Thoughts

The Freedom in Responsibility

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If you don’t accept responsibility for your life, someone will.

In order to live life in complete freedom, you must accept and exercise responsility for your life. Take responsibility for the things you can manage and influence. Accept that you cannot control outcomes, only the inputs. If you are not getting the output you desire, it is most likely because you are focused on or trying to control an input that does not actually influence or produce the result you desire. Explore different inputs, look at the things that others who are ahead of you focus on and work on those inputs. 

Context vs Control

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One of the most important lessons in business and leadership for me over the years has been learning how to lead by setting a clear context. When done correctly, context empowers the people you are leading to make the small decisions along the way that are necessary for the team to perform well. The alternative is to lead by control and essentially micromanage every aspect of the task or objective. Continue reading

A New Year, A New Me…

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I find myself in yet another season of self discovery. This seems to go in 3-5 year waves and on the one hand is very discouraging and annoying. On the other hand, I feel quite fortunate to have such a multitude of opportunities to choose from on my horizon and I am thankful that I even have the time and possibility to make some core evaluations about what I really want to be in life and where I want to go.

It is always encouraging for me to look through my goals and the progress, or lack of progress, toward those goals. Some I have far exceeded, some I have not made any substantial progress worth noting, and others I have abandoned all together. Reviewing them periodically is quite encouraging from the perspective of remembering the previous season of live and starting to look toward my next horizon. It serves to close a chapter in a sense.

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Gifts & Talents

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Jon was a drummer that I got to know through the band and singles group at my church. Getting to know Jon was also the first time that I specifically recall beginning to see the distinction between gifts and talents. I got to know Jon at a weekend youth camp where we played together in the band. After the evening events, Jon and I spent some time trading guitar licks and showing each other some stuff that we had made up. Jon had only recently picked up the guitar, having always played drums in the past, and I remember being amazed at the way he played the guitar. There was just something captivating about every aspect of his style. Part of it was the way he approached the instrument and handled it. Part of it was his comfort level in playing things that are not ‘supposed’ to sound good, at least when it comes to structured music theory. The most intriguing though was just how naturally the music seemed to flow out of him through the guitar. It was truly amazing! Continue reading