Where Does Average Come From?
Where Does Average Come From?
It comes from two places:
1. You have been brainwashed by school and by the system into believing that your job is to do your job and follow instructions. It’s not, not anymore.
2. Everyone has a little voice inside of their head that’s angry and afraid. That voice is the resistance–your lizard brain–and it wants you to be average (and safe).
-Seth Godin, Linchpin p. 5
You Can’t?
At the age of four, you were an artist.
And at seven, you were a poet.
And by the time you were twelve, if you had a lemonade stand, you were an entrepreneur.
Of course you can do something that matters. I guess I’m wondering if you want to.
There may be a voice in your head that is ready to announce that you can’t possibly do what I’m describing. You don’t have what it takes; you’re not smart enough or trained enough or (sheesh) gifted enough to pull this off.
I’d like to ask for a simple clarification.
You can’t–or you don’t want to?
-Seth Godin, Linchpin, p. 32
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko
There are several Christian books about work/discerning your calling that I highly recommend, such as Finding a Job You Can Love and God at Work.
Another great book on this topic, though not written from a Christian perspective, is Daniel Pink’s The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need. This is an unusual and fun book, it’s genre being manga. As the story of the book unfolds, Pink gives 6 lessons (“career secrets”) to guide your approach to work. I’ve recommended this book to a number of twentysomethings here in the Bay Area wanting help in career transitions, and they’ve all found it very helpful.
PS. In my opinion, everything written by Daniel Pink is thought provoking and worth reading.
Linchpin
I found Seth Godin’s Linchpin to be a stimulating read. This is an important book for how you think about your work in today’s economy and culture.
You are not a faceless cog in the machinery of capitalism (anymore). You now have a choice. This book outlines two paths available to each of us, and teaches you about why you might be resisting the less-traveled (but better) choice.
Close to Quitting
Here’s a very helpful post by John Piper:
Are you so discouraged you don’t know what to do next? I want to help you get through this. Maybe this will help.
The following quote is from my journal dated November 6, 1986. I had been at Bethlehem 6 years. If you have ever felt like this, remember this is 24 years ago and I am still here.
The point is: Beware of giving up too soon. Our emotions are not reliable guides.
Am I under attack by Satan to abandon my post at Bethlehem? Or is this the stirring of God to cause me to consider another ministry? Or is this God’s way of answering so many prayers recently that we must go a different way at BBC than building? I simply loathe the thought of leading the church through a building program. For two years I have met for hundreds of hours on committees. I have never written a poem about it. It is deadening to my soul. I am a thinker. A writer. A preacher. A poet and songwriter. At least these are the avenues of love and service where my heart flourishes. . . .
Can I be the pastor of a church moving through a building program? Yes, by dint of massive will power and some clear indications from God that this is the path of greatest joy in him long term. But now I feel very much without those indications. The last two years (the long range planning committee was started in August 1984) have left me feeling very empty.
The church is looking for a vision for the future—and I do not have it. The one vision that the staff zeroed in on during our retreat Monday and Tuesday of this week (namely, building a sanctuary) is so unattractive to me today that I do not see how I could provide the leadership and inspiration for it.
Does this mean that my time at BBC is over? Does it mean that there is a radical alternative unforeseen? Does it mean that I am simply in the pits today and unable to feel the beauty and power and joy and fruitfulness of an expanded facility and ministry?
O Lord, have mercy on me. I am so discouraged. I am so blank. I feel like there are opponents on every hand, even when I know that most of my people are for me. I am so blind to the future of the church. O Father, am I blind because it is not my future? Perhaps I shall not even live out the year, and you are sparing the church the added burden of a future I had made and could not complete? I do not doubt for a moment your goodness of power or omnipotence in my life or in the life of the church. I confess that the problem is mine. The weakness is in me. The blindness is in my eyes. The sin—O reveal to me my hidden faults!—is mine and mine the blame. Have mercy, Father. Have mercy on me. I must preach on Sunday, and I can scarcely lift my head.
Discerning Your Vocation
Poet W.H. Auden reminds us that discerning your vocation is simpler than you think. Chase what gives you “that eye-on-the-object look.”
You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation,you have only to watch his eyes:
a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeonmaking a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,wear the same rapt expression,
forgetting themselves in a function.How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.
HT: Dan Pink, Drive
How to Get Ready for What’s Next
What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give yourself the least trouble about. Everything He gives you to do, you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for what He may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next.
-George MacDonald
Free to Work and Free from Work
I’m preaching on work from Genesis 2 this Sunday. For the past year I’ve found myself thinking about this statement from Charles Drew about work. I don’t think the quote is going to make it in the sermon, so I thought I’d post it here.
People who understand that their creativity is a gift of God, rather than putting it in the place of God himself, discover a paradoxical freedom. They are both free to work and free from work. Motivated by love and gratitude (powerful motivators) they are free to work very hard, giving their best back to God. At the same time, because they know neither they nor their work is God, they are free from the burden of taking themselves or their work too seriously—as if their giftedness mandated perfection.
The God Who Wired Us
God’s design…makes us mysterious. We are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made,’ and the God who ‘wired’ us initially continues his work, molding us through the complexity of life experience…Both nature and nurture are in his hands. Dare we believe that this Craftsman’s work might be less subtle or marvelous than Michelangelo’s? Dare we expect to figure ourselves out by the time we reach college, or at midlife, or even on our death beds?
-Charles Drew, A Journey Worth Taking: Finding Your Purpose in This World p. 40
A Good Lay Off
Your recent lay off might be a good thing.
Here in Silicon Valley, the recession has a different face than in Manhattan or Detroit. Our panic is more genteel, softened by balmy California weather, a laid-back attitude, and, OK, the fact that we haven’t had a local industry completely implode. Nonetheless, the meltdown is quite real.
Personal bankruptcies and foreclosures are as high here as in the rest of the country, and established companies are cutting way back on hiring. The Valley lost nearly 10,000 tech jobs in the past year, according to the state’s Employment Development Department, and the trend is expected to continue. If you work in the Valley today, you’re likely as fearful of losing your job as anyone else.
But you need to get over that. In fact, getting fired just might be a good thing.
Here’s why: Valley culture has an unwritten rule that if you don’t like a job, or if you think your company isn’t going anywhere, you leave. Instead of hanging around the office whining, you walk out the door and find something better and cooler to do. Because skilled tech workers are hard to find and interesting companies abound, employees, not employers, call the shots. This was true at Apple in 1984, and it’s still true at Facebook today.
Read the whole thing: Wired Magazine, Paul Boutin, Laid Off? It’s Good for You and Good for the Tech Industry
