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Ep 32: The Leaders Who Help Everyone Else Are Still Human (Psalm 103:14) · CEO Kingdom Seekers

• 0:00
  Hey, y'all.
• 0:00
  Welcome to this week's episode.
• 0:02
  So this is a bit of a continuation from the solo episode last week where we were talking about how a lot of High Responsibility humans don't know how to let God be God.
• 0:13
  And I wanna talk about another aspect of this.
• 0:17
  So if you're the person that people call when something goes wrong, like you're the person who knows what to do, you stay calm in tough situations, you're able to make the difficult decisions, you take care of everyone else, and you're noticing that somewhere along the way, over these last several years, decades, your whole life, you started believing that being capable meant that you didn't need anything from other people, or you were wrong when you did need help from others, this episode's for you.
• 0:44
  If you've ever looked at your life and struggled with the burdens that you were feeling because of how blessed you know you are, if you think,"Oh my gosh, I have so much to be grateful for.
• 0:56
  Who am I to be tired?
• 0:58
  Who am I to be overwhelmed?
• 0:59
  Who am I to say that this is hard?" This is for you, okay?
• 1:03
  If people see your title, your education, your influence, your income, your leadership experience, your strength, and that's what they know you for.
• 1:11
  And sometimes in the back of your mind, you wonder if they actually realize that you're, like, a human being underneath of all of it.
• 1:18
  People just know that you are reliable and excellent at what you do, and they forget that you're a person with feelings and that you are fallible and that you can make mistakes.
• 1:32
  This is also for you.
• 1:33
  And it's really for you maybe if you're, willing to go here with me, you are recognizing that you've stopped seeing yourself as human, too.
• 1:43
  You're somebody that God has equipped to carry extraordinary responsibility.
• 1:50
  He's given you a lot of gifts.
• 1:53
  He's blessed you in a lot of ways.
• 1:56
  And also, God never asked you to become superhuman, and He never asked you to become Him.
• 2:04
  So that's what I want to talk about today.
• 2:06
  I want to talk about those of us who help everyone else, how we can remember that we're still human.
• 2:13
  And this includes me, this includes you, this includes a lot of us out there.
• 2:17
  So let's get into it.
• 2:19
  So we opened our High Responsibility Humans community on Substack last week, And we started with a seven-day free trial.
• 2:27
  That's still available for anyone who'd like to take us up on it.
• 2:31
  The thing about the community is that there is free and paid access content that's going out every day.
• 2:37
  I've been talking on here for several episodes that God told me to write this year.
• 2:41
  He told me to speak and He told me to write, so I've been writing.
• 2:44
  I've been writing a lot.
• 2:46
  And in the last several days, people have been reading our writing that we've been sharing, and we've been getting some incredible feedback, and it's feedback that I feel like I should have expected.
• 2:58
  But again I wish I could take credit for what is happening already inside of this space, but I- it's God.
• 3:04
  It's not me, it's God.
• 3:05
  He's using my gifts in a way that I'm just finally letting Him right?
• 3:10
  I've gotten obedient finally at nearly 40 years of age.
• 3:14
  So the messages that we're getting back are things like I started tearing up reading your latest podcast blog, and I'm not even really sure why." There's these emotional responses that people can't necessarily explain.
• 3:27
  Or,"Oh, wow, I read the seasonal reflection that was talking about transitioning from summer to fall and making sure that you don't rush ahead, and it felt like you were talking directly to me." This is really resonating.
• 3:43
  And I think what is interesting is that I didn't sit down with a marketing avatar and decide,"Okay, I'm gonna build something for this incredibly specific group of people.
• 3:54
  I'm gonna niche down, and I'm gonna help people this way." In a lot of ways, God formed this assignment that like I said, have, like quote-unquote, finally taken up.
• 4:05
  He formed it through what I've experienced.
• 4:08
  He's formed it through the positions that I had in healthcare and in trauma work and in entrepreneurship and in leadership, my own spiritual formation, my parenting, my marriage, my being a child, my being a, a sibling, my being a friend and a colleague, being a community member.
• 4:27
  All of these experiences of having a lot of burdens at the same time as having a lot of blessings.
• 4:36
  And last week we talked about the weight of being a high responsibility human.
• 4:41
  We talked about taking off that tactical gear and being able to not have our primary identity be the fact that we can hold and handle a lot.
• 4:50
  Having our primary identity be that we are a child of God.
• 4:54
  We talked about recognizing when hypervigilance has followed us home, and when we are tense in situations and treating things like danger and opposition and threat when we are really in a situation where God would handle things for us if we just stood down.
• 5:12
  We talked about the difference between stewardship and sovereignty.
• 5:15
  Um, The fact that we don't have control over everything.
• 5:19
  We don't get to choose everything.
• 5:21
  And in reality, a lot of us are trying to control things and take responsibility for things that God not only never asked us to do, but we literally can't,'cause they're not ours.
• 5:30
  We can't predict the future, we can't control other people.
• 5:33
  So a lot of what we are carrying or trying to carry It feels as heavy as it does because there's a lot of force behind it, right?
• 5:43
  And lastly, we talked about remembering that we are resources, and God is our source, and He gives us what we need in order to be successful.
• 5:51
  So He resources us with assets that He creates and that we can co-create with Him in order to be successful.
• 6:01
  And there's a deeper layer to this, right?
• 6:03
  For a lot of us, the problem isn't just that we've forgotten how to take off the tactical gear.
• 6:10
  It's one thing to ask people to take off the tactical gear.
• 6:12
  It's another thing to create enough safety in a person and help them understand that they are worthy, and they deserve being allowed to take it off.
• 6:26
  Everyone around us has forgotten that there's another human being underneath of that gear and we've forgotten too, to the point that we don't feel like it's safe for us to take it off.
• 6:34
  Because if we take it off, then who's gonna, who's gonna pick it up?
• 6:37
  Who's gonna put it on?
• 6:38
  If you don't have a self-concept of what it means to be somebody who isn't expected to always be the one who's responsible for everything, to always handle and hold everything, or maybe not everything, right?
• 6:55
  Maybe not everything, but a lot, and more than most.
• 7:00
  If you don't have a concept of that then that's gonna be difficult when you try to step into the identity of being a child of God because you don't understand what it's like to have a father figure or a parent that truly wants you to not always be responsible for everything.
• 7:19
  You don't understand what it's like to be in relationship with someone that doesn't want you to hold and handle everything because your concept of how you operate in relationship with other people is,"I'm always expected to be responsible all the time.
• 7:33
  I'm not allowed to make mistakes.
• 7:34
  I have to be constantly thinking and scanning ahead.
• 7:37
  That's not allowed.
• 7:38
  It's not allowed for me to do that." So I'm gonna give you a few examples of people that I've seen.
• 7:45
  And These are real scenarios that are either amalgamations of lots of different people, or they are specific people and there's details removed because that's important.
• 7:56
  Or they're me.
• 7:58
  Okay?
• 7:59
  The whole point in this is that you don't necessarily see yourself in every example, but I want you to pick out the pieces and parts that you do resonate with.
• 8:06
  And notice this, because if you start realizing, oh, there's several things that Lee said that feel true for me, or that I've experienced personally, then that is something to be noticed.
• 8:22
  That's something to be taken in prayer to God, and that's also something that identifies that if you weren't sure you were a high responsibility human before, you are.
• 8:35
  All right?
• 8:36
  And this identity can't come before your identity as a child of God, as a follower of Christ.
• 8:42
  Okay?
• 8:43
  So i've been in lots of boardrooms in my position as a professor, in my doctoral preparation as a nurse practitioner, as a acute care nurse practitioner, and someone who has been on planning committees and all those sorts of things, as someone who's been in boardrooms for other businesses that were coming in and doing strategic consulting.
• 9:04
  I've been around that table, and Those tables are tense a lot of the time because it's a bunch of people who are holding a bunch of weight getting together at a table and sitting there making tough decisions.
• 9:16
  That, that just is what it is, and those tables feel tough so often because nobody at that table feels like they can be human.
• 9:23
  And so they're all showing up as who they think that they have to be in order to do well at that.
• 9:29
  There's not a lot of vulnerability at those tables oftentimes, and that is a way bigger conversation for another podcast, for another day, and it's just the truth of the matter.
• 9:41
  And I see this so much in healthcare, especially post-pandemic.
• 9:44
  And pre-pandemic in 2018, 2019, I remember sitting at a table and with a bunch of leaders, and I'm sitting with my nursing preceptor, and a physician just broke down in sobs.
• 10:00
  And this was a physician who was known for their stoicism.
• 10:04
  They were a tough nut to crack, they were a little scary, to be honest.
• 10:09
  If you went to ask them a question, you better have your ducks in a row and be ready to go, right?
• 10:14
  They were also brilliant and a phenomenal surgeon.
• 10:17
  So you've got this person who's so incredible at their job, in this position where they're managing and making these very big operational decisions.
• 10:27
  And the dilemma that got placed in front of them on the table was one of the toughest things I've ever seen.
• 10:35
  It had to do with money.
• 10:36
  It had to do with personnel.
• 10:37
  It had to do with people's jobs.
• 10:39
  It had to do with performance evaluations.
• 10:41
  It had to do with a lot of things that are very near and dear to most people, their reputations, their actual livelihoods, the amount of money they're making in those livelihoods.
• 10:51
  And the decision that this surgeon was asked to make there was no option that they were gonna walk out of the room and be like,"Wow, that feels amazing." Hundreds of people were gonna be upset no matter what got decided.
• 11:04
  And they were going around the table just having this conversation, and this surgeon is the one who's going to have to make the call.
• 11:12
  And everyone at the table has all these different opinions, and They're basically reinforcing that there's no good option.
• 11:19
  And this physician just started sobbing, they got dysregulated and they yelled a little bit.
• 11:26
  And then you could just see that the mask slipped, the emotions came out, and then all of a sudden it was like,"Oh my gosh, this isn't allowed, right?
• 11:35
  This isn't allowed." And there was just this look of terror, and the mask slammed back on, the heart space closed up, and you could just see the shame and embarrassment come up, and then they just left the room.
• 11:50
  And I think the thing that broke my heart the most was that when they left the room, everyone else was like,"Wow,""They really didn't hold themselves together well." And I'm over here going,"Oh my gosh, you have no idea." This surgeon's probably worked 100 hours this week.
• 12:04
  I can't imagine what's on their plate.
• 12:07
  And you just put something in their lap that's really tough, and they because They broke.
• 12:13
  They broke under the weight of all of it.
• 12:15
  It wasn't a perfect leadership decision.
• 12:17
  It wasn't this, this place where everyone could even remotely walk away happy.
• 12:24
  And being the person responsible for making that decision didn't magically make this physician immune to the emotional weight, and yet everybody in that room expected them to act like it didn't hurt.
• 12:37
  There was another scenario where I had the opportunity to be in the room with someone whose work has transformed millions of lives, and who has a reputation that precedes itself, extraordinary influence, extraordinary capability.
• 12:55
  And I got to be in the room with that person when they confessed quietly and with a little bit of shame again, right?
• 13:06
  "I'm afraid of getting an IV." I've I'm a really hard stick, and it hurts, and I hate it, and so I'm really tense about this.
• 13:14
  And when you're somebody who has influenced that many people, and you have such a powerful gift to help others, and you're afraid of something that a lot of other people would be like,"What do you mean you're afraid of that?" You've done all of these incredible things, and you're afraid of this?
• 13:33
  We see someone's impact and how confident they are in that space, and we unconsciously assume that level of confidence is gonna transfer into every area of their life.
• 13:43
  Oh, this person's so brave and so confident over here, so naturally I'm sure they're not scared of anything else.
• 13:50
  You can be extraordinarily powerful in one context and extraordinarily vulnerable in another.
• 13:56
  This is actually something that I've experienced personally.
• 13:59
  I remember that a friend was asked to give a talk at a large healthcare organization on holistic health in healthcare for workers, and they asked if I would tag team with them, and I said,"Absolutely, I would love to do that." I love to speak.
• 14:15
  I love to be on stage.
• 14:16
  I still get a little nervous before I go up there.
• 14:18
  I get a little shaky.
• 14:19
  I get a little worried that I'm not gonna say the right things or do the right things, and at this point I know that's just something that happens, and it's something I just have to give myself the first three to five minutes of talking to get through, and then I'm gonna be fine.
• 14:33
  And in that talk, I was sharing about my profound experiences with social anxiety, and with a lot of insecurity and unworthiness issues.
• 14:42
  And so I shared that from the stage.
• 14:45
  And I had someone walk up to me afterwards and they said,"I can't believe that someone like you struggles with anxiety and insecurity." And I said what do you mean?" They said,"You were so confident, and you were so capable up there.
• 14:56
  You exuded comfort on that stage." And I said yes, I did." And I can be incredibly successful at what I do and also be scared, and also have mental health struggles, and also have spiritual struggles.
• 15:12
  That is a small example of this other person I was just sharing about.
• 15:16
  We see someone be so far and above from a talent perspective in one area, and then we just assume that they're superhuman.
• 15:25
  There's another example that, and I've seen this one in so many people.
• 15:30
  When I used to do work through our trauma institute, I would have clients come to me who had spent years functioning at this incredibly high level, and they were very proud of the abuse and pressure and struggles that they went through in order to get where they were.
• 15:53
  They're like,"Yeah, this industry's so toxic," or"This is how many hours I had to work," or"This was the toxic boss that I had to deal with," or,"These were the situations I had to work in where I didn't have enough assets, and I always had to be figuring things out, and it was just chaotic all the time." And I used to be like this.
• 16:09
  One of the examples that I give is I'd brag on how many hours I could go without sleep.
• 16:14
  I used to be like,"Yeah, I work 20-hour shifts, and then I take a four-hour nap, and then I go teach." And I would say that almost like I was proud of myself that I could do that, that I could push myself that far, and like, hearing other people be like,"Oh my gosh, that's amazing." That wasn't amazing, y'all.
• 16:28
  That was exhausting.
• 16:30
  That was part of the reason that I left the role that I was in, because it was glamorizing and glorifying being depleted, being exhausted, not having enough assets, like not being a resource.
• 16:41
  And so I realized, okay, that's not the way that God designed this.
• 16:48
  A lot of these situations where I'm gonna say this.
• 16:51
  We'll have to make this episode explicit.
• 16:53
  But one of the practices for high-level practitioners, physicians, nurse practitioners, other people, is that when you do rounds with patients, you get put through something called pimping, and that is where the senior clinician basically grills you as the less senior clinician to see if you studied everything that you were supposed to study and you know everything you're supposed to know about this patient.
• 17:19
  Basically like,"Did you prepare enough, and do you know the answers to everything that I think you should know the answers to?
• 17:24
  And if you don't, I'm gonna embarrass you on the spot." That happened a lot, and rounds were incredibly stressful in specific scenarios.
• 17:33
  That was something that people would talk about all the time, was getting ready to present at rounds and people would be, like, panicking.
• 17:41
  I share that'cause is that a way that we actually need to have healthcare set up, right?
• 17:45
  Is that a way that we really want to tolerate the system operating?
• 17:52
  And a lot of the people who would come to me, whether they were healthcare providers or C-suite executives or people in industries where it was very, like, cutthroat, competitive sales, they would be like,"Hey I'm struggling to function at the level that I know I need to be functioning at." And when we get in there, I'm like,"That's not a normal level to function at all.
• 18:14
  This isn't normal.
• 18:15
  This isn't a normal way to treat somebody.
• 18:16
  You shouldn't be tolerating these things." You've abandoned yourself to continue trying to survive in a system that is determined to extract everything it can from you, and any time you don't give it all of your extra and beyond that, it tells you that you're bad and wrong.
• 18:31
  That's not okay.
• 18:34
  That might be typical, but it's not normal.
• 18:39
  And there's one other example that I wanna share this is particularly from the first responder space the military space.
• 18:45
  I know it personally from the healthcare space.
• 18:50
  Going home and having to face your family after you have just failed to save someone's life despite your best efforts you put your absolute all into a situation and it didn't go well, and in fact, it went really poorly and you drive the 20 minutes home, and you're supposed to go to your kid's sports game, or it's time to make dinner and do laundry That is indescribable.
• 19:34
  I don't have the words.
• 19:36
  I still feel the emotion of that after being out of clinical practice for almost six years.
• 19:44
  It is so tough to shift from,"I literally just watched someone lose their life despite everything I tried," or,"I just watched somebody commit a crime," or, I had to take a life or end a life in order to protect other lives." And now I gotta go be dad, mom, wife, sibling, coach, normal everyday person.
• 20:16
  On the business side I just had to let somebody know that we're laying off a bunch of people.
• 20:24
  I just had to make a decision that is going to, in the short term, like really harm people Because it's what's best long term, and even eternally.
• 20:37
  And a lot of people don't have all the information that I have, so they're not gonna understand why I just did what I did, so they're gonna be really upset.
• 20:46
  And they're gonna blame me, and I'm gonna have to take it because I can't explain to them why.
• 20:51
  I can't explain to them why we did A instead of B, because then I would have to give them all of the backstory, and that's confidential or that's above their pay...
• 20:57
  like, I can't.
• 20:59
  So I just have to tell them as much as I can and let them be upset, and then I gotta go home and be just Lee.
• 21:10
  Smile, cheer, ask what everyone wants for dinner, maybe answer some emails, you know.
• 21:19
  You're standing at the stove making dinner, talking with your family, doing something completely ordinary, and you've got these images, and these decisions, and these conversations, this grief, this responsibility from what just happened earlier in the day that has nowhere obvious to go, and it compounds.
• 21:36
  It compounds.
• 21:38
  It's not that you believe that your family doesn't care, it's just you know they don't get it.
• 21:42
  It's not that you don't wanna talk about it, it's just you don't know where to take it.
• 21:47
  And when people see you as that leader long enough, like I said, they forget that you're also a human, and you start forgetting, too.
• 21:53
  You start going"Well, I don't have anywhere to take that.
• 21:55
  I don't have anyone to talk to about it.
• 21:57
  I don't really know what to do with it, and this is where I think it actually gets really messy, is that we feel and understand the blessing that God has given us to be in those roles.
• 22:11
  We have enormous privilege, and impact, and power in those roles, along with the burden that comes with it.
• 22:19
  We have education, we have money, we have authority, we have access, we have teams, we have opportunities.
• 22:26
  We have assets that other people genuinely wish that they had We are able to do things that other people aren't able to do.
• 22:35
  We're able to go places that other people aren't able to go.
• 22:37
  We have access to information that other people don't have access to funds And we're still human.
• 22:47
  We still get hungry.
• 22:48
  We still need sleep.
• 22:49
  We still get sick.
• 22:50
  We still feel lonely.
• 22:51
  We still become confused.
• 22:52
  We still get angry.
• 22:54
  We experience grief.
• 22:55
  We want things we shouldn't want.
• 22:56
  We are afraid of things that we know we shouldn't be afraid of.
• 22:59
  We make mistakes.
• 23:00
  We need reassurance.
• 23:01
  We need friendship.
• 23:02
  And most importantly, we need God.
• 23:08
  But here's what's so fascinating.
• 23:10
  Recognizing your privilege and your blessings, if you do the either/or thing, All of that privilege becomes another burden.
• 23:26
  Well, Who am I to have burdens if I've been this blessed?
• 23:29
  What you essentially do is you take the burdens that you are experiencing and you invalidate them, which believe it or not, makes them heavier.
• 23:42
  Because if you invalidate the burdens that are weighing you down in your life, you can't process them, you can't release them, you can't put them down, you can't really let them go.
• 23:54
  Because if you're pretending they don't exist, then how do you let them go?
• 23:57
  You'd have to admit you were holding them in the first place.
• 24:01
  You can't release or offer or surrender something up to God that you're pretending doesn't exist And this is what that invalidation looks like.
• 24:13
  Who am I to complain?
• 24:15
  People would love to have my life.
• 24:16
  People would love to have this opportunity.
• 24:18
  I accepted this calling.
• 24:19
  I chose this profession.
• 24:21
  I make good money.
• 24:22
  I have good resources.
• 24:23
  Here's the big one.
• 24:25
  I prayed for this.
• 24:27
  I asked God for this.
• 24:31
  I wanted this.
• 24:33
  So why am I still struggling?
• 24:36
  And here's the answer.
• 24:38
  You're treating this as an either/or.
• 24:40
  You are deciding that you either get to have burdens or you get to have blessings, and that's not true.
• 24:44
  Humans Have both.
• 24:50
  Humans Can feel burdened and feel blessed simultaneously.
• 24:58
  You can experience gratitude and resentment simultaneously.
• 25:03
  You can experience passion and exhaustion simultaneously.
• 25:07
  You can experience calling and limitation, privilege and pain, faith and doubt simultaneously.
• 25:15
  All of that can coexist.
• 25:19
  You being extraordinarily gifted doesn't remove your ordinary human needs.
• 25:27
  This is where I want to bring in the scripture for this week.
• 25:30
  It's Psalm 103:14.
• 25:33
  "For he knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust." For he knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust.
• 25:43
  You were made from dust And God breathes in and inspires us and gives our souls life.
• 25:56
  He understands that we are both divine and human.
• 26:01
  He put us in bodies that are animalistic and natural and gave us minds that are divine and supernatural.
• 26:10
  So He's not surprised by your human nature.
• 26:12
  He knows what you're made of.
• 26:14
  He knows you have limits.
• 26:15
  He knows your body needs sleep.
• 26:16
  He knows your nervous system can get dysregulated if it doesn't have what it needs.
• 26:19
  He knows you don't have all the information.
• 26:22
  He knows you can't be everywhere.
• 26:23
  He knows you can't save everyone.
• 26:25
  He knows you're gonna make a lot of mistakes.
• 26:27
  And yet you, we hold ourselves to these standards that God isn't holding us to We act like we need to be able to save everyone, be everywhere all the time, have all the information, not get dysregulated ever, not need sleep, and not have any limits.
• 26:49
  We hold ourselves to standards God doesn't hold us to.
• 26:51
  And this is the question I want you to sit with.
• 26:54
  If you don't take anything else away from this episode, this is what I want you to walk away and ask yourself.
• 27:01
  Where am I demanding more from myself than God is demanding from me?
• 27:07
  Where am I deciding that God has an expectation that He has never said?
• 27:19
  Now, I know a lot of y'all don't have a ton of time, okay?
• 27:25
  You probably have more time than you think, and you feel like you don't have any time.
• 27:30
  I know a lot of you struggle to get into the Word, you struggle to get into the Bible, all right?
• 27:36
  Here's something that I have learned after reading the Bible cover to cover last year, and then doing daily Mass readings every day, I would say 90% of the time.
• 27:48
  Being in the Word every day, and being deep in the Word almost every day.
• 27:53
  God has told us all of the standards that He holds us to.
• 27:59
  God has made it explicitly clear the standards that He holds us to, and they're actually pretty simple.
• 28:08
  He says that he wants us to love him above all, and he wants us to love others as we love ourselves.
• 28:22
  Is it possible that you're demanding the wrong things from yourself?
• 28:29
  Because what God is commanding, if you decide to be in a relationship with him, these are God's expectations.
• 28:38
  Put me first, and then love other people the same way you love yourself.
• 28:48
  And use the example of how I love you as an example for how you love yourself and how you love other people.
• 28:55
  God gives us an example of how He loves so that we can love Him back that way, and we can love other people and ourselves that way.
• 29:03
  But I see people do this all the time.
• 29:07
  We forget ourselves.
• 29:09
  And interestingly, when you don't put God first, you don't get to learn how He loves you because God's love is best understood when we allow Him to get really close, and if we don't surrender to Him and will His good, then it's really hard for Him to get close to us because we're not allowing Him to, and He honors our choice.
• 29:36
  So the closer we let Him get, the closer we get, the better we understand how He loves us and cares about us so much, and then it makes it a lot easier to love ourselves because now we feel the love that God's giving us, and then we can go out and love other people very easily as well.
• 29:53
  I'm personally experiencing this.
• 29:55
  It's so much easier to love other people and have compassion and mercy and grace for other people when I let myself receive the compassion and mercy and grace that God has said in the Word He gives us.
• 30:08
  Today, I literally in my daily readings, I think it was Psalm 33.
• 30:17
  God is our sword and our shield.
• 30:19
  He goes before us.
• 30:22
  And not only that, it talks about how his mercy endures forever.
• 30:25
  Do you know how many times that statement is said in the Psalms, that God's mercy endures forever?
• 30:32
  That's why Jesus exists.
• 30:40
  We are made in the image of God, and we are dust.
• 30:43
  Both are true, and we need to remember that.
• 30:47
  And a big piece of this is that you are forgetting that you're not God.
• 30:56
  You carry His image.
• 30:59
  You have gifts He's given you.
• 31:01
  You are creative.
• 31:02
  You are called to be fruitful and multiply and take dominion to rule over the places He gives you.
• 31:11
  You have authority.
• 31:12
  You have power.
• 31:14
  You're intelligent.
• 31:17
  We can practice metacognition like no other animal on the planet.
• 31:20
  We can think about our own thinking.
• 31:25
  That is a God-like thing to be able to do.
• 31:29
  We have discernment.
• 31:31
  We're able to receive and practice wisdom.
• 31:35
  We have capacity.
• 31:38
  We're able to be fruitful and multiply, to cultivate and to steward and to lead, and we're also dust.
• 31:44
  We're finite, we're dependent we're fallible.
• 31:48
  We need food and water and sleep, and we need other people, and we need a lot of grace.
• 31:55
  Our humanity's not something to hate.
• 32:02
  We, we get to stop looking at our humanity and our limits as a problem.
• 32:09
  The fact that we have emotions as a problem, the fact that we get to a point that we feel overwhelmed as a problem.
• 32:16
  The fact that we need help at times as a problem.
• 32:18
  We've got to actually look at the fact that's how God designed us.
• 32:21
  God said,"Hey, do you want to know when you're most capable?
• 32:24
  When you don't try to do this on your own." And y'all, self-reliance like that, forgetting that, oftentimes, it looks like faithfulness.
• 32:46
  I've been seeing a few videos talking about, and interestingly they're from non-Christians, they're talking about the statement just give it to God." And they're like,"How do you just give it to God and just let it go and not worry about it?" And it's interesting'cause when I first saw a couple of those videos, I was like, oh, christians do this too.
• 33:10
  Especially high achieving Christians.
• 33:12
  I see them do this all the time.
• 33:13
  They don't give things to God.
• 33:17
  I can handle it.
• 33:19
  I should handle it.
• 33:20
  If I don't handle it, who will?
• 33:25
  Th- that's not giving it to God.
• 33:28
  Giving it to God is being surrendered, right?
• 33:30
  And this goes back to the issue from the last solo episode.
• 33:35
  Your stewardship becomes sovereignty.
• 33:37
  Your gifts and formative experiences make you a phenomenal leader, but they don't make you God, and whatever you've gone through, whatever you've experienced, whatever you have learned, somewhere along the way, you learned giving it to God wasn't an option.
• 33:53
  Or you kind of gave it to him.
• 33:55
  You set it down in front of him for like, five seconds, and then when he doesn't pick it up fast enough for you, you go pick it up again yourself.
• 34:03
  You don't give him everything.
• 34:12
  You don't allow Him to help you in everything.
• 34:14
  You don't love Him first.
• 34:18
  Because loving Him first is willing His good, and He has told you what is good is you loving me.
• 34:29
  What is good is you willing my good.
• 34:32
  How can you will my good if you don't talk to me?
• 34:35
  If you don't know what I want?
• 34:36
  What I wanna help you get, I wanna help you do?
• 34:41
  If you decide things without talking to me first, you're not willing my good, which means you're not loving me, which means you're not practicing the first commandment, which means you're not in relationship with me.
• 34:51
  And This might be tough for some of y'all to hear, and if this is just smacking you in the face, I, sorry, not sorry.
• 35:02
  Sorry, not sorry.
• 35:06
  Because you're not God.
• 35:09
  And if you claim to believe that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, Jesus said, the greatest commandment is this: to love the Lord your God with all your strength and all your will and all your might and all your heart." I think I might have put those out of order, but your heart and your will and your mind, your soul, your strength to love Him with everything, which means everything goes to Him first You accept that you have limitations.
• 35:41
  You accept that you don't have access to all the things, that you can't predict the future, that you can't control other people, that you're not omniscient or omnipresent or omnipotent.
• 35:52
  You need help.
• 35:56
  When you run up against these limitations, those are reminders of where dependence belongs.
• 36:05
  Your inability to know everything reminds you that God knows everything.
• 36:09
  Your inability to be everywhere reminds you that God is all places in all time because he exists outside of time and space.
• 36:17
  Your inability to control every outcome reminds you that God is sovereign.
• 36:21
  Your need for rest reminds you that you were created by a creator who showed you how to rest.
• 36:27
  Your need for community reminds you that you weren't created for isolation.
• 36:33
  Your need for help reminds you that self-sufficiency wasn't the goal.
• 36:37
  God never wanted that.
• 36:38
  He told us the goal,"I want you to be fruitful, and I want you to multiply, and I want you to have dominion over the things that I give you, and nothing more and nothing less." This is why I care so much about that last word in High Responsibility Humans.
• 36:56
  It's why it's not called High Responsibility CEOs or leaders or Christians, because y'all, we hear this, we need a place where we don't have to demonstrate how capable we are before we receive something.
• 37:13
  This space has been transformative for me because I'm realizing I don't have to show up here as the type of leader that I had to show up as any other place.
• 37:25
  I get to show up as a human in this space because if I don't, I'm not walking my talk.
• 37:31
  I'm not practicing what I teach And this is why, honestly, like God gave me the plan for this.
• 37:42
  He was like,"This is how it's gonna be.
• 37:45
  It's rooted in seasons, and it's rooted in dependence on me.
• 37:49
  Everything comes back to me.
• 37:50
  Everything comes back to that first commandment.
• 37:52
  And then everything after that goes to the second commandment of how do you actually love yourself?
• 37:57
  Because you cannot love other people if you do not love yourself.
• 38:03
  I stand 10 toes down on that statement.
• 38:10
  If you do not know what it's like to be loved, people who love themselves receive love.
• 38:18
  People who will their own good receive from other people willing their good because they understand that they're not gonna be good if they don't do that.
• 38:29
  So you cannot love others well, you cannot lead others well if you are not loving yourself well, which means you've got to be dependent on Him.
• 38:42
  So our daily practices, we call them the rooted return.
• 38:44
  That is where you return to Christ before you do anything else.
• 38:50
  You remember whose you are before you assess anything that you need to do every day.
• 38:57
  Our weekly space scans are to help you look at a particular area in your life and notice what you're actually carrying, not what you should be carrying or what you think you should be able to hold, but like, what's actually occupying your capacity, and what do you wanna do about it?
• 39:13
  Do you like it?
• 39:13
  Do you not like it?
• 39:14
  Do you wanna change things?
• 39:15
  You wanna add things?
• 39:16
  You wanna take things away?
• 39:17
  You wanna do more of something?
• 39:19
  You wanna do less of something?
• 39:20
  You wanna keep doing it the exact same'cause it's actually working?
• 39:23
  What do you wanna do?
• 39:25
  What does God say you should do?
• 39:31
  And this is where getting in The Word really helps'cause the Bible's got a lot to say about practically every decision that you could think about making.
• 39:41
  Like legit.
• 39:46
  This week we focused in on the first five minutes when you wake up.
• 39:52
  And we talked about how oftentimes the first five minutes that you wake up are influenced by the last few minutes before you go to bed.
• 39:59
  So for me I started plugging my phone in'cause it's my alarm, I started plugging my phone in across the room face down.
• 40:08
  Number one, it keeps me from scrolling.
• 40:10
  Number two, I can't holler at Siri to snooze my alarm because when your phone's face down, she won't answer you.
• 40:21
  Little trick there.
• 40:23
  So that sets me up at night because then I actually go to bed.
• 40:26
  It sets me up in the morning because then I have to get out of bed, and the way that I have my space set up is that when I get out of bed and I stumble over to the desk where my phone is plugged in, between my bed and the desk is my prayer area.
• 40:42
  So then I just literally crawl over to my prayer area where I've got this little carpet that I kneel on in front of my oversized chair and I pray.
• 40:50
  It works eight to nine times out of 10.
• 40:53
  It works really well.
• 40:56
  So now I'm automatically set up better.
• 41:00
  We have a weekly Fruits of Leadership newsletter where we don't look at like, how much did I produce?
• 41:05
  It's not about productivity externally, it's really about what is leadership and the way that I'm approaching it producing in me?
• 41:16
  What does the internal fruit look like?
• 41:18
  How are the fruits of the Spirit growing within me?
• 41:20
  How am I allowing the Holy Spirit to grow me in my faith, in my leadership?
• 41:28
  What does deepening those roots look like?
• 41:33
  And from there we look at what fruit comes from the way I'm currently doing things?
• 41:41
  Because the quality of the fruit that's getting produced externally is directly related to the quality of the nourishment that you're receiving and what is internally happening.
• 41:55
  We have a weekly advisory board, which is this cool thing that I'm just obsessed with.
• 42:01
  You bring the actual thing.
• 42:02
  That's what we say.
• 42:02
  We- you bring the actual thing.
• 42:04
  It's a place to bring the problem that you can't bring anywhere else.
• 42:08
  And sometimes it's not even a problem.
• 42:10
  Sometimes it's just something that you're like,"I need to just set this down and leave it here.
• 42:13
  I don't even need anyone to do anything with it.
• 42:14
  I just need somebody else to read it and know it exists, and I need to know that it exists somewhere so that it can exist outside of me I don't actually wanna do anything with it right now.
• 42:25
  I just wanna bring it and set it down I don't need advice.
• 42:31
  I don't need consolation.
• 42:32
  I just need y'all to witness that this happened and just put it here and then leave it be.
• 42:39
  And other times it's an actual thing.
• 42:41
  It's uh, okay, here's a thing I don't know how to solve.
• 42:44
  Here's a thing that, where I know there's not a perfect answer and, or I don't know if there even is an answer.
• 42:50
  And it's a place to get perspective instead of being the one that's always giving it, because I know y'all give advice and share wisdom you give it all out.
• 42:57
  It's going like hotcakes, and you're not receiving.
• 43:01
  And then we have our monthly gathering where you get to come into this space without having to perform as the title, right?
• 43:07
  You don't have to be the smartest person.
• 43:09
  You don't have to show up as the clinician or the CEO or the expert or the fixer or the responsible one, like just be a human, And let's just talk through what's coming up.
• 43:22
  It's not therapy, it's not coaching, it's not any of that.
• 43:24
  It's literally a gathering.
• 43:25
  Let's look at what is happening in this season for all of us and just have some connection and some community.
• 43:33
  And yeah, there might be some advice or some wisdom or inspiration.
• 43:36
  People might have resources.
• 43:37
  We might end up sharing those things.
• 43:38
  It's pretty common, but, also, that's not the point.
• 43:42
  Just come into a space where you don't have to perform.
• 43:46
  And then the seasonal integration, these are things that happen quarterly.
• 43:50
  God created natural seasons for a reason, and we all have these individual seasons that we go through, and then there's these collective seasons that we're going through.
• 43:58
  But then we also have these natural seasons on a quarterly basis that we go through.
• 44:02
  Summer, winter, fall, spring.
• 44:07
  And seasons change, capacity changes.
• 44:10
  So God may ask you to carry your responsibilities differently in fall than he does in winter.
• 44:16
  He might ask you to carry things differently this fall than he did last fall.
• 44:22
  He knows that you've grown.
• 44:23
  He knows that you've changed.
• 44:25
  Or maybe there's a place that you haven't grown or you haven't changed, and He's like,"You know what?
• 44:28
  This season, it's time.
• 44:32
  They're ready." I think the thing to take away from this, whether you join us in High Responsibility Humans or not, is that you can be someone who is incredibly responsible without becoming someone who is over-controlling.
• 44:59
  You can be extraordinarily gifted and receive the gifts by His grace that He's given you without trying to become God.
• 45:08
  We want to be like Jesus.
• 45:10
  We don't want to be Jesus.
• 45:14
  We grow in sanctification to become more like Jesus.
• 45:18
  He gave us a practical example of how we can show up.
• 45:21
  We're not trying to become Him.
• 45:26
  And lastly, we can faithfully lead other people while also allowing ourselves to remain human.
• 45:34
  I think one of my favorite things about working with the leaders that we do now, like whether it's in the community or it is more like behind the scenes one-on-one in our agency, is how vulnerable and open we are with our clients.
• 45:53
  Our humanity is on full display for them, and I cannot tell you how many times we have heard people say,"Thank you for modeling this.
• 46:02
  Thank you for showing me that this is a both/and, that the burdens and the blessings get to exist, that I can be this incredible, skilled, talented, gifted, high level whatever, and also be just Lee.
• 46:20
  'Cause just Lee is actually like, the really important part.
• 46:25
  If all of that other stuff went away and I was, quote-unquote, just Lee, would that feel like it was enough?
• 46:29
  Because if it wouldn't, then I've got some stuff to sort through.
• 46:35
  So the invitation is to let yourself be human today.
• 46:39
  The invitation is to consider again, where have I been demanding more from myself, expecting more from myself than God is expecting from me?
• 46:48
  Instead of asking"Well, what can I technically handle?" Like, What has God actually asked you to carry?
• 46:59
  Where have you assumed because I can handle something, I should, and as a result, you've confused self-reliance with faithfulness?
• 47:12
  And what would it look like if you just decided today that you were gonna let God be God and let yourself be, quote-unquote,"just you"?
• 47:25
  Would you ask for help?
• 47:27
  Would you say you don't know?
• 47:29
  Would you take a lunch break?
• 47:31
  Would you take a nap?
• 47:33
  Would you let yourself cry?
• 47:34
  Would you change your mind on something that you already committed to?
• 47:37
  Would you go back and say to somebody,"Hey, I know I told you that didn't hurt, but that hurt"?
• 47:43
  Would you let somebody take care of you without immediately trying to figure out how you're gonna pay them back?
• 47:49
  Would you bring something to God first before trying to solve it yourself?
• 47:56
  Would you let somebody else carry something for you?
• 48:00
  Even though technically you could hold it?
• 48:06
  God remembers how He made you.
• 48:10
  He knows your dust.
• 48:13
  And I think we're the ones that need reminding.
• 48:20
  So I wanna just close out with a prayer.
• 48:23
  In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen.
• 48:26
  God, thank you for the responsibility that you've entrusted to us.
• 48:30
  Thank you for our gifts and our influence, our opportunities, and the people that you've allowed us to serve, and thank you for reminding us that we're human.
• 48:39
  I pray that you show us where we're demanding something from ourselves that you haven't commanded us to do.
• 48:46
  Show us where we've become self-reliant and disguised it as faithfulness or strength.
• 48:54
  Teach us to receive care and to ask for help, to rest, and to wholly depend on you, to steward what you've given to us without trying to become all-powerful over it.
• 49:09
  You know exactly what we're made of.
• 49:11
  You remember that we're dust, and I pray that you help us remember too.
• 49:18
  I pray all this in Jesus' name.
• 49:19
  Amen The people who help everyone else are still human, and if you're one of them, I hope you can find some spaces where you don't have to stop being powerful or capable or called in order to be cared for.
• 49:36
  And that's what we're building inside of High Responsibility Humans.
• 49:40
  And I truly hope that if this episode has resonated with you, that you will go to the link in our show notes and you will check out our seven-day free trial of the community, and that you will allow yourself to have a space where you can remember that you're both a child of God and just a person who gets to have all the needs that humans do and who can be grateful for everything that they have, while also struggling at times, too.
• 50:10
  I love you all, and we'll see you next week.