Managing Leadership Anxiety Quotes

“Anxiety shrinks the power of the gospel because it presents a false gospel—one of self-reliance rather than reliance on God.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“This is why I think the gospel of Jesus is such incredibly good news, because what you may not have gotten as a child, Jesus freely offers without condition: identity, acceptance, love.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“The goal of managing anxiety is not simply for relief, it is to connect more fully with God and to raise awareness of what God is doing. Anxiety blocks our awareness of God because it takes our subconscious attention. This means that anxiety can be an early detection system that we’re depending on something other than God for our”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“We all know the importance of observing some kind of Sabbath rhythm. After all, you can’t fill a moving cup.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“Differentiation is the courage to lead people to a difficult place while still being deeply connected. Connected to yourself and your conviction, connected to the people you are leading, and remaining nonanxious in the face of anxious responses. It is the ability to walk into an anxious situation and lead people into a new reality while maintaining caring connection to them even when they are sabotaging your efforts. Jesus, not surprisingly, is a model of differentiated leadership.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve. —JOHN STOTT”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“Anxiety blocks our awareness of God because it takes our subconscious attention. This means that anxiety can be an early detection system that we’re depending on something other than God for our well-being.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“Burnout has less to do with workload and more to do with internal and external leadership anxiety.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“The temptation of every person who wants to make an impact is to wish we were like somebody else. We look at the gifts and talents of another person and we think, If I had those gifts, I’d be a better leader, but God has made each of us unique and qualified to lead based on our gifting.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“When we are under pressure, feeling threatened or anxious, we depend on this false self rather than depending on God. If we can learn to notice when it is at play, name what we think we need that we do not actually need, and then die to it, we can be freed from its grip and opened to a deeper experience of grace. I am not talking about heaven and hell and the forgiveness of sins or a transaction with God in the past. I am talking about freedom and transformation moment by moment. I think this is one reason Jesus calls us to deny it daily. Sometimes we need to deny it hourly or moment by moment to encounter God’s freedom. In this approach, anxiety becomes a gift rather than a curse because it serves as an early detection device that your false self is at work.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“In our effort to become like him, we actually fall in to a sophisticated form of idolatry-we tend to make Jesus into a perfected version of our image and then strive to become like that. Nope. We will never be like Christ. Let's deny false self, worship him, and be free.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“you become not only self-aware but also group-aware and lead beyond awareness, you can create a healthy culture for people to thrive.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“This is hard work, but staying the same and not doing this work is hard too. It is just that you are familiar with the ‘hard’ you’re in now. You’ve become so accustomed to the anxiety you carry every day that you don’t realize how hard it is.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“One simple exercise for those brave enough to try it is to ask people you trust, “Why do people follow me?” If you gather several friends and ask one another, you will discover a variety of differences.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“When Jesus was on earth, following him was certainly not easy, but it was straightforward. No doubt, Jesus said things and went places that kept the disciples scratching their collective heads and saying among themselves, “It’s your turn to ask. I asked him last time and I still feel like an idiot.” As far as I can tell, Peter was the appointed, or perhaps self-appointed, disciple to take a deep breath and say to Jesus, “I don’t get it.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“Here is what I did and I regret how I did it. Here is where I was coming from. I am not saying that to excuse it. I know it caused damage, and I am sorry for the hurt that it caused. I would like to hear how it affected you.” Repair work takes humility and courage, but also builds significant trust and relational equity. The simplest repair is when you acknowledge what you did, apologize for it, and acknowledge the impact it had on the other. An apology without an acknowledgment of impact isn’t enough. But most people will give each other grace for these situations if repair is handled well. Recognize”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“In contrast, a differentiated leader is fully present, but fully intact, with space between where he or she ends and the other begins.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“symptoms. The primary symptom is when you keep seeking new answers to old questions rather than reframing the questions.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“Jesus forever changed the perception of infection and sin transfer. When Jesus, the healthy and holy man, touched the sick and when he lived in close proximity to “sinners,” he infected them. Instead of Jesus becoming sick or sinful, the people became clean.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“you find yourself in the anxiety of interpreting mixed messages, simply choose the message you want to receive, ignore the other, and see what happens.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“If you want to explore identifying and shedding a childhood vow, you will begin by identifying as concretely and specifically as you’re able the vow or vows you believe and sift them against the good news of Jesus.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“We needed them as kids and they fit well, but as we grew into adulthood, they became constricting and began to strangle us. A vow suffocates your future and increases your anxiety, because you are living out of that vow rather than by faith in God.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“wish I could laugh at the carpenter along with Isaiah, but this hits too close to home. God gave me gifts to use for God’s glory, but I turn them into idols and quickly forget the source, choosing instead to seek comfort and security from the gifts rather than the God who gave them.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“Jeanie Duck said that in the absence of information, “people will connect the dots in the most pathological way possible.”1 Often the stories we tell ourselves are full of all manner of pathology and half-truths. The good news of Jesus is the story no longer gets the final word.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“Another way to notice the story is to pay attention to “same species syndrome.” A couple of church pastors in your past used power to cause you pain. This is a singular truth, but your internal filter makes it universally true: now all pastors are suspect. This universal truth is reinforced by same species syndrome. The previous pain came at the hand of some church leaders; therefore all church leaders are highly suspicious.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“Power over anxiety begins when you succinctly identify the sources in concrete ways; it then continues when you tell some friends you trust.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“This was the fundamental goal of the chaplaincy experience, to be fully present to God and the people God had called me to serve in that moment and to recognize that God is already where I am heading. I think it is the goal of any leader as well.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“God has forged a new path in Jesus that leads to life and freedom. Walking by faith, then, is the lifelong habit of trusting God’s story over the story we tell ourselves. Contemplate this modified phrase: Jesus died to free me from needing anymore.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“simple prayer I frequently offer to God: Jesus died so I don’t have to anymore.”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs

“This is how denying self actually works. We notice our anxiety, we prayerfully name its source to God, and we rest free in our identity in Christ and his work instead of what we think we need. We”
― Steve Cuss, Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs