I recently started meeting with a mentor. It has only been a month or so, but having someone a little further down the road look back and give us some guidance is a huge help. There haven’t been any big life changing directions, just small adjustments that I can see having a big impact over time.
The challenge I received today was to flip my fear.
My mentor asked me to write out my customer’s path, in other words, a purpose statement. A purpose statement is to make the customer’s life better. So, in essence, he asked me what benefit do I offer the customer (or blog reader, or podcast listener, etc). I wrote my first version and he told me that it was vague and vanilla at best. I knew that, but wrote it anyway. When I received that challenge, I was forced to dig deeper into why was it vague.
The answer was that it was self-centered. I’ve written here before that I’m very selfish with the podcast. I’m pursuing truth through conversation and sharing it. There is some value in the authenticity of it, but doesn’t really tell people what they will get out of it. The customer doesn’t really understand why they should listen to the podcast. Why? Because it wasn’t about them, it was about me.
I realized that once I looked beyond myself, I found a butt ton of fear. I was self-centered, not because I thought I was great, but because I was in control. I can control me. I can’t control anything else. As soon as I moved past what I could control, I was afraid. I was afraid of what it would mean if I fail, what it would mean if I succeed, what if I wasn’t good enough, what if everyone sees how fake I am, etc, etc.
The follow up challenge my mentor gave me in response to me telling him about this fear was to flip it. The fear doesn’t go away. Fear is apart of being human, but the perspective can shift. The reality of it is that I’m afraid of what I will loose (i.e. reputation, credibility, family, friends). His question was, if Christ was standing before you and said, “follow me,” what would be the cost of NOT following him? What would you loose if you didn’t have Christ?
The reality is that I would loose eternally more without Christ.
I compare this to a shift in my mindset when I had kids. I struggle with the fear of judgement. There are lots of things I haven’t done because of what I worried people would think. Once I had kids, I wanted to please them so much more than I worried about what other people thought, that it overshadowed the fear. It is still there, it just doesn’t have power over or against the love for my kids. I think that is what flipping our fear looks like. I am more afraid of missing out or disappointing my daughters, because of how much I love them, than I am of people judging me.
I have to acknowledge that a thorn I bear is fear. That thorn probably won’t be removed from me. It can be overshadowed by the love of Christ to the point that the thorn holds no power. The fear of what I will miss on a life with Christ is far greater than the fear of what I will miss here in this world.
Leave a Reply