Every Friday we have what we call teachings. These are kind of like sessions that happen from 8 to about 10 on Friday mornings and are taught by leaders in AIM. They have been talking about many different topics that as a community we’d like to hear about or just topics that would benefit us. Such as discipleship, spiritual gifts, communication and most recently, leadership. Seth, the president/CEO of AIM, has been teaching us specifically about self leadership and asked us how we lead ourselves. Leading ourselves? What does that mean? I know for me I was struggling with what that looked like in my life. And on top of that he wanted us to give each other feedback on how we self lead? So I sat, looked at my goals and tried to figure out how I was leading myself to those them. Finally achieving that, I realized what I dreaded was the feedback. Not really worried about hearing it, more like worried because I knew what was coming….and I knew I’d agree with any criticisms. I feel like I have all these grand goals and dreams but that I haven’t been doing anything to get to those things 🙁 I am not ok with that. Something that has stuck with me in the feedback I received was that I get hung up in the details of things and really, that’s it. I get easily overwhelmed. I “can’t see the forest through the trees.”
Even as I write this, things are starting to click for me. Before I left for Christmas break, I was praying and God showed me this picture, this is what I wrote in my journal:
“It’s like I have been walking through this grass and all that is around me is trees. It is all that surrounds me. I look ahead and more trees. I finally start to see a little light shine through. Could there be something up ahead? I can’t see anything else but trees. On the other side there could be a beautiful sun, a view of the water or mountains or something that’s in the horizon up ahead”
I wrote this a few months ago and really that sums me up. I see all this “stuff” and haven’t known how to sort through it. I am pretty easily overwhelmed. I know there’s peace to find in the midst of it, and that once I take a breath and take it one step at a time I can see through it all. That’s just it, I am presented with two options: either I can push through it, or stop out of overwhelming frustration.
So back to the teachings, we continued on more about leadership and talked about how self leading includes
- Proactivity
- Beginning with an end in mind
- Prioritization (First things first)
Was this ever speaking to me!!! I need to get this under control. I can be pretty bad about getting things started/going. What happens is that I get super excited about all the possibilities for the end goal, and then quickly get overwhelmed by it all, no balance is really achieved. I can list things out that need to get done, but then doing the whole “first things first” and prioritizing it all….that’s another story:/
So, all this to say……No more. It’s time to get going. What are my goals? God put it on my heart to go back to school, grad school, so it’s time to get going. No more standing still. No more overwhelming-ness, or seeing crazy trees everywhere, time to push through!
