Donald Miller's Blog, page 39
May 9, 2015
Five Articles I Sent My Staff This Week
May 8, 2015
Can You Imagine Your Way Into Better Relationships?
I’ll never forget reaching out, timid but hopeful, to take what I thought would be a significant step forward for my career.
Shortly thereafter I received a crushing bit of feedback.
I tried something new, and although I knew it wasn’t perfect, I was hoping for insight into how I could improve. Instead, the person I talked to wanted to shut me down altogether. The suggestion was simple—maybe I ought to just stick to the old thing.
It still stings all these years later.
One of the worst feelings in the world is to discover that someone in your life has boxed you in, has put a lid on your potential, has sketched out a ceiling on what you can become.
I appreciate that sting, though, because it has shaped my desire to treat the people I care about in a way that propels them forward, not holds them in place.
On my best days I want to be the kind of leader, father, and friend that partners with people as they grow more and more into who God made them to be.
But to do that, I have to constantly remind myself of the difference between information and imagination.
Information is incredibly valuable.
Leaders need comprehensive and reliable information in order to see what has happened, what’s happening now, where someone has been, and who they are now.
But that’s just it. Information is oriented toward documenting the past and providing a more comprehensive picture of the present.
May 7, 2015
You Can Live A Better Story. We Can Help.
Do you feel like you should be having a great impact on the world than you already are? Are you tired of “being inspired” but not having a plan you can act on?
Do you want to be accepted into a community of people who share your desire to live a meaningful life?
Come join us for a weekend you’ll never forget.
Register NOW to join us in Chicago, November 5-7.
Every year the Storyline Conference has helped people learn to live a better story. We’ve brought in world-class speakers to both inspire and equip you to live a life worthy of writing about. The conference has grown significantly the past couple of years and it’s been an amazing ride.
What we didn’t expect was to have created a family. Turns out we’re all being tempted to live boring, distracted lives.
And we’re all doing something about it.
Photo Credit: Spencer Combs
The Storyline Conference is going to take place in Chicago this fall.
We’re back for another year!
Register NOW to join us in Chicago, November 5-7.
What you’ll get:
In addition to the opportunity to hear from inspirational speakers like Bob Goff, Shauna Niequist and Korie Robertson, you’ll also walk away with the following things.
Renewed energy and passion for life
A community of friends to support you on your journey
New understanding of difficult things that have happened in your past
Clear direction for where you should go next
Refreshed understanding of your skills and gifts, as well as how to use them
Focus and clarity
A written plan
Don’t miss this chance to attend Storyline Conference.
It’s truly life-changing.
Register NOW to join us in Chicago, November 5-7.
If you still have questions about the Storyline Conference, or are still wondering if it is for you, feel free to visit our Frequently Asked Questions page, where we do our best to fill in all the blanks.
Hope to see you in Chicago this year.
You Can Live A Better Story. We Can Help. is a post from: Storyline Blog
May 6, 2015
The Life Changing Power of Real Friendship
One of the reasons I looked forward to moving back to the town where I grew up was that my best friend through my teenage years was still there. After I graduated from high school, I moved a lot and was back in my home town infrequently—once was to be a groomsman in his wedding.
He was a groomsman in mine.
When I moved back, though, something wasn’t right.
We’d make plans to get together, and about half the time he wouldn’t show up.
When we did see each other, he seemed distant. Distracted. The most curious of all was when he agreed to be with my wife and me on my birthday.
It would be dinner at my house, and then we’d go to a concert with two of the world’s great jazz musicians, Chick Corea and Gary Burton. I spent a good chunk of change and got tickets for the three of us.
My wife went to considerable effort to make the dinner special. She knew how much this friend meant to me.
But he never showed up.
We waited for a courteous 30 minutes, then I tried calling him. No answer. I called his work. Not there. We waited an hour, then finally ate and went to the concert.
For the next several days I tried calling him, and finally gave up.
I knew he wasn’t dead. There had been sightings.
About two months later he called me at my office—something he had never done before. He sounded very matter of fact, made no effort to explain what happened on my birthday, but he cut right to the chase.
“I need to ask you to do something for me,”
He spoke in a flat, controlled tone. He didn’t even wait for my reply. “I need you to write a letter stating why you like me, and why you’re my best friend. And I need it by 6:00 tonight.”
I agreed without hesitation. But I had to ask.
“Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m going to my AA meeting, and tonight is my night to tell my story. They said I needed a letter from someone who could say why they liked me. You’re the only one I could think of.”
After we hung up I just stared at the ceiling.
How could I have missed the signs of his alcoholism? What kind of a friend was I? The writing came easily. I wrote about what a gift he was to the world. I listed his talents, his traits, his acts of kindness, his humor.
I was specific in how much better my life was as a result of our friendship.
He stopped by the house promptly at 6, and I was waiting for him at the door. I handed him the envelope, and we shook hands. I told him that I was sorry and that I was proud of him.
He was silent and quickly headed back to his car.
He told me later that all he could see when he looked in the mirror was that he was a failure. Labels like drunk, divorced, disappointment, were the only ways he could see himself. He assumed that the world looked at him the same way. And that I looked at him the same way.
My letter gave him some new language: funny, loving, smart, friend.
He couldn’t see it. He needed someone else’s perspective.
Our friendship is still strong, more than 30 years later.
He’s healthy and sober. We live in different parts of the country again. His dad just died and we had a great conversation on the phone about loss and grief.
Since he called and asked me to write that letter, I have been more intentional about articulating to my friends what they contribute to the world.
People can’t always see themselves. They’re too blinded by labels and their own sense of failure. Storyline Blog
May 5, 2015
How Much Are Your Negative Words Costing You?
I used to think the words I used didn’t really matter that much, but the older I get, the more I see how certain words just cost me so much more than others. It’s not a monetary cost—it’s a spiritual or relational cost. But in order to make the intangible cost feel tangible, I prescribe a monetary cost to my words.
So in other words, I charge myself money for words I know cost me a lot—and the most expensive words are negative ones.
I charge myself $500 for each one.
Before I speak negative words—words of criticism to a friend or a client, bitter or angry words, or just words that could come across as complaining—I remind myself that those words cost 500 bucks each. Storyline Blog
May 4, 2015
Before You Get Married, Do You Need to Talk About Money And Sex?
Before my wife and I got married, I called my counselor friend Al to see if he would do our pre-marital counseling for us. His response really surprised me.
He said basically, “no” and then explained how he didn’t like to do pre-marital counseling in the way you typically think about pre-marital counseling. The reason was, he isn’t really interested in sitting down with couples to have a conversation about personality, money and sex.
That’s basically what pre-marital counseling is, he said: conversations about personality, money and sex.
And when it comes to working with couples before they get married, he just explained how there are so many other important things need to be talking about besides money and sex and, in his experience, that doesn’t happen in your “typical” pre-marital counseling session.
It’s not that money and sex aren’t important topics of conversation. It’s just that, he explained, there is usually something much deeper driving those conversations.
He wants to get couples to talk about that stuff.
His response really stuck with me.
Because when I thought about it, I realized that just having a few conversations before I got married about finances and sex wasn’t going to guarantee us a rock-solid marriage. What was going to guarantee us a rock-solid marriage was being willing to talk about these things openly, over time.
For a rock-solid marriage, we would need a willingness to get below the issues to the real issues. Storyline Blog
May 2, 2015
5 Articles I Sent My Staff This Week
May 1, 2015
Is He The One Who Got Away?
This phrase has been running around my head lately: He’s not the one that got away.
Did you catch the “not” I slid in there?
I thought about it one night when I was cooking and listening to the Civil Wars. Their song “The One that Got Away” came on and got me thinking. The song talks about forbidden love, saying “I wish you were the one that got away” and what it’s like to not be able to let go of that person.
As I peeled my carrots and listened, I realized I’m fortunate that I’ve never been in a relationship like the one the song describes, wishing that person had gotten away.
Then, this truth struck me:
No one in my life did get away, at least, not in the sense this phrase entails.
Saying “he’s the one that got away” is like saying “he’s the one I should have been with and then something went wrong and got us off track.” I’ve wondered this before of course, and I’m assuming most of us have when a relationship ends but also, in lots of other areas of our lives besides relationships.
I remember taking forever to decide where I was going to go for graduate school.
I was choosing between two schools that were basically exactly the same, just located in different cities. And when I finally chose one, I immediately wondered if the one I didn’t choose would be the school that got away.
If not going there meant missing out on God’s blessings and will for my life.
Maybe you’ve felt like this.
Maybe you’ve wondered if that was the job opportunity that got away or the move that got away or the apartment that got away. Whatever it is, I think it’s important to not view these things as the one that got away, but rather, as the one that went away.
In the Bible, we are taught about seasons in life and God’s sovereignty in the same scripture: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
The best way to attempt to overrule God’s timing and plan is to say that something in our lives got away, as if it were a mistake or an accident.
I think we can really mean it when we say this.
I know I have. I have felt regretful and certain I had made a wrong decision. I was certain he/it was the one that got away and that I had derailed myself too far this time. But never has this thought brought me peace and never has it propelled me forward, and this is how I’ve grown so convinced that he, it and they did not get away.
Because even in stating that, we stray.
Even in wondering and questioning the past, we get lost in it.
The people and opportunities in our lives didn’t get away; they went away because it was time. Storyline Blog
April 30, 2015
Why Forgive When It Feels Like There Is No Point?
Forgiveness.
What a tired word. It lacks energy. It sounds like it has a “hmphh” in it. It lands like a thud.
For Americans, who love everything to be moving forward—new stuff, exciting and heroic stuff—forgiveness sounds about as exciting as going to the library. It feels old. It looks backward. It’s slowing down to fix what’s broken. It feels sticky.
Perhaps forgiveness is something we misjudge because we misunderstand it.
In fact, if we are to recapture the wonder of grace and the beauty of peace-making, we need to recognize there are reasons forgiveness still packs a huge punch. They are as follows.
1. Forgiveness paves the way to better realities.
Forgiveness literally creates new realities. It is, often times, the only bridge forward when all is broken and beyond repair.
My friend Todd Deatherage, a former State Department worker, leads educational trips to Israel and Palestine—a conflict-ridden place in where things seem intractable—to introduce men and women to true peacemakers. Rather than taking sides, they give their entire lives to help both sides win.
For people who have lost family members and friends in the heat of this conflict, this takes a tremendous amount of forgiveness where forgiveness seems impossible.
Forgiveness is the only way to find a win/win when decades of hatred have accumulated. Hatred and violence end when forgiveness cuts the Gordian knot.
Easy? No.
Necessary? Yes.
We don’t always get a clean slate to start with—certainly not in a place like the Middle East—so forgiveness is the healing balm.
By the time most of us reach adulthood (or our 30s and 40s), there will be dozens of relationships we wish we could start anew. We long for fresh starts. We have a choice: we can run from broken relationships. We can think they’re all behind us.
Or, realizing that life is messy and people make mistakes, we can begin to learn the art of starting over through the application of grace.
2. Forgiveness alone allows for transparency and freedom.
There’s something dangerously beautiful about a man or woman who is open and transparent enough to not only own their own faults, but those of others as well. Someone who cares about the flourishing of the community more than his own.
Anyone who is that humble or self-effacing has nothing to hide.
Jesus ended the teaching of the Lord’s Prayer with the words, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Interestingly, he immediately followed it with the commentary, “For if you forgive those who sin against you, your sins will also be forgiven.”
Jesus builds into the heart of his message the idea that the state of our relationship with each other speaks directly to the state of our relationship with God.
Grace and forgiveness free us from the burden of secrecy, the deception of pride and the stench of bitterness. They allow us to be fully human—as God intended—naked in his presence and moldable as clay.
The giving and getting of forgiveness does for us spiritually what breathing oxygen in and out does for us physically.
3. Forgiveness is at the heart of justice.
This might sound crazy to someone who has been the victim of extreme injustice—say losing relatives in the Holocaust or experiencing racial injustice in the Deep South.
At the end of the day, for there to be justice, there also must be forgiveness.Storyline Blog
April 29, 2015
One Phrase to Remember When Everything Goes Wrong
I had a few friends come over for dinner the other night and from the very beginning, it was a total disaster.
To start with, I finished my work day late and got stuck in traffic on the way home. Then there was this woman in line at the grocery store with 20 items in the 15-item-or-less-lane. Then I got home and realized I had forgotten the one crucial ingredient I needed to cook our dinner.
Over the next few hours, things just continued to go wrong.
The smoke alarm went off at one point. The chicken was undercooked. I realized I had forgotten to run the dishwasher, so we had to wash all the plates and silverware by hand before we could eat.
The whole time, I was so stressed I could hardly focus. I don’t think I sat down once.
The thing is, usually, I love hosting. It’s one of my favorite things. I love creating a beautiful environment for people that can soothe them after a hard day or week.
But when things didn’t go as I planned that night—
when it was the fire alarm going off instead of the soothing music I had carefully chosen, when I practically sent my friends home puking instead of thinking about our refreshing conversation—I felt awful.
I was not having fun. I think I apologized a dozen times.
But here was the best part.
My friends just kept saying, “Are you kidding? You’re the only one who is stressed about this. At least we’re together.”
I kept thinking about that statement after they left that night—and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. “At least we’re together.” It’s so simple. But what if we reminded ourselves of that fact every time things didn’t go the way we wanted them to?
When things aren’t perfect, well, at least we’re together.
I know the story I’m talking about was just a dinner party.
But what about when bigger stuff goes wrong in life? What about when I lose a job or someone gets sick or life takes a left turn and doesn’t end up looking like the perfect, beautiful picture I planned?
I see how this could translate.
Our perfectionism can keep us from being with people, from loving them and letting them love us. Storyline Blog
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