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How to Discern Your Calling Without Feeling Pressure (Greatest Hits) with Andrea Joy Wenburg

Episode 124

Have you ever looked at someone you admire and felt pressured to be like them, do things the way they do, or feel what they feel?

Where does this pressure come from? Yourself?

How much do you judge yourself based on what you admire about that person?

I want to help you stop the judgments and instead focus on what it is about that person that you resonate with. What is that person awakening in you?

In this episode, I’m going to provide some insights that will help you do this; including why I personally believe that comparing ourselves to others isn’t always a bad thing.

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Today, we’re going to be talking about Pressure, the pressure to feel like you ought to be or do something in particular that somebody else is or does or says that you should do.

I want you to imagine someone in your mind who you really admire.  You admire them for the way that they are, for who they are, or for something that they do.  I have a feeling that there’s somebody in your life that you really admire.  So just take a minute and think about them and I’ve got a question for you.

And I’ve got a question for you, first of all, what do you admire about them?  What is it that comes to mind?  You love the way that they do this.  You wish that you could do that.  You see something in their life that looks so attractive that you really wish that it could be something that you had to.

On a scale of 1to 10, how much do you judge yourself based on what you admire in this other person?  So when these things come to mind, these things that you really like about them, how much do you judge yourself based on that?

So one would be “Oh, I really don’t judge myself at all.  I’m not saying that I’m worse or better than them, I just really admire this about them.”  And then on the other side would be a 10 where you completely determine your own value based on how much you are able to do or not do the things that you admire about that person.  So my guess is that you’re somewhere in the middle, most of us are.  Hopefully you’re not too high up at the top like a 10.

But let’s just be honest with ourselves for a minute here.  How much time do you spend comparing yourself and then judging yourself based on other people in your life?  Or maybe not in your life but maybe on a podcast or in a book or online, some place, or somebody that you admire?  How much time do you spend on that?

Now, here’s the thing.  I’ve talked about some of these things that we’re going to talk about today before.  But today, I really would like to focus on taking the pressure off.  There’s so much pressure on each of us that we put on ourselves most of the time, but sometimes it comes from other people and we accept that pressure to be or do something like someone else.  And it can feel like we’re less than other people because we know that we’re not good at this particular thing.

So let’s take an example, because I realize that you may be thinking to yourself “Well, I don’t think that way,” but the truth is maybe you do.  And maybe you don’t need to listen to this episode or maybe you don’t and you should listen to this episode so that you can help others.

But think about that because we each have these people in our lives that we admire.  And I think that’s OK, because there’s a difference between admiring somebody even comparing ourselves with them.  I don’t think comparison is really the enemy because comparison can help us differentiate.  Comparison can help us to understand how we are uniquely different and how they are uniquely different and how we can work together in our differences.

So comparison in and of itself I don’t think is the problem.  What becomes a problem is when we judge ourselves or we judge other people based on that comparison.  So we start to feel bad about ourselves or we start to feel high and mighty about ourselves because we have compared ourselves to someone else.  So that’s something to really think about because comparison isn’t the enemy, judgment is.

OK, so the next piece of this is that you can admire somebody and that can turn into that self condemnation or a race to beat that person or to try to become that person or become elements of that person.  Maybe they have a really clean house and you don’t have a clean house.  And so you feel like crap all the time and you keep trying to pick your house up and you never quite get it like this other person does.

I would definitely be that person who does not clean her house very well.  I try, I try, but it’s not very often super clean or super put together.  So it would be easy for me to look at somebody’s house who is super clean or super put together.

I think, even for me, this is one thing that I noticed about myself is that I admire, really admire people whose houses are so, I think put together would be the way to put it, where they have an intentional reason for all these little things that are in their house and things have a place and they don’t have a lot of clutter and things like this.  I really admire that.  It’s something that I would like to get better off for myself.

But here’s what can happen in situations like this, we could look at that person that we admire and say “Oh man, I don’t even wanna be around that person,” or “I don’t wanna be in their house because it reminds me of how bad I am at that.”  Does that sound familiar to you at all?  Are you trying to avoid somebody because you admire them so much and it’s just feels like this is in your face all the time that you’re not what you wish you could be?  If that’s the case, I’m really sad to hear that because I don’t think it has to be like that.

I think that we can admire somebody and allow it to just be that like “Wow, I just have such an appreciation for you and what you’re able to do.  I have appreciation for this well put-together house,” without putting a lot of pressure on yourself to ever become that.  Maybe you can be inspired by it, maybe you can say “Hi, I wonder if you have any tips for me,” without feeling the pressure to become what they are, to get your house to the point at their houses.

And when I’m talking about pressure, I’m really talking about, I think you know that feeling that “Huh, I just feel like I’m supposed to be like that.  I’m not, so I feel bad about myself and so I don’t want to think about it.  I don’ wanna be around them.  I need to try harder.”  That’s pressure, and I don’t think that’s necessary.

So another way to look at this is to see people that you admire and realize that maybe they actually have tapped into something, they’re good at something that you actually do want to be good at.  I mean, not just want to.  I’m not saying you should be good at it.  I’m saying like you feel awakened when you see them do their thing.  You feel like something inside of you has just awakened, is inspired, is motivated and is saying “Huh I do want to be like that.”

So I could tell you that from my personal experience besides the house thing that through the years when I was growing up and in my young adult life, whenever I would watch a speaker onstage, I would think to myself or an author, I would think to myself “Man, I really wish I could be like that.”  I really admire them and if I did really admire somebody, I’d be feeling like “Oh gosh, why isn’t it not me up there?”  That sort of thing and that could easily turn into pressure.

It could easily turn into “Well, I need to do what they’re doing,” or I feel like such a failure because they’re younger than me and they have more success in this area.  That could easily turn into a pressure.  And that’s something that I think that we really need to turn off.

We need to take that pressure off of ourselves and say “No, I don’t need to judge myself based on my comparison with that person just because they’re younger than me, or just because they have more followers than me or they seem to have a bigger impact than I do for whatever reason.

Instead of judging yourself based on that, could you allow yourself to be awakened to what might be a calling for you?  So for me when I would see these speakers and authors and things, I would think “Oh gosh!  Oh, I really do want that!”  It was like I felt called to it.  Like I felt I really truly wanted it, not so much that I felt like I should be that or that I should have what they have but then I wanted it.

I think that when we talk about comparison as being a bad thing, the danger of that is that we start to turn off all of our abilities to think critically about how we are different and what we should be.  So instead of being honest about the fact that we have a desire, we try to turn it off because we start to feel bad.  We feel this pressure and we start to feel bad and so we turn off the comparison and we kind of know more ourselves to that comparison because we know what it has done to us in the past.

Maybe you have felt a lot of pressure.  I don’t want to feel that pressure, so I’m just going to avoid it or I’m going to _____ it.  I’m going to say, “I don’t care.”  Kids do this all the time, don’t they?  “I don’t care,” or when we’re self-critical, we try to beat people to the punch and say, “I’m an idiot.”  I’ve said that to myself before.  I try to beat people to the punch because I don’t want somebody else say that about me because I feel like I should be something different.

So we do these things that distract us from what’s truly in our hearts what might be an actual calling, a desire to actually move towards something.  So if you’re somebody, who, like me, sees people who are writing books and out there speaking or maybe an entrepreneur or maybe they are just somebody who seems like they have it together for this or that and you feel awakened to a desire inside of you.  That is different than feeling pressured to become what somebody else says.

So instead of turning it off, avoiding it off, or avoiding that person, get down to asking yourself, “What is it that I’m feeling awaken to?  What excites me about this, about where they are and what they’re doing?  What doesn’t?”  This is where you get to compare yourself.  This is where you get to do that comparison.  You’re not saying that they are better or worse than you are.  No, no, we’re not judging here.  What you’re doing is you’re doing some discerning about your own calling.

I went to this talk and this person got up there and he spoke and he just awakened something inside of me.  And for a split second, I felt bad about where I’m at right now but then I remembered that, “No, this isn’t about feeling pressured, this is about finding what I desire, finding out what I really feel called to.”

So let’s ask myself these questions, “Self, what do I feel called to then?  What is so exciting to me about what I’m seeing?  What was awakened inside of me, a desire for what?  What piece of this or what pieces of these just really energized me?  And perhaps what doesn’t?  What something about this that I’m not excited about?”

And that’s OK.  It’s OK to admit that as well, “You know what, I don’t really like that they did this because I would do it differently.”  That doesn’t mean that you’re judging them.  That means that you’re trying to figure out what your voice is, you’re trying to figure out what you are called to and then allow them to be who they are.

So a few months ago, I spoke at a conference in Las Vegas and I just had a few minutes onstage but it was so _____.  I had such a blast because I love the stage.  If you read UNFROZEN, my book, you know I love the stage.  I felt guilty about it for a long time like I shouldn’t love it.  And then I realized over the years I kind of come to terms with the fact that it’s OK for me to love being onstage.

So when I got up there in front of a 150 people or so, I just got up there and owned it.  I felt like I was owning the stage and afterwards the conference organizers had everybody do a little survey.  And so on the survey, they asked different questions like from a scale of 1 to 5, how engaging was this presenter?  From scale of 1 to 5, how much did you learn and that sort of thing.  And I got to take home all of these surveys.

So I went through and on my way home, I calculated all the responses.  And really they calculations were really high.  I actually got some really good responses between 4 and 5 for everything.  But there were a few individual responses, and one in particular, he was so critical.  One person, you could tell who did not like me.  And they didn’t feel like they learned anything because I talked about the same thing that they do.  OK, fair enough.  They did not like the way I was dressed.  We’re talking like they’re giving me a 1 or whatever.

They felt like I was acting onstage which nobody else did but they did.  You know things like these, and I was just like “Oh my goodness, this person is like really, really critical.”  And this is what I think that we do when we are comparing and judging at the same time.  I think that we look at somebody else and say, “I wouldn’t do it like that.”  And so we mark them down in our minds and that instead of saying, “This was effective,” or “This wasn’t effective for me,” or “This wasn’t effective for me but I think it would be effective to these other people.”

So if you’re in that position where you’re looking at somebody and you’re saying, “I really admire them but I really don’t like this and I really do like that.”  Well, you don’t have to put judgment on it.  You can say, “This is really effective for me.  This would be really effective for the audience I want to reach.  This would be really effective but this other thing maybe I didn’t like it and I wouldn’t do it, but maybe it would reach somebody else.”

My tendency is to always be looking for what’s effective and what’s not.  And when I watch other speakers, I’m thinking to myself “Is this perfectly put together, but is this effective?  Is it getting people where they want to go?  What about myself, is what I’m doing effective or not.”  So here’s where I’m coming back to this.  I’m coming back to comparison isn’t bad.  Comparison saying whether or not you are like somebody else and how and whatever, that’s OK as long as you’re not adding judgment to it.

But you can ask yourself what awakens desire in me and what doesn’t.  So you can let that person be that person.  You’re not saying that they should be different by doing this process of comparing and figuring out, discerning what you want to be.  You’re not saying that they should change.  You’re not judging them nor are you judging yourself.  What you’re doing is your discerning your calling and you’re saying, “Well, maybe they are called to do just what they’re doing and that’s totally fine.”  Or maybe they could up in a notch, maybe there’s some way that you can help or that somebody else can help, that’s fine.  That’s totally fine.

What I’m saying is you don’t have to feel bad about comparing yourself to other people, because if someone that you admire awakens something inside of you, something that they do or something that they say and it awakens something inside of you and you’re like “Wow, I really want that!”  This is where you’re following your heart to find you’re calling.  This is doing a little bit deeper in our work to be able to figure out what you’re really called to.

But if you look at somebody and you say, “Wow, they’re doing these amazing things, but I can admire that and not want it or not judge myself based on them on what they’re doing.”  That’s a really healthy place to be.

So when you are listening to this podcast, when you’re listening to Voice of Influence and you hear me talk about things like vision and mission and voice and understanding what your message is and things like this, this may or may not be for you.  Because there are some people in the world, who, maybe like me, long to have a certain message and a certain impact.  We long to find our calling and we’re having a hard time doing it.

When I was having a hard time doing it, I needed to get clear on all the chaos on my head.  I needed to get clear on what I most care about so that I could know how to focus my energy.  Does every single person in the world need to do that?  I don’t think so.  In fact, I think what’s important probably more than anything _____ is to know what you really care about, what standard you’re going to measure everything by.

So here’s the thing.  This is where I was thinking about this earlier, I need clarity around my message and offering.  But somebody like my husband, he needs to partner with somebody who has a message and an offering that he can relate to, that he can support, that he can get behind.

So while he may not feel like he needs a certain message or a certain offering, as long as he can feel supportive of what I’m doing, as long as he can feel like he relates to it, he agrees with it, it’s not just his values; all that sort of things then he can get behind it and help me in whatever way that we decide to move forward.  But we’re focusing in on my particular message and offering for Voice of Influence.

So there are some people in the world who really do feel like they have something they need to say in particular and they want focus, they want to know all these things.  And then there are other people who care.  They have a voice and they use their voice but they do it in a way that is supportive and get behind what other people do.

Last week, I had on the podcast Susie Hageman.  And Susie is one of these people who really cares about human trafficking and this is something that she chose to focused on because it’s a message she can get behind.  And she is not the one that’s starting this nonprofits and writing about it per se, maybe she will someday, I don’t know.  But it’s not necessarily like she is out on the front with the message, but she got behind this message, because she thought like she could and she felt like it resonated with what her values are.

That is exactly what I think we all need.  We all need to know what were our values are so that we know what we want to get behind, whether we want to get behind it or we want to come out with this message or whatever.  This is the kind of thing that I’m talking about when I say, you don’t have to be what you admire.  You can admire someone else, their gifts, their offering, their message, all that sort of thing without feeling the pressure to have one of your own, to be that particular thing that they’re talking about.

So if listening to this podcast ever makes you feel pressure, I sure hope it doesn’t.  But if it does, it’s totally OK to turn it off, because you should surround yourself with things that awaken your passion, your desire, your calling; and help you discern your calling instead of making you feel like “Oh my goodness, if I hear again about you know having a message or this or that and it just keeps bringing me down.”

I completely understand if you didn’t want to do that but I will also challenge you not to take that into the rest of your life.  Don’t take that avoidance or tendency to compare and judge.  Don’t let that come with you.  Leave the judgment.  Put it aside, whatever voices in your head from the past that are telling you should or shouldn’t be this or that, put it aside because you are so important the way that you are, how you have been created, how you had been built.  The experiences that you’ve had have really drawn out things about you that are so important.

These are critical, critical in the world and don’t ever forget that.  Please know that whenever I talk about having a message, whenever I talk about using your voice of influence, I’m not excluding anyone.  And at the same time, I’m not saying that you have to be just like anybody.  You really don’t need to be.

I think that the most important thing of this is that we really need, we desperately need to be free, free from this judgment.  So do what makes you come alive.  And yes, when it comes to passion, I talk about passion in terms of something you’re willing to pour yourself out for.

So it’s not always pretty, it’s not always happy go lucky, but it doesn’t have to be about looking at your fault all the time.  It can be about what makes you come alive.  It can be about what you want to live into, a vision for yourself and your life and your message and your calling that you want to live into that vision.  That’s a whole lot different then and expectation that puts pressure on you.

So have vision, not expectation.  Take the pressure off and go just use your voice.  It will matter more!

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How to Discern Your Calling Without Feeling Pressure with Andrea Joy Wenburg

Episode 67

Have you ever looked at someone you admire and felt pressured to be like them, do things the way they do, or feel what they feel?

Where does this pressure come from? Yourself?

How much do you judge yourself based on what you admire about that person?

I want to help you stop the judgments and instead focus on what it is about that person that you resonate with. What is that person awakening in you?

In this episode, I’m going to provide some insights that will help you do this; including why I personally believe that comparing ourselves to others isn’t always a bad thing.

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Today, we’re going to be talking about Pressure, the pressure to feel like you ought to be or do something in particular that somebody else is or does or says that you should do.

I want you to imagine someone in your mind who you really admire.  You admire them for the way that they are, for who they are, or for something that they do.  I have a feeling that there’s somebody in your life that you really admire.  So just take a minute and think about them and I’ve got a question for you.

And I’ve got a question for you, first of all, what do you admire about them?  What is it that comes to mind?  You love the way that they do this.  You wish that you could do that.  You see something in their life that looks so attractive that you really wish that it could be something that you had to.

On a scale of 1to 10, how much do you judge yourself based on what you admire in this other person?  So when these things come to mind, these things that you really like about them, how much do you judge yourself based on that?

So one would be “Oh, I really don’t judge myself at all.  I’m not saying that I’m worse or better than them, I just really admire this about them.”  And then on the other side would be a 10 where you completely determine your own value based on how much you are able to do or not do the things that you admire about that person.  So my guess is that you’re somewhere in the middle, most of us are.  Hopefully you’re not too high up at the top like a 10.

But let’s just be honest with ourselves for a minute here.  How much time do you spend comparing yourself and then judging yourself based on other people in your life?  Or maybe not in your life but maybe on a podcast or in a book or online, some place, or somebody that you admire?  How much time do you spend on that?

Now, here’s the thing.  I’ve talked about some of these things that we’re going to talk about today before.  But today, I really would like to focus on taking the pressure off.  There’s so much pressure on each of us that we put on ourselves most of the time, but sometimes it comes from other people and we accept that pressure to be or do something like someone else.  And it can feel like we’re less than other people because we know that we’re not good at this particular thing.

So let’s take an example, because I realize that you may be thinking to yourself “Well, I don’t think that way,” but the truth is maybe you do.  And maybe you don’t need to listen to this episode or maybe you don’t and you should listen to this episode so that you can help others.

But think about that because we each have these people in our lives that we admire.  And I think that’s OK, because there’s a difference between admiring somebody even comparing ourselves with them.  I don’t think comparison is really the enemy because comparison can help us differentiate.  Comparison can help us to understand how we are uniquely different and how they are uniquely different and how we can work together in our differences.

So comparison in and of itself I don’t think is the problem.  What becomes a problem is when we judge ourselves or we judge other people based on that comparison.  So we start to feel bad about ourselves or we start to feel high and mighty about ourselves because we have compared ourselves to someone else.  So that’s something to really think about because comparison isn’t the enemy, judgment is.

OK, so the next piece of this is that you can admire somebody and that can turn into that self condemnation or a race to beat that person or to try to become that person or become elements of that person.  Maybe they have a really clean house and you don’t have a clean house.  And so you feel like crap all the time and you keep trying to pick your house up and you never quite get it like this other person does.

I would definitely be that person who does not clean her house very well.  I try, I try, but it’s not very often super clean or super put together.  So it would be easy for me to look at somebody’s house who is super clean or super put together.

I think, even for me, this is one thing that I noticed about myself is that I admire, really admire people whose houses are so, I think put together would be the way to put it, where they have an intentional reason for all these little things that are in their house and things have a place and they don’t have a lot of clutter and things like this.  I really admire that.  It’s something that I would like to get better off for myself.

But here’s what can happen in situations like this, we could look at that person that we admire and say “Oh man, I don’t even wanna be around that person,” or “I don’t wanna be in their house because it reminds me of how bad I am at that.”  Does that sound familiar to you at all?  Are you trying to avoid somebody because you admire them so much and it’s just feels like this is in your face all the time that you’re not what you wish you could be?  If that’s the case, I’m really sad to hear that because I don’t think it has to be like that.

I think that we can admire somebody and allow it to just be that like “Wow, I just have such an appreciation for you and what you’re able to do.  I have appreciation for this well put-together house,” without putting a lot of pressure on yourself to ever become that.  Maybe you can be inspired by it, maybe you can say “Hi, I wonder if you have any tips for me,” without feeling the pressure to become what they are, to get your house to the point at their houses.

And when I’m talking about pressure, I’m really talking about, I think you know that feeling that “Huh, I just feel like I’m supposed to be like that.  I’m not, so I feel bad about myself and so I don’t want to think about it.  I don’ wanna be around them.  I need to try harder.”  That’s pressure, and I don’t think that’s necessary.

So another way to look at this is to see people that you admire and realize that maybe they actually have tapped into something, they’re good at something that you actually do want to be good at.  I mean, not just want to.  I’m not saying you should be good at it.  I’m saying like you feel awakened when you see them do their thing.  You feel like something inside of you has just awakened, is inspired, is motivated and is saying “Huh I do want to be like that.”

So I could tell you that from my personal experience besides the house thing that through the years when I was growing up and in my young adult life, whenever I would watch a speaker onstage, I would think to myself or an author, I would think to myself “Man, I really wish I could be like that.”  I really admire them and if I did really admire somebody, I’d be feeling like “Oh gosh, why isn’t it not me up there?”  That sort of thing and that could easily turn into pressure.

It could easily turn into “Well, I need to do what they’re doing,” or I feel like such a failure because they’re younger than me and they have more success in this area.  That could easily turn into a pressure.  And that’s something that I think that we really need to turn off.

We need to take that pressure off of ourselves and say “No, I don’t need to judge myself based on my comparison with that person just because they’re younger than me, or just because they have more followers than me or they seem to have a bigger impact than I do for whatever reason.

Instead of judging yourself based on that, could you allow yourself to be awakened to what might be a calling for you?  So for me when I would see these speakers and authors and things, I would think “Oh gosh!  Oh, I really do want that!”  It was like I felt called to it.  Like I felt I really truly wanted it, not so much that I felt like I should be that or that I should have what they have but then I wanted it.

I think that when we talk about comparison as being a bad thing, the danger of that is that we start to turn off all of our abilities to think critically about how we are different and what we should be.  So instead of being honest about the fact that we have a desire, we try to turn it off because we start to feel bad.  We feel this pressure and we start to feel bad and so we turn off the comparison and we kind of know more ourselves to that comparison because we know what it has done to us in the past.

Maybe you have felt a lot of pressure.  I don’t want to feel that pressure, so I’m just going to avoid it or I’m going to _____ it.  I’m going to say, “I don’t care.”  Kids do this all the time, don’t they?  “I don’t care,” or when we’re self-critical, we try to beat people to the punch and say, “I’m an idiot.”  I’ve said that to myself before.  I try to beat people to the punch because I don’t want somebody else say that about me because I feel like I should be something different.

So we do these things that distract us from what’s truly in our hearts what might be an actual calling, a desire to actually move towards something.  So if you’re somebody, who, like me, sees people who are writing books and out there speaking or maybe an entrepreneur or maybe they are just somebody who seems like they have it together for this or that and you feel awakened to a desire inside of you.  That is different than feeling pressured to become what somebody else says.

So instead of turning it off, avoiding it off, or avoiding that person, get down to asking yourself, “What is it that I’m feeling awaken to?  What excites me about this, about where they are and what they’re doing?  What doesn’t?”  This is where you get to compare yourself.  This is where you get to do that comparison.  You’re not saying that they are better or worse than you are.  No, no, we’re not judging here.  What you’re doing is you’re doing some discerning about your own calling.

I went to this talk and this person got up there and he spoke and he just awakened something inside of me.  And for a split second, I felt bad about where I’m at right now but then I remembered that, “No, this isn’t about feeling pressured, this is about finding what I desire, finding out what I really feel called to.”

So let’s ask myself these questions, “Self, what do I feel called to then?  What is so exciting to me about what I’m seeing?  What was awakened inside of me, a desire for what?  What piece of this or what pieces of these just really energized me?  And perhaps what doesn’t?  What something about this that I’m not excited about?”

And that’s OK.  It’s OK to admit that as well, “You know what, I don’t really like that they did this because I would do it differently.”  That doesn’t mean that you’re judging them.  That means that you’re trying to figure out what your voice is, you’re trying to figure out what you are called to and then allow them to be who they are.

So a few months ago, I spoke at a conference in Las Vegas and I just had a few minutes onstage but it was so _____.  I had such a blast because I love the stage.  If you read UNFROZEN, my book, you know I love the stage.  I felt guilty about it for a long time like I shouldn’t love it.  And then I realized over the years I kind of come to terms with the fact that it’s OK for me to love being onstage.

So when I got up there in front of a 150 people or so, I just got up there and owned it.  I felt like I was owning the stage and afterwards the conference organizers had everybody do a little survey.  And so on the survey, they asked different questions like from a scale of 1 to 5, how engaging was this presenter?  From scale of 1 to 5, how much did you learn and that sort of thing.  And I got to take home all of these surveys.

So I went through and on my way home, I calculated all the responses.  And really they calculations were really high.  I actually got some really good responses between 4 and 5 for everything.  But there were a few individual responses, and one in particular, he was so critical.  One person, you could tell who did not like me.  And they didn’t feel like they learned anything because I talked about the same thing that they do.  OK, fair enough.  They did not like the way I was dressed.  We’re talking like they’re giving me a 1 or whatever.

They felt like I was acting onstage which nobody else did but they did.  You know things like these, and I was just like “Oh my goodness, this person is like really, really critical.”  And this is what I think that we do when we are comparing and judging at the same time.  I think that we look at somebody else and say, “I wouldn’t do it like that.”  And so we mark them down in our minds and that instead of saying, “This was effective,” or “This wasn’t effective for me,” or “This wasn’t effective for me but I think it would be effective to these other people.”

So if you’re in that position where you’re looking at somebody and you’re saying, “I really admire them but I really don’t like this and I really do like that.”  Well, you don’t have to put judgment on it.  You can say, “This is really effective for me.  This would be really effective for the audience I want to reach.  This would be really effective but this other thing maybe I didn’t like it and I wouldn’t do it, but maybe it would reach somebody else.”

My tendency is to always be looking for what’s effective and what’s not.  And when I watch other speakers, I’m thinking to myself “Is this perfectly put together, but is this effective?  Is it getting people where they want to go?  What about myself, is what I’m doing effective or not.”  So here’s where I’m coming back to this.  I’m coming back to comparison isn’t bad.  Comparison saying whether or not you are like somebody else and how and whatever, that’s OK as long as you’re not adding judgment to it.

But you can ask yourself what awakens desire in me and what doesn’t.  So you can let that person be that person.  You’re not saying that they should be different by doing this process of comparing and figuring out, discerning what you want to be.  You’re not saying that they should change.  You’re not judging them nor are you judging yourself.  What you’re doing is your discerning your calling and you’re saying, “Well, maybe they are called to do just what they’re doing and that’s totally fine.”  Or maybe they could up in a notch, maybe there’s some way that you can help or that somebody else can help, that’s fine.  That’s totally fine.

What I’m saying is you don’t have to feel bad about comparing yourself to other people, because if someone that you admire awakens something inside of you, something that they do or something that they say and it awakens something inside of you and you’re like “Wow, I really want that!”  This is where you’re following your heart to find you’re calling.  This is doing a little bit deeper in our work to be able to figure out what you’re really called to.

But if you look at somebody and you say, “Wow, they’re doing these amazing things, but I can admire that and not want it or not judge myself based on them on what they’re doing.”  That’s a really healthy place to be.

So when you are listening to this podcast, when you’re listening to Voice of Influence and you hear me talk about things like vision and mission and voice and understanding what your message is and things like this, this may or may not be for you.  Because there are some people in the world, who, maybe like me, long to have a certain message and a certain impact.  We long to find our calling and we’re having a hard time doing it.

When I was having a hard time doing it, I needed to get clear on all the chaos on my head.  I needed to get clear on what I most care about so that I could know how to focus my energy.  Does every single person in the world need to do that?  I don’t think so.  In fact, I think what’s important probably more than anything _____ is to know what you really care about, what standard you’re going to measure everything by.

So here’s the thing.  This is where I was thinking about this earlier, I need clarity around my message and offering.  But somebody like my husband, he needs to partner with somebody who has a message and an offering that he can relate to, that he can support, that he can get behind.

So while he may not feel like he needs a certain message or a certain offering, as long as he can feel supportive of what I’m doing, as long as he can feel like he relates to it, he agrees with it, it’s not just his values; all that sort of things then he can get behind it and help me in whatever way that we decide to move forward.  But we’re focusing in on my particular message and offering for Voice of Influence.

So there are some people in the world who really do feel like they have something they need to say in particular and they want focus, they want to know all these things.  And then there are other people who care.  They have a voice and they use their voice but they do it in a way that is supportive and get behind what other people do.

Last week, I had on the podcast Susie Hageman.  And Susie is one of these people who really cares about human trafficking and this is something that she chose to focused on because it’s a message she can get behind.  And she is not the one that’s starting this nonprofits and writing about it per se, maybe she will someday, I don’t know.  But it’s not necessarily like she is out on the front with the message, but she got behind this message, because she thought like she could and she felt like it resonated with what her values are.

That is exactly what I think we all need.  We all need to know what were our values are so that we know what we want to get behind, whether we want to get behind it or we want to come out with this message or whatever.  This is the kind of thing that I’m talking about when I say, you don’t have to be what you admire.  You can admire someone else, their gifts, their offering, their message, all that sort of thing without feeling the pressure to have one of your own, to be that particular thing that they’re talking about.

So if listening to this podcast ever makes you feel pressure, I sure hope it doesn’t.  But if it does, it’s totally OK to turn it off, because you should surround yourself with things that awaken your passion, your desire, your calling; and help you discern your calling instead of making you feel like “Oh my goodness, if I hear again about you know having a message or this or that and it just keeps bringing me down.”

I completely understand if you didn’t want to do that but I will also challenge you not to take that into the rest of your life.  Don’t take that avoidance or tendency to compare and judge.  Don’t let that come with you.  Leave the judgment.  Put it aside, whatever voices in your head from the past that are telling you should or shouldn’t be this or that, put it aside because you are so important the way that you are, how you have been created, how you had been built.  The experiences that you’ve had have really drawn out things about you that are so important.

These are critical, critical in the world and don’t ever forget that.  Please know that whenever I talk about having a message, whenever I talk about using your voice of influence, I’m not excluding anyone.  And at the same time, I’m not saying that you have to be just like anybody.  You really don’t need to be.

I think that the most important thing of this is that we really need, we desperately need to be free, free from this judgment.  So do what makes you come alive.  And yes, when it comes to passion, I talk about passion in terms of something you’re willing to pour yourself out for.

So it’s not always pretty, it’s not always happy go lucky, but it doesn’t have to be about looking at your fault all the time.  It can be about what makes you come alive.  It can be about what you want to live into, a vision for yourself and your life and your message and your calling that you want to live into that vision.  That’s a whole lot different then and expectation that puts pressure on you.

So have vision, not expectation.  Take the pressure off and go just use your voice.  It will matter more!

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Finding Convergence Between Your Calling & Career

Episode 12 with Josh Erickson

For the past 20 years, Josh Erickson has been utilizing his experience, intuition, and insatiable drive for success to help transform businesses and teams into champions. After being proven successful in his own ventures, his innovative methods have expanded in reach, helping institutions like FedEx, Catholic Health Initiatives, and the University of Nebraska take their employee engagement and team collaboration to new heights. His ability to navigate the cyclical patterns of human behavior, coupled with his dynamic and personable presentation style have established him as a pioneer in his field, paving the way for emotional and professional empowerment in collaborative environments, large, small, and everywhere in between.

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Transcript

Hey, this is Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence Podcast. I’m really glad that you’re here with me today. And today I have a fun guest. His name is Josh Erickson and Josh and his wife, Nikki – we, Aaron and I knew them back, I don’t know what was it, 10 years ago or so and when we’re living in the same town. Now, we both moved away from that town and we haven’t really kept in touch. I’m really looking forward to hearing from Josh about what he’s doing with his business, Team Concepts. 

Andrea: Josh Erickson, it is really good to have you here today!

Josh: Hey thanks, my pleasure to be here.

Andrea: Let’s start a little bit with maybe where you’re at right now and then we’ll go back and find out how you got to where you are right now. So what is Team Concepts? What is this business that you have?

Josh: Well, Team Concepts is a consulting company. Basically, we work with all size of organizations to improve employee engagement organizational proficiency. We really believe that in order for an organization to be successful, everybody needs to lead. People need to take ownership and they need to figure out how they can lead within that organization. And we have a phrase that says “When everybody leads, everybody wins.”

And so we try to help organizations build the team where everybody is leading. And in order to do that, we need to understand personalities, styles, profiles, and the different leadership components of any group. So we worked with athletic teams. We work with, obviously businesses, schools, with the high schools assemblies; middle schools assemblies, teachers and services. We work at nonprofit organizations and just any organizations that require teamwork which is pretty much everything.

Andrea: So true. So I know that you have been always doing Team Concepts, so why don’t you take us back to kind of…I guess, I’d love to hear about where you started out and how you’ve gotten to this point right now. So what were you doing when we met you guys like I don’t know, was it 10 or 15 years ago?

Josh: Yeah, 2003 or 2004 I suppose. I’ve always done Team Concepts on a part time basis and that is ever since college. I really got into this idea of team building in order to be a more successful coach. I was a wrestling coach, so just figuring out how to get my team to collaborate together and to develop leadership with my team because I know if I could just get them to lead themselves, it really just made my job easier. And so I started practicing different methods and investigating

But the whole time I was coaching wrestling, I taught school. I was a youth pastor. I started a nonprofit organization and I really give my life to public service, different groups, and being involved. But I always did this team building stuff on the side. And then about eight years ago, I really started a sense of change in what I wanted to do, obviously still serving the community but probably from a more influential role. I felt like my overall community influence as a youth pastor or somebody, ministry, or nonprofit was minimal.

And I really want to have that ability to impact the whole community with the things that I felt and the way that I see the world. So I realized, in order to do that, I would have to be a successful member of the business community also. My wife and I started dabbling in some different business ventures trying to figure out how we could really just kind of gain influence in the community. And we knew that it had to be from a financial aspect that we just had to be seen as successful.

So while I was doing Team Concepts and doing these other things and I also started doing investment properties, flipping houses and some commercial properties. Then we got into a restaurant business and started several restaurants and owned and operated. At one time, we were doing 13 restaurants at a time and then when the opportunity presented itself, we started getting out of that.

And four years ago, I had to say just kind of pivotal moment from myself. I just realized “You know, instead of Team Concepts, and teambuilding being my hobby, this is really what I wanna do. And I wanna run it like a business not as a hobby.” So the business experience that I’ve gained from the construction and then the rental property management then the restaurants, I just started applying that to Team Concepts. I thought “You know, I’m gonna put a budget together. I’m gonna put a business plan together. I’m gonna start advertising and will start marketing and really solidify the product offerings that I have for different organizations.

And so I would say that that journey is what’s that kind of led me here. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do and I didn’t know that it’s what I wanted to do until I went through some other things. And it’s been unique because I find myself in a very influential place for a definitely a lot of organizations especially my clients. They allow me a lot of power when they hire me to come in and work with their employees and work with their staff and help lead and guide their organization.

Andrea: I find this really interesting because I think that there are a lot of people who do have that heart. They want to be an influencer and so the gravity towards those… I mean, the two things that you were doing beforehand, teaching schools and being a youth pastor, and being a coach those are really great ways to influence people. But like you were saying you kind of had this. I don’t know, did you just feel it like a deeper call? Did you just keep feeling called to more, how did you know?

Josh: Yeah, I think as I matured and just had more experiences in life, you know, I used to believe that I have the best ideas for kids and how they should look their lives and had the best ability to influence them. And so when I was younger that’s young in my professional career that’s really all I saw myself doing. I supposed as I gained experience and just life grew, I started realizing that I wanted to impact, not just kids, but I wanted to impact the city.

We started a nonprofit organization in 2003, called One City and that was a city-reaching organization to really empower people to take responsibility for the condition of their city. As I started doing that, I just realized that there’s only so much influence you can have as nonprofit which is great. It’s a great influence but yeah, I just needed more. I really felt like even governmentally like I had ideas and things that I wanted to be able to share. And not just share through a letter or not just share through an empty, you know, a blank stare from somebody who didn’t respect me. But I really wanted to gain the ability to speak government policy to political institutions to the business community.

And I didn’t want to counterfeit it. I didn’t want to find the way in. I knew the only way to get there was to really get involved in business and feel the struggles. You know, we got some successes and we’ve had some failures. And we had to make some really hard decisions when it came to the cost-benefit ratio and the return of investment. The experience gained in running my own businesses and having the employees has really helped me feel a big part of society. I can emotionally relate to people at all different levels.

I know what it feels like to be a teacher. I know what it feels like to be a government worker. You know, I was a soldier in Nebraska Army National Guard. I remember that feeling and then I also remember the feeling when people started to perceive us as successful when we bought a bigger house and we drove nicer cars. And when we started to do that to feel the different perception of how society feels about us, it’s just different. And to live the experienced life on both the sides where people perceived you as not successful and then the other side when people perceived you as successful or at a higher social status.

I don’t think you can really empathize and lead effectively. And so through the process, I’m just thankful for the journey that Nikki and I had been onto, to really understand where people were at and how to influence people at all levels of socioeconomic status.

Andrea: You know, just personally, I always thought that it wasn’t good for me to try to gain different kind of status in society or whatever. You know, I almost thought that being in ministry or having that kind of mindset that I shouldn’t try to get people to perceive me in a different way. Does that make sense?

Josh: Uh-hmm.

Andrea: Did you ever feel that way? Or did you just kind of…

Josh: Yeah.

Andrea: I mean, was that a struggle?

Josh: You know, I would say the first part of our marriage in our life; we never officially did it but we kind of talked about poverty that we were not going to be successful for the sake of our ministry because we didn’t want to make anybody believe that we were any better than anybody. So we lay that aside, although, it’s kind of funny because Nikki and I, we’re just very gifted people. And I think that they led me out of that realizing that I have the ability to be way more successful with even very little effort than a lot of people do. And it’s not because anything I did. It’s just that the way that I see the world, people find value in.

And so when I expressed it and when I used the intellect and the lens that I see the world with, it adds value to people. And for me that’s really what influence is, is the ability to add value in a simple way to other people because we can be influential over our children because we add so much value but that’s not really scalable. I mean, I have five kids but I don’t think we can handle another one because they’re so time-consuming.

But when we started talking about influence, it’s really the ability to add value or even to have the perception of adding value to somebody’s life. And when you can add value to somebody’s life, you have influence over them. And to have that the scalable model of influence in order to grow in your ability to influence others, you have to add value with your words. You have to add value with your ideas.

And because you can add value to tens of people or maybe even hundreds of people physically, now you can share, you can invest in them. You can be one-on-one with them or you can help meet their physical needs or even their emotional needs. But in order to really have them influence on society, on cities, on a larger organization or even worldwide influence, you really have to be able to add value with your words, your thoughts and your ideas.

And I think what led me out of or into this next season of life, it’s not even out of anything but is when I started to realize that my ideas and my words were influential no matter what audience I got in front of. I used to believe that they were just influential for kids. Then I just had some opportunity to speak to larger groups of people, adults, and I got the opportunity to speak to some politician and through some different experiences. And I just started realizing that every time that I had the ability to voice my opinion that it’s influential to people at all varying levels.

I just realized that my ideas, my thoughts, my words, add value to people at varying levels. And for me to stay at one place and just say this is my position would really be kind of robbing me of my destiny and maybe robbing God of the glory that he deserves who created me the way He did. He put ideas and thoughts and creativity in me in order to really live out my destiny and live out my purpose in life. I have to expand that and see how much influence do I have and what platform can I build to just share my ideas and my thoughts with the world and how far would they reach.

And now that’s where my goals has changed in life is to see how far this voice that God has given me can reach and see where He wants it to go and how He wants it to look. And in that Team Concepts as a platform I’m using right now, because I just seen more and more difficulty for organizations to really build a solid team to understand the concept of teamwork as we deal with, especially with multigenerational organizations, the lack of communications and understanding between the generations as we lead in a world we’re leading.

A generation of people that in the baby boomers that really believe in positional leadership and authority that you respect authority for the sake of authority and we’re entering into a generation, the emerging workforce generation does not believe in positional authority. They do not have a respect for any title or position. They have respect for people who show them respect.

Then we have this organizations that are really struggling to find the balance of “Okay, how do we attract or retain new people to our organizations with this multigenerational concept, and how do we have the influence over different generations all at the same time?” And it really requires some skill, some understanding but I really believe that I developed the system with Team Concepts that’s easy to remember, easy to use and that can benefit organizations of all type.

Andrea: Wow! Yeah, that’s a huge need. I find myself being a person who resonates with the younger generation maybe, who wants to be respected and have a hard time grappling with or putting myself into this position where I really appreciate positional authority if you will. So I find that a very personal thing. Do you have any suggestions for people about how to communicate with somebody who really just wants to be respected not just told what to do?

Josh: We did them look at the life experience and the quality and just what life is teaching people in each generation. So it take the baby boomers, you know, they were born shortly after the depression. Their parents lived through depression and they were taught that if you don’t work, you starve to death. They were thankful for the opportunity to work and they were also thankful for education because anytime they got out of school, it didn’t make any difference how boring school was or what was being taught, it meant that they didn’t have to work.

So school and education was just so much different because it was either “Oh if I’m not here working on blackboard then I’m gonna be digging potatoes.” So it’s obviously was a much better thing to be educated. So the teacher became the one who is the one who got them out of this work. And the teacher was seen as a hero because their position of authority that they had was automatically respected because it was an improved quality of life but what they’re being asked to do, right?

And so anybody who was in a depression or let’s just say a boss then, let’s say this baby boomer got his first job, well they remember that if we don’t work, we don’t eat. That we’re going to starve if we don’t eat. So that position was being shown to automatically give them respect because it improved their quality of life. They gave over the influence because the title alone of being a boss meant that “My family is not gonna starve or I’m not gonna starve.”

And so positional authority, those people had influence because they were adding value to life. And so the switch is comes over the last two generations is that work no longer adds value to life. So it’s not a direct comparison because nobody remembers or nobody thinks that we’re ever going to starve, that we have to do these things. And so I think about teachers now instead of being respected automatically, they’re giving a classroom full of students that could be playing video games or doing some incredibly fun but instead, they have to be sitting, they’re listening to them.

And so the difference in the educational environment and the culture is just…I mean, you can’t even compare them in how they grow up. So what we have here is people, the older generation and baby boomer generation that they’re in a position of leadership right now. They believe that “I’m adding value to your life.” They believe that intrinsically where young people come into a job thinks “I’m adding value to your life; you’re not adding value to mine. I showed up to work today.” Obviously that adds some value and neither one is wrong.

That’s what people realized is that nobody is wrong. It’s just as our culture has emerged and changed and we transformed into a much more prosperous culture, there’s a negative and positive consequences. Obviously, we don’t want anybody to think about starving because it’s not fun. But fear-based motivation is effective and it does work. It’s not where we want to live, but it does work. But now, we’re trying to motivate the kids and motivate this emerging workforce just from a compensation package.

Well, compensation really doesn’t even work either because you have to find the way to add value to who they are as a person. And I would say that the baby boomer generations never even dreamed that finding convergence. They didn’t care about convergence, they just wanted survival. And if they found more than survival, they were thankful and they work harder to start giving extra and to start allowing their kids to do extra and then their grandkids to do extra, to do more. So it’s the very fact that they paved away for people to do more that has led to the change in culture where people automatically thankful. People are automatically appreciative of a gift or appreciative of an opportunity because they have millions of opportunities.

And so this idea that everybody can come into the environment and just know how to get along is ludicrous, because it takes a lot of thought and it takes a lot of skill to navigate that all the different world views that are coming into the workplace right now, because they’re so opposing. It just really becomes important to understand that “You know what, if you don’t know how to navigate, they said, nobody is wrong.” And they can’t throw us aside because it’s people world view. It’s how they experience life and experience culture.

So as far as like for me automatically, you know, I’m in between and if somebody who automatically wants respect because they’re human being or because they have a title, they’re both right. Everybody deserves respect, but it’s how you give it, how its felt. And so with the emerging generation and I really just try to focus on what I’ve already talked about here today and it is how they add value by being just who they are. How do we help them find convergence as quickly as possible because obviously, the younger we get, the less patient people are too.

You know, I’ve got a millennial employee who wants to find convergence in his 18-months in. He’s like “I’ve done convergence this life’s over.” I was like “You know, it was a 25-year process for me to find convergence.” And my father and my grandfather didn’t care and didn’t even understand what convergence was. They didn’t care because they were just happy not to be starving. And now we have a next generation who’s trying to find convergence and they understand it even if they don’t have that as their title. It’s what they’re looking for that ultimate value satisfaction and stuff. But they want it quickly and so there’s just a lot of balance there.

Andrea: I love hearing your thoughts on this. It’s definitely something that I’ve thought about as well and the idea of having a voice of influence and one of the things I say is “Your voice matters but you can make it matter more.” And it sounds like we’re talking about both of those things. It’s like yes, inherently, you matter inherently you add value. But at the same time there is a perception and putting yourself in a position where people are ready to listen to you is different.

How did you get to this point where you had built yourself this platform where you could speak, where you did have the opportunity to speak to people in all kinds of different scenarios? Was that something that you also set out to do or did you just find yourself in these different positions and the doors just kept opening up, or how did that build for you?

Josh: Yeah. Whenever I try to build my platform, I fail. Whenever I just try to look at the world and see where I can add value, my platform grows. You know, the even flow of economics, there’d been times when my families has been in need and I really thought “Man, I really need to build my platform and need to get out there because I prosper financially when people want to hear what I have to say.” But it just that never seems to really work for me. So how I’ve grown more than anything is just really looking at organizations, looking at people and start really giving away my advice for free and just see how I can add value and then build rapport with those people and that’s where my clients came from and referrals.

And I’ve got several from advertising also but the majority of the clients that I’m working with have just been because I care about their organizations and I really want their organizations to succeed. And I thought, “You know, I got these thoughts and ideas that I believe can add value to you, do you think this is valuable?” And we see if there’s a mutual beneficial situation there. But I would say more than anything, my platform has grown just when I observed the world around me, organized my own thoughts about it and then share those thoughts in a way that I believe that’s right to the people involved and that’s really how it’s grown.

Andrea: Uh-hmm, so it’s that been mostly in person? Have you done much building online or is it mostly been in person?

Josh: Yeah, all in person. Yeah, one-on-one phone calls and personal. Obviously, you know after our little staff this morning trying to get this thing done that I’m not very tech savvy guy, so I don’t… I barely uses technology for any of my platform.

Andrea: Well, it sounds like you don’t have to because you have that natural ability to connect and the desire to share what you’re thinking and what you’re learning. I mean, that’s powerful in it of itself. I asked you before I noticed that you’re strengths finder coach, Gallup’s strengths coach, is that right?

Josh: Yes.

Andrea: So do you want to share your top five for anybody that is listening.

Josh: Yeah, I’m a big fan of Gallup’s StrengthsFinder. Yeah, I was part of the second class they offered when they decided they were going to outsource their coaching and I let other people from outside their organization get certified. Anyway, my Top 5 – my number one is Activator. My number two is WOO, which is Winning Other’s Over. My number three is Maximizer, which means nothings ever good enough for me, and number four is Strategic, and number five is Self Assurance.

Andrea: Hmmm, I mean it’s just sounds like you to me, especially after everything that you just described in your story and everything. Of course, I have a pretty good idea of what all those things are but that activator, that desire to get people going, right?

Josh: Yeah definitely.

Andrea: And the WOO is being able to easily connect with people and draw people in. I mean, all those things together I think are really just powerful combinations. So do you think that you’ve always been all those things? Have you seen that in yourself since you were like a kid?

Josh: Yeah, you know, seven on my top 10 strengths are in the domain or the category of influencing others and this is what my life is has really I think always been about. I tried to be great athlete, but I wasn’t that great. I was good but not great. I was an amazing coach. I was a much better coach than an athlete and I think that’s kind of been my life, my skill sets are, not that outstanding in an out of themselves. But when I have the ability to activate other people and when people around the cause share ideas and get people excited, motivated, and organized around an idea or concept that’s when I really get to add the most value.

I kept talking about adding value because I believe that’s the source of all influence but great things happens when people get to add value by being who they naturally are. And that’s when you start to hit what I would call convergence in your life or the switch part of your life is when you get to be who you are and you’re adding value to a lot of people. That’s where influence really starts to increase exponentially. And through strengths and through self-evaluation processes, I just realized that what I bring, I had energy and ideas to any organization. But I don’t add a lot of work value. I don’t add a lot of hourly value for the stuff that I do. I can do those things but it’s very minimal value that I add.

But when I have the ability to share ideas, when I have the ability to encourage and motivate and get a platform to set an objective and tell people why it’s important to  objective, that’s when I have the ability to really be influential at the highest capacity and I love the idea of convergence where you find the thing that you love to do, that’s your passionate about and that becomes the thing that you’re able to provide for yourself and your family through.

And I think that’s what I’ve been able to do through Team Concepts is I’ve created a platform where I just going to be myself. I get to add value the way that I add most value to an organization and be the most influential. And it’s now the way that I’m providing for my family. First is running a restaurant. I mean, it’s a tough thing to do but it didn’t need my specific skill set to do that and I was moderately successful at that but nowhere near as influential as am in this current role.

Andrea: Yeah and the journey that you been on to get to that point where you could find that convergence, that’s a long journey. It wasn’t just overnight. You didn’t just decide and then it happened. It sounds like you had a vision and you started walking down that path. Did you feel like you had a pretty good idea of each step along the path?

Josh: No, not at all. I really believed that my life have been a little more just like Forest Gump. I say that often that I’m just going to force my way through this. You know, you try to make the best decisions with the information you have at different stages in life and try to pick opportunities when you see them. Whenever I create, I try to create an opportunity for myself, it fails. Whenever I just sit back and look and see what opportunities are available to help others or add value, it works.

I would say that the biggest pivotal moment, the only time I knew that there was a moment was when I just realized we had just kind of suffered a business loss and some hard time and I knew that I had to find to make up the difference for the money we had lost in one venture and I say “You know, the only way that I wanna make this money back and the only I wanna provide my family is Team Concepts.” And I said “That’s what I love to do and that one was a pivotal moment for me where I said “You know, I just got to do this. It’s either gonna work or it’s not, I’m gonna go all out. I’m gonna give everything I have and try to find this convergence.”

You know, I’ve been doing this for 16, 17 years on the side and loved it but you know all of my…I don’t think anybody except for my wife told me that it was a good idea. Everybody said, that’s such a…well the first thing is I’m creating a market especially in the Midwest. There’s people that do some other things on the Coast, but in the Midwest, there’s really none. I don’t really have a direct competitor here. For that different thing I do, some competitors that indirectly compete with some of the services I offer. But as a whole, nobody offers the services we offer.

So you have to create a new market. You have to create the need around that new market and let people know that they have a need and then you also have to tell them that you’re the person to meet that need and that your organization is going to meet that need. So we go through a lot of difficulties in our sales process because very few people are out there looking for “Hey, I need somebody to come in and teach my team how to work together, how to be more efficient and effective.” It’s because it’s indirect result from a bottom line for an organization, not a direct result.

Andrea: Right. And it’s so valuable but like you said it’s indirect, so people don’t necessarily feel that right away especially with small businesses, it can feel like you’re just trying to survive anyway and not necessarily financially. Maybe just trying to survive the day-to-day, and the idea of taking time away from whatever you’re doing with your employees or whatever, that’s a hard sale but so worth it in the end. And I’m sure that you have plenty of testimonials to attest to that.

Josh: Yeah, you know when people are busy living life; it’s tough to work at improving your life. The same way most home owners go through or business owners and/or business managers is that you know, the only time my houses ever done is the week before we list them to sell them. The rest of the time, we’re just too busy living to actually work at our home improvement and do the projects that we wanted to do and make things actually the way that we want them. But when we get to the end or we decide we’re going to sell our home or we’re going to move on then we’re like “Oh we got to make this look like we’ve always want it to look so other people would buy it.”

And I think business owners get in that in their mind, they’re like “Oh this is gonna be great. We’re gonna be like this. We’re gonna be like this.” But yet, day to day living in an existence where their company isn’t, their workplace is not the environment, it’s not the culture, or it’s not all the things that they want. But in the back of their mind, it is and that they’ll get there someday but how do you create that deadline for yourself when it’s not. We’re going to sell that over, we’re going to move.

And unfortunately, a lot of the times for business owners and managers the deadline creates itself and that you have a crisis. You start losing key employees until it affects your bottom line because your culture isn’t what it needs to be then that crisis will call them to action. But I would much rather see organizations work on the top end and that is “What are you dreaming about? What are you trying to look like?” And make them believe that “You know what, you can’t have that, you can’t be like that but it’s really tough to do yourself.” But when you bring somebody else in that knows exactly how to influence people to create that culture, it just works better.

Andrea: Yeah, it actually kinds of reminds me of your story and how you’re kind of dabbling in Team Concepts until there was an actual financial loss and then you went for it. Do you think it would have happen quite like this if whatever business opportunity didn’t fail?

Josh: No. I don’t think so. I think it’s actually what had to happen for me to launch into this business, because it was hard for me to really push or sell this because it’s so personal to me. It’s like selling myself.

Andrea: Yes, I get that.

Josh:  And that part is really tough to do aggressively. It’s easy to do when it’s passive and people are talking great about you and they’re friends and that but to aggressively say “You know what; you need what I have to offer.” It takes a lot of confidence and it takes a lot of drive. But it’s amazing if you go home at night and you realize that if you don’t do this your kids are going to be hungry. It’s pretty easy to find that confidence and it’s very easy to find that drive. So when we found ourselves in a hard spot, I realized that there’s only way out and that was for me to really find convergence and get paid to do the things that I love doing the most and what I’m best at. So we had to create that opportunity.

Andrea: Yeah, I love that. This is all very, very interesting. And I’m so glad that you’re doing what you’re doing Josh. I’m glad that even though you had to experience some loss and frustrations and whatever else came with that a few years ago that you could come to this point where you really living into who you are and sharing that with others in such a powerful way. So thank you so much for that.

Josh: Oh thank you!

Andrea: And so now that we know who you are and everything, if somebody were to want to get in touch with you, are working on mostly of local level then or do you do any travel?

Josh: No, we work nationwide. So if a local in the Central Nebraska area, I have some different program and a more in depth program available, obviously logistics. We have three different training facilities that we use here in Central Nebraska. But when I travel nationwide, we have scaled activity based programming, obviously my speaking and consulting. Team Concepts is pretty…we have a lot of different products offered.

We offer activity based learning Low Ropes training for larger organizations and schools. And so those require vehicle travel with trailers so that scale is different there. But when I travel and speak and consult on managing millennial engagement, managing the engagement cycle of others and building teams that lead themselves, all three of those topics I travel nationwide on because it’s just me who showcase of activities.

Andrea: Yeah that’s cool. Well, how can people get a hold of you, Josh? Go to teamconcepts.com?

Josh: Yeah that’s perfect. And my phone numbers are on there too. I don’t mind people to contact me directly and just see if there’s anything I can do to add value to any organization or anybody’s life. That’s what we’re here for.

Andrea: Awesome! Well, thank you so much for your Voice of Influence and for sharing it with us today.

Josh: Oh thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.

 

 

 

END

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Is Your Dream a Fairy Tale or Your Calling?

You don’t have to wait for signing day, 2025 to find out where Amelia intends to go to college to play sports. Our 9-year-old daughter is determined to be a Nebraska Husker quarterback. And if that doesn’t pan out, she plans to be Miss America. And you won’t hear her cheering for female Presidential candidates because she intends on being the first.

It’s tempting for Aaron and I to smile and shake our heads at her audacious dreams, and sometimes we do. They remind me of my own childhood dreams to travel the world singing as a Christian recording artist.

Dang, I wanted that bad.woman-690118_1280

It wasn’t until I actually went to Nashville for college and met all of the other kids with dreams like mine who had already done a ton of leg work in building connections, refining their style and promoting themselves that I realized I wasn’t cut out for the game.

But my parents let me try. They knew I would never feel at rest until I did. And though I gave up on the dream to be a recording artist long ago, I’ve continued to search for my greater purpose. And one of the most difficult questions I’ve had to wrestle with is this: How can I know when my dreams are fairy tales and when they are truly worth working toward?

You Won’t Know Until…

Last night Aaron and I caught the last half of The Matrix on TV. I was struck anew by the fact that plain old Mr. Anderson is given a new name and told he is “the one” who will save humans from the machines who have taken over the world, but he isn’t sure if he should believe it. It seems as though he is equally hopeful and terrified that it is true. The oracle tells him he isn’t “the one,” taking pressure off of him so he can realize it for himself. Through the last half of the movie he makes incremental decisions that put him in a position to call out his courage, little by little. And with each small victory, he grows in confidence of his abilities and conviction of his purpose until he owns his new name, Neo. The fascinating part to me is that he isn’t fully confident that he is “the one” until the end of the third movie when he really does defeat the machines and save the human race.

Neo’s story isn’t a new tale, it is a tried and true one. One of my favorite lines attributed to God is when God speaks to Moses in the burning bush and tells him he is “the one” who will lead the enslaved Israelites out of Egypt and into freedom. Moses goes back and forth with God, asking how in the world anyone, including Moses, would believe it. Finally God says, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” (Exodus 3:12, NIV)

And I hear this: “Look Moses. I’m telling you that I’m with you. But you will not feel completely confident that it was me until you see me set the captives free. Only when the job is done will you be able to look back and know for sure.”

Hindsight is 20/20

I know it’s hard to discern when dreams are fairy tales and when they are worth working toward. My own vision for the contribution I make to the world is constantly changing and being shaped as I take steps toward it. But I am experiencing the growth in confidence that Neo does as I make my own incremental decisions to take risks that call out my courage and calling.

How do you know if your dream is a fairy tale or worth pursuing? Friend, it is as true for you as it is for the rest of us:

  • Whether you dream of becoming an inspiring teacher, running for School Board or being the United States Secretary of Education
  • Whether you dream of speaking at a national conference, becoming a pastor or leading a small group
  • Whether you dream of being the first female President of the United States, Miss America or a Husker quarterback

You won’t know if your dream is a fairy tale or if it is your calling until you take incremental steps of faith and see where they end up leading you.

Then someday you will look back and know, that you didn’t know, until you tried.

Suggested Reading: The Art Of Work, by Jeff Goins

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Stretch Into Who You Are-Like It’s Your Job

Purpose and calling may not always have a measurable reward. Stay at home parents know exactly what I’m talking about. The day-to-day humdrum of life keeps beating and they keep-on keepin’-on withoutsweetness financial reward or recognition for their often extraordinary efforts to fend off tantrums, sickness and boredom. Some of the most important jobs are not paid.

Over a year ago I desired to spend time on a curriculum on friendship that I’ve been developing for forever. Aaron and I looked at our schedule and decided that I would spend time working on it while our youngest was in preschool. Expending time and energy on it felt self-indulgent until I started thinking of writing as a part-time “job.” We decided to devote job-like time to it because it was that important to us. I wasn’t getting paid to do it, but thinking of it as my job to read, think, write and teach was freeing! It was like stretching out in a big soft bed after having been cooped up in a box – a little bit of pain, a lot of relief.

I don’t know if we really had a choice about how much time I could spend on this sort of thing while the kids were tiny. Though I’m sure I could have, I’m not going to say I should have done it a different way or that anyone who feels boxed up doesn’t have to maintain their responsibilities. I don’t want to turn stretching into running away from responsibilities for me or you. I don’t want to neglect my kids when I’m with them or prioritize writing over my family.

But I do want to prioritize it. I do want to take a hard look at the week and our commitments with my husband and come up with ways that we can each find time to stretch into who we are. The fact is that I am a better mom, wife and friend when I stretch out into these other parts of me.  Most of the time I have more energy, focus and momentum to carry out my responsibilities. And when that happens, my perspective sees beyond the tantrum or barking dogs and I interact knowing that hard moment will pass.

Things that feel self-indulgent might actually help me fulfill my calling as a family girl and a writer.

When my husband and I work together to consider how we want to spend our time, we become mutually invested in each other’s growth and purpose in life.

     Sometimes that means we don’t get what we think we want coming into the conversation because through open discussion we realize we want something else even more – time together, sanity for our partner or maybe just rest. Great team-building conversations are open like that. They aren’t demanding, they seek the best for everyone. Of course, not all of our conversations are like that! But when they are, great things happen for both of us and we strengthen our team.

Tackle It Together: Discussion ideas to explore with someone you love.

1 – What “you” sort of thing would you do if you had more time or energy? How would it help you stretch into who you are so you can offer more of YOU to the world?

2 – What box are you cooped up in? Where is there room to stretch while still maintaining your responsibilities/prioritites? What could you cut so you can add something more important to you? (Sometimes saying “yes” means saying “no” to something wonderful!) What things could you set aside for now or for the evening or for the week?

3 – If you live or work with your loved-one, how can you work together to accomplish other tasks or provide specialized time or encouragement for you to each stretch into who you are? (Maybe it’s 30 minutes, maybe it’s a whole weekend! What works this week, in this stage of life?)

I hope we can look at those we love and with all our hearts be able to say: Stretch into you like it’s your job (even if it’s a very-part-time job). 

like it's your job

What would you do more of if you could call it your job? Let me know in the comments here or on Facebook.

 

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Underdog!

A loving push toward who you are

Sometimes we just need a good push to become more of who we are.

My childhood backyard was situated on a corner, so my parents surrounded it with a tall privacy fence. That yard was our academy of play. Mom was our teacher and Dad was our coach. My sister and I had all kinds of fun learning and growing in our yard. We grew in strength and accuracy as we played catch. We learned how to live in and celebrate the moment while we ran through and under streams of water from the hose. And we experienced the happy exhilaration of pumping our whole selves in rhythm with external forces (eh-hem…gravity) on the swing.

The swing was my happy-place. Sometimes we faced the house, other times we would face the fence and see if we could swing high enough to peak over the top and at the world outside. And every once in a while Dad would surprise us from behind…

UnderdogUnderdog!

His force of strength thrust us higher and faster than we ever went on our own. Dad’s underdogs were scary and thrilling and they inspired us to find the new swing-beat he set for us, and pump along.

Six months ago I was sitting on a swing in my current stomping grounds, the academy of purpose. There were things inside of my mind and heart that needed to come out, but I wasn’t sure I could let them go. I wasn’t sure I could swing with enough force of strength to do justice to the message I wanted to convey. I tried pumping my legs time after time but I didn’t know which way I wanted to face and I just couldn’t get my legs and body to move in sync. I looked around at others swinging and wondered if I would ever be able to join them – or if my insides would go to waste simply because I couldn’t find the swing-beat of my purpose.

Then out of nowhere…

Underdog!

Finally – clarity! I had words to say and passion with which to say them. I drove to the closest coffee shop, popped on my earphones and typed for two hours without stopping. When I got done, I posted my intimate thoughts on the movie Frozen (Frozen Top Ten), and let the world know.

My body began moving to the rhythm of the new swing-beat and pump, pump, pump…keep pumping! Every time I lost momentum, someone would give me the push I needed by sharing how he or she connected with my message. And somehow, I kept swinging.

Six months later I am a better version of myself. I am more of myself. I am playing in a playground that feels right and good and…like it was made for me. Sometimes I swing just high enough to peek over the fence and get a glimpse of things beyond – and then I settle into my swing-beat and keep pumping, knowing that at some point the rhythm will change again. And I want to be ready.

Are you?

Because my dad gives the best underdogs.