How to develop new habits...and succeed.

1. Recognize new habits take anywhere from 20-80 days to form. The more ingrained the old behavior, the longer retraining may take.

2. Learn the CUES that trigger the behavior you want to change. A cue can be a certain place, circumstance, person, emotion, activity, season, or time of day. Becoming consciously aware of the cues is critical.

3. When the cues happen, initiate the NEW BEHAVIOR. It could be setting a budget, refraining from speaking in anger, spending more quality time with family, exercising, etc.

4. REWARDS. Every time a cue occurs and you respond with the new behavior, make sure to give yourself some kind of _reward_, even if it's small. It needs to be something you really enjoy. I suggest carrying a bar of single origin chocolate with at least 70% cacao content...works for me ;-)

Help others develop new habits by giving them approval and affection when they initiate new behavior.

5. Try to find a KEYSTONE HABIT, that, if you changed it, would make many other habits easier to change or alleviate negative ones altogether. Some habits are interconnected. 

For example, say there is a certain person in your life that you want to impress. Whenever they show up, you overspend your budget wanting to pay for meals, treats, or gifts to win their approval. The person is a cue. You could retrain and reward yourself for sticking to your budget when around them. But, perhaps there is a keystone habit of a core emotion at play. Maybe it's a feeling of unworthiness? So whenever you feel unworthy (initiated by certain cues), behave and treat yourself as worthy and then reward yourself for the new behavior. If you address unworthiness, you may not need to address your overspending problem when your friend is around!

Summary: Habits are comprised of a cue, a behavior, and a reward.

For more great content on this, check out, "The Power of Habit," by Charles Duhigg. I pulled from his ideas to write the content above.

#resolutions #youcandoit

5 lies believed about leadership

Have you "talked" yourself out of being a leader? 

Maybe you've come to the conclusion that leadership is for those people who were born at the right time, in the right environment, with the right resources. But I ask you to step back from your own self-judgement and re-imagine leadership. 

Actually we are all leading. If you are alive, you are leading. The difference between good leadership and bad leadership is intentionality. The Bible records the wisest man in history as saying, "A king's throne is built on love and truth," Proverbs 20:28. In other words, the foundation of leadership is loving others consistently. Why?

You cannot influence what or who you don't love.

And leadership is dependent upon influence. As you recognize the influence you do have (right now, not some day in the future) and steward that influence intentionally (using it to help others learn, grow, and improve) you have the essence of good leadership. 

As Vince Lombardi has famously said, "leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile." Right on Vince! 

So the question is not, "are you a leader?" Rather, the question is, "are you leading well?" To help answer that question, you may need to unlearn some conclusions you have drawn about what leadership is. Below are five of the most frequent lies people have believed about leadership in my experience. Happy unlearning!

1. "To be a leader, I need to have a big sphere of influence." 

False. You do need influence to lead. However, nobody has direct control over the scale of their influence. But we all have control over the quality of our influence. The essence of leadership is always the same; love, service, honor, personal-responsibility, self-control, humility, etc. These are the virtues that establish the quality of leadership you have. Your leadership starts with the way you lead yourself, then expands out to your intimate friends & family, and then to aquintances and even strangers. As the scale of your influence grows, the expression of leadership may look slightly different but the essence is unchanged. It tends to be, as we consistently demonstrate a high quality of leadership, the scale of our influence will expand. People want to connect with sources that add value and strength to their lives. A high quality leader is like a deep well of cool, refreshing water in a hot and vast desert. People will come to you for a drink and direction, if you have the clean, cool water of quality leadership. Fundamentally, leadership is about valuing and loving people which creates in you a desire to strengthen and encourage them. Don't make a large scale of influence your goal, lest you become a people-pleaser who lacks substance. Rather, make becoming a quality leader your goal, and let the scale of influence follow. Be thankful for where you are, always, and look for ways to grow, always.

2. "Leaders do the most talking in a group setting." 

False. Being a leader means being a confident listener.  I say 'confident' because some people who talk the most in a group are doing so to take control because they are afraid. They are afraid the group may talk about something on which they have little to say and they fear looking ignorant or, perhaps, they are insecure and need the group to know how intelligent or well-educated they are. Your ability to dominate the airwaves is not a measure of leadership. Try the 80/20 rule: listen 80% of the time and speak 20% of the time. Imagine how much you would learn if you listened four times as often as you spoke! Imagine how loved others would feel by you if they were listened to.

3. "Leaders need to have a persuasive or charismatic personality." 

False. While having these traits may help you entertain or hold the attention of an audience, it will not make you a good leader. Leadership is not a personality. Leadership is a lifestyle choice. Your unique personality will match your unique expression of leadership.  When you make a commitment to love and serve other people around you, motivating them to be the best version of themselves, leadership will flourish. Your personality won't ever constrict leadership. Your personality will direct your leadership. Your authentic personality is meant to be a gift to you and others. Make sure you receive this gift!

4. "Leaders must be able solve any problem." False. Yes leaders are responsible for advancing people and issues. But, they do this through facilitating a creative environment of teamwork and discovery—which produces greater breakthroughs than they could have achieved alone. Leaders are collaborators. Their primary responsibility is to develop highly functional teams, then to coach and support that team through the process of discovery, understanding, & implementation. The results a leader is able to deliver depend on their commitment to their team and the actions they take to express that commitment; first commitment, then actions, then results — that's the way good leaders deliver.

5. "Failure disqualifies a person from leadership." 

False. Everyone fails. How you decide to respond to failure is what separates those who lead well from those who don't. We cannot hear this message enough. If you choose to learn, unlearn, or relearn from failure you will grow. You'll be able to try again with a different perspective, using a different approach, and achieving different results. You often must fail your way into success. Winston Churchill said it this way, 

"success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts."

Failure can be fatal, but only if you allow it to be. It's the courageous spirit in a person that drives them to grow, and that is what positions them to be a good leader. Recognize also that success is not final. When you are focused on continual growth, successes become achievements or breakthroughs along the journey. A friend of mine recently said it like this, "achievements are signposts not goalposts." They let you know you're moving, but the real goal is continual growth and improvement. 

Thanks for reading. It's only as all of us are leading together, that our deepest dreams will be realized.

The Power of Jealously

Envy is corrupted jealousy. The Greek and Latin background of envy comes from, "to look upon with evil." 

But jealousy is actually meant to be a powerful gift. It shares its root with the word zeal, meaning, "to burn with fervor." We are meant to look upon our future, our dreams, our inheritance and jealousy pursue & protect them. We do this mainly by positioning ourselves to become the kind of people who can achieve and steward the success we hope for.

But envy is to look upon another person's inheritance, another person's story and burn with fervor to have what is theirs. The unfortunate thing is even if you were to have it you would not ultimately enjoy it for it can never be truly yours since it was meant to be theirs.

What you receive as a gift, you and the giver protect. It is born of relationship.

But what you take, you are left to protect on your own.

To take something that belongs to another is to despise your own inheritance. To try to live out the story of another is to despise your own story. If only we believe the greatness of what God has prepared for us, we would never be caught up in such trifles as envy of others. Paul described it as, "things which no one has even dreamed God has prepared for those who love Him" (1 Cor 2:9). Yet if we envy others, we deny ourselves the things that God intended to be truly ours.

John the Baptist said it like this, "A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven” John 3:27 NASB. John jealously pursued and protected the story of God for his life when he said, "I am not the Messiah," v28. And because of this he was able to say, "...this joy of mine has been made full" v29. By living this way, jealously pursuing and protecting our own stories, we will position ourselves to celebrate others as they pursue and protect their own stories. Because John lived his own story with joy, he could look at Jesus as He lived out His own story and say of Him, "He must increase, but I must decrease" v30.

So be jealous for your own story and live it our with joy. Be careful to give envy no place in your heart, lest you lose not only what is rightfully another's but also that which is rightfully yours!

Is marriage only between one man and one woman?

Yes.
But I really can't tell you now.
Ask me again in 70 years
and in 70 years I will have become
my answer. My answer is not full yet
and my preamble began the day I said,


"I do."


I do what?
I do what I am;
I am a husband
and I am learning to be
this to one wife.
I made a choice,
one so far beyond me,
and now I am learning
all that choice fully means.
And in seventy years
I will know the meaning of that choice,
the choice I make everyday
to be and to become
a husband, the husband of one wife.


"I do,"


is a threshold,
it is the doorway we enter through,
it is the first day of a life-long journey
to become an answer, a message.
And, right now, I am a year and a half
into my answer. And I have so much to say,
though I am like a planet growing.
And in 70 years, the mass of me
will have increased exponentially,
if I continue becoming an answer
(and I will), and then you will know me,
you will feel my gravity.

And we are all talking
(yap yap yap yap yap)
about one man and one woman,
about freedom and choice and preference
and history and precedence
but the answer is not in any of these things.
The answer is in the narrative arc of our lives.
For, as Solomon wrote,
"there is a way that seems right to man
but in the end it leads to death."
So celebrate and eat and drink
but just remember
things are not always as they seem.
And SEEMING is too easy,
but BEING is hard work
and it will take you at least 70 years.

In the meantime,
make and pass laws
and then overturn them and sue,
make and consume TV shows,
let right and wrong wrestle on HBO.
But that is all SEEMING,
all that is much more like sand dunes
in a desert, constantly changing
and being shaped by the wind.
And BEING begins at home,
where families create culture
and dream of destinies which become the bedrock,
either of answers
or the loneliness unanswered questions bring.

But I will be an end of loneliness,
as my gravity grows,
and in 70 years you will recognize me
that I have been pulling on you all along.
And then you will be able to see
into my eyes and my eyes will tell you the answer.


Is marriage only between one man and one woman?


And you will look into eyes
that have become gentle and pure
(the kind of gentle purity that takes 70 years).
Then you will know the answer
and it will be like the first phrases
being sung by a choir you did not know was there.
And the melody of the song begins
to wrap itself around us
and dress the wounds of our souls.
It is a song of healing, of gravity,
of answers to the questions
that had eroded our hope.

In the song is THE YES,
the only YES,
that, when we hear it, we will know,
and we will sing,
"...at the beginning of creation 
God 'made them male and female.'
'For this reason a man will leave 
his father and mother 
and be united to his wife, 
and the two will become one flesh.' 
So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 
Therefore what God has joined together, 
let no one separate."

Creation Song

Light years of melodies

bathe the earth in new voicings 

each morning. As centuries role on,

there are new movements;

Songs hundreds of years long.

A thousand voices awake,

join the crescendo of praise,

which sometimes means to know (Yadah);

to speak the words of love’s vocabulary,

rhythms of mercy 

that wrap themselves around you

like heat from
glowing embers.

Melodies are meant to develop.

Sometimes it means to make beautiful (Navah);

to re-dress the I AM

with the reality of His own perfect, white robes

filling a temple of living stones 

with smoke that is much more like incense

than the kind that makes you choke,

because beauty is holy

and holiness is beautiful.

When someone is beautiful they are other

they are set apart.

And when all are holy

they are beautiful altogether,

they are untouched by the fingers of fear

pulling at the hems of who they are

wanting nothing more than everything to unravel.

And we have been unravelling for 6,000 years

taking our chances with dead-end songs

(and every day we have a chance to sing

Creation’s song and the melodies of mercy

and the language of love).

For, at the sound of a thousand voices,

the doorposts and thresholds of the living temple shake

and the smoke frustrates the fingers of fear

and the holy and the beautiful are together

here, in one moment.

Don’t miss this; 

the beginning.

In the beginning was the Song…

the Song was with God,

in His Heart,

in the beginning.

With the tone and tongue of thousands of waterfalls

the words were sung,

“let there BE…

the beginning of song,

of time.” In time, 

be immersed in the creatures patient song

“Holy, Holy Holy…”

Lose time in a hundred years

to develop the melody, 

the mystery,

as the covers are pulled back

and the meaning of the Song is slowly revealed.

And the meaning is in each voice.

And each voice is beautiful,

if it is unafraid,

it is holy.

And that’s what you are

made to be,

because God created voices after His own image.

And age upon age 

we paint with sounds and words

and let there be…

as the curtains of eons are pulled back 

and the Mystery of the Song is revealed.

Crossing the Border pt.ii

I looked into the ojos of the man

with half an arm.

Mira.

And the oceans within them roared;

foam topped waves frothed

in the dark brown irises.

And I could not keep from going overboard.

And I was swept out to sea.

And I had no raft, 

no life jacket,

but only two hands 

in the waters of him who had none.

And I struggled in his ocean swells.

I kicked and paddled

and felt my arms growing weak

in the waters of him whose half-arm 

does the work of two.

And I began to choke

as the waves broke 

over my head.

And I gasped for breath.

And the waves were breaking me in bits.

And biting at my fingertips, 

was the memory of the dragon.

And I was sinking.

And I used all my voice

in the waters of him who had no voice

and I cried out, "my God, my God,

why have you forsaken me?!"

And He answered in waves and breakers

that rolled over me.

"My God, my God,

why are You so far from helping me?!"

And His voice was in the roar of the waters.

And there was silence.

And darkness was on the face of the deep.

And I was lost in the unfathomable depths.

And as I sank, I dreamed, 

"let there be light!"

And there was evening,

on the first day.

And there was morning.

And I was washed up on the shore

of another world.

And I awoke on the beaches 

of the subconscious

of the man who has half an arm.

And the sun of this world 

was gray and wounded;

limping along the horizon.

And I looked, and behold,

in the pale light,

there were outlines and shadows,

by the thousands,

copies of the man who had half an arm.

And they were formless and void.

And I said, "are these the children of the man?"

And the waters roared and said,

"These are the dreams of the man.

And all dreams begin as children.

And the children have come to birth, 

but there was no strength to bring them forth."

And all of the children had two arms.

And as I was looking, 

the image of the children was superimposed

on the man who had half an arm,

and I couldn't tell which was which.

And now there was only a man

with his two arms,

for the two is greater than the half,

and he was clothed in his dreams.

And all this happened as I was in my coche.

And all this happened while I was looking 

into the ojos of the man with two arms.

And I heard the roar of the oceans.

And I felt the violence of the waves.

And I saw the sands of the shores,

and the pale light just hanging on,

and the thousands of two-armed children

waiting to take shape.

And the waters

and their thousands of voices

resounded in concert,

"we are still here,

estoy aqui siempre!

If only there was strength for the birth.

Share your strength,

strength to bring us forth!"

Crossing the Border pt.i

From my coche,

I saw a man,

with half an arm.

He had battled a great dragon.

And the dragon said,

“I will feast on your anger or your arms.”

And the man was unwilling

to nourish the beast with his wrath.

And the dragon began to gnaw

on the tips of his fingers.

And the man raged on the dragon,

kicking at his throat.

And the dragon bit the man’s wrists

and the blood flowed,

both the man’s and the dragons.

And the dragon struck and missed

but ripped off the man’s shirt

and struck again, this time

locking onto the man’s shoulder

and his scales glimmered in the light.

The powerful neck thrashed and the jaw snapped

and one arm was no more.

And the man recoiled

and kicked the throat and broke a few scales

and the blood ran down the dragon's neck.

And the dragon snapped his teeth into the remaining elbow

and jerked his head back 

and came away with half an arm in his mouth.

And the man’s blood ran over the dragon’s lips,

and mixed with the dragon’s blood

as it ran down his neck.

Then the man crouched down and leapt at the dragon

and clung to it’s neck with his half-arm

and bit at the place 

where the scales were broken.

And the dragon trashed his neck

but was unable to shake the man

who kept biting,

and the dragon’s blood kept flowing.

So the dragon spread his wings 

and shot up into the sky,

the man still biting, 

the man still clinging 

with half an arm.

And the dragon flew straight up, 

higher and higher until the streets were no longer recognizable

and the air thinned and the man struggled for breath

and his half-arm was weakened

and eventually he lost his grip on the bloody neck

and fell back to earth, 

slipping out of consciousness.

The streets came into view 

and the man was asleep

and the man smashed into the ground but he was already asleep.

His wounds were cauterized on the burning pavement.

He awoke with no shirt and his half-arm.

He raged but there was no dragon.

He kicked at the air but there was no throat.

He bit at the car tires but never drew blood.

In the confusion, he raged even more

and wore himself out.

And he grew weak 

and the air thinned

and eventually he lost his grip 

on the bloody reality.

And he fell back, deep into himself, slipping out of sanity.

The streets came into view 

but the man is asleep

and he never said a word.