Fixing Your View of God, The Standard of Leadership, Rethinking Failure
Newsletter #12 on April 15, 2023
Discipleship // Leadership // Mental Performance. The best from this week.
DISCIPLESHIP
“If your God never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself."
Tim Keller
The Lord said, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Put another way, God's thoughts are different than yours. They are higher, holier, and more correct. His way of thinking is better than your way of thinking.
Neal A. Maxwell taught, "Jesus' love consists of ... pressing encouragement. His perfect love of each and all spares Him the need to accept us as we now are, for He knows perfectly what we have the possibility to become ... (His) love of us is not a passive love that merely watches indulgently over us in our folly. (His) love is a pressing love that seeks to correct our folly; it is a determined love that can create an uncomfortable and godly sorrow in us ... Because His love of us is true charity, He will not spare us, since to exempt us would be to deny us."
This is a really good measuring stick for our discipleship. Does our faith ever make us uncomfortable? Do we ever feel God's pressing encouragement?
If you do, be encouraged. It's a clear indicator that God loves you way too much to ignore you. If you don't, you might need to recalibrate your view of God.
LEADERSHIP
“Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.”
Mother Teresa
This might be the most concise description of what Christlike leadership really is. I imagine every one who was blessed to have had a personal encounter with Jesus (other than those who were against Him), left that experience different in two ways.
1. They were better.
2. They were happier.
This is the standard of leadership. When others are around you, do they want to be better? Do they feel happier? What effect do you have on those around you?
One speaker put it this way: "One of the most valuable skill sets that you can have in any walk of life is the ability to make other people better. If your mere presence, like, if the moment you walk in this room everyone else in the room gets better just by the fact that you're here, that is bottled gold."
Sometimes we make leadership so complicated. But it's simple. Are others better because of you? Are they happier because of you? That is leadership.
MENTAL PERFORMANCE
“External things are not the problem. It's your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.”
Marcus Aurelius
Here are some fun facts about Thomas Edison.
He had less than one year of formal education.
His teacher told his mother he was too dumb and would never amount to anything.
He was fired from his first two jobs.
Edison made countless attempts to invent the lightbulb, as well as many of his other inventions. In fact, Edison has 1,093 patents to his name. I'm sure accomplishing these feats felt amazing. But the process included failure after failure. It was hard and discouraging. So how did he find it in him to keep going?
Because of how he assessed his circumstances. Edison said, "I have not failed, not once. I've discovered ten thousand ways that don't work."
His mind was wired so differently than most of ours. Most of us would quit after discovering TEN ways that failed. But not Edison. He didn't see failure as failure. To him, failure didn't exist. All that existed was learning.
He realized external things weren't the problem. Assessing his circumstances incorrectly was the problem.
Edison said, "When you’ve exhausted all options, remember this: you haven’t."
We all have circumstances. And we all have choices. Will we choose to be the creator of circumstance? Or creature of circumstance?