Just do it

I don't like loose ends.  I like to know what is going on.  And I don't like unclear goals or, well, anything that makes me feel stress.  

I often spend a large chunk of my day getting ready to work.  Not actually working, but getting ready to work.  I write lists, determine priorities, gather supplies and information, and review my other lists to ensure I'm not missing anything.  Sometimes I look back on a day and realize that I've actually done nothing.  I've just gotten ready to do something.  

Often, that is because I am waiting for the perfect conditions.  I'm waiting to feel like I understand it all, like I know what I'm doing and that I have everything I need  I've realized that this perfectionism is wasting my potential, our potential,  the world's potential at fixing our problems.  

All of us probably realized in our early 20's that there will never be a time again when our to do list has every box checked off.  Life never stops and is always growing in complexity every day.   

What I've been realizing lately is that I've just gotta start.  Stop thinking so hard.  Stop waiting for things to be ready.  Stop looking for a blank slate to start from.  Just start.  Move.  Try.

My boss calls this the "trickle down" method.  Rather than starting something after you've calculated the whole plan, start to trickle out the project.  Communicate a bit here, a bit there, and then suddenly...you're done.  

For me it seems that it has taken almost 30 years for me to realize that none of us know what we are doing.  That we are supposed to try, win and fail.  That we are supposed to be ill-equipped.  That we should welcome anyone's efforts regardless of the outcome.  That we don't need to necessarily defend our actions when things don't turn out.  That mistakes are really where the real living happens.  And that admitting them doesn't change who you are.

Fear is a big part of this.  There have been times during the past few weeks when fear felt insurmountable for the task at hand.  When I spent time trying to get rid of fear, sometimes winning and sometimes losing the battle in my mind.  But then I read this:

"Great acts of faith are seldom born out of calm calculation.  It wasn't logic that caused Moses to raise his staff on the bank of the Red Sea.  It wasn't medical research that convinced Naaman to dip seven times in the river.  It wasn't common sense that caused Paul to abandon the Law and embrace grace.

"And it wasn't a confident committee that prayed in a small room in Jerusalem for Peter's release from prison.  It was a fearful, desperate, band of backed-into-a-corner believers.  It was a church with no options.  A congregation of have-nots pleading for help.

"And never were they stronger.

"At the beginning of every act of faith, there is often a seed of fear." (Lucado)

Accept where you are and take a step to where you want to go.  Scared?  Good.  Don't know what your second step will be?  Who cares.  Just start.

Still the same?

Leadership has been a topic I've thought a lot about lately.  Mostly because I have new leadership challenges in front of me - at work and in my personal life.  

I read my dad's Leadership Journal when I was a wee thing, was a member of the youth group's leadership team and was praised for my leadership ability.  The latter got old quick when I realized I was leading more often than not because people expected me to, not because I wanted to or because I necessarily cared about the goals.  

Figuring out what to lead might be just as hard as learning how and actually leading.  There are a few things I'm leading right now.  Luckily I know the goal, which is sometimes half the battle. But I'm noticing that the way I've led for the past few years isn't working in the face of these new challenges.  I'm looking around and I don't see enough followers.  

So I'm getting back to the basics.  

I picked up the quintessential book on leadership, John Maxwell's Developing the Leader Within You, in the hopes of being reminded of the important, rather than the urgent.  The root of the book focuses on influence.  You are a leader if you have influence.  Influence only comes from people giving you permission to enter into a relationship with them to accomplish something together.  

I've also been working lately on not caring what others think of me.  If I had a dollar for every time I wondered what others thought of me, I would be as rich as Bill Gates.  So I've gotten more honest. More unapologetic.  More driven.  More focussed on what I think is right to do, rather than what others think of me while I'm doing it.  But that isn't leadership either.

Because to be a leader you have to care what others think.  They have to want to have a relationship with you.  

In fact, you might need to care more about that than the objectives of your own leadership.  They have to want to follow you so you have to start with where they are.  

Crap.  

So, now what?  You'd think that I have an answer to that question because this is the first time in months that I have posted here.

But I don't have an answer to that that I like yet.  My answer for now is to keep praying, keep walking and keep hoping that there is more God in my leadership than there is me.

While reading Maxwell, I noticed pencil scribbles in the back inside cover.  I'd really like to know when I made these scribbles.  It would give some perspective of whether or not I am the same leader I was when I wrote it.  It was a draft personal mission and list of values that I was once triggered to write down:

mission: To gather meaningful information on societal attitudes and activities in order to communicate and illuminate truth.

Values:

• Detail: The whole picture
• Cause: What is the root?
• Think: Be still, then act
• Others:  Focus on others
• Self: Love thy self

I'm still the same girl.  What I'm doing isn't the same when I wrote that.  But I still care about the same things.  But I'm not the same leader I once was.  

Now I am searching for a new definition of leadership.  Not on the whole, but one for me.  One that focusses on others and comes out of loving thy self.  Or something like it...