Quote from Seth Godin:
“One option is to struggle to be heard whenever you’re in the room. Another is to be the sort of person who is missed when you’re not. The first involves making noise. The second involves making a difference.”
I’m Tired of Happy Christians
I’m tired of happy Christians. I am not saying that want them to be unhappy; only that I think it is time for Christians to start being real with each other and the world around them.
Over the course of my Christian experience I have bumped into people who, as followers of Christ, have lost the ability to stay in touch with real emotions. They walk through life with a smile, a prayer, and a few memory verses they can quote to negate any bad feeling they or another person might have. At the top of their arsenal of Scripture verses are “All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.” This is the emotional trump card.
Your closest loved one just died in a tragic automobile accident…All things work together for good for those that love the Lord!
You are experiencing a dark period in your life as you battle depression…All things work together for good!
You were just diagnosed with cancer…All things work together for good!
Your business is failing…You guessed it…All things work together for good!
To be sure, I believe that God has good purposes for those who are committed to them and if we stay open to him in those circumstances we can discover those purposes and learn lessons that help us mature. In question here is not the truth of Scripture or the validity of this theological proposition. Rather, I am disappointed with how this verse is used to sweep hurtful circumstances and painful experiences under the rug as if they are not real and do not matter.
Life is hard. Emotions are real. And things that we experience in life bring hurt and pain. It is not unChristian to feel bad when bad things happen to us. It is human.
And guess what? Christians are human.
Mature Christians have emotional integrity. They feel what they are experiencing and they honor the feelings of others by entering into that feeling with them. Instead of covering over it with a smile and a verse they decide to “weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice” (Rom. 12:15).
Cultivating Emotional Integrity
So how do we cultivate emotional integrity? Let me suggest a few ways I am attempting to grow my emotional integrity.
1. Slow down and pay attention.
Life moves quickly and we are busy people. We move too fast to feel. We don’t take the time to reflect and we do not allow ourselves the space to explore our feelings. One thing I am doing to re-awaken my emotional awareness is a practice I picked up from Julie Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way
I began the practice with much skepticism and the first few days it did not do too much for me. However, I stuck with it and after the first week my writing began to explore deeper issues. I found that I was stepping back to view situations and circumstances from a different perspective. And then something wonderful and dreadful happened. I became aware of my feelings. This is a healthy thing, but it is also scary, especially when I had for so long been too busy to feel anything. Clearly, this writing practice does not magically make a person emotional mature, but it does help a person slow down every day to pay attention to what is happening and how it feels. This is where the journey to emotional integrity begins.
2. Listen to yourself and others.
You cannot feel what you are experiencing or honor the feelings of others if you do tune into those emotions. This requires you to listen. Listen to the internal conversation you are having with yourself as you walk through various situations in your day. What are you telling yourself? How are physically responding to the situation? Is your heart rate increasing? Are you tensing up? Is your blood boiling? Are you feeling sad or afraid or distressed? Listen to yourself and what you are feeling.
As you begin to slow down and listen to yourself you will begin to cultivate the ability to listen to others around you. Listen for the emotions that are running behind the words they are saying. As you respond to them, don’t just respond to the words; connect with the emotions they are expressing.
When a person vents to you about how busy they have been and how they are running from one thing to another and wondering if they are going to get it all done. You can respond by saying, “Slow down, relax, make a list, and do one thing at a time. You’ll get it done.” This may be good advice. But if you want to connect with them at an emotional level, you can identify the feelings you’ve heard them express. ”This is a stressful time for you. It sounds like you are carrying a heavy load during this season. How can I be helpful to you?”
The first response offers sound advice that may be helpful. The second response makes a connection and allows the other person to know that you have heard them. The first response keeps you as the advice giver separate from the other person; you remain outside their situation as a teacher. The second response places you next to them in the circumstance; you enter into their situation as a servant. People with emotional integrity hear the other person, enter into their situation, identify with what they are feeling, and take on the posture of a servant ready to help.
3. Sit with the questions.
Some of the most raw emotions I have experienced in my own life or when dealing with others have come as I have confronted hard questions about life, tragedy, failure, pain, and loss. Where is God? Why did this happen? If God is good, how could he allow this to occur? The temptation for the happy Christian is to avoid these tough questions with one of those syrupy smiles and a rote response from Scripture. As I have asked my questions, I have been on the receiving end of some of these ill-timed happy responses. Instead of feeling loved and cared for I have felt belittled, minimized, and overlooked. Fortunately, I have had some key individuals who have had the ability to sit with my questions. They didn’t try to answer them or even respond to them. They just acknowledged that I was raising a tough question and that they did not have an answer for me. This allowed me to face those questions instead of feeling guilty for asking them. Learning to sit with questions that you and others have is a mark of emotional integrity.
Help Me Think More Fully About Emotional Integrity
What thoughts do you have on the concept of emotional integrity? I’d love to hear your insights, questions, and practical ideas for how to cultivate this aspect of our character. Leave a comment below and enrich the conversation.
Executive Book Summary: The Truth About Leadership
Book Summary
The Truth about Leadership: The No-fads, Heart-of-the-Matter Facts You Need to Know
Ten Truths About Leadership
1. You make a difference.
“Before you can lead other, you have to lead yourself and believe that you can have a positive impact on others. You have to believe that your words can inspire and your actions can move others. You have to believe that what you do counts for something. If you don’t, you won’t even try. Leadership begins with you.” (p. 1)
2. Credibility is the foundation of leadership.
“Leadership begins with you and your belief in yourself. Leadership continues only if other people also believe in you.” (p. 15)
3. Values drive commitment.
“People want to know your values and beliefs, what you really care about, and what keeps you awake at night. They want to know what drives you, what makes you happy, and what ticks you off. They want to understand your personal story. They want to know why they ought to be following you.” (p. 29)
4. Focusing on the future sets leaders apart.
“The capacity to imagine and articulate exciting future possibilities is the defining competence of leaders. Leaders are custodians of the future. They are concerned about tomorrow’s world and who will inherit it.” (p. 45)
5. You can’t do it alone.
“Leaders are here to serve others, and not the other way around.” (p. 61)
6. Trust rules.
“Trust rules your personal credibility. Trust rules your ability to get things done. Trust rules your team’s cohesiveness. Trust rules your organization’s innovativeness and performance. Trust rules your brand image. Trust rules just about everything you do.” (p. 75)
7. Challenge is the crucible for greatness.
“The historical leaders whom people admire most always faced and led others through major challenges.” (p. 91)
8. You either lead by example or you don’t lead at all.
“Walk the talk, practice what you preach, put your money where your mouth is, and follow through on your promises…they all mean the same thing. Your actions had better be consistent with your words. In the final analysis, people believe what you do over what you say.” (p. 106)
9. The best leaders are the best learners.
“The potential to lead exists in you. If you apply your head, your heart, and your courage, you can learn to lead.” (p. 119)
10. Leadership is an affair of the heart.
“Nothing important ever gets done without heart. Purely and simply, exemplary leaders excel at improving performance because they pay great attention to the human heart.” (p. 135)
Top Twelve Quotes
“Leadership is a demanding, noble discipline not to be entered into frivolously or casually. It requires an elevated sense of mastery. And, you can do it. It’s a matter of technique, of skill, of practice. It’s also a matter of desire and commitment.”
“Myth and legend treat leadership as if it were the private reserve of a very few charismatic men and women. Nothing is further from the truth. Leadership is much more broadly distributed in the population, and it’s accessible to anyone who has passion and purpose to change the way things are.”
“Everything you need to be a successful leader you already have: your intelligence to see an issue and a way to fix it, your heart to stay motivated, and your courage not to give up. You can’t look for the man behind the curtain to solve your concerns. Everything you need you already have. It’s all about taking the first step.”
“No one can make you a leader, either. You have to take that first step for yourself. You have to be willing to take actions that others will want to follow.”
“Only credible leaders earn commitment, and only commitment builds and regenerates great organizations and communities.”
“Before anyone is going to willingly follow you—or any other leader—he or she wants to know that you are honest, forward-looking, inspiring, and competent.”
“If you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t believe the message.”
“If people are going to willingly follow you, it is because they believe you are credible. To be credible in action, you must do what you say you will do.”
“The brick walls are there for a reason. They’re not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”
“While leadership can be learned, not everyone learns it, and not all those who learn leadership master it. Why? Because to master leadership you have to have a strong desire to excel, you have to believe strongly that you can learn new skills and abilities, and you have to be willing to devote yourself to continuous learning and deliberate practice. No matter how good you are, you can always get better.”
“Leaders put their hearts in their businesses and their businesses in their hearts.”
“To become the best leader you can be, you have to fall in love with the work you are doing and with the reason you are doing it.”
Personal Reflection
As I read this book I was reminded of three key concepts that shape my own leadership.
First, leadership flows out of who I am. In order to lead, I need to be credible and trustworthy. In order to be credible and trustworthy, I must be a person of character. Who I am plays a major role in determining the quality of the leadership I provide. I cannot develop my leadership without working on the interior aspects of my spirituality, character, and integrity.
Second, leadership requires continual learning and ongoing development. Leadership is made up of key practices and behaviors. Kouzes and Posner make it clear that these aspects of leadership can be learned if a person is committed to the journey of personal growth and development. To faithfully steward my calling and capacity as a leader, I must keep learning, stretching, growing, and developing.
Third, leadership is done with others for others. Leaders rally people. They forge unity. They shape culture. They build teams. They inspire commitment to a greater cause. They give of themselves and compel others to do the same. They work with others to accomplish things that help others. This is what makes leadership a noble pursuit.
How About You?
As you read this book summary and reflect on the key ideas presented here, what thoughts about leadership do you have? What strikes you about these leadership truths? What resonates? What causes dissonance? Share your thoughts below. I’d love to hear from you.
