Something Worth Preaching, Your Leadership Impact, The Story You Tell Yourself
The Disciple-Leader Newsletter #51
DISCIPLESHIP
“No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home and never preach again until you have something worth preaching.”
Charles Spurgeon
Spurgeon was appalled at the idea of a Christless sermon. Jesus was so central to him, that he genuinely didn't see a point without Christ. Do you? More than just sermons, what about Christless acts? Or Christless thoughts?
Elder Ronald A. Rasband taught, "The Lord is in the small details of our lives." Are you as eager to involve Him as He is eager to be involved?
If Jesus Christ is central to your life, certainly He'll be in your sermons. But you'll involve Him in everything. You'll find a way to make everything about Him. You'll glorify Him. You'll reflect and represent Him at all times, in all things, and in all places, and when necessary, you'll use words.
Why should you, by the way? Why should you make Him the center of your life?
The primary reason is because He asks you to. His is the way that leads to eternal life. Jesus taught, "Look unto me in every thought" (D&C 6:36). If action is the offspring of thought, then by implication, Jesus is teaching you to look unto Him in every action.
But consider another reason. Here are 3 quotes from Spurgeon all hashing out the same idea:
“Sooner by far would I go to a bare table, and eat from a wooden porringer something that would appease my appetite, than I would go to a well-spread table on which there was nothing to eat. Yes, it is Christ, Christ, Christ whom we have to preach; and if we leave him out, we leave out the very soul of the gospel. Christless sermons make merriment for hell. Christless preachers, Christless Sunday school teachers, Christless class leaders, Christless tract distributors—what are all these doing? They are simply setting the mill to grind without putting any grist into the hopper. All their labor is in vain. If you leave Jesus Christ out, you are simply beating the air, or going to war without any weapon with which you can smite the foe.”
“The Spirit of God bears no witness to Christless sermons. Leave Jesus out of your preaching, and the Holy Spirit will never come upon you. Why should he? Has he not come on purpose that he may testify of Christ? Did not Jesus say, ‘He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you’? Yes, the subject was Christ, and nothing but Christ, and such is the teaching which the Spirit of God will own. Be it ours never to wander from this central point: may we determine to know nothing among men but Christ and his cross.”
“Where there is nothing of Christ, brethren, there is nothing of unction, nothing of savor, and a man is quite right not to attend such a ministry as that. Leave Christ out of your preaching, and you have taken the milk from the children, you have taken the strong meat from the men; but if your object as a teacher or preacher is to glorify Christ, and to lead men to love him and trust him, why, that is the very work upon which the heart of God himself is set. The Lord and you are pulling together.”
Here, he is talking about sermons. But you have to consider your life as a sermon. You are a living, breathing, walking sermon. What will your life, or your sermon, be about?
I hope it is about Jesus Christ.
LEADERSHIP
"Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”
Buzz Williams
This idea has also been said this way, "If your presence doesn’t make an impact, your absence won’t make a difference."
Ask yourself these questions:
What impact does your presence make?
What difference will your absence leave?
MENTAL PERFORMANCE
"You are a story that you tell yourself."
Naval Ravikant
One of the core tenets of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is cognitive reframing. On a daily basis, you experience cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are "internal mental filters or biases that increase your misery, fuel your anxiety, make you feel bad about yourself", and simply aren't true. Cognitive reframing is the ability to challenge and change your thoughts.
Cognitive psychologists have concluded that we think about 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts every day. On top of this, our brains are hardwired with a negativity bias. Negative thoughts, or cognitive distortions, stick to our minds like velcro. Positive thoughts, on the other hand, are like Teflon. They are elusive and slippery. They need frequent reapplication. This is why we need to actively participate in cognitive reframing.
It's important to understand what constitutes your thoughts. Can we ascribe all 80,000 daily thoughts as yours? No.
One of the principles of DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) is that you are not the voice in your head. You’re the one who hears it. Put another way, your thoughts aren’t what pops into your mind. Your thoughts are what you keep in your mind.
We experience so much unnecessary anxiety and suffering simply due to wrongly attributing the voice we hear as our own.
What are some of the most common cognitive distortions? Here are a few you've likely experienced (taken from here).
All or Nothing: Seeing something or someone as all good or all bad. Look for phrases with words like always and never. Ex: "I always say the wrong thing."
Mislabeling: Seeing something or someone as all good or all bad. Look for phrases with words like always and never. Ex: "The relationship ended, so I'm not good enough."
Jumping to Conclusions: Interpreting others’ thoughts or assuming the worst possible outcome when there are no facts to support your conclusion. Ex: "I bet everyone is laughing at me."
Personalizing: Blaming yourself or someone else for a situation that in reality involved many factors. Ex: "They didn't call me back, so they must be mad at me."
Emotional Reasoning: Judging a situation based on how you feel. Ex: "I feel guilty. I must have done something bad."
Overgeneralization: Applying one experience and generalizing it to all experiences. Ex: "I did poorly on this assignment, so why should I stay in the class?"
Negative Mental Filter: Focusing on a negative detail and dwelling on it. Ex: "It feels like nothing went well today. It was just failure after failure."
Discounting the Positive: Rejecting all positive experiences because you don't feel like they count. Ex: "It doesn't matter if my daughter ate my breakfast. She threw so many tantrums throughout the rest of the day."
Magnification or Minimization: Exaggerating your weaknesses or comparing them to others' strengths. Ex: "I barely cook dinner for my family, and when I do, it's nothing like her dinners."
Should Statements: Telling yourself how things should or should not be. Ex: "I shouldn't have messed up like that."
So how do you cognitively reframe? I love this suggestion from mental performance consultant Justin Su'a: “(What) we do quite often is I’ll have a room full of people, let’s say it’s a team. I will tell every player to pick a teammate. What you’re going to do is something you do all the time: debate. People will debate the best food, they will debate the best movies, they’ll debate what sports are the best, and they’re really good at it. So what I have them do, I say, okay, you’re going to debate and I give them the topics. You’re going to debate hot weather versus cold weather, and you hear them go at it. You’re going to debate watching the movie in the theater or watching the movie at home, and they go at it.
"Then I ask who won the debate, and in a room full of highly competitive individuals, they all raise their hands. Then I ask, ‘Okay how did you win the debate what did you do to win?' They say techniques like, ‘I didn’t let my opponent talk’ or ‘I listened to what they said and then I poked holes in their reasoning’ or ‘I applied logic and I provided evidence and data against what they were saying.’ Then I come with the point. The point is it’s interesting how you can sit here and debate a topic like weather, sport, and food, but you don’t pause to apply those same principles to debate yourself. When you start doubting yourself, a lot of times we say, ‘Oh that is true, I’m not smart. Oh that is true, I’m never going to accomplish that. Oh that is true, he or she is better than me’ as opposed to stopping and saying, ‘No, let me look at that differently. Let me apply evidence against it. Let me consider the fault of my reasoning. The faulty judgment that I might be having.’ That’s what it means to talk to yourself instead of listen to yourself.”
Here are 2 principles to better your mind through cognitive reframing.
Recognize The Distortion, Call It Out, Debate With Yourself
Use this Justin Su'a activity and apply it to your situation. When a negative thought or cognitive distortion shows up, call it out. Your thoughts are only the ones you keep. Debate it.
Build Fortifications
Captain Moroni is considered the greatest military leader in Nephite history. His strength came from an uncompromising commitment to preparation.
"Yea, he had been strengthening the armies of the Nephites, and erecting small forts, or places of resort; throwing up banks of earth round about to enclose his armies, and also building walls of stone to encircle them about, round about their cities and the borders of their lands; yea, all round about the land. And in their weakest fortifications he did place the greater number of men; and thus he did fortify and strengthen the land which was possessed by the Nephites" (Alma 48:8-9).
In fact, his preparation was so unprecedented, the opposing army was described as being astonished.
"Now at this time the chief captains of the Lamanites were astonished exceedingly, because of the wisdom of the Nephites in preparing their places of security" (Alma 49:5).
But behold, to their uttermost astonishment, they were prepared for them, in a manner which never had been known among the children of Lehi. Now they were prepared for the Lamanites, to battle after the manner of the instructions of Moroni. And it came to pass that the Lamanites, or the Amalickiahites, were exceedingly astonished at their manner of preparation for war" (Alma 49:8-9).
The Nephite victory over their enemy was convincing. You'd think after such a blowout, Moroni would've been satisfied. The Book of Mormon records how he responded: "And now it came to pass that Moroni did not stop making preparations for war" (Alma 50:1). Not only was he constantly making military preparations for war, but he was also preparing his people mentally. "Moroni ... had been preparing the minds of the people to be faithful unto the Lord their God" (Alma 49:7).
Moroni didn't wait for an attack to respond. He prepared. He set the example for how we should treat our minds.
My favorite way to prepare my mind is to study and rehearse my personal culture. I wrote about that here.
Another related way is through affirmations. Some people think these are silly. Actually, there's good science behind their efficacy. After reading the science, if you still think it's silly, watch the scariest man in the NFL, Aaron Donald, engage in this before playing in the Super Bowl. If it's not silly to Aaron Donald, why would you think it's silly?
Here's just one finding, among many: "University of Pennsylvania researchers showed that repeating self-affirmations produces physical changes in brain regions associated with self-processing, ultimately impacting their view of themselves, and these changes are associated with subsequent positive changes in people’s behavior."
Jeff Benedict chronicled Tiger Woods' experience with mental affirmations as a young man. He wrote, "Tiger was in grade school when his father furnished him with a cassette player and motivational self-help tapes. Tiger was filling his mind with words that were intended to make him great. He wrote some of the messages on a sheet of paper that he taped to his bedroom wall:
I believe in me
I will own my destiny
I smile at obstacles
I am first in my resolve
I fulfill my resolutions powerfully
My strength is great
I stick to it, easily, naturally
My will moves mountains
I focus and give it my all
My decisions are strong
I do it with all my heart
Tiger listened to those tapes so often that he wore them out."
It works for Aaron Donald. It works for Tiger. It will work for you too.
Remember, you are the story you tell yourself. Make it exceptional.
Disciple-Leadership: Jesus-led. Lead like Jesus.