Donald Miller's Blog, page 10

The Terrifying and Beautiful Act of Starting Over

Have you ever started over?

By that I mean, have you ever transferred schools and lost all of your credits, left a long relationship you thought was going to last forever, scratched a business or a project after years of your life and thousands of dollars invested?

If you have, you know how truly terrifying staring over can feel.

Over the course of my 37 years on this planet, I’ve had the opportunity to start over numerous times, and each new ‘starting over’ opportunity brought with it a healthy amount of fear—as well as pure excitement.

The first memory I have of starting over was when I transferred between my freshman and sophomore year of college. You see, I had spent my first year fairly close to where I grew up, with people I had gone to high school with, heavily scholar-shipped, and pretty much just ‘playing it safe’.

Midway through that first year, I realized that in order to really pursue my dream career—the one I had known and wanted since I was 14 years old—I would need to go to the big, scary, expensive, and far-away University of Illinois.

A similar thing happened to me my senior year of college.

I had spent the previous 3 years learning how to be a product designer and loving nearly every minute of it. Then, this unexpected passion for making music began stealing my attention. I started to feel like now was the time to give music a shot as a career.

So again, I faced that familiar feeling of starting over.

I secured a role playing music at a couple of summer camps, arranged to record a cd, and planned a move to Nashville.

Just like that. I was starting over.

Most recently, I’d come to a place artistically where I felt the need to leave Nashville in order to make the music I wanted to make. I had been writing and recording music in virtually the same way, in the same location, for the entirety of my career, and I was bored.

I wanted to feel like I did when I first moved to Nashville.

Like when I first got to the U of I.

Like anything was possible and there was nothing to compare and no safety net (cue: Nothing Left to Lose by Mat Kearney). So what did I do? I began making arrangements to spend a few months in Los Angeles—to start over yet again musically and see what inspiration I could find in an unfamiliar place.

It’s amazing what happens when we start making decisions.

Something happens to us when we set an intent on a new course.

All the other options fall away, and all of a sudden we have new decisions to make, but the cool thing is- they are all in line with this new path we are walking down!

And before you know it, you’re actually DOING the thing you set out to do!

Something I’ve learned in the last couple years is that the antidote to fear isn’t safety, but courage. So if I’m afraid of something, shrinking back and not making a decision doesn’t make me less afraid.

It’s only when we step out and take courageous action that fear begins to fade away.

The beautiful thing is: that courageous thing doesn’t even have to lead me to the place I thought it was going to go, because it ultimately will lead to the next decision and the next after that. Each of these steps becomes absolutely indispensable in our journeys, and will ultimately sweep us up in an adventure we never would have entered by playing it safe.

I’ve definitely tried playing it safe in my life.

especially as I’ve gotten older and have accumulated more and gotten accustomed to a certain lifestyle and begun to expect certain things out of life.

I can’t think of a bigger enemy to courage than comfort.

Most people will not decide to make a change in their life until the pain of NOT making that decision is too much to endure.

Maybe I have a lower pain threshold than most, and for that, I’m thankful.

What I do know is that when we’re at a crossroads in life, whether creatively or otherwise, we’d be wise to take courage from the fact that we can’t mess it up!

Even if you decide you’re going to move to Omaha to be a pro surfer, the beautiful thing is—the sheer fact that you are deciding to DO something will open up a whole new world (cue: Aladdin soundtrack) that will get you closer to where you ultimately were meant to be.

A Prayer for My Daughter on Her Wedding Day

My daughter got married a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to have a home where love can thrive.

My wife and I wanted our daughter and new husband’s home to be a safe, welcoming place not only for themselves, but also for all who would come into it.

We hoped that their home would be a kind of sanctuary.

I wrote this prayer for them as a kind of blessing over this new path they were on.

Photo Credit: Leo Hidalgo, Creative Commons

During this Spring season, a lot of weddings are occurring. I hope that this means there are many new places where love can thrive, and new sanctuaries can emerge. With my daughter and new son-in-law’s permission, this is the prayer I prayed for them.

I hope it applies to all of these other new beginnings as well.

A prayer for your new beginning.

Oh God, who brings us into intimacy with you

And with each other,

We ask for your holy sense of confidence, assurance, peace

And joy

As these two begin this new chapter in their lives as a

Married couple.

May they know that they will never lose sight of

Each other

As long as they keep their eyes fixed

On you.

May they see the best version of

Each other,

Sometimes despite the evidence,

As you see the best version of

Them.

As they step out in faith toward

A new life together,

Toward new careers, in new cities,

May they see that you have prepared a way for

Them

Got there before

Them

And that you have been at work in their lives from

The Beginning.

May their love for

Each other

Grow deeper and more profound

With each

Achievement

And each

Setback.

May they be a couple that points

The Way

For others.

May their home be a place of

Acceptance, hospitality and peace.

May they love

And trust

Each other

As they grow in love

For you.

Amen.

Do You Believe You’re Good at Relationships?

I’ve had a couple friends speak into my life who changed it dramatically. Both of them told me something on the same theme: “Don, you are good at relationships.”

At the time, I thought nothing could be further from the truth. I was going through a painful breakup in which I’d made enormous mistakes.

I was terrible at relationships.

Today, though, I no longer believe this is true. And partly, I don’t believe it’s true because I had friends around me who refused to see me in black and white or good vs evil terms. They saw my mistakes, but they also saw my abilities and innate goodness.

As I grew out of those painful experiences, I began to believe what my friends told me. I wasn’t bad for the world. I wasn’t bad for people.

I could contribute.

In fact, years later, when I was dating my wife, I started to believe I was as good for her as she was for me. I started to believe that my relationships weren’t about me receiving something from others only, but me giving them something they needed: love, encouragement, wisdom, time, dignity and so on.

Today, I don’t believe I am bad for people. I believe I am good for them. Of course I make mistakes, but I tend to surround myself with gracious people.

This has changed everything for me.

Once I believed I could positively affect a person’s soul, a person’s feeling about himself or herself, I became a better friend all the more.

This year, the quality of our relationships will increase when we realize that not only do we have wonderful, amazing friends and family and spouses, but we are also amazing for them. When their hearts are dark, we can bring light; when they’re tired, we can offer rest; when they believe they are terrible for the world, we can look them in the eye and say “the world would not be as good without you.”

Quickly, make a few little notes of why you are good for the people around you.

This practice will help.

You’ll find that when you understand your own ability to bring joy to people, you offer it and further fulfill what you believe about yourself.

What if you’re really good at relationships and just don’t know it? What would happen if you started believing it?

Think about what it is you bring to relationships. What are the things people say you most positively contribute to their lives? Allow these truths to sink in and watch how they help you start to build more successful, deep, rich, meaningful relationships.

What Matters Most When You’ve Screwed Up

I sent a really dumb email the other day.

It wasn’t even a whole email yet. It was just a draft. It was a thing I’d started typing, and before I could read over it to make sure it said what I thought it should say, my twitchy mouse finger hit the send button.

This is not what I meant to have happen.

The last sentence was only half-written. My tone was defensive rather than direct. And autocorrect helped me say “Hank’s!” instead of thanks.

None of this is a big deal, I understand.

I didn’t know the person well, so they might think I’m a terrible correspondent—but it’s not like my email will result in famine or war or even a bad hair day. Everyone survived my mistaken click of the “send” button.

But my brain took this as evidence of what it had suspected all along: that I wasn’t really qualified for interacting with other humans. That I am a mistake maker, that I am just awful.

I knew it.

Anne Lamott writes that doubt is not the opposite of faith—certainty is. Her friend Father Tom taught her that.

Certainty leaves no room for possibility.

There’s no mystery in certainty. No questions. No wonder. There’s no growth and no change, because what can change when you’re already certain? She’s talking about faith in God here, but I think it applies to having faith in people, too.

And people do give us plenty of chances to choose between certainty and faith.

They run late and don’t send a text message. They cut us off in traffic. They reschedule at the last minute. They support candidates we oppose. They choose the gross coffee.

They accidentally send us passive-aggressive sounding email. Ahem.

At times like this, I can be certain about people: certain that they’ll never change, and certain about which boxes they fit in. I can be certain I understand enough. I can be certain I know just what’s going on here.

Certainty is easy, but it feels terrible.

Faith is harder, but I think it makes us better.

I can have faith that everyone is doing their best. I can have faith that each person is, in some way, reflecting the image of God, which means each person is, in some way, reflecting love.

If they don’t seem to be reflecting love, the most generous interpretation I can come up with is that they need my compassion. And I can have faith that this is true.

Maybe the truth is, they’re afraid, or lonely, or tired, or grieving. Maybe they feel overlooked or misunderstood. Maybe they made a mistake, and maybe one mistake doesn’t tell me much about who they are.

Or maybe they’re just mean, but even then I can have faith that growth and change are possible.

Having faith in people doesn’t mean we abandon our intuition.

It doesn’t mean that we have no boundaries. It just means I choose to believe the best thing I can about a person and their motives in a given situation.

I can be certain that I am right—or I can have faith that I may not understand the whole picture. I can be certain that things will always be this way—or I have faith that things can change.

I can be certain that someone deserves my judgment—or I can have faith that they need my kindness.

I can choose certainty about people or I can choose faith in people.

But I can’t have both at the same time. That’s true whether we’re talking about the person whose car is plastered in bumper stickers that make me cringe, or whether the person we’re talking about is me.

I don’t like where certainty takes me. I want to make space for possibility, for change, and for curiosity. I want to grow in that kind of faithfulness.

How can you choose to have faith this week?

You Can Stop Trying to Figure Out Your Life Purpose

I graduated from college 13 years ago.

Whoa, that is both an exhilarating and slightly devastating thing to say out loud (or in this case, to write down). In my head I often still see myself as a 22 year old college student.

I for sure want to believe I am still as cool as a 22 year old college student, but the reality is I am only a few years away from being old enough to have given birth to a college aged student.

This is the great news and the hard news about life: time flies.

By that I mean it’s really great news that time flies because all those questions you have about your life right now—about how things are going to go and what you’re supposed to do next—the questions that are driving you crazy will have answers soon. Sooner than you realize.

But this is also hard news because it means that if you don’t embrace the day and the hour or the moment in front of you, it passes you by.

Currently there is a recent college graduate living with us.

A few months ago we were talking about a children’s show called “Blue’s Clues”. I said, “The kids I nannied while I was in college used to watch that show.” To which she replied, “I used to watch that show.”

Whoa, that’s right. I, in fact, am no longer a college-age student.

When I graduated college I found myself standing on the doorstep of my future, believing it was time to step into my life’s purpose.

But my life’s purpose was a mystery to me.

I knew what I loved. What I was passionate about. The things God had branded on my heart that were unique to me. So I gathered up all those desires, passions, and ideas and used them to navigate me towards fulfilling my life’s purpose.

The thing about it is though, I’ve changed so much since then.

What I want out of life life and what I once believed to be my “life’s purpose” has morphed and changed a thousand times, and has become what is now my life. It’s nothing like I thought it would be. It’s better.

A lot has happened to me in these past 13 years.

I went on to earn two teaching credentials. I set up and run my own high school classroom full of teenagers, and hormones, and sass. I got married. I bought a house. I traveled to far off places where people speak different languages and eat exotic foods. I experienced loss and tragedy. I adopted three kids. I started a new career as a writer.

I’ve taken this one and only life I’ve been given and done my best to drink it up. Letting adventure, relationships and love hydrate my soul.

As soon as I thought I had a grip on my life’s purpose, life changed.

We think our life’s purpose is to get married, or be a parent, or work that dream job. But what happens when you hit 35 and you are still single, or your marriage ends in divorce or your spouse tragically passes away?

What happens when you are unable to have kids?

What happens when the economy tanks and you are laid off from you dream job?

It makes me begin to wonder if we are missing something when we think about our “purpose” in life.

The fact that pursuing ones life’s purpose is, in itself, an idea only the privileged have access to, to me makes it a mostly irrelevant question. Not that we’re wrong for wondering. We can’t help it. It’s just that we can’t predict or control where we are trying to go.

It might be healthier for us to just be open.

I can’t image a single mother in a third world country is waking up in pursuit of her life’s purpose. Or a man being driven from his home by war and terror is looking to God to show him what his “life’s purpose” is.

No, most likely they are waking up figuring out how to get food and water into their bellies and the bellies of their families.

Before pursuing our life’s purpose, we need to recognize that it is in fact a privileged idea.

If you’re in a season of life where you’re wondering what comes next, here’s the great news:

Your life’s purpose is to love God and love others. Period. Everything we put our hands to should fall under those two categories. As long as it does, you’ve already found your life’s purpose—so you can give up all that painful guessing and wondering and pressure-packed question-asking.

Finding our purpose in loving God and loving others frees us up to take a step towards whatever is next, or feel a whole lot less terrified when everything we have worked so hard for crumples before our eyes.

Let’s love other and love God and in so doing find ourselves exactly who we were meant to be all along.

My 6 Tips for Surviving Criticism

If you share yourself with the world, you’re going to be criticized. The world may seem like a nice, safe, warm place, but as soon as you put yourself out there’s a good chance you’ll be a target for criticism.

If you’re not careful, you’ll start feeling like a character in The Lord of the Flies.

So how do you survive it? How do you keep putting yourself out there?

Here are a few ideas:
1. Understand great ideas get criticized just as much as bad ones. Michelangelo, Mark Twain, Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln were ferociously criticized. Receiving criticism doesn’t mean you’ve done great work, but it doesn’t mean you haven’t, either. Everything out there gets criticized, good or bad.

2. Keep your moral center. Know in your mind and heart whether what you are writing, painting, singing or filming is good for the world. And be able to articulate why. Come back to this when you’re beginning to doubt the importance of your work.

3. Love your enemies. Most criticism is actually good, but the criticism that hurts the most comes from people who want to tear you down, personally. The positive side of this kind of criticism is it presents you with a challenge. Can you love somebody who wants to harm you? If you can, it only proves what you’re bringing to the world is revolutionary, and perhaps even divine. Fear and hate are common. For a person to love their enemies, there’s little explanation save the involvement of God.

4. Limit your enemies. It’ll do no good to constantly search the internet for people writing about your new album. I normally read the first several Amazon reviews and that’s about it. I just want to make sure what I wrote is landing well. After that, I see little benefit to reading reviews. If I’m reading reviews, I’m not working on what’s next.

5. Realize there aren’t that many critics. Likely, for every critic you get you’ll encounter a lot of people who needed and received your help. You either encouraged them or inspired them, made them laugh or just offered your art for their comfort. Just keep working for them.

6. Learn from the constructive critics. One of the most encouraging afternoons of my career was going on Rotten Tomatoes and reading through the negative criticism of the film Blue Like Jazz. It was scary at first, but I realized so much of what the critics were saying I felt as I was working on the screenplay. I wanted to go further but was too scared. The critics affirmed, indeed, I was too scared. The constructive critics can speak the truth and you are somehow encouraged. They can help you become a better artist.

I’m really hoping criticism doesn’t get you down. You have a right to speak, to paint, to create film, to speak, to teach and to share your thoughts and perspectives with the world.

Making Choices When You Don’t Know What’s Next

One of the greatest challenges I encountered post college was the suddenness of having to make seemingly “life-altering” choices for myself—unique choices that nobody was going to make for me.

They were choices that didn’t come on a 4-year plan or with guaranteed happiness, choices without gold stars and applause, choices that might give you more than you ever imagined or might cost you everything.

Unfortunately, these choices don’t have a manual.

You can seek and receive advice, read up and listen in, pray for guidance—and all these things surely help. But your choices are uniquely yours. And spoiler alert: even when you avoid making a choice, you are making a choice. Probably a bad one.

So in order to really develop our true identities and giftings, we have to learn to face the unknown and make choices that don’t fit inside the formulas and “right-or-wrong” mentality we’re taught to cling to as children. This learning process ends up looking like the rest of our adult lives.

Just think about how you grew up.

To be fair, I don’t know your schooling background. I have a friend whose kid is in a private school in Portland where they do awesome things like meditate and collect gems for a “kindness castle” and a bunch of other magical stuff.

Not my experience. I grew up state-funded-get-on-the-bus-kid public schooled. And I liked it that way, for the most part.

But I wasn’t taught much about the benefits of risks, while I was taught a lot about safety. I was rarely encouraged to find my own solutions but expected to devote countless hours memorizing context-based formulas so I would “perform” well. I went through most of my high school years signing up and showing up for things that I thought would secure my future.

Good things come to those who wait.

That’s what I thought. Perform well and wait for good things, a good college, a good job, a good community, a good man to choose you. But the closer I got to the real world, the more I realized this was not always the case. And how quickly this way of thinking would lead me down a path of restlessness rather than discovering my unique identity and leveraging my gifts.

I could either sit around waiting for merited opportunities and relationships, or I could cultivate them. And when I looked to Jesus for guidance, I saw a man who made choices. I saw a man that confidently and creatively pursued his passions. I saw a man who created the community he desired. I saw a man who entrusted every decision to God and changed the world because of it.

So these days I believe something different.

Good things come to those who choose.

You can’t ever throw a touchdown pass if you’re only focused on the defensive backs. If you try something while trusting God, you may not get exactly what you wanted but you’ll still get more of Him.

And when I think about it, that’s all I really want. I’m finding I would rather live a life pursuing what I love with God rather than wondering when or if things will happen for me. The latter gets me nowhere, while the former allows me to experience a journey of purpose, beauty and grace.

Let’s be choice-makers and put more of our “what ifs” to the test.

Is Busy-ness a Drug?

Busy is both my drug and my defense.

By that I mean that I use busy-ness to make me feel numb and safe, the way you use a drug, and I use busy-ness as a way of explaining all the things I dropped, didn’t do well, couldn’t pull together, as a defense.

And I’m telling you this because I want to stop.

I want to drop the drug and the defense, one from each hand, letting them fall with heavy thunks, and I want to live a new way.

I know it’s not all or nothing, or all at once.

In the same way that most married couples have like the same three fights over and over throughout their life together, I think each person has two or three issues that rear their heads over and over, and that those issues spike especially when the stress level gets a little bit elevated for whatever reason.

Some people isolate and curl inward, some people dip back into an eating disorder that’s been held mostly at bay for a long time. Some people become angry, wielding rage as power against all the things that scare them.

This is what I do: I keep myself busy, for a whole constellation of reasons. I do it because I’m addicted to the feeling of being capable, because I hate to be bored, because I hate having to face the silence, because it might force me to feel things I don’t want to feel.

What if this book doesn’t connect with people at all? What if there are more bad reviews than good?

What if something happens to one of the kids?

What if I’ve made the wrong choices, and I’m missing something important, something I could have been or should have done?

If I stay busy I don’t have to feel those things.

I don’t have to worry about them, don’t have to let them blossom in to full-fledged questions. I don’t have to sit and think about that thing someone said about me recently when they didn’t know I was there, something I can’t get out of my mind. And so I run away from it, and from everything, faster, faster, faster.

And I use my busy-ness as an excuse for why I might not succeed, or accomplish the things I want to, or have the relationships I want to have.

I mean, I’m juggling a million things here, of course the book’s not perfect.

Seriously, where am I supposed to find time to work out and become some gorgeous supermodel, when I have like seven thousand things on my plate?

I probably didn’t get invited because they knew I’d be out of town anyway, right? Right? Right?

The busy-ness is a drug to keep me numb and a defense to keep me safe.

And it works. But numb and safe aren’t key words for the life I want to live. I want so much more than numb and safe. And when I pursue numb and safe, what I get is busy, and after that what I get is exhausted, and after that, fragile and weepy and quick to snap and fearful.

So much for numb and safe, which aren’t even something to aspire to anyway.

I think I might not be the only one who keeps herself safe by keeping herself busy.

I might not be the only one who wears exhaustion as a badge of honor, a way of showing people how terribly fast I’ve been running. I posted this article Brene Brown’s fantastic words about exhaustion as a status symbol, and I know so many of you connected with those ideas, as I did.

This is right where I am these days, and maybe it’s right where you are, too.

Today, I’m dropping the drug and the defense, and I’ll do my best to do the same tomorrow.

Today, I’m shooting for higher than numb and safe and protected by excuses. I want to be present and whole and have nothing to hide, no excuses to be made, because I did my best, and because that’s enough.

Today, I want to communicate to my kids, through my words and my actions, that we don’t always have to be hustling, plates don’t always have to be spinning, balls don’t always have to be in the air.

What would it look like in your life to lay down busy, both the drug and the defense?

Why I Don’t Bother Getting my Inbox to Zero, and How I’d Lose Out if I Did

I’m not a CEO type, but I run a little company. I’m not efficient, but I get things done. I’m an artist living in the world of people who dot every “i” and cross every “t” and take pride in their ability to get things done.

I’ve read a few books on becoming more efficient, but they all read like Greek to me. I’m not a linear thinker. I’m not going to create an elaborate filing system.

All I want to do in my professional life is get important things done. It would be easy for me to get bogged down.

So as a creative, how do I manage?

Turns out I have a system. It’s a patch I learned a long time ago.

I do this: I focus on one ball and I hit it.

What I mean is, on a given day I’m asked to coffee twice, asked to review and endorse at least one manuscript, receive more than one-hundred emails and about twenty text messages. That’s per day. Per week, add in a few invitations to speak, a few friends coming to town, requests to talk on the phone and so on.

I’d say I get between 500 to 1000 requests per week that claim to need a response.

I see each of these requests as a baseball coming at me from the pitchers mound.

And I decide NOT TO HIT THEM.

That’s right. I do the incredibly rude and offensive thing. I let them pass by.

Right now I have thousands of unreturned emails and hundreds of unopened text messages. It’s rude. It’s insanely rude. It’s not nice. In a culture that takes pride in people who get their inboxes to zero, I’m a complete loser.

And yet, year after year I get an enormous amount of work done.

The thing is, I see all those baseballs coming at me from the pitchers mound and instead of trying to hit them all, I choose one and I swing for a home run. Of the dozens of pitches thrown at me on a given day, I focus on one and I hit it. When I’m done, I pull the bat back and hit another.

After I hit a few pitches a day (a daily quota) I try to respond to some of the others, but I don’t worry about it if I can’t get to them all.

Here are the steps in my “two step process” to getting things done:

1. Pick your pitch: This means knowing, as opportunities are coming at you, which one you should hit. I hit the ones that have to do with furthering my calling as a writer. That means I write the blog, work on the new book, interview that guy who’s been elusive and so on. That’s the ball I want to hit consistently. The others are extra. If I have time, I have time, if not, it doesn’t matter cause that’s not my pitch.

2. Let the others go by: This is incredibly hard for some people to do. They feel like they are morally obligated to respond to everything. And maybe we are. Maybe in heaven Jesus will be mad because we didn’t return our emails. But I doubt it. I have nearly 200 unreturned text messages and several thousand unreturned emails. I take no pride in getting to zero because I’m not on the planet to get my inbox to zero. I’m on the planet for other reasons. I explain to people I can’t respond to all the requests and I go back to step one. I pick my pitch and try to hit it out of the park.

Will this system frustrate people? Yes, it will. And I don’t like that, but that’s not the point, the point is I have to hit my pitch. Is this the best system? No, it’s not. But it’s the system that works for me. If I had a more linear mind, I’d have a different system.

Anyway, I miss a lot of balls, but I hit a lot of home runs too.

I hope for some of you creative types this is helpful.

How To Grow Your Confidence In One Easy Step

I’ll confess: I struggle with my confidence. Perhaps you can relate.

As someone leading an organization with a large vision, being confident in the way I share our story and raise support is a crucial piece to my work. But after all these years, it’s still a daily battle.

I believe confidence is an important step toward professional success and emotional well-being. So how do you build more confidence? And how do you do it when your confidence levels are depleted?

Here’s a quick tip I just learned that I really like.

Ready for it?

Fake confidence by making small talk with people who are paid to be nice to you.

That’s it?

No, seriously – that’s it. Stay with me here.

Cashiers, deli workers, bank tellers, baristas, waiters, auto mechanics, and more. These people are paid to be nice to you. No matter what you say, they will smile, engage, laugh, banter, and go along with all your bad jokes.

People who are paid to be nice to you offer you a handful of incredible opportunities every day to practice being confident.

In fact, when you break out of your shell to small talk with a bank teller about how their day is going, a biochemical reaction takes place in your brain. With every social success, your body releases tiny amounts of endorphins, dopamine, and testosterone that help to reinforce confident behavior.

It’s all about those little successes.

As crazy as it sounds, the more you practice being confident, the more it starts to filter into your real life.

I learned this tip from a marketing blogger named Derek Halpern. He goes into more detail on his post and video titled “How To Be Confident” which I recommend checking out.

So what do you think of this? Do you believe me?

Give it a try and then in the comment section below, tell me how it went.