Donald Miller's Blog, page 8

The Problem With Black-And-White Thinking

Generally speaking, you are either a Republican or Democrat, a Calvinist or Arminian, you either believe we are shaped by nature or nurture, you either like Neil Diamond or you don’t, and even as you read this, you either agree with the statements I just made or you disagree. We think Fox News is brainwashing or truth-telling, we are Democratic or Marxists, evolutionists or creationists. There is either right or wrong, good or bad, beautiful or profane, right?

Such thinking wouldn’t make it through the door of an undergraduate course in logic, yet it’s commonplace in our arguments.

And it’s a problem.

Black-and-white, either-or thinking polarizes people and stunts progressive thought.

Moreover, we begin to believe whatever thought camp we subscribe to is morally good and the other morally bad, thus demonizing a threatening position, further stunting our ability to think and find truth. Instead, we are armed with ammo from the twenty-four hour news cycle that helps us defend our identities rather than search for truth.

There are places where this sort of thinking doesn’t prevail, however. I remember hanging out at Reed College back in the day and wondering how odd it was that people’s identities weren’t attached to their ideas. In fact, ideas weren’t even their ideas anymore than artifacts found in an archeological dig belonged to their finder.

So how did we become so polarized?

It’s true that humans have a need to categorize their thoughts in order to make sense of the world. And yet few of us would realize our categories are largely utilitarian, based loosely in fact and largely in fantasy. Austin Cline suggests that when we fall victim to black-and-white thinking, we reduce an endless spectrum of possibilities to the two most extreme positions, saying, in short, that home is either north or south, when home may indeed be southeast or northwest, or in some cases, both, depending on the necessary route.

Black-and-white thinking is attractive because it’s reductionistic; it simplifies everything so we don’t really have to comprehend. It allows us to feel intelligent without understanding, and once we are intelligent, we feel superior. People who don’t agree with us are just dumb.

What about you? Do you think in black and white?

Here are a few ways I’ve had to train myself to not think in black and white.

1. Disengage your ego from your ideas. Our ideas aren’t really ours; they are just ideas. They may be true ideas, which makes them important, but they aren’t our true ideas, and people should have the free will to either agree with them or not. It is very difficult to be honest with ourselves about whether our egos are involved, but it’s the territory of a better thinker.

2. Understand there is much you don’t understand. We begin to think in black and white when we assume we know everything. But this is an illogical assumption. Those who think in black and white and defend their camps will have a hard time engaging new and valuable information because they have already built their home halfway across the desert.

3. Walk away from black and white conversations. When the conversation becomes about defending one’s identity, it’s time to politely move on. If the conversation is calm, and nobody is defending his or her ego, you’d be amazed at what information unfolds in the discussion.

4. Choose your words carefully. Use phrases such as: At this point, I’ve come to believe, or, I’ll never stop learning, but I’m attracted to the idea that… Some will read these statements as weak, but I see these as strong and humble statements. When you make statements like this, your listener hears that you are objective and have sought truth. You are, as such, thought of as more trustworthy, and your argument is given more weight.

I’ll never stop learning, but at this point I’ve come to believe black-and-white thinking isn’t the best way to engage ideas.

It should also be noted, I do believe some things are black and white.

Murdering an innocent person, for instance, is always wrong. Killing somebody, however, is not always wrong. Some actions are right or wrong depending on context. This would be considered a gray area. If you’d like to read more about this, I suggest checking out G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. Chesterton asserts that mathematicians go mad, not poets, because mathematicians try to build a bridge across the infinite, and poets simply swim in the sea.

Is there right and wrong, absolute truth and so forth? Absolutely. But is life complex? Absolutely. Are there grey areas in life? Yes, there are. At least this is what I’ve come to believe. And I’ll hope we’ll explore them.

Doing The “Right Thing” May Be Keeping You Stuck

I’ve never been very good at making decisions. I envy my friends who are confident and decisive and who make a choice and own it, all the way to the end.

For me, that’s hard.

To be frank, even the smallest decisions are a challenge for me.

Recently I was speaking at a conference and one morning, before I headed to the event center, I decided I’d really like to get a cup of coffee. I knew there was a Starbucks within walking distance from my hotel, and the conference wasn’t far either, so I made the decision to stop on my way.

As I got in line at Starbucks, I checked my phone to make sure I was okay on time.

Five minutes passed. Then six minutes.

And as I looked at the length of the line still in front of me, I started to feel nervous I was going to be late.

So I stepped out of line, resigning to find coffee later.

This was the right decision, I told myself.

But when I arrived at the conference a few minutes later, I realized the doors hadn’t even opened yet, and general session wasn’t starting for another 15 minutes… at least. Why had I been so worried about time? I wondered to myself. I could have waited. In fact… I could probably still make it back to Starbucks and then back to the conference before things got started.

I stood there thinking about it for a few minutes before I decided—you guessed it—to walk back to Starbucks and get in line again.

And I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but as I stood in line at Starbucks for the second time, my mind started spinning. Did I really have time to wait? Was I just being selfish in my need for coffee? Did I really need to spend the money?

Should I have just stayed at the conference center?

Maybe I should get out of line again…?

Yes, I’m exhausting.

I forced myself to stay in line and get my coffee and—no big surprise here, but—I was on time to the conference and nothing terrible or dramatic happened.

But ever since then I’ve been thinking about this frustrating tendency I have to obsess over decisions and go back and forth and back and forth, looking for the “right” answer.

How am I supposed to make decisions like what house to buy, or where to invest my money or whether to stay in a relationship or leave it behind, if I can’t even make a choice about a stupid cup of coffee?

There is so much at play here.

The problem includes how little I trust my own intuition, how little permission I give myself to mistakes (perfectionism), how little faith I have in my ability to overcome problems and obstacles, etc.

But recently a friend said something to me that illuminated this problem for me in a whole new way. First of all, he suggested that perhaps trying so hard to do the “right thing” wasn’t serving me the way I thought it was.

Because the right thing for you, he mentioned, might not be the right thing for every person. And the “right thing” for the person next to you might not be the “right thing” for you.

We’re constantly trying to measure our own progress and choices by what everyone else around us is doing.

We so desperately want guarantees—when the truth is there are none.

Second, he said, “compliance is a form of resistance.”

It took me a minute to understand what he was saying, but eventually I knew he was right. Compliance (rule-following, a constant obsession with finding the “right” answer) is a form of resistance.

So in other words, my own desperate need to find the “right” answer to the question, the “right” college, the “right” house, the “right” decision about something as dumb as coffee is actually my resistance to fully engaging with my life, to doing my own inner work, to owning my choices.

It is my protection against failure or disappointment, my attempt to disengage and skip the accountability I have for myself and for my life.

My desire for a formula or a step-by-step process or someone to give me the answers is my resistance against the transforming process that takes place when we find the answers in the context of relationship, but within ourselves.

Yikes.

That is me. Or, it was me.

There is value in asking for feedback or advice from others. There is value from learning from those who have gone before us. There is value in asking for support. There is even value in asking for boundaries or limits, or setting some of your own.

But I guess I’m starting to see what I’m missing by “following the rules,” just because they’re the rules, or by constantly seeking the “right” answer to every question, or by beating myself up for making what now seems like the “wrong” choice “back then” (“If only you had stayed in that Starbucks line the first time!”)

I’m missing the process of unfolding and learning and growing and becoming me.

And that’s not a trade I’m willing to make anymore.

Don’t Strive to Be Someone You’re Not

Growing up, I wanted to be just like my big sister Jenna. Jenna has one of the best personalities of anyone I know. She’s fun, kind, energetic, handles the spotlight beautifully and at the same time she’s humble and genuinely curious about others’ lives. Jenna was prom queen and homecoming queen in high school for these very reasons. She hates that I just told you that.

Even in high school I remember she received those crowns with a subtle eye roll. Jenna is awesome because she doesn’t need accolades and crowns to tell her so.

Though I wanted to be:

I was not just like Jenna in high school.

I had friends. I liked my life at school and am fortunate to have walked away from those adolescent years with an overall good experience. But I realized in that time that my personality was not identical to Jenna’s like I wanted it to be.

People would tell me often that I was quiet. This upset me. I was not quiet, I would tell them. They just didn’t know me well enough. I thought being quiet was a negative character trait and I was embarrassed this was the impression I was giving people. I didn’t want to have a reputation of a quiet girl. I wanted Jenna’s reputation. How was I going to be homecoming queen if I didn’t?

It took years of fighting people on this aspect of my personality before surrendering to it. In college, enough people had described me as quiet that I began to admit it to myself.

I was often quiet.

I didn’t speak up much in class. I liked riding in the car in silence, which irritated many of my friends. I liked to read and write and be by myself more than the average college student. I loved people and meeting new ones and going to things, but I was never the life of the party and would not have felt comfortable if I was.

Sometimes people give us labels.

They can be cruel and hurtful and inaccurate, and we need to go to counseling in adulthood to work through it. And other times, people give us labels that are not bad or anywhere near inaccurate yet we resist them because we have a vision of who we think we should be.

If the well-meaning people in your life are consistently describing you in a certain way, don’t dismiss it. Take it into consideration, whether this description is, in your opinion, positive or negative.

When I began accepting my quiet self, I began to experience freedom. If being quiet was true about me, I didn’t have to force myself to be louder than what felt natural. I didn’t have to try to be more fun at parties when I didn’t know how to be. I could start to discover who I truly was, quiet parts and all.

Life was more enjoyable.

I was less anxious and I was easier on myself, rather than being hard on myself for not speaking up more.

I was never homecoming queen or prom queen. I think I won a participation award in my Latin class once, but I never received that reputation I thought I wanted, the one I thought I needed. Now, I know that that’s ok. It’s better to be who you are than to strive to be who you think should be.

And years later, I still look up to Jenna and want to be just like her, but I want to be just like me too.

Are Your Criticism and Cynicism Holding You Back?

I was talking to a friend awhile back about the power of our thoughts and how they are busy creating our reality.

Photo Credit: Mike Monaghan, Creative Commons

The conversation came up because she caught me in long train of negative comments about a situation in my life that was both less than ideal and also mostly out of my control. She pointed out my bad attitude.

At first, I resisted.

I told her I was just venting and that she was making a bigger deal out of it than it was. I tried to tell her I didn’t mean what I had said and that I was just trying to be funny or dramatic. She didn’t buy it.

“I wonder what would happen if you changed the way you think about this circumstance…” she said.

“What if you changed your mind?”

The whole thing made me feel upset at first. Changed my mind? Had she even been listening? I mean, wouldn’t a “positive spin” on a negative circumstance be kind of like lying?

Still, she pushed me…

“Our thoughts are busy creating our reality” she said.

I told her I wanted to agree with her, in theory, but that I was clearly having a hard time putting this into practice.

Honestly, I have to admit my long-time skepticism about this way of thinking.

In my mind, the whole thing felt a bit hokey, like a slippery slope to thinking I was somehow in charge of more than I really am.

I would tell myself that being critical and cynical was funny, that it was cute, that it was “just part of who I am”.

But as I talked with my friend that day about cynicism and positive thinking, something unexpected happened. I began crying. Like, out of nowhere. She had taken the negative statement I was making about my situation (like, “my life is falling apart”) and turned it positive statement (“my life is coming together”) and then asked me to say it out loud.

I almost couldn’t do it. I was in tears.

As we talked more about it, I realized that my cynicism had, for a long time, been an incredibly effective form of self-protection for me. And if I was going to let down my cynicism, I was also going to have to let down my guard, too.

I was going to have to believe that something amazing was about to happen.

Hope takes so much courage.

When I get really honest about my cynicism and negativity, I have to admit that the reason it feels so comfortable to me is that it feels like it’s protecting me.

And in its own way, it is.

If we spend enough of our time worrying about things, complaining about things, criticizing things and judging other people, we get to avoid the terrifying work of fighting the raging battle of negative thoughts that is storming in so many of our lives.

Those negative thoughts dictate our feelings, which dictate our actions and, as such, silently steer our lives.

All of this is happening under the surface, like the small rudder that directs a giant ship.

This conversation happened almost a year ago now;

and I’ve made a concerted effort to curb my negative thinking.

Life is not perfect. It never is. But I have seen dramatic and positive changes in my mood, my relationships, my career and my ability to deal with problems when they arise. Sometimes I’ll choose a thought to meditate on—like, “I am worthy of love”—and watch the following months as undeniably loving circumstances and people flood into my life.

In such a beautiful way, it makes me feel powerful and connected. It makes me feel like I have control and I have choices.

It feels like tiny little miracles unfolding all around me.

It’s true we don’t have total control over our lives.

But here’s what I’m learning: the most important thing we can control, the ONLY thing we can control, is our thoughts, which lead to emotions, which lead to actions.

This is the only fight we have to fight. It is the hardest fight we will ever fight.

No one else can fight it for us.

It matters so much how we tell our stories, especially to ourselves.

How to Make A Complicated Life Feel A Little Simpler

I was walking yesterday at a local State Natural Area in Nashville – it was quiet and that full, early-summer green and smelled good.

This spot is a nature preserve—so you run across more sorts of creatures than you would on a walk in a neighborhood, and it seems many of the people who hike here have their eyes peeled for just such encounters.

A third or a fourth of the way in, I noticed a girl stopped ahead of me on the path—except she was coming from the other way.

She had stepped off to the side and was smiling as she looked toward the woods.

Because there’s wildlife out there—when you see someone paused and quiet, it usually means they’ve spotted something worth looking at and slowing down for—a deer, a wild turkey, a barred owl.

As I walked toward her I started trying to look backwards at a diagonal over my right shoulder—the direction she was looking—but I couldn’t see anything yet.

A couple was turning the corner from behind her, walking at a good pace until the woman, a few steps behind the man, got to the spot where the girl was and had almost her same perspective. Then she called for her husband to slow down, to come back, to turn around, to look.

Whatever they saw, it was important enough to cause now three people to stop.

As I was passing, I turned my head back again and, even though I mostly kept moving, I saw briefly what she saw—a young deer sipping water. I continued and turned this little almost-interaction over in my head.

It felt significant, even if I wasn’t sure how just yet.

I haven’t been able to put anything in writing lately, which makes me frantically scan every waking second of life for some clever, paradigm-shattering metaphor, most of which end up not, in fact, clever and don’t, in fact, benefit from my further expounding on them in a blank Word document.

Life is complicated.

By that I mean we aren’t individuals or communities made up of strictly fixed and tidy beliefs, values, identities, histories, influences, or even plain likes and dislikes. As much as it’s tempting to think so, and as much as it would be easier if it was so, this is just not the way life is.

Sometimes a metaphor helps us remember that the first step to handling all these differences with grace is, in fact, simple—even if how it gets worked out in the real world isn’t instantaneous or easy.

As I thought about the girl stopping to look at the deer, two metaphors floated up that I wanted to remember.

First, sometimes you can’t see what your neighbor sees because you’re not standing where she is.

Whether in the moment it was possible for any of the rest of us to see the view exactly in the way she was seeing it isn’t the point, at least not here, but rather it was a physical reminder that when two people are approaching the same reality from different vantage points, the scene they take in is not the same.

And maybe as good a starting point for humility as any is:

“From where I am, I can see that from where you are, you see something I can’t.”

This is confirmed each time I’ve walked up to someone’s door who lives across the street from me. It’s a difference of maybe fifteen feet from the familiar sidewalk on their side of the street, but somehow the whole scene, particularly my own home, looks different, even when the frame is shifted only ever so slightly.

Second, we’re better able to see the world from a new perspective when we are open to and even hoping to see something new.

When I walk into a situation knowing there are good things to behold—in a setting where I am willing to look side to side more than usual, where I know I’ll spot things that might make me wonder or think—I’m more likely to take extra time and patience to deepen my understanding of the world around me.

I know I’d benefit from taking one or both of these approaches more often than just when I’m within the boundaries of a nature preserve.

Weapons of Hate and The Danger of Doing Nothing

We find anwsers when we own problems.

Waking up to another tragedy and watching reporters search for cause and meaning in all directions (religion, radicalism, discrimination, anti-gun, pro-gun, mental health, fundamentalism, political parties, etc…) is evidence of a sad reality where personal responsibility is sparse and judgement has quietly reached epic proportions.

We spend more energy and time on judgement than we do on actually finding a solution.

Maybe if we use half of the time spent posting, reporting, and talking about who’s at fault and what “they” should do to fix it, and instead spent some time looking at what ‘we can do’—then maybe empathy, hope, and sustainable change could have a chance.

Hate is born from division, exclusion and misused fear.

Love is born from inclusion, empathy, understanding, and grace.

Not the kind of inclusion and love practiced within our likeminded communities and comfort zones, but that which is lived out everywhere with everyone. We are all in this together and are all part of the problem & solution.

It’s an “us” problem, not a “them” problem.

So I’ve been in thought this week about how I contribute (or don’t) to both the problem and solution.

Often when I don’t know what to do I do nothing.

Everyone knows things need to change but does anyone know that means us too?

How we respond either speeds up the change process or slows it down. So how do we move from a culture that consumes to one that contributes? How do we become a culture that participates in solution rather than just trying to pray away the problem?

I know accountability matters, fingers need to be pointed, this needs to be politicized, and the conversation must be had. If however that were enough, things might already be different and there worse.

Let’s no longer allow not knowing what to do get in the way of doing something.

I grieve and pray alongside these tragic losses, and will do my best to act and be part of the solution to this systemic global problem.

The victims deserve better and so do we. Change is a messy process and worth us owning our part.

I’ve been in the change business long enough to know that changing anyone or anything starts with changing ourselves.

Let’s move beyond the comfort of blame.

Let’s put down the microscope, pick up the mirror, and work together towards love and solution.

Outrage and avoidance are no longer working and action starts with inquiry and conversation. Start a conversation today with your family, friends, work and church, about what needs to change with us so we can be apart of the change we seek in others.

When intolerance ends, restoration begins.

Worrying Isn’t Doing For You What You Think It Is

I had a pretty good revelation the other day and it was this: Things almost always turn out fine.

It was a good time for me to have that revelation because I’d just sat down to write when I got a call reminding me about an appointment I’d completely forgotten. I’d have to rush out the door to make it, forfeiting my writing session. And I hate forfeiting my writing sessions.

On the drive there, I had a bad attitude.

I thought about how I was going to get behind on my project and how I resented having to keep this appointment. Then it hit me: These things always turn out fine.

I had plenty of hours on the other side of the appointment to write and by no means was the day ruined.

I confess there are times I play the victim and count the ways my life can’t be good.

But it’s hardly true.

Things almost always turn out fine.

The rest of the day went fantastic. I kept the appointment and loved it and went home and had a great evening working on my project. So I’m going to use it as a mantra from now on. Things almost always turn out fine.

Had a fight with a family member about holiday plans? What if you went into the next conversation believing everything was going to be okay? How would it affect your attitude and thus his or her response?

What’s worrying you?

Worried about money, or a relationship, or about everything that has to get done by a certain time? I guess we can either panic or realize it’s going to be a tough season, but in the end it will turn out fine.

Honestly, I think I spend more time worrying about things that never happen than I do realizing things mostly turn out okay.

What Are You Telling Yourself That Isn’t True?

Now that worry has proved such an unlucrative business, why not find a better job? – Hafiz

I’m writing this in the midst of a week long vacation on a friend’s farm in the rolling hills of North Carolina. My wife and I are spending our days reading, napping and walking the numerous trails on the land. Every morning, I wake up early and hike the farm’s perimeter. By the time the morning mist lifts, I’ve encountered quite a few forest critters.

Over the first few days, I saw a wild turkey, a herd of deer, a turtle, a toad, a raccoon, and more birds and squirrels than I could count. And upon each encounter, I was reminded anew of something:

Wild animals are freaked out by me.

I scare the wits out of them! When I came upon them, the turkey flew into the woods screaming, the deer dived into the dense forest, the turtle closed the doors of his shell, the toad backed quickly into his hole, and the raccoon shimmied up an oak tree.

After a while, I began to get my feelings hurt. I wanted them to know that not only was I a nice guy, but I also didn’t carry a gun. While I was quite willing to be Francis of Assisi-like, having chats with them and rubbing their little backs while we talked, they in turn saw me as a menacing mortal threat.

Our perspectives couldn’t have been more different. I was intrigued by their beauty and their place in the natural world, but in their imagination, if given the chance, I was certain to do them great harm.

In fairness to my animal friends, I understand them.

I, too, make up things about people, and most of the time, what I make up is neither accurate nor true.

For instance, I’ll write someone an email and suggest we get together for coffee. If I don’t hear from him for a day or two? No big deal. But by the third or fourth day, I begin to wonder what’s going on. “Was it something I said? Did I do something wrong?”

And by the fifth day, I’m convinced he won’t give me the time of day and he doesn’t like me, but is afraid to tell me. By the sixth day, I imagine him throwing darts at my photo or sticking pins in a little doll with a striking resemblance to me.

All of this I have completely made up.

In reality, I have no idea why my friend hasn’t written back. He may be out of the country, on a social media fast, or simply forgot to return my email. It happens. For all I know, he could be in some deep crevasse with his arm trapped under a huge boulder, trying to decide whether or not to use his dull Swiss Army Knife. Meanwhile, I’m wasting an inordinate amount of time making up a story that has a 99.9% chance of being untrue.

Let’s face it – we all make stuff up! While we have legitimate questions — Why didn’t they call back? Why wasn’t I invited? I wonder why I wasn’t chosen for this or that? — we often answer them with a negative and active imagination.

How much more interesting would our lives be if we lived the story we knew to be true rather than engaging in an imaginary story where paranoia crowds out the truth.

Let’s commit to living the real story we know, leaving fairy tales to folks who write fiction.

Have you been “making up” anything this week? If so, try to step out of this part of your imagination and step into what you know to be true.

The Way to Your Calling is Not A Straight Path

I’ve often been asked the question, “When did you know you wanted to be a singer?” I usually respond with, “I’m not sure. Ever since I can remember, I was a singer.”

My family would always say they knew I was happy when I would walk around the house singing at the top of my lungs. My brothers and sisters would usually end up yelling at me to stop, and probably rightfully so.

But why do I sing?

That’s the deeper question.

I’ve found the journey of the artist to not be an easy one. It’s doesn’t always seem to be a straight path. It evolves and grows and subtracts and meanders along the way.

But to know why we do what we do can be a powerful thing.

Awareness and acceptance have been my two key words as of late.

If you are like me and you have found the path to your calling to be unclear and winding at times, here are five seasons I see in my own journey looking back. I hope they are a reminder to you that you don’t have to know exactly where you’re going to know you’re on the right path.

Season One: Discovery. Inherent Love.

I sing because I’m happy.

I’ve always loved the moment in Sister Act 2 where Whoopie Goldberg’s character walks up to Lauryn Hill (“Rita” in the film) and says,

“I went to my mother who gave me this book called ‘Letters To A Young Poet’ Rainer Maria Rilke… A fellow used to write to him and say, ’I want to be a writer. Please read my stuff.’ And Rilke says to this guy, ‘Don’t ask me about being a writer. lf when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing, then you’re a writer.’”

Take a minute and remember back to yourself at four or five—an age before you found yourself worrying about what others might want from you. What did you love to do?

These days, what do you wake up thinking about in the morning?

What keeps you up at night?

Perhaps these answers are pointing you in the direction of your calling.

Season Two: The Joy of Feeling Affirmed

I sing because I feel seen and loved.

I remember growing up in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Minnesota with an even smaller church, the ones with stained glass windows and pews.

I remember the first time I stood up in front of that congregation and sang. As a teenager, it was nerve-wracking and scary and addicting. I remember walking out into the foyer after one of those Sunday morning services and seeing the smiles and hearing the encouraging compliments from people I admired.

My heart felt so full.

What felt better than being seen and loved? I needed to have more of it.

Can you think back to a time when you felt seen and loved and acknowledged for something you brought to the relationship?

How could this be pointing you toward your calling?

Season Three: The Satisfaction of Doing Something Well

“I sing because it feels good to be good.”

My senior year of High School I was in a guys ensemble singing four part harmony to old classics like In the Still of the Night and Duke of Earl. Four of us had sung together for a few years at that point. From appearing at proms to singing the National Anthem at basketball games, we knew we were good.

It was probably confidence mixed with ego, but the inherent joy of being able to do something well was also quite addicting.

What are you really good at? What does it feel like to use those gifts?

How could this be pointing you toward your calling?

Season Four: The Allure and Appeal of External Success

“I sing because I feel important and successful.”

I remember moving to Nashville 6 years ago. I had been living in Kansas City for a few years at that point but felt frustrated because what I wanted to accomplish musically felt stunted in that city.

I found a home in Nashville amongst a group of creatives who were all doing what I wanted to be doing—writing songs, making records, taking risks.

When my last record came out, I began to feel some momentum in the world of external success.

People I admired in the music industry were commenting about my record.
Label executives were reaching out for meetings.
The record was climbing the iTunes charts.

The allure of success—or what the world defined as success—was a bit intoxicating. But what I found, ultimately, was that the allure of success kept pointing me back to one question:

Why was I doing this?

This might be a good question for you to ask yourself: why are you pursuing the path you’re pursuing? What’s the greater meaning?

What’s the purpose?

Season Five: The Reward of the Moment (or Music) Itself

I sing because I sing.

I remember watching an interview with American Singer/Songwriter John Mayer. He was commenting about his journey as an artist and said there’s a point where you realize the greatest reward is in the music itself.

It’s in this moment.

It’s us right here.

It’s the beauty of creating something together.

At different points in his career it was about the applause of the crowd or the allure of success, but at this point it was about the inherent joy of the music itself.

Maybe that’s what the full circle journey of the artist looks like – coming back to the realization that we create because it’s who we are. Past the changing moods, or applause, or success, this moment is enough.

This moment is everything. It’s the only thing.

What do you do for the love of it?

Why Being Creative Matters (It’s Not What You Think)

If there’s something you want to create—a book, a song, a website, a business, a painting—that you aren’t creating, I bet you have a really good reason.

You have too much going on (work, commute, family responsibilities, mild terror), or not enough of something (time, money, expertise, cabins in the woods). You don’t know how to start, or your setup isn’t right, or you’ll get to it later.

I tell myself all of these.

Some days I sit down to write and suddenly nothing seems so important as the sink full of dishes in the other room, or the fact that my toenails might need trimming.

Or my youngest will wake up when she should be sleeping, or my oldest will ask for help deciphering the hieroglyphics that are high school geometry.

A distracting tree-trimming guy will set up his wood chipper in the street behind my house, or the coyotes in the canyon out front will start howling so close that I decide I probably ought to go check that they’re not in the yard. (Not that I would know what to do if they were.)

And that’s just on the outside.

On the inside, I see that cursor on the screen blinking at me and I imagine it’s asking, Do you even have anything worthwhile to say?

Fear starts talking, though sometimes it sounds like doubt or cynicism or insecurity:

What if this doesn’t make sense?
What if it doesn’t connect with anyone else?
What if isn’t good enough?

Does this even matter?

You’ve probably heard this quote from early-twentieth-century theologian Howard Thurman: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

If you are a person who comes alive through creativity, then creativity matters because coming alive matters.

The more you come alive, the more you see ways to use that life to serve the world. You become more yourself, and you see where your gifts and passions can meet the needs around you.

But there’s another reason that creativity matters that I learned from Howard Thurman’s teachings.

“There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself… and if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”

The sound of the genuine is your true identity and “the music God heard when He said, ‘Let us make man in our image.’”

Isn’t that beautiful?

The genuine, then, sounds like truth and love and an awareness of who you are. The sound of the genuine is not the voice of fear. If we’re following our fears instead of creating, we’re going in the wrong direction. And I’m guessing the rest of our excuses and distractions aren’t helping, either. All that talk about too-much and not-enough? That is us, listening to the wrong thing.

If you hear the “sound of the genuine” expressed in you when you paint, or write, or sing, or create, then the excuses don’t matter and the results aren’t the point. Listening is the point.

We have really good reasons for not creating. Sure we do.

But if we’re listening, we might find even better reasons to get to work.