Straight Talk on Raising Your Game
It takes a lifetime to learn some things. This is one of them.
You are not the sum of your production. You’re not. How well you perform as a husband or a wife, how well you do as a parent, a friend, a member of your church or rotary group or neighborhood homeowners association member – you are not the sum total of all that you can produce.
You are you. You have an identity, a created persona with innate value and worth. This is not some mantra we quote, some nuanced ‘thing’ we plaster to our mirror so we can meditate on it, should we have the time or need. This is simply true – whether we believe it, think about it, learn more, etc.
Believing that we are the sum of our successes and failures in life is another way of connecting with this. For some, the shit has truly hit the fan in life, and it weighs things down profoundly. Some of that was done to us and truly ought not to have been. Some of that we do to ourselves for myriad reasons. Conversely, we’ve been trained that hard work and diligence will, it would seem, produce positive outcomes, and balance the scales, then move us ‘into the black’. We’ve been trained this way our whole lives. It’s how we perceive the value of things. We do this all the time, in small things and in big things.
If you want to raise the game – in any area of your life – you must be willing to think about this honestly. Is it up to you to raise your own value by moving the needle yourself? Really? Does your personal output really determine your worth as a person?
A four-year-old boy draws his Papa a dinosaur on the disposable “kids menu” at the local diner while out for pancakes one morning. To the little boy, it is an act of love and joy. Papa receives it as that...or as something to be assessed, corrected, and retrained in the little one? Crumples it up and tosses it?
A good Papa receives it with love and joy. Some of you have never known this good Papa. Some of you have forgotten…
I want you to know, dear friends, that producing trends began in us from an early age, believing that we had to ‘draw great dinosaurs’ with our lives to impress a Papa that we wished were different. It has become a conforming pattern in how we think, act and drive our lives. We are invited to come and learn to think in a new way.
R12 Coaching came to be because I know, all too well, about this conforming pattern. I’ve come to see it in my own life in spades – like a smell I couldn’t wash off – the trying harder, doing more, quitting old habits to make room for good ones, stuff. These are good things to do (not saying they’re not). Just not what is needed to assuage an identity issue I wasn’t actually aware of.
R12 is a reference to a very meaningful scripture passage from an extremely productive overachiever. His name was Saul who, in time, had his name changed to Paul. During the Saul years he did all he could to leverage everything he had to position himself at the top of society’s heap. Some in the culture revered him, some feared him. Inside, Saul hated himself and would later reflect on his “wretchedness”. But the God who created Saul intervened in his life when some of us (if we had any input with God on the matter, I suppose) would have preferred God crumple up the whole of his life like a piss-poor dinosaur drawing and tossed it into a fire. But God did not do that. He intervened and revealed the reality of who was really who, including Saul, and changed the man into a most radical, productive, impactful, world-changing ambassador.
R12 is from the 12th chapter of his letter to the church in Rome. Quoting here from the first two stanzas of that section. And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice – the kind He will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship Him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good, pleasing and perfect.
Now some of you might not be religious folks. I wasn’t for a long time. I’m not asking you to read that with a religious filter. I’m asking you to consider reading it as an invitation that speaks to the very core of what drives you.
Do you want to keep working to do good to prove you have value OR do you want to know you have value and then go out and do some good stuff with your life?
The One who changed the life of Saul changed my life. Saul became Paul and trained people to walk with others in following the One who changed us. Those folks became the most productive, innovative, creative people…
When you know who you are from the One who knows who you are and were created to be, you will do more than you could ever ask, think or imagine.
Walking together.
Peace~
Craig
craig@r12coaching.com
*If you’d like to chat about working and walking together, reach out. I’m happy to discuss that with you.
