49. 5 Lessons I Learned In 2023

Big thought: Every year people typically like the idea of having a type of reset in their lives through a New Year’s resolution. One thing that I like to do is have an end of the year reflection to look back and critically think about what lessons I have learned. Each year, I feel like I am able to grow as an individual and leader as I consider these different kinds of life experiences, and I am able to use them to shape myself into the kind of person that I want to become.

In today’s episode, I’m going to talk about five major lessons I learned from this past year. We’re going to learn why it’s important to not wait too long to act and why you need to make the time to connect with people. We’re going to talk about being consistent in small beginnings and how that kind of discipline can bleed over. And we’re going to talk about how meaningful it is to enjoy what you’re doing.

1. Don’t wait too long to act.

There were some things that I knew that I needed to do but procrastinated too long to actually act on them. The longer that I ended up waiting to do something, the more people ended up being affected in a negative way. Once I finally acted on what I knew that I needed to do, even though I felt super anxious about it, it was abundantly clear that it was the right thing to do and that I should have sucked it up and acted at the very beginning.

2. Make the time to connect with people.

Most leaders are straight out busy and continuously have things pile up to where their workload seems to never slow down. I definitely felt like that this year! There were certain moments in which I kept putting off meeting with people and other leaders because I felt like I needed to catch up my workload before I could go to network or connect with others. But the weeks quickly turned into months where I still hadn’t met with anyone. When I finally just threw my hands up and decided to make the time despite how busy I was, it always ended up being a more productive use of my time.

3. Be consistent even in small beginnings.

A lot of people have good ideas and intentions to do something meaningful but are usually discouraged when it doesn’t seem to have taken off after launching their initiative. The reality is that a lot of things take time to grow. If you really want to see something work out, you have to have the understanding that it may take several years to really see the results that you’re wanting to see.

4. Discipline bleeds over.

Similar to making time for connection, it’s important to learn how to make time for certain disciplines. It’s easy for us to be in a state of being overwhelmed, to the point where we neglect taking care of ourselves because we feel like we need to catch up on our work. But the truth is that you will perform better and be more effective with less time if you take better care of yourself.

5. Do what you enjoy doing.

I think that doing what you “have” to do and doing what you “want” to do can either be the same thing or completely different. For many people, they spend their day doing what they feel is necessary even though they don’t enjoy it. They work to live but don’t live for their work. While this is pretty consistent with the majority of people, I think that actually enjoying what you do for a living is an essential secret to feeling fulfilled in life.

Take away:

1. Write a list of lessons that you’ve learned over this past year.

2. Critically think and write down ways that you can apply 1-3 of the lessons I talked about today to your own life.

3. Do the same thing from take away 1 and 2 but apply it to your ministry/organization and go over it with your team.

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