Weekly Blog
Tips, Tricks, Skills, Spirituality and Wisdom
How do you determine success?
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Success, as a topic, has come up a few times in our Wednesday night men's group lately. It is no secret that our culture is a success-oriented culture, meaning, it is a core value. Our culture does not have a clear definition of success, but we all know the primary signs: wealth and prestige.
One can acquire wealth without gaining prestige. For instance, the "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli earned great wealth but did so in such a manner as to gain notoriety, not prestige. The opposite is also true, one can become prestigious without acquiring wealth. We may think of various artists or writers. Regardless, we rarely think of success without at least one of these elements present.
In part, this is because of compartmentalization. We think of success in terms of the "work life" but we do not often think of success in other areas and so we remain limited in the categories at our disposal to define it (in this case only two, wealth and prestige).
What would it mean for the "work life" to represent only one piece of our view of success (rather than the totality)?
What would it mean to be a successful person?
This is what we're going to talk about for a few days. I'm going to start with a little theory- my attempt to wrestle with, and try to make sense of, this difficult topic (nine days to be exact- hang with me- the practical side is always better if I'm allowed a little time to play in the mud first). Then, we'll talk practical specifics.
A Simpler Approach to Spirituality
I’m going to close with a simpler way to process your spirituality if looking at all the individual puzzle pieces (as we’ve done the past few days) isn’t all that interesting to you.
What constitutes a good day? Do you ever ask yourself that question? What do you need to do today, that you can (in reality) do, that would contribute to experiencing a meaningful day?
It tends to be that we’re so bogged down trying to get done the things that need to be done that we don’t think about building meaning into our day. Or, we don’t consider what it would take in order to create space to create meaning in our day.
Of course, building meaning into our day such that we spiritually flourish requires a little bit of planning. But it’s not just about planning- it’s about intentionality. Intentionality is at the heart of a flourishing spiritual life.
Are you living as you intend to be living?
Spend some time with that question. It’s not an easy one to answer. And, the answer will always be a little bit yes and a little bit no.
Life will be more spiritually enriching if we’re living as we intend to be living. This means we regularly evaluate how we’re living and intentionally seek to adjust the areas where things aren’t going well. This process allows our lives to become more full, more spiritually enriching, in part because we confidently know that we're approaching our lives wholeheartedly. That requires courage.
If we’re living intentional lives then we will experience ourselves as being more whole, or unified, persons because there will be, over time, fewer discrepancies between our desires and our actions. There will be less hypocrisy, less internal tension, and the joy that comes from knowing we’re doing the best we can.
Every Moment Holy
Every moment is holy. Or, perhaps, every moment has the capacity to be holy. Holiness is about distinctiveness, it’s about being “set apart.” God called Israel, in the Old Testament, to be His people, meaning, they were to live with by a unique set of values that pointed others towards God.
We lose track of individual moments quickly. They pass us by while we’re looking elsewhere. But each individual moment grants us the opportunity to be kinder, gentler, more patient, more gracious, more attentive versions of ourselves. The world is not a gentle place so even a small, seemingly insignificant display of compassion can dramatically impact another person’s day, or life.
Perhaps we miss these small, significant opportunities to fulfill the call to be a people “set apart” while we anticipate grander opportunities to put our goodness on display. Or perhaps we (wrongly) assume we have no goodness to display, and give up the fight. Whatever the case may be, focus on the smallest possible way in which you can exercise your distinctiveness.
If we can “focus small” then we will be far less likely to miss grander opportunities.
Confession
16 Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.
James 5:16, NRSV
Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
Confession is a term that points us in the direction of a number of spiritual practices. We can’t confess until we’ve done rigorously honest self-reflection, for instance. We can’t confess without surrounding ourselves with community who are willing to hold us accountable to our certain way of seeing, who we, for our part, trust to do so.
The 12 steps provide us the mechanics required to carry this process out (in step 5 and its surrounding steps). We take a moral inventory, we share it with God and a trusted accountability partner.
The Bible casts a more obviously spiritual vision for confession (though, of course, the 12 steps are profoundly spiritual), a vision which includes healing, forgiveness, acceptance, redemption, restoration, and community up-building. That's a powerful list. We can't over-emphasize the importance of confession.
Imitation of Christ
5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:5-8, NRSV
We could just as easily title this day, “Character Part III.”
The idea here is that our spirituality, our participation in God’s spirit, doesn’t happen just so we feel good, or calm, or peaceful (though those things are good), but so that we become people who embody God’s values, such as humility and obedience to God’s way of seeing. The idea here is that participating in God’s spirit creates within us the capacity to give up on the rat race of striving for power and, instead, being willing to be people who find meaning in a life defined by service.
Service looks many different ways (though it does not look like codependency, for instance) but it seems to take place where presence meets humility. When presence and humility meet, we are free to simply be available for a difficult conversation, or show up to a meeting when you know you won’t benefit from either. You may not benefit, but presence plus humility gives us vision to see that other people benefit from learning that showing up to meetings is meaningful and impactful. When presence meets humility we are prepared to do things that we don’t need to do (for our own benefit), or things that may actually be beneath us, so that someone else may benefit.
I don’t want to sound too legalistic. This humility plus presence stuff is about a mentality, not a certain set of right actions. Situation and context always inform our actions. This is about learning to become people who desire to live in ways that benefit others, and then learn to act on that desire.