Shared through CC license by Leo Reynolds

I don’t stick this away in a drawer. It is an agreement or constitution between me and the members on my team.

1. I want everyone on my team to succeed mentally, spiritually, and emotionally in both your personal life and in your professional life.

- This may mean that you are prepared for a job greater than I can offer.

- This may result in you becoming my boss.

- This may lead to alternate and unexpected employment.

2. I intend to always be honest with you (even in hard times), and I expect the same out of you.

3. If I ever make a decision out of ego, call me on it.

4. I will not make comment/criticism that doesn’t generate a positive result.

5. I strive to always be fair, call me on it.

6. I do not have to have the last word.

7. I will never condemn you for something that I cannot change.

8. I expect you to be professional.

9. I will never ask you to do anything that I would not be willing to do, and I expect you to do most anything that I would do.

Anything there that seems crazy? Do you have your own rules that you use?

Passion is a loaded term. That soup of spiritual, emotional, mental, physical and social longing and satisfaction each have unique answers. The challenge is to bring alignment that satisfies all elements of your person. I’ve found myself chasing mental “passion” only to drain all energy from my physical body and vice versa.

So what’s alignment? As noted in the post starting the “why” series, we have spent all of our lives growing up with the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” The real question is WHY do you want to be when you grow up? Below the surface of the what is a reason that drives you. The alignment of the why, how and what are the critical recipe to figuring out the “passion” question.

Simon Sinek does a nice job of explaining the approach of the what versus the why by illustrating the Golden Circle. (If you haven’t seen his TED talk check it out.)

Sinek's Golden Circle - Shared by The memories of a Product Manager

When I was 15, my deepest longing was to direct movies. I spent years in the theatre trying my hand at acting, directing, and a ton of time in the technical production. Other masters came into my life, and in the pursuit of their satisfaction I quashed the dream. Finally at 27, I thought the passion was to be a lawyer. I looked at the “what” of being a lawyer–power, money and success– rather than the “why”–helping people. I went down that ridiculously difficult road only to find that the inside of the what was different than the outside of the why.

So, how do you get to the heart?

1. Remove the “whats.” We spend a great deal of time–especially in our culture–driving to the features of our lives: what kind of clothes we wear to work; what kind of car we will drive; what kind of house we’ll live in. etc. These are all results or features, and they cannot drive the decision.
2. What is the problem in the world that gets you excited? For me, after years of searching, I believe that people and organizations are uniquely situated to be incredible, but they don’t always see the path to excellence.
3. What can you do better than anyone else to solve that problem? Again, for me, I believe that by spending time with people and organizations, listening to them, and bringing into focus the “thing” that really drives them, I am helping to unleash potential.
4. There lies the WHY. My purpose or WHY statement is to unleash potential. The purpose should be boiled down to one or two words and be very simple.
5. How do you do it? The how is the bridge from the why to the what. It becomes the rules or a framework that directs the purpose into the action. For example:
   1. I want everyone to succeed mentally, spiritually, and emotionally in both personal life and in your professional life. This may mean that you are prepared for a job greater than I can offer. This may result in you becoming my boss. This may lead to alternate and unexpected employment.
   2. I will not make comment/criticism that doesn’t generate a positive result.
   3. I will never condemn you for something that I cannot change.
6. Finally, what’s the what? At this point it is very easy to determine what you can do, but more importantly it determines what you can’t do. The realm of opportunity is limited by the answers to the preceding questions. So, it is easy for me to say based on my purpose and promises that I would not, for example, be satisfied as a scientist working in a lab all day because I would not be unleashing the potential of people.

Over the past few weeks, I read Simon Sinek’s Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. While Sinek points at many of the same basic tenets as Collins, the ease of his explanation, works very well to explain the need for the core purpose, or as he says “the why.” Take a few minutes to see Sinek’s TED talk.

At least twice in my life, I followed the paths of what careers–one by pure accident and another by great intention. The results were what you might expect: longing, dissatisfaction, frustration and anger.

Over the last two years, I have spent most of my consulting hours, working with clients in the profit and non-profit sectors forcing the why questions. Relentlessly, we spend difficult hours cutting through all of the “stuff they do” to get to the reason that they are doing it. It’s amazing and fulfilling to walk this journey.

This week I’m going to write a few pieces about how to answer the why, but first, I wanted to put the questions to you:

• Do you know your purpose?
• Are you working (volunteer or paid) to answer your purpose?
• If not, what’s your greatest fear from taking the leap?

Like many families, the Faulkenberrys purchased a house to renovate and truly make the home of their dreams. However, those plans were cut short with Reed’s untimely death. Since last May, the community has identified different needs to help. Gregor Smee, Principal of Smee + Busby, saw something that most would not identify as a need but most families cannot live without–fun.

While Smee was visiting the Faulkenberrys to put up a tree swing in the back yard for one of the daughters, he asked Jana what else could be done for the children. She said that Reed had talked a couple of years ago about building a tree house for the kids. Gregor, an architect, offered the help of his staff at Smee + Busby Architects to design and build a five platform (one for each child) tree house in two large existing trees connected by a cable suspension bridge.

Fellowship Church and Smee + Busby will provide the design and labor, but the outstanding need is the funds to cover lumber, hardware, and parts for the bridge. It can be donated through Fellowship Evangelical Free Church so as to be tax deductible.

If you can spare $30 to make this dream come through for the Faulkenberry family, let me know. If you can’t, take a minute to share this story with your friends on your social networks. I will keep this post updated with the status of the fundraising efforts.

When I was much younger and smarter, I realized that like the physical world, the human experience is always moving in and out of seasons. In fact, at the time I imagined that I would need a daily reminder of this, and I memorialized this belief symbolically in my wedding ring.

I had a jeweler create this ring with four sides surrounding a circle representing the continuity of life surrounded by the different seasons life will take. Since that time, we have moved to several homes, worked at different jobs, watched life spring forth with the birth of our children and watch life slip away. Despite my best efforts to make the high points last forever, they slip away. Fortunately, with the same  predictability the low points have vanished. Sometimes these changes have come at exactly the right time, but most often life’s seasons have changed when I least expected it or when I had given up hope for the spring. But just as you cannot look at a tree in the depth of winter and command it to spring forth a new bud, you cannot pop a magic pill or throw a magic life preserver to the seasons of life.

From a tiny sprout, an oak tree becomes a magnificent creation. In the first years of growth, the changes are dramatic and measurable. The seasons bring the trees dangerously close to death and at other times abundantly  full of life, but each season brings maturity and depth to the support system of the entire tree. As the oak matures, its outward growth becomes indiscernable yet it is still developing…seasoning into a solid fixture.

Today, the memento left by the younger me served as a reminder that change will come. While some winters are more harsh than others, these seasons indelibly mark our lives. While the trees mark these seasons with growth rings, us humans carry it wisdom.

Image used via CC license from @atmosphera

After reading this book and watching this documentary in the past few weeks, it sends home the message that I’ve been thinking for a few months: we are a culture of excess. According to this NY Times article, Americans throw away 96 billion pounds of food per year; our hard drives are filled with terabytes of information; (remember, Bill Gates said that “640KB should be enough for anybody.”); and we sit in our congested homes and watch a show about hoarding. After spending time serving the needy in Mexico this year, I am astounded at how much I truly have.

While my house may not have 35 years of junk packed to the ceiling, I hoard. I have more than 100 GB of digital photographs; more than 50 GB of (legal) digital music files; and myriad digital fragments that tug at my mind. More than that, I have scattered bits and pieces of hobbies and aspirations crowding the RAM of my mind. Is it any wonder that medication for ADD is so highly prescribed.

So, here it is.

1. I want to carefully evaluate the things that are truly important to my life.

2. Evaluate the areas of my life that are in conflict with #1.

3. Take more time to tidy up (archive) my digital life.

4. Say “no” more.

I don’t expect this to be quick or easy, but I want to begin the movement towards simplicity. Cheers.

How about you?

Feature image used via CC license.

Photo used via CC License from @miggiddymatt

This morning a situation came up, and I blurted out these mythological words, “Ain’t No Fat Boy’s Gonna Tell Me I Can’t Climb This Mountain!!” Thankfully, no one was around; thankfully, I wasn’t on a mountain, and most importantly, I was the only fat boy in ear shot.

It’s funny how life’s little events can become mythological, and as we are all readying our lives for the celebration of Christmas, I thought I’d share the origin of this defiantly optimistic proclamation (originally shared by Doug at my dad’s memorial service last year).

In the late 90s, my dad, brother Jeremy, brother-in-law Andy, and me all decided to hike up to Mt LeConte right after Christmas. As the poorly trained hikers we were, we departed for the hike in late afternoon on a snowy December day. We finally reached the trail around four p.m.

Most people appeared to be coming back from the trail as we headed out and up. At first the path seemed fine, but soon we were walking (and slipping) on ice. Daylight was slipping away alongside us. Soon the dark shadow of night was fast approaching.

The trail shifted from a smooth passage over tree roots and rock to a steep climb along the side of the mountain. In my typical less than courageous mindset, I was ready to head back to Gatlinburg and enjoy a good meal! But we pressed on.

Soon a heavy set guy passed us heading down the trail. He stopped and said, “You really shouldn’t go any farther. It’s too steep, too icy and getting too dark.” After he passed out of sight, my dad replied, “Ain’t no fat boy’s gonna tell me I can’t climb the mountain!”

That one statement captures the energy and fire in my dad’s belly. If you tell him he can’t do it, can’t win, can’t make, he’s sure to give everything to prove you wrong. Thus we trudged upward and onward. I was convinced we’d die on the side of the mountain. But to my amazement, my dad’s drive pressed us all forward, and we made to the top and spent the night up there in a three sided-cabin.

Over the last several years, my dad’s quote became part of the family lore. Even now when facing a hard struggle, one of us will say, “Ain’t no fat boy gonna tell me I can’t climb the mountain!” That one moment (which was so exhausting and overwhelming at the time) has come to be one of the fond memories of time spent with my dad.

In my memory, the air was colder, the hills were steeper, the night was darker, and most importantly Doug’s complaining was louder than any other experience in my life. But, we made it. So, no matter your “mountain” this holiday season, remember: the fat boy may have been right, but that’s no story worth telling your kids.

Merry Christmas!

I donned my costume and paraded about the neighborhood accepting bribes in lieu of retribution–trick or treat. And somewhere in the back of my mind I contemplated this act as a foreshadowing of the adult-world to come. In the dark reaches of my mind, I contemplated the true “tricks” that were occurring that night. Those days never came.

As I have gotten older, the polarity between good and evil seems more like a crevice than a chasm. Sure, there’s witchcraft and wizardry just like there’s revival and pentecost, but for the most part the imagination of my youth has met a dull and mediocre retail experience. Halloween is the second largest retail holiday of the year. Christmas is the largest commercial holiday, and while we are reminded to remember “the reason for the season,” we are still quite comfortable to numb the pain of our best intentions with another gift at the top of the stack.

This is obviously a #firstworldproblem. Our commercialism sucks meaning and polarity out of everything that it touches, and we are left with something that vaguely resembles the other. I’m not sure that I could handle the discomfort of a world any other way, so tonight I’ll help the kids don their costumes and collect their obligatory treats. We’ll all go on as if there is good and evil without really experiencing either.

A “Pennington” search confirmed my worst fears; Trey succumbed to the darkest of human conditions–hopelessness. Trey was a man of faith. He was a family man, and if you ever had a conversation with him, you likely had a sense that he was grounded. He was. Depression is not a respecter of education, class, faith, family, fame, or “happiness.” It strikes like a viper and speaks worthlessness and desperation directly to the core of those who taste its venom.

When I read Bridget Pilloud’s tribute to Trey and personal struggle with depression, I was struck by the simple gesture of her professor that assisted her off the ledge:

She asked me if I was thinking about suicide.

Yes, I said.

I was so depressed that I didn’t realize that she was going to try to talk me out of it. I thought she was going to say Go For It, or maybe Where are your poems? I want to publish a chapbook posthumously.

I was wrong.

You’re a mother right? She asked.

Yeah, I said, but you know, he’ll have his dad, and if I do it now, he won’t remember me.

She nodded. She was quiet for a moment and then she said, My mother killed herself when I was 9. She jumped off the balcony of our house. And every day since the day she died, I’ve wondered what I could have done differently.

I remember looking down at my doc marten mary janes.

Then she said, If you decide to kill yourself, understand that you are dooming your two-year-old to always wonder what was so wrong with him that you chose to kill yourself instead of being his mother.

I thought of my boy. I thought of my mother and how many times I thought I had failed her, and wondered what was so wrong with me.

And I never considered suicide again.  It stopped being an option.

We all hear a little voice from time to time; it’s usually no big deal. It might be that we feel like we failed a project, or because of a string of mess-ups, the voice says you are a “failure.” We may see that we’ve gained a few pounds in the mirror, but that voice tells says, “no one will ever love you.” These strikes are lies, that’s all they are. Eventually after listening to them time and again, the voice builds one on another and says “you have no reason to live.” Bridget heard the lies, and fortunately she was able to share her story with someone outside that gave her a different perspective and spoke truth into her life.

We have relationships all around us where the voice is striking. From the outside, it’s not always easy to see evidence of it. But our ability to listen and not always fix is the perspective that someone may need to walk off the ledge.

Recently, one of my closest friends moved out of town. For the last five years, our families ate dinner together once a week. He and I regularly had “back porch time” where we would talk about nothing in particular and everything in between. Something about that time kept my pressure release valve open. Without posturing, we would just sit outside and chat…or sometimes just sit outside and listen.

Since his move, the viper would strike a lie here and a lie there in my own mind, and after about a month the internal dialogue began to build one lie on another. Everyone has reasons why we don’t want to let anyone into our labyrinth of lies: I’m a man, I’m a father, I’m a mother, I’m a leader, I’m famous, etc., but I found myself subverting the viper’s strike until the other day. I had a telephone call with my friend and mentioned one of the lies. Almost immediately, he spoke truth into my situation and it changed my perspective.

We all need a little more truth in our lives:

• You are uniquely and wonderfully created.
• You are everything to your children despite your screw-ups.
• You are everything to your parents despite your screw-ups.
• You are important.
• You are not a whore.
• You are loved.
• You are rich.
• You can eat the elephant in front of you, one bite at a time.
• You are not a failure.
• You touch more lives than you’ll ever know.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

-Alexander Pope

May God bless your soul and you find peace, brother Trey.