The Fountain of Christ, The Balance of Love, 70,000 Thoughts / Day
The Disciple-Leader Newsletter #6 on March 4, 2023.
Discipleship // Leadership // Mental Performance. The best from this week.
DISCIPLESHIP
“O that thou mightest be like unto this river, continually running into the fountain of all righteousness!" - 1 Nephi 2:9 (The Book of Mormon)
Here, Christ is referred to as the fountain of all righteousness. This verse teaches us to continually run into that fountain. But righteousness isn't the only thing flowing from the fountain of Christ. Neal A. Maxwell taught, "In intelligence and performance, He far surpasses the individual and the composite capacities and achievements of all who have lived, live now, and will yet live!"
Jesus Christ is:
The Fountain of all Power
The Fountain of all Love
The Fountain of all Knowledge/Truth
The Fountain of all Humility
The Fountain of all Holiness
The Fountain of all Expertise, in every field
The Fountain of all Happiness / Joy
The Fountain of Mental Performance
The Fountain of all Leadership
He is the fountain of every good thing (Moroni 10:18). If you want any good thing, come unto Christ.
LEADERSHIP
"Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love.” - John Stott
This week, I encountered a pastor and a few of his followers who were trying to convince me that I was a part of the wrong denomination and that I don't believe in the real Jesus.
They were very direct in letting me know I'm a cult follower, a demon worshipper, and am going to Hell unless I take a hard pivot away from the Church I associate with.
I don't bring this up to debate theology. But the style of their messaging confused me. I didn't take offense to what they said, because I am riveted in my convictions. But it got me thinking about how a Christlike leader would communicate. And it's not like that.
I love the above quote by John Stott. Paul taught us to speak the truth in love. If your aim is to be an instrument in God's hands to lead and influence others to change their minds or repent or just to be better, how you communicate is of utmost importance.
Insults don't change minds. Contempt doesn't change minds. They don't influence. LOVE influences. This excerpt from the book "Team of Rivals" gives Abraham Lincoln's philosophy on persuasion, and it's the best I've ever come across.
“Rather than upbraid slaveowners, Lincoln sought to comprehend their position through empathy. More than a decade earlier, he had employed a similar approach when he advised temperance advocates to refrain from denouncing drinkers in ‘thundering tones of anathema and denunciation,’ for denunciation would inevitably be met with denunciation, ‘crimination with crimination, and anathema with anathema.’ In a passage directed at abolitionists as well as temperance reformers, he had observed that it was the nature of man, when told that he should be ‘shunned and despised,’ and condemned as the author ‘of all the vice and misery and crime in the land,’ to ‘retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart.’
Though the case be ‘naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel,’ the sanctimonious reformer could no more pierce the heart of the drinker or the slaveowner than ‘penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him.’ In order to ‘win a man to your cause,’ Lincoln explained, you must first reach his heart, ‘the great high road to his reason.’ This, he concluded, was the only road to victory—to that glorious day ‘when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth.”
You can say everything right, but without love it is wrong. Or as Paul put it, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal" (1 Cor 13:1).
MENTAL PERFORMANCE
“The biggest battle that you have is with yourself. What you say to me when you tell me what I can or can't do will not affect me or discourage me unless I allow it to. If you want to get to your dreams, if you want to accomplish your goals, you have to be able to deal with yourself. Stay positive. Don't talk to yourself in a negative way. Continue to stay on your path. Continue to get better and better and better.” - Kobe Bryant
According to the Cleveland Health Clinic, the human brain processes 70,000 thoughts per day.
EACH DAY. That's astounding.
In his book Chatter, psychologist Ethan Kross wrote, "Our verbal stream of thought is so industrious that according to one study, we internally talk to ourselves at a rate equivalent to speaking four thousand words per minute out loud. To put this in perspective, consider that contemporary American presidents' State of the Union speeches normally run around six thousand words and last over an hour. Our brains pack nearly the same verbiage into a mere sixty seconds. This means that if we're awake for sixteen hours on any given day, as most of us are, and our inner voice is active about half of that time, we can theoretically be treated to about 320 State of the Union addresses each day."
The most important conversations you have each day are with yourself. And you have a lot of them. How do you speak to yourself? If you spoke to a family member or friend the way that you speak to yourself, would they still be your friend?
For most of us, probably not. Our brains have a negativity bias. We talk so critically about ourselves, to ourselves. Psychologist, Rick Hanson, explained it this way: "The mind is like Velcro for negative (thoughts) and Teflon for positive ones.”
It takes deliberate practice to rewire our brains away from our negativity bias towards a positive, optimistic bias. It's something we must do.
If we have 70,000 thoughts and let's say even just 1/10 are negative, that's 7,000 negative thoughts about yourself every day. For a disciple who is trying to develop "the mind of Christ" (1 Cor 2:16), that has to change.
While there are many ways to try to rewire your brain, start with this: Don't talk to yourself in a negative way. Whenever you have a negative thought, intentionally think of something positive about yourself. Make it a habit. It takes time. But try it! Don't let a negative thought enter your mind without fighting it. Change it. See yourself as Christ does.
3 Questions
Are you continually running into the fountain that is Christ?
Has your love grown soft or has your truth grown hard? How can you improve how you communicate?
What's one thing you can do to deliberately practice positive thinking?
Disciple-Leadership: Jesus-led. Lead like Jesus.
Have an amazing week, friends.
Aaron @ The Disciple-Leader