My friend and mentor Roy Goble wrote this week’s post. Roy is kind of a big deal, with a very kind and wise heart that he tries –and fails– to hide behind a curmudgeonly pragmatism. I asked him to write so that you all could have the opportunity to learn about and support his non-profit, Pathlight International, which was severely affected by Hurricane Richard.
Self-leadership requires an honest definition of what we need to succeed. Not merely to survive, and not simply to maintain, but to truly thrive.
Many mistakenly define this as some internal switch we turn on in our brains. Many of us are so buried by psychobabble that we believe once we get past anger toward our mothers and baggage from a failed (fill in the blank here) that we’ll succeed in life. We buy into the idea that an attitude adjustment after hours of counseling or key medicinal supplements will allow us to launch a new life into something extraordinary.
I don’t think so. I believe that getting past our emotional stumbling blocks is important and applaud all who are working through that. I’m thankful for the therapists, counselors, pastors and others who guide us through the process. But that’s only the first step. We still have a ways to go before we can truly flourish in life.
By my late 20’s I was married to my high school sweetheart (and I still am), had two young children, a successful business, and felt like I was on top of the world. Whatever roadblocks were in my emotional health were on the mend or long gone. Was I surviving and sustaining a good life? Very much so, and if measured by the love of my family, strength of my faith, or my financial achievements, I was successful. Life was good.
About this time I picked up a travel magazine that listed the top hotels in the world. To my astonishment, I had been to five of the top ten. I wasn’t even 30 yet and I had already enjoyed more luxury and wealth than over 99% of the worlds population. It struck me that there was something … well, unhealthy about that.
This is when self-leadership kicks in.
I could have easily ignored that little voice in my head and numbed myself by delving deep into my worlds of business, family, travel, and luxury. It was tempting. The theologian and author Richard Foster has said that the rich live at the gates of hell because the wealthy can become intoxicated with their own success. But such a life is not thriving in life; it is self-deception. Self-leadership is choosing to pause, reflect, and perhaps most importantly to be honest about what we need versus what we have.
After reading the travel article, I chose to intentionally spend more time in reflection, prayer, and conversation about what a good life really meant. This effort of self-leadership led to a time of reflection that made me realize I was missing one important thing: I did not have the poor.
This was quite an astonishing discovery. The poor? Why the poor? Of all the things I might find missing in my life … the poor? At first it made little sense, but over the years I have learned better. I am not only called to love the poor, but I am desperately in need of the poor. So I began to reach out to the poor in places like Haiti, Zimbabwe, Belize and elsewhere. I had no idea what I was doing at first, but it slowly began to dawn on me that my interaction with the poor was helping me to be fully human, and thriving, in ways that I had never expected.
The poor add richness to our lives. Interacting with and working beside the poor helps us to understand perseverance, hope, faith, community, family, security, peace, and love. Success is measured in radically different ways among the poorest of the poor, and failure is measured in ways that often condemned my rich Western ideals. You do not learn these things when living in a gated community surrounded by likeminded people of the same socio-economic background.
I have had the privilege of a supportive family and an excellent education. I have walked what some call the corridors of power. I have met the billionaires and millionaires of the world. And I’m thankful for these things because I learn from them in ways that the poor cannot teach me. I need the people in the country clubs and shopping malls as much as I need the poor. But to stay exclusively in the setting of the wealthy is to have a skewed view of the world and not be fully alive.
You cannot truly flourish in life until you engage all of life, and most importantly that means engaging people unlike yourself (and that includes people you might now scorn). You need them, and if you give yourself a chance you will grow to desperately want them.
I am now in my early 50’s and spending about half my time in business and half my time in various non-profit endeavors. Chief among these non-profit groups is PathLight International, which serves at-risk youth by providing educational opportunities that integrate faith and learning. The work of PathLight has been hindered lately by Hurricane Richard, which severely damaged our mission and conference center in Belize (you can help us by clicking here).
But the hurricane damage is a lesson in itself; the poor have taught us that thriving is not about repairing the damaged facility, or replacing the broken “tools” like computers, or even about restoring the disrupted power or repairing the flooded roads. Success is being grateful that no student or teacher was harmed in the hurricane. Thriving is appreciating the simple joy of learning in after-school tutorials. Flourishing is the peace and joy that comes from seeing the world as God sees the world.
These are the lessons the poor teach me, and continue to teach me. Without them my life is incomplete. And so I lead myself to them, and I learn.
Roy Goble has done a lot of good in the world through real estate, environmental sustainability work, and supporting church and para-church ministries as well as various business ventures. He asked me to say that he’s the quiet shy type that doesn’t say much or have any strong opinions. This is true unless you’re talking about books, politics, organizations of any kind, faith, or wine. Roy blogs at http://www.junkyardwisdom.com/
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