Being All There

Its never fun to hear negative things about yourself. But coming from people whom you trust and you know love you it almost always turns out for the good. Recently in one of our Vision Team (elder) meetings, Adam, Allen, Dustin, and I were having a conversation with the purpose of helping each other refine and grow in our respective leadership roles. In this conversation, they told me that I have been “moody,” or “up and down” recently.

Of course being a typical guy, at first I was offended and I wanted to disagree with them. But then I realized that they were right. After a few more minutes of discussing it, I realized that the root of the whole issue was not my actual mood or demeanor at a given point in time, it was that my mind was often elsewhere instead of being focused on whatever I was doing. Some of the issues and pressures in my life were bleeding over into and affecting everything else. Things I could not do anything about were having a negative effect on many of the things that I did have the power to control.

A Godly man who mentored me several years ago named Fouad Faris used to say, “wherever you are, be all there.” Wise advice that I once lived out fairly well, but apparently need to recapture at this point in my life.