Work and Lead by Your Original Design
We are all products of the culture we grow up in. In the Western world, and in America in particular, society brainwashes us to believe we’re only as valuable as what we produce or achieve, and the bar for both keeps getting higher. 50 years ago, the prediction was that in the year 2000, we’d only be working 30 hours a week and have 13 weeks of vacation. Our biggest challenge was going to be what to do with all our leisure time. However, we’ve now reached 2021 and this isn’t our reality at all. In fact, we seem to have gone the opposite way, unwittingly and unhesitatingly bowing to the gods of productivity and accomplishment while sacrificing ourselves in the process.
As the CEO of a company, you’re taught to believe everything depends on you; it’s up to you to be right, have the answer, or figure it out yourself. You’re forced to fulfill different roles for different people — your board, your team, and your family — but this is impossible to sustain. You try anyway, working harder and longer hours. But the joy and meaning becomes vaporised from your work, and you lose heart. The work is getting done, often with excellence because your pride alone won’t let you do anything else, but the impact of losing heart is real:
- Your strategic thinking and discipline wane and the most important things take a back seat to the urgent.
- You’re impatient with your team.
- Because everything is riding on your performance. Your anxiety levels are sky-high.
- You start making questionable decisions.
You were designed to be a wholehearted person. There is a path back to wholeheartedness and to becoming the type of person who can be entrusted with authority. So how do we find that path and solve this problem once and for all?
What is your Original Design?
You were created in the image of God and you are designed to experience contentment, joy, and confidence in Him. However, you’ve thus far believed the lie that life is up to you. COMPLETELY UP TO YOU! Do you feel the weight of that?
I certainly do, and I fight that lie almost everyday. Despite having a team, family, and community of friends around me, I feel alone in my struggle to make my business work (and my marriage and family too). I stew in worries and I put a tremendous amount of energy and pressure on myself to figure it all out. I feel that I have to have the perfect answers and look unphased in the process. The lonely feeling comes from my belief that I’ve missed the boat on what God is doing or wants to do in my life, and now I have to figure it out because, again, my life is up to me. I also feel like I’m always behind and having to play catch up. This translates to feeling like I’m in a hurry, and feeling anxious about being in a never-ending game of catch-up. I must confess that some of the most important things are actually at the mercy of things that matter far less. This is a product and expression of that deep belief that “life is up to me.” I don’t want to screw up the hard stuff, so I focus on things that are a no-brainer but that are often less important.
That’s the lie, but the truth is, you and I have a Father who exists at the center of all things. He is well, He is happy, and He has your best intentions at the center of His heart. He is perfectly capable of saving and restoring both my world and the world at large that He has created. He invites us to participate in an ongoing partnership with Him in leadership. When we recover our life with God as our original design, we realize that life is not actually up to us. We are not behind; we are on time.
Living this way is the path to wholeheartedness. Just like when I asked before about feeling the weight of the lie that tells us our lives are up to us, can you feel the weight lift reading these words? Does it feel good to acknowledge that life isn’t up to you?
When you recognize this lie for what it is, and acknowledge your lack of control in life, you realize:
- No matter the fire that might be raging at work, you never feel alone
- The pressure is released of having to have all the answers and realizing that you just have a seat at the table with your leadership team to solve things.
- The need for validation and love in figuring it all out is replaced by a settled and oriented heart in being a beloved son or daughter of God.
- It’s ok to look messy, to make mistakes or get something wrong. Those don’t define you anymore
- The most important things can now get the attention they deserve, because the possibility of a misstep isn’t overwhelming. This isn’t permission for incompetence; our best is still required, but the stakes of the important things have been properly recognized.
How to work & lead by Original Design
There is a path of wholeheartedness, your Original Design, that allows you to courageously order both your days and your relationships in a manner that brings joy, energy, and fulfillment to your life, and to those entrusted to your care. This requires that you ask the designer, God, to lead you on a path towards deeper maturity and deeper joy, one that helps you recover a life that is worth living.
So where do you begin this process of wholeheartedness? It begins – and then continues in a process of discovery – with three questions. My friend, Morgan Snyder, calls these the “questions of initiation”.
1. Who is God?
This isn’t the Sunday School, theologically-abstract version of God, but rather, what you have come to believe is the nature of God. Who is He, really, to you? What is His character? What is the extent of His authority? What’s His relationship with you? You may need to wade through some choppy waters here, because so many have formed a view of God as a direct result of their own life, circumstances, and in some cases, incorrect teachings. Answer this question with a prayerful heart, a Bible in hand, and a trusted spiritual director who can help you navigate these waters.
2. Who am I?
First, answer this question from a general standpoint. Who are you as a human? Who created you? As a human, who were you designed to be and what were you created to do? The answer to this question will flow directly from the answer to the first question, so it’s important not to skip ahead. Next, answer this question for yourself specifically – Who is the person you have been entrusted to bring into the world? What are your gifts? What is your heart? Your personality? The purpose of excavation here is to get to your true self. This is grounds that most people are unfamiliar with, so again, answering this with a trusted coach or mentor who has done this work themselves is very helpful.
3. What is the story?
This isn’t the timeline of your life, but rather, the bigger story that’s being written with you in it. Each person is born into a story that’s already at work. Whenever I think of this question, I think of Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump. The larger story he was born into was one of military service and, morbidly, death on the battlefields of US history. Ask yourself what the story arc you were born into is. Which ongoing story lays the context from which everything else in your life happens? The answer to this question gives purpose and meaning, and removes the obsession with individual circumstance and the weight of today’s decisions from your self-discovery.
4. What’s the frontier for you?
When you think of a frontier, think of Lewis and Clark on the edge of the MIssissippi or the Columbia Rivers, being called forward to keep moving west. The frontiers in your life are those edges to risk, to grow, to become more of what you were meant to be. To step towards your frontier requires boldness. For example, one client of mine found that his frontier was leading his organization with more of his heart. He had heard feedback that he was unapproachable and somewhat cold, despite his desire to be open. Another client’s frontier was faith; she needed to let go of her need for control and to always be in action, never slowing down. Finally, another client’s frontier was an acquisition of another company. He needed to stop playing it safe with the small organization he had built, and to try to impact more lives.
By answering these four questions, you can begin walking down the path to wholeheartedness. Choosing to lead, not from the hijacked setting of social design, but according to your original design, creates flourishing, thriving organisations, teams, marriages and families. By stepping into a more wholehearted way of living and leading, you model the way for others to do the same. It encourages new levels of commitment, resourcefulness, and creativity, and leads to significant results.
As noted earlier, in this process to wholeheartedness, you’ll encounter choppy and deep waters. You’ll benefit from the support of a coach and spiritual direction. If this work calls to you, please reach out. I would love to talk about what it would look like for me to join you on this journey.