With Purpose Online Conference

Fight, Flight, or Fear … Isn’t there another choice? You bet! Michael Warden reminds us of this in his interview for the Building With Purpose conference. His challenge, to think creatively instead of reactively, is a timely word for us today. He inspires us to grow during this time and gives us some tangible ways to do so.

Check out this clip:

Building With Purpose

This excerpt is a part of the FREE online conference I’m hosting called Building With Purpose. This course will help you pivot during this time of social distancing and working from home.

For many of us, it’s a new experience. These experts will help you gain clarity and momentum and experience success.

To sign up for the conference, go here.

Registration is completely free and is currently open.

Building With Purpose Online ConferenceIn this conference, we hear from leading experts in:

  • Coaching
  • Business Consulting
  • Human Resources
  • Finance
  • Digital Marketing
  • And more

If you’re interested in starting or growing a business or even just wondering how to maximize your time and what to do next, enroll in the free conference.

To follow up, I’m offering all attendees a complimentary session.

To redeem your session, go here.

Isn’t There Another Choice?

I love how Michael reframes the conversation around creativity in action and not the negativity of reaction. It prompts us towards healthy growth and gives us strong language for action. Maybe, like Michael you’re asking, isn’t there another choice? Yes, here are some of my thoughts:

1.) Remember all you’ve overcome.

You have, quite literally, made it through everything previous to this in your life. While much of this is new and unexpected, you have ample evidence to suggest that you can make it through this as well.

2.) Choose contemplative action.

Michael does a nice job of helping us walk through the waters of necessary action without reckless direction. I like the term “contemplative action.” Years ago, Elise and I instituted a rule that we will pursue a new path, potential direction, or life change with 100% enthusiasm until we sense God telling us to stop. He blessed us with brains, skills, and passions and we should use them in ways that spark joy. When we sense him telling us to stop, we do. This has opened up tremendous opportunities and new career paths. We have been committed to both action, and being aware of what’s going on in the midst of it, or here, contemplative action.

3.) Seek sound advice.

Life was never meant to be lived alone. That’s what makes social distancing hard for so many. Be sure to have good, sound counsel in your life. Find a friend, a coach, a mentor, or significant other give feedback and encouragement. 

My Interview With Michael Roberts

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I walked away from my interview with Michael Roberts thinking, “If someone followed these seven steps, they could start a business today.”

Michael Roberts, from the small business celebration podcast, gave us seven timeless qualities of great business leaders. Looking to grow a strong and profitable business? Listen to, and then follow, Michael’s advice.

 

Building With Purpose

This excerpt is a part of the FREE online conference I’m hosting called Building With Purpose. This course will help you pivot during this time of social distancing and working from home.

For many of us, it’s a new experience. These experts will help you gain clarity and momentum and experience success.

To sign up for the conference, go here.

Registration is completely free and is currently open.

Building With Purpose Online ConferenceIn this conference, we hear from leading experts in:

  • Coaching
  • Business Consulting
  • Human Resources
  • Finance
  • Digital Marketing
  • And more

If you’re interested in starting or growing a business or even just wondering how to maximize your time and what to do next, enroll in the free conference.

To follow up, I’m offering all attendees a complimentary session.Building With Purpose Online Conference

To redeem your session, go here.

 My Interview With Michael Roberts

During my interview with Michael Roberts, he gave us seven steps to business growth, even during COVID-19. It may sound hard to believe but even now, there are things you can do to grow your business. Here are three key takeaways I learned from Micael.

1.) Expand – Don’t Contract

The world is telling is us to be afraid. To shrink back. To hide. Michael challenges this thinking and tells us to charge ahead. Position yourself as the authority now by pivoting your mindset and products to help those in need around you. He provides a real-world example of a restaurant doing that and how it is actually growing, even as we follow the stay-at-home mandate.

2.) Value First – Sell Second

As entrepreneurs and business owners, we are all excited about our product. The problem is that sometimes we are more excited about selling that (and making money) than we are about helping and serving others. Michael challenges that thinking. Start first by creating a value-based relationship and then sell your product.

3.) Take Care of Yourself First.

I can’t run a business, help my neighbors, or provide for my family if I’m sick. Now more than ever we need to take care of ourselves first. Start by looking after your own health: spiritual, emotional, physical, relational, and mental health matters. 

 

Want to hear the rest of Michael’s other points and grow your business?  Join the Building With Purpose Conference for free.

The Spiritual and Emotional Health of Leaders

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Blog Post Title: Leadership Health and Integrity Part 2

Spiritual and Emotional Health in Leaders

The spiritual and emotional health of leaders is a necessary component of holistic health. 

We’re in the middle of a series on leadership health. Want to catch up? Part 1 is here.

Spiritual Health

Healthy leaders engage in ancient practices of development, often called spiritual disciplines. Times of quiet reflection, meditation, prayer, rest, and community discernment are a few examples.

An example of leadership spiritual growth is a hobby. Hobbies are those life-giving activities that serve as a reflection of our unique personality. Hunting, fishing, reading, flying drones, calligraphy. 

Need help? I did. Go here. Blog Post Title: Leadership Health and Integrity Part 2

In fact, I found that is often the case for high performing leaders. Engrossed in work and personal development (for the sake of further accomplishment), high performing leaders have a hard time unplugging and engaging in activities with no real goal or purpose other than enjoyment.

I’ve used comments like, “I have fun when I’m winning.” That’s enormously frustrating to people who are playing to have fun. (And vice versa).

Other similar phrases include:

  • I don’t know what to do with downtime.
  • I’m not bringing too much work with me, I’m on vacation.
  • My hobbies include winning and getting better.

(I may or may not have said all of these….) šŸ˜¬

But spiritual health is rooted in calling and it is about the full development of a person’s humanity. Below, is a partial list of spiritual practices and disciplines to help you grow.

Practices for Spiritual Development:

  • Prayer
  • Journaling
  • Meditation
  • Scripture Reading
  • Gratitude and Thankfulness
  • Fasting
  • Sabbath Rest
  • Singing
  • Silence
  • Solitude

Have others? Leave a comment and let others know how to grow in spiritual health.

Emotional Health in leaders

Emotional health is the next step to fruitful and productive leadership. In my experience, this is the most neglected area of health. The emotional health of a person sits in the unique field of being almost completely internal in nature through past experiences, while also being almost completely externally visible through actions, perceptions, and relationships.

Peter Scazzeo notes the concerns of emotional health:

Emotional health is concerned with such things as: naming, recognizing, and managing our own feelings identifying and having active compassion for others initiating and maintaining close and meaningful relationships breaking free from self-destructive patterns being aware of how our past impacts our present developing the capacity to clearly express our thoughts and feelings respecting and loving others without having to change them clearly, directly, and respectfully asking for what we need, want, or prefer accurately assessing our own strengths, limits, and weaknesses, and freely sharing them with others developing the capacity to maturely resolve.

For the emotionally healthy leader, effective emotional health requires a previous recognition and engagement with the emotional traps, snares, and shortcomings at earlier stages of life. Family dynamics, addiction triggers, and shortcomings all need to be worked through and reflected upon.

But it is important to remember that emotional health may start internal, but presents external.

Snappy comebacks.

Biting remarks.  Leadership Blocks

Constant criticism.

These are a few outward signs that something is wrong internally. Healthy leaders, by contrast, are generous. With their praise, with their affirmation, with their encouragement and desire to see others succeed and grow.

Because this is such an important topic, we are going to examine how to grow in emotional health and intelligence next week.

For now, take this test if you want to know where you’re overall health is.

 

Calling – Leadership Health and Integrity (Part 1)

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Calling – Leadership Health and Integrity (Part 1)

A Firm Foundation

The journey of healthy and sustainable leadership happens by building a firm foundation.

The bathroom remodel is nearing completion (finally!).

Over the last several months, it has been a series of two steps forward and one step back.

Exciting progress met by a frustrating setback.

The subfloor was installed fairly quickly and easily.

But then, it took three orders of the shower to get one delivered undamaged, followed by three visits of the plumber to get it installed fully.

But after six weeks, we finally had a shower. So we put up the drywall and painted.

Progress, Setback, Repeat.

That, as it turns out, is much like life.

Slow, Steady Growth

Healthy leadership is a series of growth events. Each is the opportunity to take a step forward. Unfortunately, we also experience moments of setback. 

For every successful meeting or mentoring moment, we belittle an employee.

Every time we set healthy boundaries and engage in personal development, we scream at someone in traffic.

For every trip to the park with our kids or a date night with our spouse, there’s the emotional binge eating for temporary relief.

It’s this continual cycle of growth and progression that encapsulates the leader’s life. It’s also the reason that I started intentionally focusing on seven key areas and aspects of healthy leadership.

Over the next couple of weeks on the blog, we are going to be covering each of these seven areas. In each area, we’ll examine the process of opportunity, growth, and reflection.

First up, let’s talk about calling.

Calling – Leadership Health and Integrity (Part 1)

The foundation for all leadership begins in a calling. God has been calling and shaping people since the beginning of time. Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and Paul are a few examples. All have unique and personalized call stories that led them to live a life of mission.

There are two levels of calling that need to be identified. First, is a general calling. The second moves from general to specific.

General Calling

The general call focuses first on the development of leadership skills.

For me, it came as a freshman in college. Unhappy with where I was, how I felt, what I was looking forward to, and the classes I was taking, I remember the feeling of being alone, unloved, and unimportant.

I had gone to college because itā€™s what I was supposed to do. However, I didnā€™t arrive with any real sense of purpose or direction. Having spent a semester as a science major, the only thing that I was certain of was that I couldnā€™t spend any more evenings in the lab staring at a microscope.

I entered into a time of dedicated study, prayer, and reflection. I looked at transferring schools, changing majors,  and dropping out and getting a job. After weeks of prayer and study, I was renewed with a sense of purpose and direction. I was reminded that I had once been called into leadership positions and that it might be time to explore that calling again.

I began to argue with God about what that might look like. In my brokenness, I also listed the reasons why I was unfit and unqualified for leadership.

I suffered from extreme shyness and public anxiety.

I had a lack of public presence and a huge fear of the unknown.

In a sense of divine irony, I sensed the call to read my Bible. I randomly opened my Bible to the story of Moses in Exodus three and four. My reservations and fears had been calmed when I saw that I raised all the same objections Moses had. I became convinced that God delights in using our weaknesses in unique and exciting ways.

General revelations can happen at any time and force future leaders to have open hearts and minds about how God is calling and shaping them.

Specific Calling

Specific call stories take on a more detailed tone. If a general calling echoes my own idea of, ā€œIā€™m not sure what this means, but I think Iā€™m called into leadership;ā€ specific call stories can fill in the blanks of to whom and for whom.

Originally for me, this meant youth ministry, but it didnā€™t take very long as a youth pastor to see that this was not what God intended for me!

Over the last decade, I have continued to define and refine my leadership skills and capabilities.

I now work with leaders, empowering them to get the right things done. My time is spent with success-oriented individuals helping them reach peak performance, accomplish their goals, and transform conflict into opportunity.

Growth Points

Let’s wrap up today’s discussion by providing discussion plans and growth points for the leadership journey.

These questions are designed to help you gain momentum in your journey towards leadership health.

  • To whom have I been called to serve?
  • What energizes me?
  • How do I want to give back?
  • What gifts and talents do my closest friends and family see in me?
  • Have I experienced a general calling? What did that look like?
  • Have I experienced a specific calling? What does that look like?
  • Who am I trying to become?

Next week, we are going to begin our look at the four internal aspects of leadership health and continue towards our final destination.

Resisting Burnout

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Last week we examined the necessity of talking about burnout.

If we want to prevent leadership burnout, we must first acknowledge it. This week, we want to create a plan for resisting burnout. Below are four things Jesus did. We can implement similar and visions to have sustained leadership success.

Resisting Burnout

Jesus, from the very inception of his public ministry, took intentional action steps to prevent ministry burnout. Aware of the potential dangers and the high price of public demand, Jesus regularly withdrew and practiced steps to healthy spirituality.

Resisting Burnout is a process.

Here are 4 action steps for leadership health.

1.) Clarity in Calling

Jesus’ first act after his baptism was to withdraw to the wilderness and develop clarity in his calling. Christians claim Jesus as God and  therefore temptations he faces in Luke four have often been thought of as ā€œno big deal.ā€ The mindset is that if God canā€™t sin, these temptations didnā€™t really bother Jesus. This sells the narrative short. The real temptations behind all of these are what kind of Messiah Jesus is going to be. Behind each of these temptations is a short cut.

Leadership Shortcuts

In the first temptation, he is tempted to transform rocks into bread.

His physical hunger, a legitimate need after forty days in the wilderness, is becoming the focus of the first attack. Clearly there is legitimacy to this need; after forty days of fasting, Jesus needs to eat. The shortcut is to be a one-stop food production worker. Thousands of enslaved Israelites are about to meet him and would love the chance at free food. Satan knows that if Jesus stays busy producing food for the masses, he will never have time or be a threat to conquer death and sin.

We can face similar temptations in our own leadership journey. People will look to us to help them accomplish good things. But good is the enemy of great. Don’t take your eyes off your ultimate calling by settling for something less. Resisting burnout requires clarity of vision.

The second temptation is to worship Satan and be given the status of ruler over the earth.

Satanā€™s hope here is to usurp Godā€™s authority in the life of Jesus with his own. If Jesus worships Satan, then there is no need for a political-religious showdown with the local rulers. The status quo can be maintained.

Wise leadership knows when to upset the status quo and start a new direction. Courageous leadership takes action when action is required, knowing that the end destination will be worth the temporary pain of change. Resisting burnout requires courageous action.

The final temptation is to jump from the temple and be miraculously saved by angels.

Enthralled masses would soon want to follow this daredevil, Jesus. He would be so busy planning his next death-defying escape that he wouldnā€™t have time for social and religious transformation. Always needing to please the crowd, Jesus would waste his days performing magic tricks instead of freeing enslaved people.

Called leaders do not settle for being crowd-pleasers. Instead, while they hope to inspire those that follow them, they are more concerned about doing what is right and living in the full depth of their calling. Resisting burnout requires internal strength.

The Danger of Settling

The dangerous grounds for each of these is that Jesus ends up doing all of these tasks any way.

  • Jesus does feed the hungry masses in spectacular ways.
  • He does perform miracles that draw crowds
  • He is crowned and given authority over the earth.

Yet as it relates to burnout prevention we see something important: Jesus does and is able to accomplish these things because he first spent time clarifying his calling and who he was in God. Leaders must use this same sort of diligence.

There will always be the temptation for leaders to fall prey to these temptations in one way or another: the need for validation, the false sense of urgency, or the cheap thrill of mindless entertainment.

Only when someone has been sufficiently grounded in both calling and character are they able to produce lasting and beneficial leadership.

2.) Solitude and Prayer

Another important rhythm that Jesus engages in is to regularly retreat for prayer and solitude. One author records,

ā€œYet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.ā€

The demands of leadership are tiring to the body and the soul. By instilling regular rhythms of rest and retreat, leaders can fight against fatigue.

Regular intervals might include:

  • Daily disciplines like prayer, exercise, and meditation.
  • Monthly half-day getaways for extended silence away from technology.
  • Quarterly retreats for planning and visioning.
  • Yearly vacations and times of Sabbath rest.

3.) Focus On The Right Perspectives

The Gospel of Mark records a telling story about Jesusā€™ perspectives in ministry. Even in the midst of tremendous need, Jesus tells his disciples that it is time to move on from one location to another. He reminds them that they must travel throughout the countryside and to other towns and villages.

The current population wants Jesus to localized and claim him as their own. Jesus refutes this desire and offers a larger perspective about the work he is up to.

Leaders today will face similar temptations. Getting stuck into work ruts, ignoring vision for the day-to-day mundane, the desire to be liked, or the inability to say no. Called and courageous leaders must resist all of these temptations.

4.) Personal Relationships

Two key markers are important to note in an examination of Jesusā€™ personal relationships.

First, there is the frustration of isolation. The elevation of the leader in the mind of the organization often leaves them with few (if any) close friends or trusted confidants. All relationships essentially become working relationships and lack a personal feel. Jesus builds a personal ministry with close confidants, not only seeking to train the disciples but to confide in them and relate to them as people. Jesus, in eating with his followers and in visiting their homes, shows that while he is here to accomplish a mission, people are the focus and deserve his best.

Second is Jesusā€™ investment in others. Jesus spent significant time investing in other people: his twelve disciples, a larger group of seventy-two followers, and the masses. Within each of these spheres, he invests in the well-being of others through mentoring, training and education.

What is often lost in the hectic pace of leadership is a commitment to invest, mentor, and train others. When tasks become more important than people and result more important than a process, leaders lose the opportunity for influence. To break free from this misaligned perspective, leaders must regain focus on investing time with people and bring them into further stages of development.

 

Need help or guidance? Schedule a free strategy session to help you in resisting burnout.