One of the prices of leadership is criticism. When spectators watch a race, where do they focus their attention? On the front runners! Few people pay close attention to the racers who are out of contention. Racers who are viewed as being out or the running are often ignored or dismissed. But when you’re out front and ahead of the crowd, everything you do attracts attention.
As a young leader I wanted to be out front, and I enjoyed the praise of the people. However, I didn’t want to put up with anybody’s “constructive criticism.” Very quickly I learned that I had unrealistic expectations. You don’t get one without receiving the other. If you want to be a leader, you need to get used to criticism, because if you are successful, you will be criticized. Certain people will always find something to be unhappy about. And the way some people criticize others, you’d think they got paid for it!
Being criticized can be very discouraging. One day when I was feeling down, I shared my weariness of criticism with a friend, and his response was enlightening.
“When you’re getting discouraged as a leader,” he said, “think of Moses. He led a million complaining people for forty years and never arrived where he was supposed to go.” Moses faced a lot of complaints, criticism, and just plain whining. Some days as a leader, I can sympathize with Moses. I bet if he had it to do all over again, he would have made a note to self: next time don’t tell Pharaoh to let all my people go.
How Do You Handle Criticism?
I love the story of the salesman who was getting a haircut and mentioned that he was about to take a trip to Rome. Italy.
“Rome is a terribly overrated city,” Commented his barber, who was born in northern Italy. “What airline are you taking?”
The salesman told him the name of the airline and the barber responded, “What a terrible airline! Their seats are cramped, their food is bad, and their planes are always late. What hotel are you staying at?”
The salesman named the hotel, and the barber exclaimed, “Why would you stay there? That hotel is in the wrong part of town and has horrible service. You’d be better off staying home!”
“But I expect to close a big deal while I’m there,” the salesman replied. “And afterward I hope to see the pope.”
“You’ll be disappointed trying to do business in Italy,” said the barber. “And don’t count on seeing the pope. He only grants audiences to very important people.”
Three weeks later the salesman returned to the barber shop. “And how was your trip?” asked the barber.
“Wonderful!” replied the salesman. “The flight was perfect, the service at the hotel was excellent, and I made a big sale. And”—the salesman paused for effect—“I got to meet the pope!”
“You got to meet the pope?” Finally, the barber was impressed. “Tell me what happened!”
“Well, when I approached him. I bent damn and kissed his ring.”
“No kidding! And what did he say?”
“He looked down at my head and said, ‘My son, where did you ever get such a lousy haircut?”
Not everyone handles criticism the same way. Some try to ignore it. Some try to defend themselves against it. Others, like the salesman, use a witty remark to put a critic in his place. But no matter what, if you are a leader, you will have to deal with criticism.
How to Hold Up Under Criticism
Since all leaders nave to deal with negativity and criticism, regardless of position or profession, it’s important for them to learn to handle it constructively. Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “Criticism is something you can avoid easily—by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” However, that isn’t an option for anyone who wants to be successful as a leader. So what do you do? The following four-step process has helped me to deal with criticism, so I pass it on to you.
1. Know Yourself—This Is a Reality Issue
As a young leader I soon learned that having an upfront position was certain to draw criticism, no matter who the leader was or what he did. Highly visible leaders often have to function in difficult environments— such as the office in which the following aid to have been displayed:
Notice:
This department requires no physical fitness program: everyone gets enough exercise jumping to conclusions, flying off the handle, running down the boss, knifing friends in the back, dodging responsibility, and pushing their luck.
Anonymous
So if you are automatically going to be criticized if you are a leader, what should you do? First, have a realistic view of yourself. That will lay a solid foundation for you to handle criticism successfully. Here’s why: Many times, when a leader is being criticized, it’s really the leadership position that prompts the negative remarks, not the individual leader. You need to be able to separate the two, and vow can do that only when you know yourself. If a criticism is directed at the position, don’t take it personally. Let it roll off of you. Knowing yourself well may take some time and effort. As founding father Benjamin Franklin observed, “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self? However, the effort is worth the reward.
I have to admit that the majority of criticism that I have received over the years was directed more at me than at the position I held. Often people have tried to help me know myself, and the conversation usually began with the phrase “I’m going to tell you something for your own good? I discovered that when they tell me something for my own good, they never seem to have anything good to tell me! However, I have also realized that what I need to bear most is what I want to hear least. From those conversations I have learned much about myself including the following:
• I am impatient.
• I am unrealistic about the time tasks take and how difficult most processes are.
• I don’t like to give a lot of time or effort to people’s emotional concerns.
• I overestimate the ability of others.
• I assume too much.
• I want to delegate responsibility too quickly.
• I want options—so many that I drive everyone crazy.
• I don’t care for rules or restrictions.
• I determine my priorities quickly and expect others to have similar attitudes.
• I process issues quickly and want to move on—even when other people aren’t ready to.
Obviously, the things I have found out about myself are not flattering. Yet those weaknesses are reality. So the question is, what am I to do about it?
2. Change Yourself—This Is a Responsibility Issue
When someone’s criticism about me is accurate, then I have a responsibility to do something about it. That is part of being a good leader If I respond correctly to my critics by examining myself and admitting my shortcomings, then I set myself up to begin making positive changes in my life.
Author Aldous Huxley remarked, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.” My first natural reaction to criticism often isn’t good—it sometimes hurt, but more often anger. But after my anger has subsided, I try to determine whether the criticism is constructive or destructive. Some say constructive criticism is when I criticize you, but destructive criticism is when you criticize me!) Here are the questions I ask to determine what kind of criticism it is:
• Who criticized me? Adverse criticism from a wise person is more to be desired than the enthusiastic approval of a fool. The source often matters.
• How was the criticism given? I try to discern whether the person was being judgmental or whether he gave me the benefit of the doubt and spoke with kindness.
• Why was it given? Was it given out of a personal hurt or for my benefit? Hurting people hurt people; they lash out or criticize to try to make themselves feel better, not to help the other person.
Whether the criticism is legitimate or not, what determines whether I grow from or groan under unwanted words is my attitude. My friend, management expert Ken Blanchard, is right when he says, “Some leaders are like seagulls. When something goes wrong, they fly in, make a lot of noise, and crap all over everything.” People with that kind of attitude not only refuse to take responsibility for their contribution to the problem, but they also make conditions terrible for the people who work with them.
People can change for the better only when they are open to improvement. For that reason, when I am criticized I try to maintain the right attitude by
• not being defensive,
• looking for the grain of truth,
• making the necessary changes, and
• taking the high road.
If I do those things, there is a very good chance that I will learn things about myself, improve as a leader, and preserve the relationships I have with others.
3. Accept Yourself—This Is a Maturity Issue
Jonas Salk, developer of the salk polio vaccine, had many critics in spite of his incredible contribution to medicine. Of criticism, he observed, “First people will tell you that you are wrong. Then they will tell you that you are right, but what you’re doing really isn’t important. Finally, they will admit that you are right and that what you are doing is very important; but after all, they knew it all the time.” How do leaders who are out front handle this kind of tickle response from others? They learn to accept themselves. If you have endeavored to know yourself, and have worked hard to change yourself, then what more can you do?
Professor and author Leo Buscaglia counseled, “The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.” To be the best person you can be—and the best leader—you need to be yourself. That doesn’t mean that you aren’t willing to grow and change. It just means that you work to become the best you that you can be. And as psychologist Carl Rogers remarked, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Being who you really are is the first step in becoming better than you are.
Because I’ve already written about working within your strength zone, which you can do only if you know and accept who you are, I don’t need to say a lot more about it here, other than to emphasize that accepting yourself is a sign of maturity. If you worry about what other people think of you, it’s because you have more confidence in their opinion than you have in your own. Executive coach and consultant Judith Bardwick says, “Real confidence comes from knowing and accepting yourself—your strengths and limitations—in contrast to depending on affirmation from others.”
4. Forget Yourself—This Is a Security Issue
The first step in the process of effectively handling criticism is to stop focusing on yourself. When we were growing up, a lot of us spent a good deal of time worrying about what the world thought of us. Now I’m sixty, and I realize the world really wasn’t paying much attention.
Secure people forget about themselves so they can focus on others. By doing this they can face nearly any kind of criticism—and even serve the critic. For years when I was the pastor of
churches, I went out of my way to initiate personal contact with my critics every Sunday. I
sought them out and greeted them. I wanted them to know that I valued them as people, regardless of what their attitude was toward me. Being secure in who I am and focusing on others allows me to take the high road with people. I try to live out a sentiment expressed be Parkenham Batty, who advised, “By your own soul learn to live. And if men thwart you, take no heed. If men hate you, have no care Sing your song, dream your dream, hope your hope and pray your prayer.”
One day Perry Noble, a young leader whom I have the privilege of mentoring, shared with me about the hurt he felt when others criticized him. I could identify with his feelings. When he asked for advice about how to respond to criticism, I explained that a secure leader never needs to defend himself.
Perry later said to me, “That day I realized I was spending way too much time defending myself to my critics and not getting done what I really needed to get done.” Once again, I could relate.
As leaders, we must always be serious about our responsibilities, but it isn’t healthy for us to take ourselves too seriously. A Chinese proverb says, “Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves. They shall never cease to be entertained.” I must say, for years I have entertained myself.
My friend Joyce Meyer observes, “God will help you be all you can be, but He will never let you be successful at becoming someone else.” We can’t do more than try to be all that we can be. If we do that as leaders, we will give others our best, and we will sometimes take hits from others. But that’s okay. That is the price for being out front.
Application Exercise
1. What are your deficiencies? Where do you fall short as a person and leader? If you can’t answer that question, then you don’t really know yourself. And if you don’t, how will you be able to accept what you cannot change or change what you must to be a better leader? Ask five trustworthy people who know you where you come up short. Then decide what you need to change and what you need to accept
2. How secure are you as a leader? Insecurity and defensiveness are two characteristics that I have seen present many leaders from reaching their potential. When others criticize you, is your first reaction to dismiss what’s said, defend yourself, or fight back? If so, your responses may hold you back as a leader. Practice quietness the next time you are criticized. Take in all that’s said, tell the person that you will think about the criticism, and then take some time to process it on your own.
3. How can you properly process criticism? Use the three questions from the chapter to determine whether some criticism can be helpful to you:
• Who criticized me?
• How was the criticism given?
• Why was it given?
As you ask these questions, start out by giving the critic the benefit of the doubt so that you can be as objective as possible. If the criticism is well founded, then consider how you can make changes to improve.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Defining Moments Define Your Leadership
One of the leaders I admire most is Winston Churchill, England’s prime minister who stood up against the Nazis during World War II. He was a leader’s leader! He once remarked, “In every age there comes a time when a leader must come forward to meet the needs of the hour. Therefore, there is no potential leader who does not have an opportunity to make a positive difference in society. Tragically, there are times when a leader does not rise to the hour.”
What determines whether a leader emerges to meet the challenge of the hour? More to the point, what will determine whether you will step forward to successfully meet the challenges you face? I believe the determining factor is how you handle certain critical moments in your life. These moments will define who you are as a person and as a leader.
How Will You Be Defined?
If you are familiar with my philosophy of leadership and my teaching on success, then you know that I’m a big believer in personal growth. I don’t believe in overnight successes. In fact, one of my core principles is the Law of Process in my book The 21 Irrefutable Law of Leadership. It states, “Leadership develops daily, not in a day However, I also believe that the choices we make in critical moments help to form us and to inform others about who we are. They are defining moments, and here’s why I think they are important:
1. Defining Moments Show Us Who We Really Are
Most days in our lives come and go; they are much like all the others and don’t stand out. But there are a few days that are unlike all the others. They do stand out because they give us an opportunity to stand up, be set apart from the rest of the crowd, and seize that moment—or to remain sitting with the rest of the crowd and let it pass. These moments—for better or worse—define us. They show us what we are really made of.
We often focus on the milestones of life, the important events that mark seasons and accomplishments. We happily anticipate a graduation, wedding, or promotion. But some of our defining moments come as a total surprise, often appearing during times of crisis:
• Facing a personal failure
• Taking a stand on an issue
• Experiencing suffering
• Being asked to forgive
• Making an unpleasant choice
Sometimes we can sense the importance of our actions in the moment. We can see two clear paths ahead of us, one leading up, the other down. Other times, sadly, our defining moments occur and we don’t see them for what they are. Only afterward, when time has passed and we look back, do we understand their importance. Either way, they define who we are.
2. Defining Moments Declare to Others Who We Are
Most days we can wear masks and hide who we are from the people around us. During defining moments, we can’t do that. Our résumés mean nothing. It doesn’t matter how we have marketed ourselves. Our image means nothing. Defining moments put the spotlight on us. We have no time to put a spin on our actions. Whatever is truly inside us is revealed to everyone. Our character isn’t made during these times—it is displayed!
For leaders, defining moments tell the people following them many of the thing they really want to know: who their leaders are, what they stand for, and why they are leading. Handled well a defining moment can cement a relationship and bond leaders and followers for life. Handled poorly, a defining moment can cost a leader his credibility and end his ability to lead.
In the revised tenth anniversary edition of The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, I wrote about two defining moments in the leadership of President George W Bush. His first term in office was defined by his response to the September 11 terrorist attacks. He connected with the hearts of the American people, and even people who hadn’t voted for him were willing to give his leadership a chance. However, his second term of office was defined by his poor response to Katrina. It took only a few days for the people of the United States to feel the leadership vacuum—and even for many of the president’s supporters to disapprove of his leadership.
My intention is not to be critical. All of us have experienced failure. My point is that the defining moments of leaders can have a dramatic effect on others. When leaders respond correctly, everyone wins. When they respond incorrectly, everyone loses.
3. Defining Moments Determine Who We Will Become
You will never be the same person after a defining moment. Somehow you will be moved. It may be forward, or it may be backward, but make no mistake—you will be moved. Why is that? Because defining moments are not normal, and what’s “normal” doesn’t work in those times.
I think of defining moments as intersections in our lives. They give us an opportunity to turn, change direction, and seek a new destination. They present options and opportunities. In these moments, we must choose. And the choice we make will define us! What will we do? Our response puts us on a new path, and that new path will define who we will become in the future. After a defining moment, we will never be the same person again.
Moments That Defined Me
The defining moments of my life have determined who I have become. Take away even one of them—good or bad—and I would not be the same person. And the defining moments that lie before me will continue to shape me.
As I look back at the many defining moments in my life and reflect on them, I can see that all of them fall into four categories:
Some Defining Moments Were Ground Breakers
Many of the defining moments of my life allowed me to start Something new. More than twenty years ago, I was teaching leadership to a small group of people in Jackson, Mississippi. At the close of the seminar, one of the participants asked if it was possible to receive ongoing leadership training from me. I wasn’t sure how that could be done. However, as we talked, I could sense that many of the other attendees desired the same thing.
In that moment, I made a quick decision. I told them that if they would be willing to pay a modest fee, I would promise to write and record a new one-hour leadership lesson every month and send it to them. I had never done anything like that before, and I wasn’t even sure how to do it, but I passed a sheet of paper around the room, and to my surprise, nearly every person signed up. At the end of that day, I didn’t recognize that I had experienced a defining moment, but I had. My promise to them turned unto what I called a tape club—a leadership lesson subscription service on tape (and eventually CD) that rose to more than twenty thousand subscribers and continues even today.
Now more than two decades later, I can say with great assurance that my response in that moment was one of the most important leadership decisions I ever made. At the time, it looked like a lot of work. And it has been. But those monthly lessons allowed me to be a leadership mentor to thousands of leaders across the country and eventually around the world. Those lessons have provided material for many of the books I have written. And those lessons became the catalyst for me to start a resource company to facilitate the growth of leaders. Without that decision, the entire course of my life would have been different.
Some Defining Moments Were Heart Breakers
Not all defining moments are positive. I have experienced some very difficult moments, but sometimes those experiences have given me the opportunity to stop and make needed changes in my life. One such instance occurred on December 18,1998. As our company Christmas party came to an end, I suddenly felt a debilitating pain and weight on my chest. It was a heart attack. As I lay on the floor waiting for an ambulance, reality hit me. My priorities were out of whack, and I wasn’t nearly as healthy as I thought!
Over the next few weeks, I spent a lot of time reflecting on my health. I was working too hard. I wasn’t taking enough time off with my family. I wasn’t exercising regularly. And I wasn’t eating the right food. The bottom line: my life was out of balance.
During this season, I learned a lesson that is best described by the words of Brian Dyson, former vice chairman and COO of Coca-Cola, who delivered the commencement address at Georgia Tech in 1996. In it, he explained this:
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them—work, family, health, friends and spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls—family, health, friends and spirit are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.
I was very fortunate. When I dropped the health ball, it got scuffed but it didn’t shatter. Since receiving a second chance, I have redefined my priorities. I spend more time with my family. I exercise regularly. I try to eat right. I don’t do these things perfectly, but I’m striving to live a more balanced life. I don’t know what kinds of “balls” you may be juggling, but I recommend that you not wait until one of the important ones falls before examining your life. You can make changes without having to experience a heart breaker.
Some Defining Moments Were Cloud Breakers
Occasionally a defining moment comes as the result of seeing a new opportunity and taking action to seize it. That was the case for me several years ago. During the twenty-five years I worked as a pastor, I spent seventeen of them buying land, constructing buildings, and raising funds to pay for it.
One day a pastor and a key businessperson flew over to San Diego from Phoenix to have lunch with me. They were in a building program and said they came because I had a lot of experience raising the finances to make a vision a reality—something that isn’t taught in seminary. At the close of our lunch, they asked me if I would help them raise the money for their building program. “If you can do this for your congregation,” one of them said, “you can certainly help us.”
At that moment, it was very clear to me. I could help them. And I should. Before they left, we shook hands and I agreed to help them. I went out to my car in the parking lot, called a friend and said. “Next week we will begun helping churches raise money to realize their dreams? That was the birth of my company INJOY Stewardship Services.
Some Defining Moments Were Chart Breakers
The finest defining moments allow a person to soar to a much higher level. That was the case a few years ago at EQUIP a nonprofit organization that my brother, Larry; and I founded in 1996 to train and resource leaders internationally. The first few years EQUIP was in existence were typical of a fledgling organization. We were trying to establish ourselves, engage donors to help us, and develop a team to lead this venture. Those years were filled with trial and error, adjustments and changes as we worked to establish credibility as a leadership organization.
As time went by, I could sense that EQUIP needed a vision that would capture the heart and hands those who believed in our mission. I discovered that vision and then presented it one evening at a banquet with hundreds of supporters of EQUIP. I painted a picture in which EQUIP would train and resource one million leaders around the world in five years, and I challenged them to help fulfill it. The vision connected with the people, and EQUIP soared to a new level. That night was defining moment for hundreds of people that over five years became a life-changing experience for a million people.
Defining Your Moments
Leaders become better leaders when they experience a defining moment and respond to it correctly. Anytime they experience a breakthrough. it allows the people who follow them to also benefit The difficulty with defining moments is that you don’t get to choose them. You can’t sit down with your calendar and say, “I’m going to schedule a defining moment for next Tuesday at eight o’clock.” You cannot control when they will come. However, you can choose how you will handle them when they come, and you can take steps to prepare for them. Here’s how:
1. Reflect on Defining Moments from the Past
It’s said that those who do not study history are destined to repeat its mistakes. That statement applies not only in a broad sense to a nation or culture but also to individuals and their personal histories. The best teacher for a leader is evaluated experience. To predict how you will handle defining moments in the future, look at the ones from your past.
2. Prepare for Defining Moments in the Future
One of the most valuable things I’ve done in my life is to make major choices before times of crisis or decision. That has enabled me to simply manage those decisions in critical moments of my life. A few of these decisions I made as a teenager, many in my twenties and thirties, and a few later in life. I wrote about these decisions in depth in my book Today Matters, but I’ll give them to you here so that you can get the gist:
Attitude: I will choose and display the right attitudes daily.
Priorities: I will determine and act upon important priorities daily
Health: I will know and follow healthy guidelines daily.
Family: I will communicate with and care for my family daily.
Thinking: I will practice and develop good thinking daily.
Commitment: I will make and keep proper commitments daily.
Finances: I will earn and properly manage finances daily.
Faith: I will deepen and live out my faith daily.
Relationships: I will initiate and invest in solid relationships daily.
Generosity: I will plan for and model generosity daily.
Values: I will embrace and practice good values daily.
Growth: I will desire arid experience improvements daily.
I don’t have to wrestle with these issues during a defining moment. They are already settled, and I am free to focus on the situation at hand and make decisions based on them.
3. Make the Most of Defining Moments in the Present
Now that you will be looking for defining moments, you will be in a better position to make the most of them. Remember that after we experience one, we are never the same again. But the kind of change we experience will depend on how we respond to those moments. Many of them present us with opportunities. With opportunities come risks, but don’t be afraid to take them. It is in moments of risk that the greatest leaders are often born.
I think there is a temptation to believe that all defining moments are highly dramatic and usually occur early in the life of leaders. I don’t think that’s true. You don’t need a lot of major breakthroughs to achieve dramatic results. Just one can make a huge difference. As Albert Einstein used to say, he only came up with the theory of relativity once, but it kept him in pipe tobacco for years.
I believe that if I keep growing, keep seeking opportunities, and keep taking risks, I will continue to experience defining moments. If I keep making good choices and always try to do things that benefit my people in those moments, my leadership will continue to be redefined, to grow, and to improve. When that happens, everybody wins.
Defining Moment Define Your Leadership
Application Exercises
I. What is your track record? Look back on your life and the decisions you’ve made at critical moments. What kinds of defining moments have you experienced in the past? Write down as many as you can remember. For each, note:
• The situation
• Your decision or response
• The result
Have your responses been generally good or bad? Is there a common denominator for the poor choices? If you have the courage, ask those closest to you their opinion about your mistakes. If you see a pattern, what is it and how can you address it so that you don’t make similar poor choices in the future?
2. How are you managing your decisions? Using the following list as an example, create a list of choices you will make based on your values and priorities.
Attitude: I will choose and display the right attitudes daily
Priorities: I will determine and act upon important priorities daily.
Health: I will know and follow healthy guidelines daily.
Family: I will communicate with and care for my family daily.
Thinking: I will practice and develop good thinking daily.
Commitment: I will make and keep proper commitments daily.
Finances: I will earn and properly manage finances daily.
Faith: I will deepen and live out my faith daily.
Relationships: I will initiate and invest in solid relationships daily.
Generosity: I will plan for and model generosity daily.
Values: I will embrace and practice good values daily.
Growth: I will desire and experience improvements daily.
Post your list where you will see it every morning. Review the list daily for a month and manage your moment-to-moment decisions based on your choices.
3. How prepared are you for future defining moments? As you face each day, try to be alert to the kinds of defining moments leaders typically face:
• Ground Breakers—opportunities to do something new
• Heart Breakers—opportunities to reevaluate priorities
• Cloud Breakers—opportunities for a clear vision
• Chart Breakers—opportunities to go to a new level
Think about how you will make the most of these opportunities.
What determines whether a leader emerges to meet the challenge of the hour? More to the point, what will determine whether you will step forward to successfully meet the challenges you face? I believe the determining factor is how you handle certain critical moments in your life. These moments will define who you are as a person and as a leader.
How Will You Be Defined?
If you are familiar with my philosophy of leadership and my teaching on success, then you know that I’m a big believer in personal growth. I don’t believe in overnight successes. In fact, one of my core principles is the Law of Process in my book The 21 Irrefutable Law of Leadership. It states, “Leadership develops daily, not in a day However, I also believe that the choices we make in critical moments help to form us and to inform others about who we are. They are defining moments, and here’s why I think they are important:
1. Defining Moments Show Us Who We Really Are
Most days in our lives come and go; they are much like all the others and don’t stand out. But there are a few days that are unlike all the others. They do stand out because they give us an opportunity to stand up, be set apart from the rest of the crowd, and seize that moment—or to remain sitting with the rest of the crowd and let it pass. These moments—for better or worse—define us. They show us what we are really made of.
We often focus on the milestones of life, the important events that mark seasons and accomplishments. We happily anticipate a graduation, wedding, or promotion. But some of our defining moments come as a total surprise, often appearing during times of crisis:
• Facing a personal failure
• Taking a stand on an issue
• Experiencing suffering
• Being asked to forgive
• Making an unpleasant choice
Sometimes we can sense the importance of our actions in the moment. We can see two clear paths ahead of us, one leading up, the other down. Other times, sadly, our defining moments occur and we don’t see them for what they are. Only afterward, when time has passed and we look back, do we understand their importance. Either way, they define who we are.
2. Defining Moments Declare to Others Who We Are
Most days we can wear masks and hide who we are from the people around us. During defining moments, we can’t do that. Our résumés mean nothing. It doesn’t matter how we have marketed ourselves. Our image means nothing. Defining moments put the spotlight on us. We have no time to put a spin on our actions. Whatever is truly inside us is revealed to everyone. Our character isn’t made during these times—it is displayed!
For leaders, defining moments tell the people following them many of the thing they really want to know: who their leaders are, what they stand for, and why they are leading. Handled well a defining moment can cement a relationship and bond leaders and followers for life. Handled poorly, a defining moment can cost a leader his credibility and end his ability to lead.
In the revised tenth anniversary edition of The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, I wrote about two defining moments in the leadership of President George W Bush. His first term in office was defined by his response to the September 11 terrorist attacks. He connected with the hearts of the American people, and even people who hadn’t voted for him were willing to give his leadership a chance. However, his second term of office was defined by his poor response to Katrina. It took only a few days for the people of the United States to feel the leadership vacuum—and even for many of the president’s supporters to disapprove of his leadership.
My intention is not to be critical. All of us have experienced failure. My point is that the defining moments of leaders can have a dramatic effect on others. When leaders respond correctly, everyone wins. When they respond incorrectly, everyone loses.
3. Defining Moments Determine Who We Will Become
You will never be the same person after a defining moment. Somehow you will be moved. It may be forward, or it may be backward, but make no mistake—you will be moved. Why is that? Because defining moments are not normal, and what’s “normal” doesn’t work in those times.
I think of defining moments as intersections in our lives. They give us an opportunity to turn, change direction, and seek a new destination. They present options and opportunities. In these moments, we must choose. And the choice we make will define us! What will we do? Our response puts us on a new path, and that new path will define who we will become in the future. After a defining moment, we will never be the same person again.
Moments That Defined Me
The defining moments of my life have determined who I have become. Take away even one of them—good or bad—and I would not be the same person. And the defining moments that lie before me will continue to shape me.
As I look back at the many defining moments in my life and reflect on them, I can see that all of them fall into four categories:
Some Defining Moments Were Ground Breakers
Many of the defining moments of my life allowed me to start Something new. More than twenty years ago, I was teaching leadership to a small group of people in Jackson, Mississippi. At the close of the seminar, one of the participants asked if it was possible to receive ongoing leadership training from me. I wasn’t sure how that could be done. However, as we talked, I could sense that many of the other attendees desired the same thing.
In that moment, I made a quick decision. I told them that if they would be willing to pay a modest fee, I would promise to write and record a new one-hour leadership lesson every month and send it to them. I had never done anything like that before, and I wasn’t even sure how to do it, but I passed a sheet of paper around the room, and to my surprise, nearly every person signed up. At the end of that day, I didn’t recognize that I had experienced a defining moment, but I had. My promise to them turned unto what I called a tape club—a leadership lesson subscription service on tape (and eventually CD) that rose to more than twenty thousand subscribers and continues even today.
Now more than two decades later, I can say with great assurance that my response in that moment was one of the most important leadership decisions I ever made. At the time, it looked like a lot of work. And it has been. But those monthly lessons allowed me to be a leadership mentor to thousands of leaders across the country and eventually around the world. Those lessons have provided material for many of the books I have written. And those lessons became the catalyst for me to start a resource company to facilitate the growth of leaders. Without that decision, the entire course of my life would have been different.
Some Defining Moments Were Heart Breakers
Not all defining moments are positive. I have experienced some very difficult moments, but sometimes those experiences have given me the opportunity to stop and make needed changes in my life. One such instance occurred on December 18,1998. As our company Christmas party came to an end, I suddenly felt a debilitating pain and weight on my chest. It was a heart attack. As I lay on the floor waiting for an ambulance, reality hit me. My priorities were out of whack, and I wasn’t nearly as healthy as I thought!
Over the next few weeks, I spent a lot of time reflecting on my health. I was working too hard. I wasn’t taking enough time off with my family. I wasn’t exercising regularly. And I wasn’t eating the right food. The bottom line: my life was out of balance.
During this season, I learned a lesson that is best described by the words of Brian Dyson, former vice chairman and COO of Coca-Cola, who delivered the commencement address at Georgia Tech in 1996. In it, he explained this:
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them—work, family, health, friends and spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls—family, health, friends and spirit are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.
I was very fortunate. When I dropped the health ball, it got scuffed but it didn’t shatter. Since receiving a second chance, I have redefined my priorities. I spend more time with my family. I exercise regularly. I try to eat right. I don’t do these things perfectly, but I’m striving to live a more balanced life. I don’t know what kinds of “balls” you may be juggling, but I recommend that you not wait until one of the important ones falls before examining your life. You can make changes without having to experience a heart breaker.
Some Defining Moments Were Cloud Breakers
Occasionally a defining moment comes as the result of seeing a new opportunity and taking action to seize it. That was the case for me several years ago. During the twenty-five years I worked as a pastor, I spent seventeen of them buying land, constructing buildings, and raising funds to pay for it.
One day a pastor and a key businessperson flew over to San Diego from Phoenix to have lunch with me. They were in a building program and said they came because I had a lot of experience raising the finances to make a vision a reality—something that isn’t taught in seminary. At the close of our lunch, they asked me if I would help them raise the money for their building program. “If you can do this for your congregation,” one of them said, “you can certainly help us.”
At that moment, it was very clear to me. I could help them. And I should. Before they left, we shook hands and I agreed to help them. I went out to my car in the parking lot, called a friend and said. “Next week we will begun helping churches raise money to realize their dreams? That was the birth of my company INJOY Stewardship Services.
Some Defining Moments Were Chart Breakers
The finest defining moments allow a person to soar to a much higher level. That was the case a few years ago at EQUIP a nonprofit organization that my brother, Larry; and I founded in 1996 to train and resource leaders internationally. The first few years EQUIP was in existence were typical of a fledgling organization. We were trying to establish ourselves, engage donors to help us, and develop a team to lead this venture. Those years were filled with trial and error, adjustments and changes as we worked to establish credibility as a leadership organization.
As time went by, I could sense that EQUIP needed a vision that would capture the heart and hands those who believed in our mission. I discovered that vision and then presented it one evening at a banquet with hundreds of supporters of EQUIP. I painted a picture in which EQUIP would train and resource one million leaders around the world in five years, and I challenged them to help fulfill it. The vision connected with the people, and EQUIP soared to a new level. That night was defining moment for hundreds of people that over five years became a life-changing experience for a million people.
Defining Your Moments
Leaders become better leaders when they experience a defining moment and respond to it correctly. Anytime they experience a breakthrough. it allows the people who follow them to also benefit The difficulty with defining moments is that you don’t get to choose them. You can’t sit down with your calendar and say, “I’m going to schedule a defining moment for next Tuesday at eight o’clock.” You cannot control when they will come. However, you can choose how you will handle them when they come, and you can take steps to prepare for them. Here’s how:
1. Reflect on Defining Moments from the Past
It’s said that those who do not study history are destined to repeat its mistakes. That statement applies not only in a broad sense to a nation or culture but also to individuals and their personal histories. The best teacher for a leader is evaluated experience. To predict how you will handle defining moments in the future, look at the ones from your past.
2. Prepare for Defining Moments in the Future
One of the most valuable things I’ve done in my life is to make major choices before times of crisis or decision. That has enabled me to simply manage those decisions in critical moments of my life. A few of these decisions I made as a teenager, many in my twenties and thirties, and a few later in life. I wrote about these decisions in depth in my book Today Matters, but I’ll give them to you here so that you can get the gist:
Attitude: I will choose and display the right attitudes daily.
Priorities: I will determine and act upon important priorities daily
Health: I will know and follow healthy guidelines daily.
Family: I will communicate with and care for my family daily.
Thinking: I will practice and develop good thinking daily.
Commitment: I will make and keep proper commitments daily.
Finances: I will earn and properly manage finances daily.
Faith: I will deepen and live out my faith daily.
Relationships: I will initiate and invest in solid relationships daily.
Generosity: I will plan for and model generosity daily.
Values: I will embrace and practice good values daily.
Growth: I will desire arid experience improvements daily.
I don’t have to wrestle with these issues during a defining moment. They are already settled, and I am free to focus on the situation at hand and make decisions based on them.
3. Make the Most of Defining Moments in the Present
Now that you will be looking for defining moments, you will be in a better position to make the most of them. Remember that after we experience one, we are never the same again. But the kind of change we experience will depend on how we respond to those moments. Many of them present us with opportunities. With opportunities come risks, but don’t be afraid to take them. It is in moments of risk that the greatest leaders are often born.
I think there is a temptation to believe that all defining moments are highly dramatic and usually occur early in the life of leaders. I don’t think that’s true. You don’t need a lot of major breakthroughs to achieve dramatic results. Just one can make a huge difference. As Albert Einstein used to say, he only came up with the theory of relativity once, but it kept him in pipe tobacco for years.
I believe that if I keep growing, keep seeking opportunities, and keep taking risks, I will continue to experience defining moments. If I keep making good choices and always try to do things that benefit my people in those moments, my leadership will continue to be redefined, to grow, and to improve. When that happens, everybody wins.
Defining Moment Define Your Leadership
Application Exercises
I. What is your track record? Look back on your life and the decisions you’ve made at critical moments. What kinds of defining moments have you experienced in the past? Write down as many as you can remember. For each, note:
• The situation
• Your decision or response
• The result
Have your responses been generally good or bad? Is there a common denominator for the poor choices? If you have the courage, ask those closest to you their opinion about your mistakes. If you see a pattern, what is it and how can you address it so that you don’t make similar poor choices in the future?
2. How are you managing your decisions? Using the following list as an example, create a list of choices you will make based on your values and priorities.
Attitude: I will choose and display the right attitudes daily
Priorities: I will determine and act upon important priorities daily.
Health: I will know and follow healthy guidelines daily.
Family: I will communicate with and care for my family daily.
Thinking: I will practice and develop good thinking daily.
Commitment: I will make and keep proper commitments daily.
Finances: I will earn and properly manage finances daily.
Faith: I will deepen and live out my faith daily.
Relationships: I will initiate and invest in solid relationships daily.
Generosity: I will plan for and model generosity daily.
Values: I will embrace and practice good values daily.
Growth: I will desire and experience improvements daily.
Post your list where you will see it every morning. Review the list daily for a month and manage your moment-to-moment decisions based on your choices.
3. How prepared are you for future defining moments? As you face each day, try to be alert to the kinds of defining moments leaders typically face:
• Ground Breakers—opportunities to do something new
• Heart Breakers—opportunities to reevaluate priorities
• Cloud Breakers—opportunities for a clear vision
• Chart Breakers—opportunities to go to a new level
Think about how you will make the most of these opportunities.
Friday, October 24, 2008
The Toughest Person to Lead is Always Yourself
During a Q&A session at a conference, someone asked, “What has been your greatest challenge as a leader?” I think my response surprised nearly everyone in the auditorium.
“Leading me!” I answered. “That’s always been my greatest challenge as a leader.”
I think that’s true for all leaders regardless of who they lead and what they accomplish. We sometimes think about accomplished leaders from history and assume that they had it all together. But if we really examine their lives, whether we’re looking at King David. George Washington, or Winston Churchill, we’ll see that they struggled to lead themselves well. That’s why I say that the toughest person to lead is always yourself, it’s like Walt Kelly exclaimed in his Pogo cartoon strip: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Acknowledging that leading myself is a challenge brings back some painful memories. Many of my leadership breakdowns have been personal breakdowns. In a leadership career that has spanned almost four decades, I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but I have experienced only four major leadership crises. And I’m sorry to say that all of them were my fault.
The first occurred in 1970, just two years into my first official leadership position. After two year of work, I had won over many people and there was a lot going on. However, one day I realized that my organization had no direction. Why? Because I lacked the ability to prioritize correctly and bring focus to my leadership. As a young leader, I didn’t yet understand that activity does not necessarily equal accomplishment. As a result, my people, allowing my example, were wandering in the wilderness for sixteen months. In the end, I didn’t really lead them anywhere.
The next crisis came in 1979. At that time I felt pulled in two directions. I had been successful in my second leadership position, but I also realized that if I was going to reach a broader audience, which I felt was the right thing to try to do, I would have to leave the organization I had been a part of for the first twelve years of my career. My uncertainty and the personal changes that I was dealing with negatively impacted the organization I led. I became unfocused, and my vision for the organization became cloudy. My passion and energy also begin to wane. Leaders who aren’t focused aren’t as effective as they could be. As a result, we weren’t moving forward as effectively as we could.
The third occurred in 1991 when I was overloaded with work and my life was out of balance. Because I had been leading my organization successfully for ten years, I thought I could take a few shortcuts to make things easier for me. I made three difficult decisions in rapid succession without doing proper due diligence or taking the time needed to process everyone through them. What a mistake! As a result, the people were not prepared for the decisions—and I was unprepared for their response. The trust that it had taken me ten years to build began to erode. To make matters worse, when the people who questioned my decisions balked at following my lead, I became increasingly impatient. I angrily thought, What is their problem? Why don’t they “get it” and get on with it? Within a few weeks, I realized that the problem wasn’t them. It was me. I ended up having to apologize to everyone for my attitude.
The fourth occurred in 2001 and involved a staff member whom I needed to let go. I’ll tell you more about that in “A Leader’s First Responsibility Is to Define Reality.” The bottom line was that my unwillingness to make difficult decisions cost me many dollars and some key personnel. Once again, I was the source of the problem.
Judge For Yourself
If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that the toughest person to lead is ourselves. Most people don’t need to worry about the competition. Other people aren’t the reason they lose. If they don’t win, it’s because they disqualify themselves.
That’s as true for leaders as it is for anyone else. They are often their own worst enemies. Why is that?
We Don’t See Ourselves as We See Others
My years counseling others taught me something important: people seldom see themselves realistically. Human nature seems to endow us with the ability to size up everybody in the world except ourselves. That’s why in my book Winning with People I start with the Mirror Principle, which advises, “The First Person We Must Examine Is Ourselves.” If you don’t look at yourself realistically, you will never understand where your personal difficulties lie. And if you can’t see them, you won’t be able to lead yourself effectively.
We Are Harder on Others Than We Are on Ourselves
Most people use two totally different sets of criteria for judging themselves versus others. We tend to judge others according to their actions. It’s very cut-and-dried. However, we judge ourselves by our intentions. Even if we do the wrong thing, if we believe our motives were good, we let ourselves off the hook. And we are often willing to do that over and over before requiring ourselves to change.
Keys to Leading Yourself
The truth is that to be successful in any endeavor, we need to learn how to get out of our own way. That’s as true for leaders as it is for anyone else. Because I have known for many years that the toughest person to lead is me, I have taken step help me do that. By practicing the following four thing, I have tried to lead myself well as a prerequisite to leading others:
1. Learn Followership
Bishop Fulton I. Sheen remarked, “Civilization is always in danger when those who have never learned to obey are given the right to command.” Only a leader who has followed well knows how to lead others well. Good leadership requires an understanding of the world that followers live in. Connecting with your people becomes possible because you have walked in their shoes. You know what it means to be under authority and thus have a better sense of how authority should be exercised. In contrast, leader who have never followed well or submitted to authority tend to be prideful, unrealistic, rigid, and autocratic.
If those words describe your leadership, you need to do some soul searching. Arrogant leaders are rarely effective in the long run. They alienate their followers, their colleagues, and their leaders. Learn to submit to another person’s leadership and to follow well, and you will become a more humble—and effective—leader.
2. Develop Self-Discipline
It’s said that one day Frederick the Great of Prussia was walking on the outskirts of Berlin when he encountered a very old man walking ramrod straight in the opposite direction.
“Who are you?” Frederick asked his subject.
“I am a king,” replied the old man.
“A king!” laughed Frederick. “Over what kingdom do you reign?”
“Over myself,” was the proud old man’s reply.
Each of us is “monarch” of our own lives. We are responsible for ruling our actions and decisions. To make consistently good decisions, to take the right action when needed, and to refrain from the wrong actions requires character and self-discipline. To do otherwise is to lose control of ourselves—to do or say things we regret, to miss opportunities we are given, to spend ourselves into debt. As King Solomon remarked, “‘The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”
In “Decision of Character,” British essayist John Foster writes, “A man without decision of character can never be said to belong to himself. He belongs to whatever can make a captive of him.” When we are foolish, we want to conquer the world. When we are wise, we want to conquer ourselves. That begins when we do what we should no matter how we feel about it.
3. Practice Patience
The leaders I know tend to be impatient. They look ahead, think ahead, and want to move ahead And that can be good. Being one step ahead makes you a leader. However, that can also be bad. Being fifty steps ahead could make you a martyr.
Few worthwhile things in life come quickly. There is no such thing as instant greatness or instant maturity. We are used to instant oatmeal, instant coffee, and microwave popcorn. But becoming a leader doesn’t happen overnight. Microwave leaders don’t have any staying power. Leadership is more of a Crock-Pot proposition. It takes time but the end product is worth the wait.
Leaders need to remember that the point of leading is not to cross the finish line first. It’s to take people across the finish line with you. For that reason, leaders most deliberately slow their pace, stay connected to their people, enlist others to help fulfill the vision, and keep people going. You can’t do that if you re running too far ahead of your people.
4. Seek Accountability
People who lead themselves well know a secret: they can’t trust themselves. Good leaders know that power can be seductive, and they understand their own fallibility. To be a leader and deny this is to put yourself in danger.
Over the years, I’ve read about many leaders who failed ethically in their leadership. Can you guess what they had in common? They all thought it could never happen them. There was a false sense of security. They thought they were incapable of ruining their lives and the lives of others.
Learning that was very sobering to me, because I shared the same attitude. I thought I was above such possibilities, and that scared me. At that moment, I made two decisions: First, I will not trust myself. Second, I will become accountable to someone other than myself. I believe those decisions have helped to keep me on track and able to lead myself and others.
Lack of accountability in our personal life will certainly lead to problems in our public life. We saw that time and time again with high-profile CEOs a few years ago. A Chinese proverb says, “When you see a good man, think of emulating him; when you see a bad man, examine your heart.”
Many people feel that accountability is a willingness to explain your actions. I believe that effective accountability begins way before we take action. It starts with getting advice from others. For leaders especially, this often develops in stages:
We don’t want advice.
We don’t object to advice.
We welcome advice.
We actively seek advice.
We often follow the advice given to us.
The willingness to seek and accept advice is a great indicator of accountability. If you seek it early—before you take action—you will be less likely to get off track. Most wrong actions come about because people are not being held accountable early enough.
Leading yourself well means that you hold yourself to a higher standard of accountability than others do. Why? Because you are held responsible not only for your own actions, but also for those of the people you lead. Leadership is a trust, not a right. For that reason, we must “fix” ourselves earlier than others may be required to. We must always seek to do what’s right, no matter how high we rise or how powerful we become. It’s a struggle we never outgrow. When Harry Truman was thrust into the presidency upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt, Sam Rayhurn gave him some fatherly advice: “From here on out you’re going to have lots of people around you. They’ll try to put a wall around you and cut you off from any ideas but theirs. They’ll tell you what a great man you are, Harry. But you and I both know you ain’t.”
Yesterday I participated in a conference call with board members of an organization who had to step in and hold a leader accountable for wrong actions he had taken. It was a sad experience. He will probably lose his leadership position. He has already lost their respect. If he had only led himself effectively first, the board’s actions would not have been necessary. After the call I thought to myself, When the leader doesn’t inspect himself the people don’t respect him.
Thomas J. Watson, the former chairman of IBM, said, “Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others, as what he does from day to day to lead himself.” How true. The smallest crowd you will ever lead is you—but it’s the most important one. If you do that well, then you will earn the right to lead even bigger crowds.
The Toughest Person to Lead is Always Yourself
Application Exercises
I. How clearly do you see yourself? To get a more objective look at yourself, review your performance from the last year. List all of your major goals and objectives and then mark each as either “achieved” or “not achieved” Now talk to someone you know and respect and tell them you are evaluating a candidate for a job, and show them the list. Ask them what they think based on the “candidates” achievements and failures. How does that persons evaluation jibe with your own?
2. Where do you need to grow? In which of the following areas do you most need to grow: self-discipline, “foIlowership,” or patience? What new task or practice can you take on to develop it? Maybe you should set a recreational goal that will require at least a year’s work, or put off buying something you’ve wanted for a long time. Perhaps you should offer to do a task for a leader whom you find difficult to follow. Or you could consider volunteering; it requires patience, followership, and self-discipline.
3. How well do you take advice? Ask five to ten friends, colleagues, and family members to evaluate you using the levels mentioned in the chapter. Each of the following is worth the number beside it:
1. You don’t want advice
2. You don’t object to advice.
3. You welcome advice.
4. You actively seek advice.
5. You often follow the advice given to you.
Average their scores. If your average is below a 4, you need to improve in this area. Begin enlisting others in your information-gathering process before son make decisions. It you are married, begin with your spouse.
“Leading me!” I answered. “That’s always been my greatest challenge as a leader.”
I think that’s true for all leaders regardless of who they lead and what they accomplish. We sometimes think about accomplished leaders from history and assume that they had it all together. But if we really examine their lives, whether we’re looking at King David. George Washington, or Winston Churchill, we’ll see that they struggled to lead themselves well. That’s why I say that the toughest person to lead is always yourself, it’s like Walt Kelly exclaimed in his Pogo cartoon strip: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Acknowledging that leading myself is a challenge brings back some painful memories. Many of my leadership breakdowns have been personal breakdowns. In a leadership career that has spanned almost four decades, I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but I have experienced only four major leadership crises. And I’m sorry to say that all of them were my fault.
The first occurred in 1970, just two years into my first official leadership position. After two year of work, I had won over many people and there was a lot going on. However, one day I realized that my organization had no direction. Why? Because I lacked the ability to prioritize correctly and bring focus to my leadership. As a young leader, I didn’t yet understand that activity does not necessarily equal accomplishment. As a result, my people, allowing my example, were wandering in the wilderness for sixteen months. In the end, I didn’t really lead them anywhere.
The next crisis came in 1979. At that time I felt pulled in two directions. I had been successful in my second leadership position, but I also realized that if I was going to reach a broader audience, which I felt was the right thing to try to do, I would have to leave the organization I had been a part of for the first twelve years of my career. My uncertainty and the personal changes that I was dealing with negatively impacted the organization I led. I became unfocused, and my vision for the organization became cloudy. My passion and energy also begin to wane. Leaders who aren’t focused aren’t as effective as they could be. As a result, we weren’t moving forward as effectively as we could.
The third occurred in 1991 when I was overloaded with work and my life was out of balance. Because I had been leading my organization successfully for ten years, I thought I could take a few shortcuts to make things easier for me. I made three difficult decisions in rapid succession without doing proper due diligence or taking the time needed to process everyone through them. What a mistake! As a result, the people were not prepared for the decisions—and I was unprepared for their response. The trust that it had taken me ten years to build began to erode. To make matters worse, when the people who questioned my decisions balked at following my lead, I became increasingly impatient. I angrily thought, What is their problem? Why don’t they “get it” and get on with it? Within a few weeks, I realized that the problem wasn’t them. It was me. I ended up having to apologize to everyone for my attitude.
The fourth occurred in 2001 and involved a staff member whom I needed to let go. I’ll tell you more about that in “A Leader’s First Responsibility Is to Define Reality.” The bottom line was that my unwillingness to make difficult decisions cost me many dollars and some key personnel. Once again, I was the source of the problem.
Judge For Yourself
If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that the toughest person to lead is ourselves. Most people don’t need to worry about the competition. Other people aren’t the reason they lose. If they don’t win, it’s because they disqualify themselves.
That’s as true for leaders as it is for anyone else. They are often their own worst enemies. Why is that?
We Don’t See Ourselves as We See Others
My years counseling others taught me something important: people seldom see themselves realistically. Human nature seems to endow us with the ability to size up everybody in the world except ourselves. That’s why in my book Winning with People I start with the Mirror Principle, which advises, “The First Person We Must Examine Is Ourselves.” If you don’t look at yourself realistically, you will never understand where your personal difficulties lie. And if you can’t see them, you won’t be able to lead yourself effectively.
We Are Harder on Others Than We Are on Ourselves
Most people use two totally different sets of criteria for judging themselves versus others. We tend to judge others according to their actions. It’s very cut-and-dried. However, we judge ourselves by our intentions. Even if we do the wrong thing, if we believe our motives were good, we let ourselves off the hook. And we are often willing to do that over and over before requiring ourselves to change.
Keys to Leading Yourself
The truth is that to be successful in any endeavor, we need to learn how to get out of our own way. That’s as true for leaders as it is for anyone else. Because I have known for many years that the toughest person to lead is me, I have taken step help me do that. By practicing the following four thing, I have tried to lead myself well as a prerequisite to leading others:
1. Learn Followership
Bishop Fulton I. Sheen remarked, “Civilization is always in danger when those who have never learned to obey are given the right to command.” Only a leader who has followed well knows how to lead others well. Good leadership requires an understanding of the world that followers live in. Connecting with your people becomes possible because you have walked in their shoes. You know what it means to be under authority and thus have a better sense of how authority should be exercised. In contrast, leader who have never followed well or submitted to authority tend to be prideful, unrealistic, rigid, and autocratic.
If those words describe your leadership, you need to do some soul searching. Arrogant leaders are rarely effective in the long run. They alienate their followers, their colleagues, and their leaders. Learn to submit to another person’s leadership and to follow well, and you will become a more humble—and effective—leader.
2. Develop Self-Discipline
It’s said that one day Frederick the Great of Prussia was walking on the outskirts of Berlin when he encountered a very old man walking ramrod straight in the opposite direction.
“Who are you?” Frederick asked his subject.
“I am a king,” replied the old man.
“A king!” laughed Frederick. “Over what kingdom do you reign?”
“Over myself,” was the proud old man’s reply.
Each of us is “monarch” of our own lives. We are responsible for ruling our actions and decisions. To make consistently good decisions, to take the right action when needed, and to refrain from the wrong actions requires character and self-discipline. To do otherwise is to lose control of ourselves—to do or say things we regret, to miss opportunities we are given, to spend ourselves into debt. As King Solomon remarked, “‘The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”
In “Decision of Character,” British essayist John Foster writes, “A man without decision of character can never be said to belong to himself. He belongs to whatever can make a captive of him.” When we are foolish, we want to conquer the world. When we are wise, we want to conquer ourselves. That begins when we do what we should no matter how we feel about it.
3. Practice Patience
The leaders I know tend to be impatient. They look ahead, think ahead, and want to move ahead And that can be good. Being one step ahead makes you a leader. However, that can also be bad. Being fifty steps ahead could make you a martyr.
Few worthwhile things in life come quickly. There is no such thing as instant greatness or instant maturity. We are used to instant oatmeal, instant coffee, and microwave popcorn. But becoming a leader doesn’t happen overnight. Microwave leaders don’t have any staying power. Leadership is more of a Crock-Pot proposition. It takes time but the end product is worth the wait.
Leaders need to remember that the point of leading is not to cross the finish line first. It’s to take people across the finish line with you. For that reason, leaders most deliberately slow their pace, stay connected to their people, enlist others to help fulfill the vision, and keep people going. You can’t do that if you re running too far ahead of your people.
4. Seek Accountability
People who lead themselves well know a secret: they can’t trust themselves. Good leaders know that power can be seductive, and they understand their own fallibility. To be a leader and deny this is to put yourself in danger.
Over the years, I’ve read about many leaders who failed ethically in their leadership. Can you guess what they had in common? They all thought it could never happen them. There was a false sense of security. They thought they were incapable of ruining their lives and the lives of others.
Learning that was very sobering to me, because I shared the same attitude. I thought I was above such possibilities, and that scared me. At that moment, I made two decisions: First, I will not trust myself. Second, I will become accountable to someone other than myself. I believe those decisions have helped to keep me on track and able to lead myself and others.
Lack of accountability in our personal life will certainly lead to problems in our public life. We saw that time and time again with high-profile CEOs a few years ago. A Chinese proverb says, “When you see a good man, think of emulating him; when you see a bad man, examine your heart.”
Many people feel that accountability is a willingness to explain your actions. I believe that effective accountability begins way before we take action. It starts with getting advice from others. For leaders especially, this often develops in stages:
We don’t want advice.
We don’t object to advice.
We welcome advice.
We actively seek advice.
We often follow the advice given to us.
The willingness to seek and accept advice is a great indicator of accountability. If you seek it early—before you take action—you will be less likely to get off track. Most wrong actions come about because people are not being held accountable early enough.
Leading yourself well means that you hold yourself to a higher standard of accountability than others do. Why? Because you are held responsible not only for your own actions, but also for those of the people you lead. Leadership is a trust, not a right. For that reason, we must “fix” ourselves earlier than others may be required to. We must always seek to do what’s right, no matter how high we rise or how powerful we become. It’s a struggle we never outgrow. When Harry Truman was thrust into the presidency upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt, Sam Rayhurn gave him some fatherly advice: “From here on out you’re going to have lots of people around you. They’ll try to put a wall around you and cut you off from any ideas but theirs. They’ll tell you what a great man you are, Harry. But you and I both know you ain’t.”
Yesterday I participated in a conference call with board members of an organization who had to step in and hold a leader accountable for wrong actions he had taken. It was a sad experience. He will probably lose his leadership position. He has already lost their respect. If he had only led himself effectively first, the board’s actions would not have been necessary. After the call I thought to myself, When the leader doesn’t inspect himself the people don’t respect him.
Thomas J. Watson, the former chairman of IBM, said, “Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others, as what he does from day to day to lead himself.” How true. The smallest crowd you will ever lead is you—but it’s the most important one. If you do that well, then you will earn the right to lead even bigger crowds.
The Toughest Person to Lead is Always Yourself
Application Exercises
I. How clearly do you see yourself? To get a more objective look at yourself, review your performance from the last year. List all of your major goals and objectives and then mark each as either “achieved” or “not achieved” Now talk to someone you know and respect and tell them you are evaluating a candidate for a job, and show them the list. Ask them what they think based on the “candidates” achievements and failures. How does that persons evaluation jibe with your own?
2. Where do you need to grow? In which of the following areas do you most need to grow: self-discipline, “foIlowership,” or patience? What new task or practice can you take on to develop it? Maybe you should set a recreational goal that will require at least a year’s work, or put off buying something you’ve wanted for a long time. Perhaps you should offer to do a task for a leader whom you find difficult to follow. Or you could consider volunteering; it requires patience, followership, and self-discipline.
3. How well do you take advice? Ask five to ten friends, colleagues, and family members to evaluate you using the levels mentioned in the chapter. Each of the following is worth the number beside it:
1. You don’t want advice
2. You don’t object to advice.
3. You welcome advice.
4. You actively seek advice.
5. You often follow the advice given to you.
Average their scores. If your average is below a 4, you need to improve in this area. Begin enlisting others in your information-gathering process before son make decisions. It you are married, begin with your spouse.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Boundaries and Your Self
Sarah heaved a long sigh. She’d been working on major boundary issues in her therapy for a while now. She was seeing progress in resolving responsibility conflicts with her parents, her husband, and her kids. Yet today she introduced a new issue.
“I haven’t told you about this relationship before, though I guess I should have. I have tremendous boundary problems with this woman. She eats too much, and has an attacking tongue. She’s undependable—lets me down all the time. And she’s spent money of mine and hasn’t paid me back in years.”
“Why haven’t you mentioned her before?” I asked.
“Because she’s me,” Sarah replied.
Sarah was echoing the conflict most of us have. We learn that boundaries are biblical. We begin setting limits on others. We begin moving from taking too much responsibility to taking just enough. But how do we begin to set limits on ourselves? As Pogo Possum, cartoonist Walt Kelly’s popular swamp character, says, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
In this chapter, instead of looking at the control and manipulation of others, we’ll be looking at our responsibility to control our own bodies (1 Thess. 4:4). Instead of examining outer boundary conflicts with other people, we will be looking at our own internal boundary conflicts. This can get a little touchy. As the disgruntled country church member told his pastor as he left after the Sunday sermon, “You done stopped preachin’, and you done started meddlin’!”
Instead of this defensive posture, we are much better off to look humbly at ourselves. To ask for feedback from others. To listen to people we trust. And to confess, “I was wrong.”
Our Out-of-Control Soul
Eating
Teresa’s secret shame was becoming more difficult to keep a secret. Her five-foot-four frame could hide a little extra weight, but over the past few months she’d gradually moved into the mid-hundred mark. She hated it. Her dating life, her stamina, and her attitude toward herself were all affected.
She was out of control. In her successful but stressful career as an attorney, cookies and candy were the only place she could go when everything was falling down around her. Twelve-hour days meant lots of isolation, and absolutely nothing filled the void like fatty foods. No wonder they call it comfort food, Teresa would think.
What makes overeating especially painful is that overweight is visible to others. The overweight person feels enormous self-hate and shame about her condition. And, like others who suffer from out-of-control behaviors, the overweight person feels overwhelming shame for her behavior, which drives her away from relationship and back to food.
Both chronic and bingeing overeaters suffer from an internal self-boundary problem. For overeaters, food serves as a false boundary. They might use food to avoid intimacy by gaining weight and becoming less attractive. Or they might binge as a way to get false closeness. For bingers, the might binge as a way to get false closeness. For bingers, the “comfort” from food is less scary than the prospect of real relationships, where boundaries would be necessary.
Money
A now-famous bumper sticker reads, “I can’t be overdrawn—I still have checks left!” People have tremendous problems in many different areas dealing with money, including the following:
• impulse spending
• careless budgeting
• living beyond one’s means
• credit problems
• chronically borrowing from friends
• ineffectual savings plans
• working more to pay all the bills
• enabling others
God intended for money to be a blessing to us and others: “Give, and it will be given to you” (Luke 6:38). In fact, the Bible says that the problem isn’t money, it’s the love of money that is “a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Tim. 6:10).
Most of us would certainly agree that we need to be in control of our finances. Saving money, keeping costs down, and shopping for discounts are all good things. It’s tempting to see money problems as simply a need for more income; however, the problem often isn’t the high cost of living—it’s the cost of high living.
The problem of our financial outgo exceeding our input is a self-boundary issue. When we have difficulty saying no to spending more than we should, we run the risk of becoming someone else’s servant: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” (Prov. 22:7).
Time
Many people feel that their time is out of control. They are “eleventh-hour people,” constantly on the edge of deadlines. Try as they might, they find the day—every day— getting away from them. There just aren’t enough hours to accomplish their tasks. The word early doesn’t seem to be part of their personal experience. Some of the time binds these strugglers deal with are these:
• business meetings
• luncheon appointments
• project deadlines
• church and school activities
• holiday mailings
These people breeze into meetings fifteen minutes late and breathlessly apologize, talking about traffic, overwhelming job responsibilities, or kid emergencies.
People whose time is out of control inconvenience others whether they mean to or not. The problem often stems from one or more of the following causes:
1. Omnipotence. These people have unrealistic, somewhat grandiose expectations of what they can accomplish in a given amount of time. “No problem—I’ll do it” is their motto.
2. Over-responsibility for the feelings of others. They think that leaving a party too early will cause the host to feel abandoned.
3. Lack of realistic anxiety. They live so much in the present that they neglect to plan ahead for traffic, parking the car, or dressing for an outing.
4. Rationalization. They minimize the distress and inconvenience that others must put up with because of their lateness. They think, “They’re my friends—they’ll understand.”
The person with undeveloped time sell-boundaries ends up frustrating not only others, but himself. He ends the day without the sense that a “desire realized is sweet to the soul’ (Prov. 13:19 NASB). Instead, he is left with unrealized desires, half-baked projects, and the realization that tomorrow will begin with him running behind schedule.
Task Completion
A first cousin to the time boundary problem, task completion deals with “finishing well.” Most of us have goals in the love and work areas of life. We may wish to be a veterinarian or a lawyer. We may wish to own our own business or own a home in the country. We may wish to start a Bible study program or an exercise regimen.
We all would like to say about our tasks, whether large or small, what Paul said: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness” (2 Tim. 4:7-8). More eloquent in their simplicity are Jesus’ words on the cross: “It is finished” (John 19:30).
Though they may be great starters, many Christians find themselves unable to be good finishers. For one reason or another, creative ideas don’t pan out. A regular schedule of operations becomes bogged down. Success looms, then is suddenly snatched away.
The problem with many poor finishers lies in one of the following causes:
1. Resistance to structure. Poor finishers feel that submitting to the discipline of a plan is a putdown.
2. Fear of success. Poor finishers are over-concerned that success will cause others to envy and criticize them. Better to shoot themselves in the foot than to lose their buddies.
3. Lack of follow-through. Poor finishers have an aversion to the boring “nuts and bolts” of turning the crank on a project. They are much more excited about birthing the idea, then turning it over to other people to execute it.
4. Distractibility. Poor finishers are unable to focus on a project until it’s done. They have often never developed competent concentration skills.
5. Inability to delay gratification. Poor finishers are unable to work through the pain of a project to experience the satisfaction of a job well done. They want to go directly to the pleasure. They are like children who want to eat dessert before they eat the well-balanced meal.
6. Inability to say no to other pressures. Poor finishers are unable to say no to other people and projects. They don’t have time to finish any job well.
Those with task completion problems often feel like two-year-olds in their favorite toy area. They’ll bang a hammer for a bit, vroom with a toy car, talk to a puppet, and then pick up a book. All in two minutes or less. It’s easy to see the boundary problems inherent in those with task completion problems. Their internal no hasn’t been developed enough to keep them focused on finishing things.
The Tongue
In a therapy group I was leading, a man held the floor for some time. He’d go off on tangents, change the subject, and spend inordinate amounts of time on irrelevant details. He couldn’t seem to get to the point. Other members were spacing out, dozing off, or becoming restless. Just as I was to speak to the man’s struggle with getting to the point, a woman in the group spoke up, saying bluntly, “bill, talk net, willya?”
“Talking net,” putting a net or boundary on their words, can be a struggle for many. How we use language can deeply affect the quality of our relationships. The tongue can be a source of both blessing and curse (James 3:9-10). It can be a blessing when we use our tongue to empathize, identify, encourage, confront, and exhort others. It can be a curse when we use it to:
• Talk nonstop to hide from intimacy
• Dominate conversations to control others
• Gossip sarcastic remarks, expressing indirect hostility
• Threaten someone, expressing direct hostility
• Flatter, instead of authentically praise
• Seduce
Many people who have difficulty setting verbal boundaries on themselves aren’t really aware of their problem. They are often genuinely surprised when a friend says to them, “Sometimes it seems like you interpret my commas as periods.”
I knew a woman who was desperately afraid that others would get to know her. She asked questions and talked quickly so that no one could turn the conversation toward her. She had only one problem: she had to take breaths to continue talking, and the breath created a space for someone else to say something. The woman resolved her problem, however, in an ingenious way; she drew her breaths in the middle of her sentences, rather than at the end. That kept people sufficiently off-balance so that she was rarely interrupted. An effective strategy, with only one problem: she had to keep finding new people to talk to. After a few rounds with her, people disappeared.
The Scriptures tell us to treat our words carefully: “When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise” (Prov. 10:19). “A man of knowledge uses words with restraint” (Prov. 17:27). According to The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for “restrain” refers to “the free action of holding back something or someone. The actor has the power over the object.” It’s a boundary-laden term. We have the power to set boundaries on what comes out of our mouths.
When we can’t hold back, or set boundaries, on what comes from our lips, our words are in charge—not us. But we are still responsible for those words. Our words do not come from somewhere outside of us, as if we were a ventriloquist’s dummy. They are the product of our hearts. Our saying, “I didn’t mean that,” is probably better translated, “I didn’t want you to know I thought that about you.” We need to take responsibility for our words. “But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken” (Matt. 12:36).
Sexuality
As Christians are finding more safe places in the church to be honest about spiritual and emotional conflicts, sexual problems, especially for men, have emerged as a major issue. Such problems include compulsive masturbation, compulsive heterosexual or homosexual relationships, pornography, prostitution, exhibitionism, voyeurism, obscene phone calls, indecent liberties, child molestation, incest, and rape.
The individual caught up in an out-of-control sexual behavior generally feels deeply isolated and shameful. This keeps what is broken in the soul” sequestered in the darkness—out of the light of relationship with God and darkness—out of the light of relationship with God and others, where there can be neither help nor resolution. His sexuality takes on a life of its own, unreal and fantasy-driven. One man described it as a “not-me experience.” It was for him, as if the real him was watching his sexual actions from across the room. Others may feel so dead and detached that sexuality is the only way they feel alive.
The problem, however, is that, as in most internal boundary conflicts, sexual boundarylessness becomes a tyrant, demanding and insatiable. No matter how many orgasms are reached, the desire only deepens, and the inability to say no to one’s lusts drives one deeper into despair and hopelessness.
Alcohol and Substance Abuse
Probably the clearest examples of internal boundary problems, alcohol problems, alcohol and drug dependencies create devastation in the lives of addicts. Divorce, job loss, financial havoc, medical problems, and death are the fruits of the inability to set limits in these areas.
Most tragic are the increasingly younger children who are experimenting with drugs. Drug addiction is difficult for adults, who have some semblance of character and boundaries; for the child whose boundaries are delicate and forming, the results are often lifelong and debilitating.
Why Doesn’t My “No” Work?
“I’m throwing my no away,” Burt told me. “It works fine for setting limits on other people, but every time I try to complete my tasks on time, it breaks down. Where can I trade it in?”
Where indeed? As you read about the out-of-control areas above, you may have felt defeated and frustrated with yourself. You probably could identify with one or more of the problem areas, and you probably are no stranger to the discouragement of not having mature boundaries in these internal areas. What’s the problem? Why doesn’t our no work on ourselves?
There are at least three reasons for this.
1. We are our own worst enemies. An external problem is easier to deal with than an internal one. When we switch our focus from setting limits on other people to setting limits on ourselves, we make a major shift in responsibility. Previously, we were only responsible to, not for, the other party. Now we have a great deal more involvement—we are the other party. We are responsible for ourselves.
When you are around a critical person, the kind who finds fault with everything, you can set limits on your exposure to this person’s constant criticism. You can change subjects, rooms, houses, or continents. You can leave. But what if this critical person is in your own head? What if you are the person with the problem? What if you have met the enemy, and he is you?
2. We withdraw from relationship when we most need it. Jessica came to me for treatment of an eating disorder. She was thirty years old, and she had been bingeing since she was a teenager. I asked her about her previous attempts to solve this internal boundary problem.
“I try to work out and eat right,” she said. “But I always fall back.”
“Who do you talk to about this?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Jessica looked confused.
“Who do you tell about your eating problem when you can’t take it anymore?”
Tears welled up in Jessica’s eyes. “You’re asking too much. This is a private problem. Can’t I do this without anyone knowing?”
Since the Fall, our instincts have been to withdraw from relationship when we’re in trouble, when we most need other people. (Remember how Adam and Eve hid from God after they ate the forbidden fruit?) Due to our lack of security, our loss of grace, our shame, and our pride, we turn inward, rather than outward, when we’re in trouble. And that’s a problem. As the Preacher in Ecclesiastes puts it: “Woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help” (4:10 NRSV).
Such withdrawal happens in our hospital program time after time. Hurting people will begin to make attachments with staff or other patients. For the first time, they begin coming forth with their need for connection. Like a rose lifting its petals after a hard rain, they begin to relate and connect in the light of the grace of God and his people.
Then an unexpected difficulty will occur. Sometimes their depression will temporarily worsen as their pain inside is exposed. Sometimes traumatic memories will surface. Sometimes severe conflict will occur with family members. Instead of bringing these painful and frightening feelings and problems to their newfound relationships, these people will often retreat to their rooms to work out the problem. They’ll spend several hours or a day doing everything to get back under control. They’ll talk positively to themselves or read Scriptures compulsively to try to make themselves “feel better.”
It is only when this attempt at a solution breaks down that they finally realize that these spiritual pains and burdens need to be brought out of themselves to the body of Christ. To the isolated person, nothing feels more frightening, unsafe, or unwise. Such a person needs to feel very secure before she will risk taking her spiritual and emotional problems to other people.
And yet the Bible doesn’t recognize any other answer to our problems. Grace must come from the outside of ourselves to be useful and healing. Just as the branch withers without the vine (John 15:1-6), we can sustain neither life without the vine (John 15:1-6), we can sustain neither life nor emotional repair without bonding to God and others. God and his people are the fuel, the energy source from any problem is addressed. We need to be “joined and held together by every supporting ligament” (Eph. 4:16) of the body of Christ to heal and to grow up.
Whether our boundary issue is food, substances, sex, time, projects, the tongue, or money, we can’t solve it in a vacuum. If we could, we would. But the more we isolate ourselves, the harder our struggle becomes. Just like an untreated cancer can become life-threatening in a short time, self-boundary problems will worsen with increased aloneness.
3. We try to use willpower to solve our boundary problems. “I’ve got it solved!” Pete was excited about his newfound victory over his overspending. A dedicated Christian and a leader in his church, he was intensely concerned about his out-of-control finances. “I made a vow to God and myself that I’ll never spend beyond my budget again! It’s so simple, but so true!”
Not wanting to burst Pete’s bubble, I adopted a wait-and-see attitude. I didn’t have to wait long. The next week he came in, feeling discouraged and hopeless.
“I just couldn’t stop myself,” he lamented. “I went out and bought sports equipment; then my wife and I purchased new furniture. It was just what we needed. The price was right. The only problem was that we couldn’t afford it. I guess I’m hopeless.”
Pete wasn’t hopeless, but his philosophy, popular among Christians, certainly was. He had been trying to use willpower to solve his boundary problems, probably the most common approach to out-of-control behavior.
The willpower approach is simple. Whatever the problem behavior is, just stop doing it. In other words, “just say no.” Imperatives such as “Choose to stop,” “Decide to say no,” and “Make a commitment to never do it again” abound in this approach.
The problem with this approach is that it makes an idol out of the will, something God never intended. Just as our hearts and minds are distorted by the Fall, so is our power to make right decisions. Will is only strengthened by relationship; we can’t make commitments alone. God told Moses to encourage and strengthen Joshua (Deut. 3:28); he didn’t tell Moses to tell Joshua to “just say no.”
If we depend on willpower alone, we are guaranteed to fail. We are denying the power of the relationship promised in the cross. If all we need is our will to overcome evil, we certainly don’t need a Savior (1 Cor. 1:17). The truth is, willpower alone is useless against self-boundary struggles:
Why do you submit to [the world’s] rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. (Col. 2:20-23)
The King James Bible translates the Greek word for “self-imposed worship” as “will-worship.” In other words, these self-denying practices that appear so spiritual don’t stop stop out-of-control behavior. The boundaryless part of the soul simply becomes more resentful under the domination of the will—and it rebels. Especially after we make statements as, “I will never” and “I will always,” we act out with a vengeance. Jessica’s indulgence in food, Pete’s indulgence in money, someone else’s indulgence in foolish or slanderous conversation, or still another’s determination never to be a project again will not be healed by “white-knuckling it.”
Establishing Boundaries with Yourself
Learning to be mature in self-boundaries is not easy. Many obstacles hinder our progress; however, God desires our maturity and self-control even more than we do. He’s on our team as an exhorter, encourager, and implorer (1 Thess. 2:11—12). One way to begin developing limits on out-of-control behavior is to apply a modified version of the boundary checklist we used in Chapter 8:
1. What are the symptoms? Look at the destructive fruit you may be exhibiting by not being able to say no to yourself. You may be experiencing depression, anxiety, panic, phobias, rage, relationship struggles, isolation, work problems, or psychosomatic problems.
All of these symptoms can be related to a difficulty in setting limits on your own behavior. Use them as a road map to begin identifying the particular boundary problem you’re having.
2. What are the roots? Identifying the causes of your self-boundary problems will assist you in understanding your own contribution to the problem (how you have sinned), your developmental injuries (how you have been sinned against), and the significant relationships that may have contributed to the problem.
Some possible roots of self-boundary conflicts include:
Lack of training. Some people never learned to accept its, to pay the consequences of their actions, or to delay gratification when they were growing up. For example, they may never have experienced any consequences for dawdling as a child.
Rewarded destructiveness. People who come from families which the mom or dad was an alcoholic may have learned that out-of-control behavior brings relationship. The family came together when the alcoholic member drank.
Distorted need. Some boundary problems are legitimate, God-given needs in disguise. God gave us sexual desire both to reproduce ourselves and to enjoy our spouses. The pornography addict has diverted this good desire; he feels real and alive only when acting out.
Fear of relationship. People really want to be loved but their out-of-control behavior (i.e., overeating, overworking) keeps others away. Some people use their tongues to keep other people at bay.
Unmet emotional hungers. We all need love during the first few years of life. If we don’t receive this love, we hunger for it for the rest of our lives. This hunger for love is so powerful that when we don’t find it in relationships with other people, we look for it in other places, such as in food, in work, in sexual activity, or in spending money.
Being under the law. Many Christians raised in legalistic environments were not permitted to make decisions for themselves. When they try to make their own decisions, they feel guilty. This guilt forces them to rebel in destructive ways. Food addictions and compulsive spending are often reactions against strict
Covering emotional hurt. People who are injured emotionally, who were neglected or abused as children, disguise their pain by overeating, drinking too much, or working too much. They may abuse substances to distract from the real pain of being unloved, unwanted, and alone. If they were to stop using these disguises, their isolation would be intolerable.
3. What is the boundary conflict? Take a look at your particular self-boundary problems in relation to eating, money, time, task completion, the tongue, sexuality, alcohol and substance abuse. These seven areas aren’t exhaustive, though they cover a great deal of territory. Ask God for insight into what other areas of your life are out of God for insight into what other areas of your life are out of control.
4. Who needs to take ownership? At this point, take the painful step of taking responsibility for your out-of-control behavior. The behavior pattern may be directly traceable to family problems, neglect, abuse, or trauma. In other words, our boundary conflicts may not be all our fault. They are, however, our responsibility.
5. What do you need? It’s useless to try to deal with your boundary conflicts with yourself until you’re actively developing safe, trusting, grace-and-truth relationships with others. You are severely hampered in gaining either insight into or control over yourself when you are disconnected from God’s source of spiritual and emotional fuel.
Plugging in to other people is often frustrating for “do-it-yourself” people who would like a how-to manual for solving out-of-control behaviors just as they would buy to teach themselves piano, plumbing, or golf. They wish to get this boundary setting business over with quickly.
The problem is that many people with self-boundary struggle are also quite isolated from deep relationships. They have no “rootedness” in God or others (Eph. 3:17). Thus, they have to take what they think are steps backward to learn to connect with others. Connecting with people is a time consuming, risky, and painful process. Finding the right people, group, or church is hard enough, but after admitting your need for others may be even more difficult.
Do-it-yourself people will often fall back into a cognitive willpower approach, simply because it’s not as slow or as risky. They’ll often say things like, “Attachment is not what I want. I have an out-of-control behavior, and I need relief from the pain!” Though we can certainly understand their dilemma, they’re heading toward another quick-fix dead end. Symptomatic relief—trying to solve a problem by only dealing with the symptoms—generally leads to more symptoms. Jesus described this process in a parable:
When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, “I will return to the house I left.” When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. (Luke 11:24-26)
Evil can take over the empty house of our souls. Even when our lives seem to be in order, isolation guarantees spiritual vulnerability. It’s only when our house is full of the love of God and others that we can resist the wiles of the Devil. Plugging in is neither an option, nor a luxury; it is a spiritual and emotional life-and-death issue.
6. How do I begin? Once you have identified your boundary problem and owned it, you can do something about it. Here are some ways to begin practicing setting boundaries on yourself.
Address your real need. Often, out-of-control patterns disguise a need for something else. You need to address the underlying need before you can deal with the out-of-control behavior. For example, impulsive eaters may discover that food is a way to stay separate and safe from romantic and sexual intimacy. Their fear of being faced with those kinds of emotionally laden situations may cause them to use food as a boundary. As their internal boundaries with the opposite sex become firmer, they can give up their destructive food boundary. They learn to ask for help for the real problem— not just for the symptomatic problem.
Allow yourself to fail. Addressing your real need is no guarantee that your out-of-control behavior will disappear. Many people who address the real issue underneath a self-boundary problem are often disappointed that the problem keeps recurring. They think, “Well, I joined a support group at church, but I still have problems being on time, or viewing pornography, or spending money, or talking out of turn. Was all this for naught?”
No. The recurrence of destructive patterns is evidence of God’s sanctifying, maturing, and preparing us for eternity. We need to continue to practice to learn things. The same process that we use to learn to drive a car, swim, or learn a foreign language is the one we use for learning better self-boundaries.
We need to embrace failure instead of trying to avoid it. Those people who spend their lives trying to avoid failure are also eluding maturity. We are drawn to Jesus because he learned obedience from what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). People who are growing up are also drawn to individuals bear battle scars, worry furrows, and tear marks on their faces. Their lessons can be trusted, much more than the unlined faces of those who have never failed—and so have never truly lived.
Listen to empathic feedback from others. As you fail in setting boundaries on yourself, you need others who will let you know about it in a caring way. Many times, you are unaware of your own failures. Sometimes you may not truly understand the extent of the damage your lack of boundaries causes in the lives of those you care about. Other believers can provide perspective and support.
Keith had a difficult time returning money to others when they had loaned it to him. He wasn’t broke. He wasn’t selfish. He was just forgetful. He had little awareness of the discomfort he caused those who lent him money.
One afternoon a friend who had loaned him money several months before dropped by his office.
Keith,” his friend said, “Several times I’ve asked you about the money I lent you. I still haven’t heard from you. I don’t think you’re intentionally ignoring my requests. At the same time I wanted to let you know that your forgetfulness has been hard on me. I had to cancel a vacation because I didn’t have the money. Your forgetfulness is hurting me, and it’s hurting our friendship.”
Keith was astonished. He hadn’t had a clue that such a little thing to him might mean so much to a close friend. Deeply remorseful over the loss his friend had suffered, he wrote a check immediately.
In a non-condemning, non-nagging manner, Keith’s friend had helped him become more aware of his self-boundary problem. He used the empathy Keith felt for him as a close friend. True godly remorse for causing his friend pain was a powerful motivator for Keith to become more responsible. When others in our support system let us know responsible. When others in our support system let us know how our lack of self-boundaries hurts them, we are motivated by love, not by fear.
Biblically based support groups, which provide empathy and clear feedback, keep people responsible by letting them see the effect their actions have on another. When one member tells another, “Your uncontrolled behavior makes me want to stay away from you. I don’t feel that I can trust you when you act like that,” the out-of-control person isn’t being parented or policed. He is hearing truth in love from a peer. He’s hearing how what he does helps or damages those he loves. This kind of confrontation builds an empathy-based morality, a love-based self-control.
Welcome consequences as a teacher. Learning about sowing and reaping is valuable. It teaches us that we suffer losses when we aren’t responsible. The impulsive overeater has medical and social difficulties. The overspender faces bankruptcy court. The chronically late person misses plane flights and important meetings, and loses friendships. The procrastinator faces losses of promotions and bonuses. And on and on.
We need to enter God’s training school of learning to suffer for our irresponsibility. Not all suffering should be embraced; however, when our own lack of love or responsibility causes the suffering, pain becomes our teacher.
Learning how to develop better self-boundaries is an orderly process. First, we are confronted about the destructiveness of our behavior by others. Then consequences will follow if we don’t heed the feedback. Words precede actions and give us a chance to turn from our destructiveness before we have to suffer.
God doesn’t glory in our suffering. Just as a loving father’s heart breaks when he sees his children in pain, God wants to spare us pain. But when his words and the feedback of his other children don’t reach us, consequences are the of his other children don’t reach us, consequences are the only way to keep us from further damage. God is like the parent who warns his teenager that drinking will cause a loss will have bad consequences for you.” Then, if it’s not heeded, car privileges are yanked. This painful consequence prevents a possible serious catastrophe: a drunk-driving accident.
Surround yourself with people who are loving and supportive. As you hear feedback and suffer consequences, maintain close contact with your support network. Your difficulties are too much to bear alone. You need others who will be loving and supportive, but who will not rescue.
Generally speaking, friends of people with self-boundary problems make one of two errors:
(1) They become critical and parental. When the person has failed, they adopt an “I told you so” attitude, or say things like, “Now, what did you learn from your experience?” This encourages the person to either look elsewhere for a friend (no one needs more than two parents), or simply avoid the criticism, instead of learning from consequences. “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently” (Gal. 6:1).
(2) They become rescuers. They give in to their impulse to save the person from suffering. They call the boss and tell them their spouse was sick when he or she was drunk. They lend more money when they shouldn’t. They hold up the entire dinner for the latecomer, instead of going ahead with the meal.
Rescuing someone is not loving them. God’s love lets people experience consequences. Rescuers hope that by once again bailing out the out-of-control person, they’ll reap a loving, responsible person. They hope to control the other person.
It’s far better to be empathic, but at the same time refuse to be a safety net: “I’m sorry you lost another job this year, but I won’t lend you any more money until you’ve paid back the other loan. However, I’m available to talk to for support.” This approach will show people how serious you are about developing self-boundaries. The sincere searcher will value this approach and will take you up on your offer of support. The manipulator will resent the limits and quickly look for an easier touch somewhere else.
This five-point formula for developing self-boundaries is cyclical. That is, as you deal with real needs, fail, get empathic feedback, suffer consequences, and are restored, you build stronger internal boundaries each time. As you stay with your goal and with the right people, you will build a sense of self-restraint that can truly become part of your character for life.
If You Are a Victim
Establishing boundaries for yourself is always hard. It will be especially difficult if your boundaries were severely violated in childhood. No one who has avoided childhood through victimization can truly understand what these individuals go through. Of all the injuries that can be endured, this type causes severe spiritual and emotional damage.
A victim is a person who has, while in a helpless state, been injured by the exploitation of another. Some victimization is verbal, some is physical, some is sexual, and some is satanically ritualistic. All cause extreme damage to the character structure of a child, who then grows up to adulthood with spiritual, emotional, and cognitive distortions. In each case, however, three factors remain constant: helplessness, injury, and exploitation.
Some results of victimization are these:
• depression
• compulsive disorders
• impulsive disorders
• isolation
• inability to trust others
• inability to form close attachments
• inability to set limits
• poor judgment in relationships
• further exploitation in relationships
• deep sense of pervasive badness
• shame
• guilt
• chaotic lifestyle
• sense of meaninglessness and purposelessness
• unexplainable terror and panic attacks
• phobias
• rage attacks
• suicidal feelings and thoughts
Victimization has long-lasting and far-reaching effects on the lives of adult survivors. Healing for victims is difficult because their developmental processes have been damaged or interrupted by abuse. The most primary damage done is the victim loses a sense of trust. Trust, the ability to depend on ourselves and others in times of need, is a basic spiritual and emotional survival need. We need to be able to trust our own perceptions of reality and to be able to let significant people matter to us.
Our ability to trust ourselves is based on our experience of others as trustworthy. People who are “like a tree planted by streams of water” (Ps. 1:3) feel firm because of the by streams of love coming from God and others in their life.
Victims often lose a sense of trust because the perpetrator was someone they knew as children, someone who was important to them. When the relationship became damaging to them, their sense of trust became broken.
Another damaging effect of abuse or molestation is the destruction of a sense of ownership over the victim’s soul. In fact, victims often feel that they are public property—that their resources, body, and time should be available to others just for the asking.
Another injury due to victimization is a deep, pervasive sense of being “all-bad,” wrong, dirty, or shameful. No their affirming others are of their loveableness and their attributes, victims are convinced that, underneath it all, there is no good inside themselves. Because of the severity of their injuries, many victims have over-permeable boundaries. They take on badness that isn’t theirs. They begin believing that the way they were treated is the way they should be treated. Many victims think that, since they were they were bad or evil thousands of times, it certainly must be true.
Boundaries as an Aid to the Victim
Boundary work as described in this book can be extremely helpful in moving victims toward restoration and healing. However, in many cases the severe nature of the need is such that the victim will be unable to set boundaries without professional help. We strongly urge abuse victims to seek out a counselor who can guide them in establishing and maintaining appropriate boundaries.
“I haven’t told you about this relationship before, though I guess I should have. I have tremendous boundary problems with this woman. She eats too much, and has an attacking tongue. She’s undependable—lets me down all the time. And she’s spent money of mine and hasn’t paid me back in years.”
“Why haven’t you mentioned her before?” I asked.
“Because she’s me,” Sarah replied.
Sarah was echoing the conflict most of us have. We learn that boundaries are biblical. We begin setting limits on others. We begin moving from taking too much responsibility to taking just enough. But how do we begin to set limits on ourselves? As Pogo Possum, cartoonist Walt Kelly’s popular swamp character, says, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
In this chapter, instead of looking at the control and manipulation of others, we’ll be looking at our responsibility to control our own bodies (1 Thess. 4:4). Instead of examining outer boundary conflicts with other people, we will be looking at our own internal boundary conflicts. This can get a little touchy. As the disgruntled country church member told his pastor as he left after the Sunday sermon, “You done stopped preachin’, and you done started meddlin’!”
Instead of this defensive posture, we are much better off to look humbly at ourselves. To ask for feedback from others. To listen to people we trust. And to confess, “I was wrong.”
Our Out-of-Control Soul
Eating
Teresa’s secret shame was becoming more difficult to keep a secret. Her five-foot-four frame could hide a little extra weight, but over the past few months she’d gradually moved into the mid-hundred mark. She hated it. Her dating life, her stamina, and her attitude toward herself were all affected.
She was out of control. In her successful but stressful career as an attorney, cookies and candy were the only place she could go when everything was falling down around her. Twelve-hour days meant lots of isolation, and absolutely nothing filled the void like fatty foods. No wonder they call it comfort food, Teresa would think.
What makes overeating especially painful is that overweight is visible to others. The overweight person feels enormous self-hate and shame about her condition. And, like others who suffer from out-of-control behaviors, the overweight person feels overwhelming shame for her behavior, which drives her away from relationship and back to food.
Both chronic and bingeing overeaters suffer from an internal self-boundary problem. For overeaters, food serves as a false boundary. They might use food to avoid intimacy by gaining weight and becoming less attractive. Or they might binge as a way to get false closeness. For bingers, the might binge as a way to get false closeness. For bingers, the “comfort” from food is less scary than the prospect of real relationships, where boundaries would be necessary.
Money
A now-famous bumper sticker reads, “I can’t be overdrawn—I still have checks left!” People have tremendous problems in many different areas dealing with money, including the following:
• impulse spending
• careless budgeting
• living beyond one’s means
• credit problems
• chronically borrowing from friends
• ineffectual savings plans
• working more to pay all the bills
• enabling others
God intended for money to be a blessing to us and others: “Give, and it will be given to you” (Luke 6:38). In fact, the Bible says that the problem isn’t money, it’s the love of money that is “a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Tim. 6:10).
Most of us would certainly agree that we need to be in control of our finances. Saving money, keeping costs down, and shopping for discounts are all good things. It’s tempting to see money problems as simply a need for more income; however, the problem often isn’t the high cost of living—it’s the cost of high living.
The problem of our financial outgo exceeding our input is a self-boundary issue. When we have difficulty saying no to spending more than we should, we run the risk of becoming someone else’s servant: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” (Prov. 22:7).
Time
Many people feel that their time is out of control. They are “eleventh-hour people,” constantly on the edge of deadlines. Try as they might, they find the day—every day— getting away from them. There just aren’t enough hours to accomplish their tasks. The word early doesn’t seem to be part of their personal experience. Some of the time binds these strugglers deal with are these:
• business meetings
• luncheon appointments
• project deadlines
• church and school activities
• holiday mailings
These people breeze into meetings fifteen minutes late and breathlessly apologize, talking about traffic, overwhelming job responsibilities, or kid emergencies.
People whose time is out of control inconvenience others whether they mean to or not. The problem often stems from one or more of the following causes:
1. Omnipotence. These people have unrealistic, somewhat grandiose expectations of what they can accomplish in a given amount of time. “No problem—I’ll do it” is their motto.
2. Over-responsibility for the feelings of others. They think that leaving a party too early will cause the host to feel abandoned.
3. Lack of realistic anxiety. They live so much in the present that they neglect to plan ahead for traffic, parking the car, or dressing for an outing.
4. Rationalization. They minimize the distress and inconvenience that others must put up with because of their lateness. They think, “They’re my friends—they’ll understand.”
The person with undeveloped time sell-boundaries ends up frustrating not only others, but himself. He ends the day without the sense that a “desire realized is sweet to the soul’ (Prov. 13:19 NASB). Instead, he is left with unrealized desires, half-baked projects, and the realization that tomorrow will begin with him running behind schedule.
Task Completion
A first cousin to the time boundary problem, task completion deals with “finishing well.” Most of us have goals in the love and work areas of life. We may wish to be a veterinarian or a lawyer. We may wish to own our own business or own a home in the country. We may wish to start a Bible study program or an exercise regimen.
We all would like to say about our tasks, whether large or small, what Paul said: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness” (2 Tim. 4:7-8). More eloquent in their simplicity are Jesus’ words on the cross: “It is finished” (John 19:30).
Though they may be great starters, many Christians find themselves unable to be good finishers. For one reason or another, creative ideas don’t pan out. A regular schedule of operations becomes bogged down. Success looms, then is suddenly snatched away.
The problem with many poor finishers lies in one of the following causes:
1. Resistance to structure. Poor finishers feel that submitting to the discipline of a plan is a putdown.
2. Fear of success. Poor finishers are over-concerned that success will cause others to envy and criticize them. Better to shoot themselves in the foot than to lose their buddies.
3. Lack of follow-through. Poor finishers have an aversion to the boring “nuts and bolts” of turning the crank on a project. They are much more excited about birthing the idea, then turning it over to other people to execute it.
4. Distractibility. Poor finishers are unable to focus on a project until it’s done. They have often never developed competent concentration skills.
5. Inability to delay gratification. Poor finishers are unable to work through the pain of a project to experience the satisfaction of a job well done. They want to go directly to the pleasure. They are like children who want to eat dessert before they eat the well-balanced meal.
6. Inability to say no to other pressures. Poor finishers are unable to say no to other people and projects. They don’t have time to finish any job well.
Those with task completion problems often feel like two-year-olds in their favorite toy area. They’ll bang a hammer for a bit, vroom with a toy car, talk to a puppet, and then pick up a book. All in two minutes or less. It’s easy to see the boundary problems inherent in those with task completion problems. Their internal no hasn’t been developed enough to keep them focused on finishing things.
The Tongue
In a therapy group I was leading, a man held the floor for some time. He’d go off on tangents, change the subject, and spend inordinate amounts of time on irrelevant details. He couldn’t seem to get to the point. Other members were spacing out, dozing off, or becoming restless. Just as I was to speak to the man’s struggle with getting to the point, a woman in the group spoke up, saying bluntly, “bill, talk net, willya?”
“Talking net,” putting a net or boundary on their words, can be a struggle for many. How we use language can deeply affect the quality of our relationships. The tongue can be a source of both blessing and curse (James 3:9-10). It can be a blessing when we use our tongue to empathize, identify, encourage, confront, and exhort others. It can be a curse when we use it to:
• Talk nonstop to hide from intimacy
• Dominate conversations to control others
• Gossip sarcastic remarks, expressing indirect hostility
• Threaten someone, expressing direct hostility
• Flatter, instead of authentically praise
• Seduce
Many people who have difficulty setting verbal boundaries on themselves aren’t really aware of their problem. They are often genuinely surprised when a friend says to them, “Sometimes it seems like you interpret my commas as periods.”
I knew a woman who was desperately afraid that others would get to know her. She asked questions and talked quickly so that no one could turn the conversation toward her. She had only one problem: she had to take breaths to continue talking, and the breath created a space for someone else to say something. The woman resolved her problem, however, in an ingenious way; she drew her breaths in the middle of her sentences, rather than at the end. That kept people sufficiently off-balance so that she was rarely interrupted. An effective strategy, with only one problem: she had to keep finding new people to talk to. After a few rounds with her, people disappeared.
The Scriptures tell us to treat our words carefully: “When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise” (Prov. 10:19). “A man of knowledge uses words with restraint” (Prov. 17:27). According to The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for “restrain” refers to “the free action of holding back something or someone. The actor has the power over the object.” It’s a boundary-laden term. We have the power to set boundaries on what comes out of our mouths.
When we can’t hold back, or set boundaries, on what comes from our lips, our words are in charge—not us. But we are still responsible for those words. Our words do not come from somewhere outside of us, as if we were a ventriloquist’s dummy. They are the product of our hearts. Our saying, “I didn’t mean that,” is probably better translated, “I didn’t want you to know I thought that about you.” We need to take responsibility for our words. “But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken” (Matt. 12:36).
Sexuality
As Christians are finding more safe places in the church to be honest about spiritual and emotional conflicts, sexual problems, especially for men, have emerged as a major issue. Such problems include compulsive masturbation, compulsive heterosexual or homosexual relationships, pornography, prostitution, exhibitionism, voyeurism, obscene phone calls, indecent liberties, child molestation, incest, and rape.
The individual caught up in an out-of-control sexual behavior generally feels deeply isolated and shameful. This keeps what is broken in the soul” sequestered in the darkness—out of the light of relationship with God and darkness—out of the light of relationship with God and others, where there can be neither help nor resolution. His sexuality takes on a life of its own, unreal and fantasy-driven. One man described it as a “not-me experience.” It was for him, as if the real him was watching his sexual actions from across the room. Others may feel so dead and detached that sexuality is the only way they feel alive.
The problem, however, is that, as in most internal boundary conflicts, sexual boundarylessness becomes a tyrant, demanding and insatiable. No matter how many orgasms are reached, the desire only deepens, and the inability to say no to one’s lusts drives one deeper into despair and hopelessness.
Alcohol and Substance Abuse
Probably the clearest examples of internal boundary problems, alcohol problems, alcohol and drug dependencies create devastation in the lives of addicts. Divorce, job loss, financial havoc, medical problems, and death are the fruits of the inability to set limits in these areas.
Most tragic are the increasingly younger children who are experimenting with drugs. Drug addiction is difficult for adults, who have some semblance of character and boundaries; for the child whose boundaries are delicate and forming, the results are often lifelong and debilitating.
Why Doesn’t My “No” Work?
“I’m throwing my no away,” Burt told me. “It works fine for setting limits on other people, but every time I try to complete my tasks on time, it breaks down. Where can I trade it in?”
Where indeed? As you read about the out-of-control areas above, you may have felt defeated and frustrated with yourself. You probably could identify with one or more of the problem areas, and you probably are no stranger to the discouragement of not having mature boundaries in these internal areas. What’s the problem? Why doesn’t our no work on ourselves?
There are at least three reasons for this.
1. We are our own worst enemies. An external problem is easier to deal with than an internal one. When we switch our focus from setting limits on other people to setting limits on ourselves, we make a major shift in responsibility. Previously, we were only responsible to, not for, the other party. Now we have a great deal more involvement—we are the other party. We are responsible for ourselves.
When you are around a critical person, the kind who finds fault with everything, you can set limits on your exposure to this person’s constant criticism. You can change subjects, rooms, houses, or continents. You can leave. But what if this critical person is in your own head? What if you are the person with the problem? What if you have met the enemy, and he is you?
2. We withdraw from relationship when we most need it. Jessica came to me for treatment of an eating disorder. She was thirty years old, and she had been bingeing since she was a teenager. I asked her about her previous attempts to solve this internal boundary problem.
“I try to work out and eat right,” she said. “But I always fall back.”
“Who do you talk to about this?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Jessica looked confused.
“Who do you tell about your eating problem when you can’t take it anymore?”
Tears welled up in Jessica’s eyes. “You’re asking too much. This is a private problem. Can’t I do this without anyone knowing?”
Since the Fall, our instincts have been to withdraw from relationship when we’re in trouble, when we most need other people. (Remember how Adam and Eve hid from God after they ate the forbidden fruit?) Due to our lack of security, our loss of grace, our shame, and our pride, we turn inward, rather than outward, when we’re in trouble. And that’s a problem. As the Preacher in Ecclesiastes puts it: “Woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help” (4:10 NRSV).
Such withdrawal happens in our hospital program time after time. Hurting people will begin to make attachments with staff or other patients. For the first time, they begin coming forth with their need for connection. Like a rose lifting its petals after a hard rain, they begin to relate and connect in the light of the grace of God and his people.
Then an unexpected difficulty will occur. Sometimes their depression will temporarily worsen as their pain inside is exposed. Sometimes traumatic memories will surface. Sometimes severe conflict will occur with family members. Instead of bringing these painful and frightening feelings and problems to their newfound relationships, these people will often retreat to their rooms to work out the problem. They’ll spend several hours or a day doing everything to get back under control. They’ll talk positively to themselves or read Scriptures compulsively to try to make themselves “feel better.”
It is only when this attempt at a solution breaks down that they finally realize that these spiritual pains and burdens need to be brought out of themselves to the body of Christ. To the isolated person, nothing feels more frightening, unsafe, or unwise. Such a person needs to feel very secure before she will risk taking her spiritual and emotional problems to other people.
And yet the Bible doesn’t recognize any other answer to our problems. Grace must come from the outside of ourselves to be useful and healing. Just as the branch withers without the vine (John 15:1-6), we can sustain neither life without the vine (John 15:1-6), we can sustain neither life nor emotional repair without bonding to God and others. God and his people are the fuel, the energy source from any problem is addressed. We need to be “joined and held together by every supporting ligament” (Eph. 4:16) of the body of Christ to heal and to grow up.
Whether our boundary issue is food, substances, sex, time, projects, the tongue, or money, we can’t solve it in a vacuum. If we could, we would. But the more we isolate ourselves, the harder our struggle becomes. Just like an untreated cancer can become life-threatening in a short time, self-boundary problems will worsen with increased aloneness.
3. We try to use willpower to solve our boundary problems. “I’ve got it solved!” Pete was excited about his newfound victory over his overspending. A dedicated Christian and a leader in his church, he was intensely concerned about his out-of-control finances. “I made a vow to God and myself that I’ll never spend beyond my budget again! It’s so simple, but so true!”
Not wanting to burst Pete’s bubble, I adopted a wait-and-see attitude. I didn’t have to wait long. The next week he came in, feeling discouraged and hopeless.
“I just couldn’t stop myself,” he lamented. “I went out and bought sports equipment; then my wife and I purchased new furniture. It was just what we needed. The price was right. The only problem was that we couldn’t afford it. I guess I’m hopeless.”
Pete wasn’t hopeless, but his philosophy, popular among Christians, certainly was. He had been trying to use willpower to solve his boundary problems, probably the most common approach to out-of-control behavior.
The willpower approach is simple. Whatever the problem behavior is, just stop doing it. In other words, “just say no.” Imperatives such as “Choose to stop,” “Decide to say no,” and “Make a commitment to never do it again” abound in this approach.
The problem with this approach is that it makes an idol out of the will, something God never intended. Just as our hearts and minds are distorted by the Fall, so is our power to make right decisions. Will is only strengthened by relationship; we can’t make commitments alone. God told Moses to encourage and strengthen Joshua (Deut. 3:28); he didn’t tell Moses to tell Joshua to “just say no.”
If we depend on willpower alone, we are guaranteed to fail. We are denying the power of the relationship promised in the cross. If all we need is our will to overcome evil, we certainly don’t need a Savior (1 Cor. 1:17). The truth is, willpower alone is useless against self-boundary struggles:
Why do you submit to [the world’s] rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. (Col. 2:20-23)
The King James Bible translates the Greek word for “self-imposed worship” as “will-worship.” In other words, these self-denying practices that appear so spiritual don’t stop stop out-of-control behavior. The boundaryless part of the soul simply becomes more resentful under the domination of the will—and it rebels. Especially after we make statements as, “I will never” and “I will always,” we act out with a vengeance. Jessica’s indulgence in food, Pete’s indulgence in money, someone else’s indulgence in foolish or slanderous conversation, or still another’s determination never to be a project again will not be healed by “white-knuckling it.”
Establishing Boundaries with Yourself
Learning to be mature in self-boundaries is not easy. Many obstacles hinder our progress; however, God desires our maturity and self-control even more than we do. He’s on our team as an exhorter, encourager, and implorer (1 Thess. 2:11—12). One way to begin developing limits on out-of-control behavior is to apply a modified version of the boundary checklist we used in Chapter 8:
1. What are the symptoms? Look at the destructive fruit you may be exhibiting by not being able to say no to yourself. You may be experiencing depression, anxiety, panic, phobias, rage, relationship struggles, isolation, work problems, or psychosomatic problems.
All of these symptoms can be related to a difficulty in setting limits on your own behavior. Use them as a road map to begin identifying the particular boundary problem you’re having.
2. What are the roots? Identifying the causes of your self-boundary problems will assist you in understanding your own contribution to the problem (how you have sinned), your developmental injuries (how you have been sinned against), and the significant relationships that may have contributed to the problem.
Some possible roots of self-boundary conflicts include:
Lack of training. Some people never learned to accept its, to pay the consequences of their actions, or to delay gratification when they were growing up. For example, they may never have experienced any consequences for dawdling as a child.
Rewarded destructiveness. People who come from families which the mom or dad was an alcoholic may have learned that out-of-control behavior brings relationship. The family came together when the alcoholic member drank.
Distorted need. Some boundary problems are legitimate, God-given needs in disguise. God gave us sexual desire both to reproduce ourselves and to enjoy our spouses. The pornography addict has diverted this good desire; he feels real and alive only when acting out.
Fear of relationship. People really want to be loved but their out-of-control behavior (i.e., overeating, overworking) keeps others away. Some people use their tongues to keep other people at bay.
Unmet emotional hungers. We all need love during the first few years of life. If we don’t receive this love, we hunger for it for the rest of our lives. This hunger for love is so powerful that when we don’t find it in relationships with other people, we look for it in other places, such as in food, in work, in sexual activity, or in spending money.
Being under the law. Many Christians raised in legalistic environments were not permitted to make decisions for themselves. When they try to make their own decisions, they feel guilty. This guilt forces them to rebel in destructive ways. Food addictions and compulsive spending are often reactions against strict
Covering emotional hurt. People who are injured emotionally, who were neglected or abused as children, disguise their pain by overeating, drinking too much, or working too much. They may abuse substances to distract from the real pain of being unloved, unwanted, and alone. If they were to stop using these disguises, their isolation would be intolerable.
3. What is the boundary conflict? Take a look at your particular self-boundary problems in relation to eating, money, time, task completion, the tongue, sexuality, alcohol and substance abuse. These seven areas aren’t exhaustive, though they cover a great deal of territory. Ask God for insight into what other areas of your life are out of God for insight into what other areas of your life are out of control.
4. Who needs to take ownership? At this point, take the painful step of taking responsibility for your out-of-control behavior. The behavior pattern may be directly traceable to family problems, neglect, abuse, or trauma. In other words, our boundary conflicts may not be all our fault. They are, however, our responsibility.
5. What do you need? It’s useless to try to deal with your boundary conflicts with yourself until you’re actively developing safe, trusting, grace-and-truth relationships with others. You are severely hampered in gaining either insight into or control over yourself when you are disconnected from God’s source of spiritual and emotional fuel.
Plugging in to other people is often frustrating for “do-it-yourself” people who would like a how-to manual for solving out-of-control behaviors just as they would buy to teach themselves piano, plumbing, or golf. They wish to get this boundary setting business over with quickly.
The problem is that many people with self-boundary struggle are also quite isolated from deep relationships. They have no “rootedness” in God or others (Eph. 3:17). Thus, they have to take what they think are steps backward to learn to connect with others. Connecting with people is a time consuming, risky, and painful process. Finding the right people, group, or church is hard enough, but after admitting your need for others may be even more difficult.
Do-it-yourself people will often fall back into a cognitive willpower approach, simply because it’s not as slow or as risky. They’ll often say things like, “Attachment is not what I want. I have an out-of-control behavior, and I need relief from the pain!” Though we can certainly understand their dilemma, they’re heading toward another quick-fix dead end. Symptomatic relief—trying to solve a problem by only dealing with the symptoms—generally leads to more symptoms. Jesus described this process in a parable:
When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, “I will return to the house I left.” When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. (Luke 11:24-26)
Evil can take over the empty house of our souls. Even when our lives seem to be in order, isolation guarantees spiritual vulnerability. It’s only when our house is full of the love of God and others that we can resist the wiles of the Devil. Plugging in is neither an option, nor a luxury; it is a spiritual and emotional life-and-death issue.
6. How do I begin? Once you have identified your boundary problem and owned it, you can do something about it. Here are some ways to begin practicing setting boundaries on yourself.
Address your real need. Often, out-of-control patterns disguise a need for something else. You need to address the underlying need before you can deal with the out-of-control behavior. For example, impulsive eaters may discover that food is a way to stay separate and safe from romantic and sexual intimacy. Their fear of being faced with those kinds of emotionally laden situations may cause them to use food as a boundary. As their internal boundaries with the opposite sex become firmer, they can give up their destructive food boundary. They learn to ask for help for the real problem— not just for the symptomatic problem.
Allow yourself to fail. Addressing your real need is no guarantee that your out-of-control behavior will disappear. Many people who address the real issue underneath a self-boundary problem are often disappointed that the problem keeps recurring. They think, “Well, I joined a support group at church, but I still have problems being on time, or viewing pornography, or spending money, or talking out of turn. Was all this for naught?”
No. The recurrence of destructive patterns is evidence of God’s sanctifying, maturing, and preparing us for eternity. We need to continue to practice to learn things. The same process that we use to learn to drive a car, swim, or learn a foreign language is the one we use for learning better self-boundaries.
We need to embrace failure instead of trying to avoid it. Those people who spend their lives trying to avoid failure are also eluding maturity. We are drawn to Jesus because he learned obedience from what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). People who are growing up are also drawn to individuals bear battle scars, worry furrows, and tear marks on their faces. Their lessons can be trusted, much more than the unlined faces of those who have never failed—and so have never truly lived.
Listen to empathic feedback from others. As you fail in setting boundaries on yourself, you need others who will let you know about it in a caring way. Many times, you are unaware of your own failures. Sometimes you may not truly understand the extent of the damage your lack of boundaries causes in the lives of those you care about. Other believers can provide perspective and support.
Keith had a difficult time returning money to others when they had loaned it to him. He wasn’t broke. He wasn’t selfish. He was just forgetful. He had little awareness of the discomfort he caused those who lent him money.
One afternoon a friend who had loaned him money several months before dropped by his office.
Keith,” his friend said, “Several times I’ve asked you about the money I lent you. I still haven’t heard from you. I don’t think you’re intentionally ignoring my requests. At the same time I wanted to let you know that your forgetfulness has been hard on me. I had to cancel a vacation because I didn’t have the money. Your forgetfulness is hurting me, and it’s hurting our friendship.”
Keith was astonished. He hadn’t had a clue that such a little thing to him might mean so much to a close friend. Deeply remorseful over the loss his friend had suffered, he wrote a check immediately.
In a non-condemning, non-nagging manner, Keith’s friend had helped him become more aware of his self-boundary problem. He used the empathy Keith felt for him as a close friend. True godly remorse for causing his friend pain was a powerful motivator for Keith to become more responsible. When others in our support system let us know responsible. When others in our support system let us know how our lack of self-boundaries hurts them, we are motivated by love, not by fear.
Biblically based support groups, which provide empathy and clear feedback, keep people responsible by letting them see the effect their actions have on another. When one member tells another, “Your uncontrolled behavior makes me want to stay away from you. I don’t feel that I can trust you when you act like that,” the out-of-control person isn’t being parented or policed. He is hearing truth in love from a peer. He’s hearing how what he does helps or damages those he loves. This kind of confrontation builds an empathy-based morality, a love-based self-control.
Welcome consequences as a teacher. Learning about sowing and reaping is valuable. It teaches us that we suffer losses when we aren’t responsible. The impulsive overeater has medical and social difficulties. The overspender faces bankruptcy court. The chronically late person misses plane flights and important meetings, and loses friendships. The procrastinator faces losses of promotions and bonuses. And on and on.
We need to enter God’s training school of learning to suffer for our irresponsibility. Not all suffering should be embraced; however, when our own lack of love or responsibility causes the suffering, pain becomes our teacher.
Learning how to develop better self-boundaries is an orderly process. First, we are confronted about the destructiveness of our behavior by others. Then consequences will follow if we don’t heed the feedback. Words precede actions and give us a chance to turn from our destructiveness before we have to suffer.
God doesn’t glory in our suffering. Just as a loving father’s heart breaks when he sees his children in pain, God wants to spare us pain. But when his words and the feedback of his other children don’t reach us, consequences are the of his other children don’t reach us, consequences are the only way to keep us from further damage. God is like the parent who warns his teenager that drinking will cause a loss will have bad consequences for you.” Then, if it’s not heeded, car privileges are yanked. This painful consequence prevents a possible serious catastrophe: a drunk-driving accident.
Surround yourself with people who are loving and supportive. As you hear feedback and suffer consequences, maintain close contact with your support network. Your difficulties are too much to bear alone. You need others who will be loving and supportive, but who will not rescue.
Generally speaking, friends of people with self-boundary problems make one of two errors:
(1) They become critical and parental. When the person has failed, they adopt an “I told you so” attitude, or say things like, “Now, what did you learn from your experience?” This encourages the person to either look elsewhere for a friend (no one needs more than two parents), or simply avoid the criticism, instead of learning from consequences. “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently” (Gal. 6:1).
(2) They become rescuers. They give in to their impulse to save the person from suffering. They call the boss and tell them their spouse was sick when he or she was drunk. They lend more money when they shouldn’t. They hold up the entire dinner for the latecomer, instead of going ahead with the meal.
Rescuing someone is not loving them. God’s love lets people experience consequences. Rescuers hope that by once again bailing out the out-of-control person, they’ll reap a loving, responsible person. They hope to control the other person.
It’s far better to be empathic, but at the same time refuse to be a safety net: “I’m sorry you lost another job this year, but I won’t lend you any more money until you’ve paid back the other loan. However, I’m available to talk to for support.” This approach will show people how serious you are about developing self-boundaries. The sincere searcher will value this approach and will take you up on your offer of support. The manipulator will resent the limits and quickly look for an easier touch somewhere else.
This five-point formula for developing self-boundaries is cyclical. That is, as you deal with real needs, fail, get empathic feedback, suffer consequences, and are restored, you build stronger internal boundaries each time. As you stay with your goal and with the right people, you will build a sense of self-restraint that can truly become part of your character for life.
If You Are a Victim
Establishing boundaries for yourself is always hard. It will be especially difficult if your boundaries were severely violated in childhood. No one who has avoided childhood through victimization can truly understand what these individuals go through. Of all the injuries that can be endured, this type causes severe spiritual and emotional damage.
A victim is a person who has, while in a helpless state, been injured by the exploitation of another. Some victimization is verbal, some is physical, some is sexual, and some is satanically ritualistic. All cause extreme damage to the character structure of a child, who then grows up to adulthood with spiritual, emotional, and cognitive distortions. In each case, however, three factors remain constant: helplessness, injury, and exploitation.
Some results of victimization are these:
• depression
• compulsive disorders
• impulsive disorders
• isolation
• inability to trust others
• inability to form close attachments
• inability to set limits
• poor judgment in relationships
• further exploitation in relationships
• deep sense of pervasive badness
• shame
• guilt
• chaotic lifestyle
• sense of meaninglessness and purposelessness
• unexplainable terror and panic attacks
• phobias
• rage attacks
• suicidal feelings and thoughts
Victimization has long-lasting and far-reaching effects on the lives of adult survivors. Healing for victims is difficult because their developmental processes have been damaged or interrupted by abuse. The most primary damage done is the victim loses a sense of trust. Trust, the ability to depend on ourselves and others in times of need, is a basic spiritual and emotional survival need. We need to be able to trust our own perceptions of reality and to be able to let significant people matter to us.
Our ability to trust ourselves is based on our experience of others as trustworthy. People who are “like a tree planted by streams of water” (Ps. 1:3) feel firm because of the by streams of love coming from God and others in their life.
Victims often lose a sense of trust because the perpetrator was someone they knew as children, someone who was important to them. When the relationship became damaging to them, their sense of trust became broken.
Another damaging effect of abuse or molestation is the destruction of a sense of ownership over the victim’s soul. In fact, victims often feel that they are public property—that their resources, body, and time should be available to others just for the asking.
Another injury due to victimization is a deep, pervasive sense of being “all-bad,” wrong, dirty, or shameful. No their affirming others are of their loveableness and their attributes, victims are convinced that, underneath it all, there is no good inside themselves. Because of the severity of their injuries, many victims have over-permeable boundaries. They take on badness that isn’t theirs. They begin believing that the way they were treated is the way they should be treated. Many victims think that, since they were they were bad or evil thousands of times, it certainly must be true.
Boundaries as an Aid to the Victim
Boundary work as described in this book can be extremely helpful in moving victims toward restoration and healing. However, in many cases the severe nature of the need is such that the victim will be unable to set boundaries without professional help. We strongly urge abuse victims to seek out a counselor who can guide them in establishing and maintaining appropriate boundaries.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Boundaries and Your Work
In Sunday school we were studying Adam and Eve and the Fall. I learned that the Fall was the beginning of everything “bad.” That day I went home and said to my mother, “I don’t like Adam and Eve. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have to clean up my room!”
Work at age eight wasn’t fun, and because it wasn’t fun, it was bad. Because it was bad, it was Adam’s fault. A simple theological theory for a youngster, but it was youthful heresy. Work existed before the Fall; it was always part of God’s plan for humanity. He planned for people to do two things. They would subdue and they would rule (Gen. 1:28). They would bring the earth under their domain, and they would manage it. That sounds a lot like work!
But because Eden was paradise, our difficulties with work came later, after the Fall. God said to Adam: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:17-19).
Other aspects of the Fall also affected our work. The first is the tendency toward disownership. We talked in earlier chapters about the boundary problem of not taking responsibility for what is ours. This started in the garden when Adam and Eve tried to pass the blame on to another for their original act of sinning. Adam blamed Eve; Eve blamed the serpent (Gen. 3:11-13). They were disowning their responsibility and blaming another. Their theme was “Get the attention off of me.” This tendency to blame another is a key work problem.
The Fall also divided love from work. Before the Fall, Adam was connected to the love of God and from that loved state, he worked. After the Fall, he was not motivated out of perfect love, but he had to work as a part of the fallen world’s curse and the law. The love-motivated “want to” became a law-motivated “should.”
Paul tells us the law’s “should” increases our wish to rebel (Rom. 5:20); it makes us angry at what we “should” do (Rom. 4:15); and it arouses our motivations to do the wrong unable to take responsibility and work effectively by owning its behaviors, talents, and choices. No wonder we have work problems.
In this chapter, we want to look at how boundaries can help resolve many work-related problems, as well as how they can help you to be happier and more fulfilled at the work you do.
Work and Character Development
Christians often have a warped way of looking at work. Unless someone is working “in the ministry,” they see his work as secular. However, this view of work distorts the biblical picture. All of us—not only full-time ministers— have gifts and talents that we contribute to humanity. We all have a vocation, a “calling” into service. Wherever we work, whatever we do, we are to do “unto the Lord” (Col. 3:23).
Jesus used parables about work to teach us how to grow spiritually. These parables deal with money, with completing tasks, with faithful stewardship of a job, and with honest emotional dealings in work. They all teach character development in the context of relating to God and others. They teach a work ethic based on love under God.
Work is a spiritual activity. In our work, we are made in the image of God, who is himself a worker, a manager, a creator, a developer, a steward, and a healer. To be a Christian is to be a co-laborer with God in the community of humanity. By giving to others we find true fulfillment.
The New Testament teaches that jobs offer more than temporal fulfillment and rewards on earth. Work is the place to develop our character in preparation for the work that we will do forever. With that in mind, let’s look at how setting boundaries in the workplace can help us to grow spiritually.
Problems in the Workplace
A lack of boundaries creates problems in the workplace. In consulting for corporations, I have seen lack of boundaries as the major problem in many management squabbles. If people took responsibility for their own work and set clear limits, most of the problems for which I get consulted would not exist.
Let’s see how applying boundaries can solve some common problems in the workplace.
Problem #1: Getting Saddled with Another Person’s Responsibilities
Susie is an administrative assistant in a small company that plans training sessions for industry. She’s responsible for booking the training sessions and managing the speakers’ schedules. A co-worker. Jack, is responsible for the training facilities. He takes the materials to the site, sets up the equipment, and orders the food. Together, Susie and Jack make the events happen.
After a few months of really liking her work, Susie began to lose energy. Eventually, her friend and co-worker, Lynda, asked her what was wrong. Susie couldn’t put her finger on the problem at first. Then she realized: The problem was Jack!
Jack had been asking Susie to “pick this up for me while you’re out,” or “please bring this box of materials to the workshop.” Slowly, Jack was shifting his responsibilities onto Susie.
“You have to stop doing Jack’s work,” Lynda told Susie. “Just do your own work and don’t worry about him.”
“But what if things go wrong?” Susie asked.
Lynda shrugged. “Then they’ll blame Jack. It’s not your responsibility.”
“Jack will be angry with me for not helping,” Susie said.
“Let him,” said Lynda. “His anger can’t hurt you as much as his poor work habits can.”
So Susie began to set limits on Jack. She told him, “I will not have time to bring the materials for you this week.” And when Jack ran out of time to do things himself, Susie said, “I’m sorry that you have not done that before now, and I understand that you are in a bind. Maybe next time you will plan better. That’s not my job.”
Some trainers were angry that their equipment was not set up, and customers were angry that no food was provided for the break. But the boss tracked down the problem to the person who was responsible—Jack—and told him to shape up, or find another job. In the end, Susie began to like again, and Jack began to get more responsible. All because Susie set boundaries and stuck to them.
If you are being saddled with another person’s responsibilities and feel resentful, you need to take responsibility for your feelings, and realize that your unhappiness is not your co-worker’s fault, but your own. In this as in any other boundary conflict, you first must take responsibility for boundary conflict, yourself.
Then you must act responsibly to your co-worker. Go to your co-worker and explain your situation. When he asks you to do something that is not your responsibility, say no and refuse to do whatever it is that he wants you to do. If he angry at you for saying no, be firm about your boundaries and angry at you for saying no, be firm about your boundaries and empathize with his anger. Don’t get angry back. To fight anger with anger is to get hooked into his game. Keep your emotional distance and say, “I am sorry if this upsets you. But that job is not my responsibility. I hope you get it! Worked out.”
If he continues to argue, tell him that you are finished discussing it; he can come and find you when he is ready to talk about something else. Do not fall into the trap of justifying why you can’t do his work for him. You will be slipping into his thinking that you should do his work if you are able to, and he will try to find a way that you can. You owe no one an explanation about why you will not do something: that is not your responsibility.
Many over-responsible people who work next to under-responsible people bear the consequences for their coworkers. Always covering for them, or bailing them out, they are not enjoying their work or their relationships with these people. Their lack of boundaries is hurting them, as well as keeping the other person from growing. If you are one of these people, you need to learn to set boundaries.
Sometimes, however, a co-worker will genuinely need some extra help. It is perfectly legitimate to bail out a responsible co-worker, or to make special concessions to a colleague who uses those concessions responsibly to get well. This is love, and good companies operate lovingly.
In our work as psychologists at the same hospital, we often cover hospital duty for each other or take each other’s on call” time. But if one of us started taking advantage of the other, we would need to stop that. Covering for the other at that point would not be helpful, but would enable a bad pattern.
Favors and sacrifices are part of the Christian life. Enabling is not. Learn to tell the difference by seeing if your giving is helping the other to become better or worse. The Bible requires responsible action out of the one who is given to. If you do not see it after a season, set limits (Luke 13:9).
Problem #2: Working Too Much Overtime
When I first went into practice, I hired a woman for twenty hours a week to run my office. On her second day in the office, I gave her a pile of things to do. About ten minutes later, she knocked at my door, stack of papers in hand.
“What can I do for you, Laurie?” I asked.
“You have a problem,” she told me.
“I do? What is it?” I asked, not having the vaguest idea what she was talking about.
“You hired me for twenty hours a week, and you have just given me about forty hours of work. Which twenty would you like done?”
She was right. I did have a problem. I had not managed my workload very well. I was either going to have to spend more on help, cut back on projects, or hire someone else. But she was right: it was my problem, not hers. I had to take responsibility for it and fix it. Laurie was telling me what that ever-present sign says: “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”
Many bosses aren’t so lucky. Their employees take responsibility for their lack of planning and never set limits on them. They are never forced to look at their lack of boundaries until it’s too late, until they have lost a good employee to exhaustion or burnout. Such bosses need clear limits, but many employees are afraid to set them, as Laurie did, because they need the job or they fear disapproval.
If you are in a situation in which you’re doing lots of extra work because you “need the job” and because you are afraid of being let go, you have a problem. If you are working more overtime than you want to, you are in bondage to your job. You are a slave, not an employee under contract. Clear and responsible contracts tell all parties involved what is expected of them, and they can be enforced. Jobs should have clear descriptions of duties and qualifications.
As hard as it sounds, you need to take responsibility for yourself and take steps to change your situation. Here are some suggested steps you may wish to take:
1. Set boundaries on your work. Decide how much overtime you are willing to do. Some overtime during seasonal crunches may be expected of you.
2. Review your job description, if one exists.
3. Make a list of the tasks you need to complete in the next month. Make a copy of the list and assign your own priority to each item. Indicate on this copy any tasks that are not part of your job description.
4. Make an appointment to see your boss to discuss your job overload. Together you should review the list of tasks need to complete in the next month. Have your boss prioritize the tasks. If your boss wants all the tasks done, and you cannot complete these tasks in the time you are willing to give, your boss may need to hire temporary help to complete those tasks. You may also wish to review your job description with your boss at this time if you think you are doing things that fall outside your domain.
If your boss still has unreasonable expectations of you, you may wish to take a co-worker or two along with you to a second meeting (according to the biblical model in Matthew 18), or you may wish to discuss your problem with the appropriate person in your personnel department. If even then he remains unreasonable about what he thinks you can accomplish, you may need to begin looking for other job opportunities within your company or outside.
You may need to go to night school and get some further training to open up other opportunities. You may need to chase down hundreds or employment ads and send out stacks of resumes. (Consult the book How to Get a Job by James Bramlett for information on job searches.) You may wish to start your own business. You may wish to start an emergency fund to survive between quitting your present Job and starting a new one.
Whatever you do, remember that your job overload is your responsibility and your problem. If your job is driving you crazy, you need to do something about it. Own the problem. Stop being a victim of an abusive situation and start setting some limits.
Problem #3: Misplaced Priorities
We have talked about setting limits on someone else. You also need to set limits on yourself. You need to realize how much time and energy you have, and manage your work accordingly. Know what you can do and when you can do it, and say no to everything else. Learn to know your limits and enforce them, as Laurie did. Say to your team or your boss, “If I am going to do A today, I will not be able to do B until Wednesday. Is that okay or do we need to rethink which one I need to be working on?”
Effective workers do two things: they strive to do excellent work, and they spend their time on the most important things. Many people do excellent work but allow themselves to get sidetracked by unimportant things; they may do unimportant things very well! They feel like they are doing a great job, but their boss is upset because essential goals are not being met. Then they feel unappreciated and resentful because they have put out so much effort. They were working hard, but they weren’t placing boundaries on what they allowed to take up their time, and the really important things did not get their attention.
Say no to the unimportant, and say no to the inclination to do less than your best. If you are doing your best work on the most important things, you will reach your goals.
In addition to saying no to the unimportant, you need to make a plan to accomplish the important things, and erect some fences around your tasks. Realize your limits, and make sure you do not allow work to control your life. Having limits will force you to prioritize. If you make a commitment to spend only so many hours a week on work, you will spend those hours more wisely. If you think your time is limitless, to spend only so many hours a week on work, you will spend those hours more wisely. If you think your time is limitless, you may say yes to everything. Say yes to the best, and sometimes you may need to say no to the good.
One man’s ministry required a lot of travel, so he and his wife put their heads together and decided that he would spend no more than one hundred nights a year on the road. When he gets an offer he has to check his time budget and see if this is something he wants to spend some of his nights on. This plan forces him to be more selective in his travel, thereby saving time for the rest of his life.
A company president who was allowing work to keep him away from home too much made a commitment to spend only forty hours a week in the office. At first, he really struggled because he wasn’t used to budgeting his time and commitments so closely. Slowly though, when he realized that he only had so much time, he began to spend it more wisely. He even got more accomplished because he was forced to work smarter.
Work will grow to fill the time you have set aside for it. If a meeting does not have an agenda with time limits, discussion could be endless. Allot time for certain things, and then keep your limits. You will work smarter and like your work more.
Take a lesson from Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, who, seeing Moses’ lack of boundaries, asked him why he was working so hard (Exod. 18:14-27).
“Because the people need me,” Moses said.
“What you are doing is not good,” Jethro replied. “You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone” (vv. 17-18). Even though Moses was doing good work, Jethro saw that he was going to burn himself out. Moses had allowed good work to go too far. Limits on good things keen them good.
Problem #4: Difficult Co-workers
A personnel counselor will often send someone to our hospital program because of stress at work. When these situations are unraveled, the “stress at work” often turns out to be somebody at the office who is driving the stressed-out person crazy. This person in the office or workplace has a strong influence over the emotional life of the person in pain, and he or she does not know how to deal with it.
In this case you need to remember the Law of Power: You only have the power to change yourself. Yow can’t change another person. You must see yourself as the problem, not the other person. To see another person as the problem to be fixed is to give that person power over you and your well-being. Because you cannot change another person, you are out of control. The real problem lies in how you are relating to the problem person. You are the one in pain, and only you have the power to fix it.
Many people have found immense relief in the thought that they have no control over another person and that they must focus on changing their reactions to that person. They must refuse to allow that person to affect them. This idea is life changing, the beginning of true self-control.
Problem #5: Critical Attitudes
Stress is often caused by working with or for someone who is supercritical. People will get hooked into either trying to win over the critical person, which can almost never be done, or by allowing the person to provoke them to anger. Some people internalize the criticism and get down on themselves. All of these reactions indicate an inability to stand apart from the critical person and keep one’s boundaries.
Allow these critical people to be who they are, but keep yourself separate from them and do not internalize their opinion of you. Make sure you have a more accurate appraisal of yourself, and then disagree internally.
You may also want to confront the overly critical person according to the biblical model (Matt. 18). At first tell her how you feel about her attitude and the way it affects you. If she is wise, she will listen to you. If not, and her attitude is disruptive to others as well, two or more of you might want to talk to her. If she will not agree to change, you may want to tell her that you do not wish to talk with her until she gets her attitude under control.
Or you can follow the company’s grievance policy. The important thing to remember is that you can’t control her, but you can choose to limit your exposure to her, either physically or emotionally distancing yourself from her. This is self-control.
Avoid trying to gain the approval of this sort of person. It will never work, and you will only feel controlled. And avoid getting in arguments and discussions. You will never win. Remember the proverb, “Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult; whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse. Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you” (Prov. 9:7-8). If you allow them to draw thinking that you will change them, you are asking them for trouble. Stay separate. Keep your boundaries. Don’t get sucked into their game.
Problem #6: Conflicts with Authority
If you are having trouble getting along with your boss, you may be having “transference feelings.” Transference is when you experience feelings in the present that really belong to some unfinished business in the past.
Transference happens frequently with bosses because they are authority figures. The boss-employee relationship can trigger authority conflicts you might have. You can begin to have strong reactions that are not appropriate to the current relationship.
Suppose your supervisor tells you that he wants something done differently. Immediately you feel “put down.” You think, He never thinks I do anything right. I’ll show him. Your supervisor may have made the comment in passing, but the feelings it triggered were very strong indeed. The reality is that the interaction may be tapping into unresolved hurt from past authority relationships, such as parents or teachers.
When a transference relationship starts, you may begin to act out all the old patterns you did with parents. This never works. You become a child on the job.
To have boundaries is to take responsibility for your transference. If you find yourself having strong reactions to someone, take some time and look inside to see if the feelings are familiar. Do they remind you of someone from the past? Did Mom or Dad treat you like that? Do they have the same personality as this person?
You are responsible for working out these feelings. Until you face your own feelings, you can’t even see who others really are. You are looking at them through your own distortions, through your own unfinished business. When you see others clearly without transference, you will know how to deal with them.
Another example would be strong feelings of competition with a co-worker. This may represent some competitive relationship from the past, such as sibling rivalry, that has not been worked through. Whenever you experience strong feelings, see them as part of your responsibility. This will lead you to any unfinished business and healing, as well as keep you from acting irrationally toward co-workers and bosses. Leave the past in the past, deal with it, and do not allow it to interfere with present relationships.
Problem #7: Expecting Too Much of Work
People increasingly come to the workplace wanting the company be a “family.” In a society where the family, church, and community are not the support structures they once were, people look to their colleagues for the emotional support a family once provided. This lack of boundaries between the personal and work life is fraught with all sorts difficulties.
The workplace ideally should be supportive, safe, and nurturing. But this atmosphere should primarily support the employee in work-related ways—to help her learn, improve, and get a job done. The problem arises when someone wants the job to provide what he the job to provide what her parents did not provide for her: primary nurturing, relationship, self-esteem, and approval. Work is not set up this way, nor is it what the typical job asks of someone. The inherent conflict in this set-up is this: The job expects adult functioning, and the person wants childhood needs met. These differing expectations will inevitably collide.
Health comes from owning unmet childhood needs and working them out. The problem is that the workplace is not the place to do that. There are expectations at work. They will ask from you without giving because they are going to pay you for your work. They are not obligated to provide all the emotional support you need.
You need to make sure you are meeting your needs for support and emotional repair outside of work. Plug into supportive and healing networks that will help you to grow out of your emotional hurts and unmet needs, and build you up so you can function well at the job, in the adult world that has adult expectations. Get your relationship needs met outside of work, and then you will be able to work the best without getting your needs mixed up with what the company needs from you. Keep your boundaries firm; protect those hurt places from the workplace, which is not only not set up to heal, but also may wound unintentionally.
Problem #8: Taking Work-Related Stress Home
Just as we should keep good boundaries on our personal issues and keep them out of the workplace, we need to keep some boundaries on work and keep it out of the home. This generally has two components.
The first is emotional. Conflicts at work need to be dealt with and worked through so they do not begin to affect the rest of your life. If denied, they can cause major depressions and other illnesses that begin to spill over into other areas of life.
Make sure you understand work issues and face them directly so that work does not emotionally control your life. Find out why a certain co-worker is able to get to you, or why your boss is able to control the rest of your life. Find out why your successes or failures on the job are able to bring you up or down. These important character issues need to be worked through. Otherwise, the job will own you.
The second component is finite things such as time, energy, and other resources. Make sure that the job, which is literally never done, does not continue to spill over into personal life and cost you relationships and other things that matter. Put limits on special projects that are going to take more time than usual, and make sure overtime does not become a pattern. One company we know has such a high value for family that they dock people for working overtime! They want them to put limits on their work and be home with the family. Find out your own limits and live by them. These are good boundaries.
Problem #9; Disliking Your Job
Boundaries are where our identity comes from. Boundaries define what is me and what is not me. Our work is part of our identity in that it taps into our particular giftedness and the exercise of those gifts in the community.
However, many people are unable to ever find a true work identity. They stumble from job to job, never really finding anything that is “them.” More often than not, this is a boundary problem. They have not been able to own their own gifts, talents, wants, desires, and dreams because they are unable to set boundaries on others’ definitions and expectations of them.
This happens with people who have not separated from church and the family they grew up in. A pastor was having great difficulty with his church and the board of elders. Finally, right in the middle of a consistory meeting, he said, “I never wanted to be a pastor anyway. It was my mother’s wish, not mine.” He did not have good enough boundaries with his mother to define his own career path. As a result, he had fused with her wishes and was miserable. His heart had not been in it from the start.
This can happen also with friends and culture. Others’ expectations can be very strong influences. You must make sure that your boundaries are strong enough that you do not let others define you. Instead, work with God to find out who you really are and what kind of work you are made for. Romans 12:2 speaks of having boundaries against these kinds of pressures from others: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” You should have a realistic expectation of yourself based on who you really are, your own true self with your own particular giftedness. You can only do this with boundaries that stand up and say, “This is me, and that is not me.’ Stand up against others’ expectations of you.
Finding Your Life’s Work
Finding your life’s work involves taking risks. First you need to firmly establish your identity, separating yourself from those you are attached to and following your desires. You must take ownership of how you feel, how you think, and what you want. You must assess your talents and limitations. And then you must begin to step out as God leads you.
For God wants you to discover and use your gifts to his glory. He asks only that you include him in the process: “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this” (Ps. 37:4-5).
God also, however, calls you to be accountable for what you do: “Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you to judgment” (Eccl. 11:9).
As you develop your talents, look at your work as a partnership between you and God. He has given you gifts, and he wants you to develop them. Commit your way to the Lord, and you will find your work identity. Ask him to help.
Work at age eight wasn’t fun, and because it wasn’t fun, it was bad. Because it was bad, it was Adam’s fault. A simple theological theory for a youngster, but it was youthful heresy. Work existed before the Fall; it was always part of God’s plan for humanity. He planned for people to do two things. They would subdue and they would rule (Gen. 1:28). They would bring the earth under their domain, and they would manage it. That sounds a lot like work!
But because Eden was paradise, our difficulties with work came later, after the Fall. God said to Adam: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:17-19).
Other aspects of the Fall also affected our work. The first is the tendency toward disownership. We talked in earlier chapters about the boundary problem of not taking responsibility for what is ours. This started in the garden when Adam and Eve tried to pass the blame on to another for their original act of sinning. Adam blamed Eve; Eve blamed the serpent (Gen. 3:11-13). They were disowning their responsibility and blaming another. Their theme was “Get the attention off of me.” This tendency to blame another is a key work problem.
The Fall also divided love from work. Before the Fall, Adam was connected to the love of God and from that loved state, he worked. After the Fall, he was not motivated out of perfect love, but he had to work as a part of the fallen world’s curse and the law. The love-motivated “want to” became a law-motivated “should.”
Paul tells us the law’s “should” increases our wish to rebel (Rom. 5:20); it makes us angry at what we “should” do (Rom. 4:15); and it arouses our motivations to do the wrong unable to take responsibility and work effectively by owning its behaviors, talents, and choices. No wonder we have work problems.
In this chapter, we want to look at how boundaries can help resolve many work-related problems, as well as how they can help you to be happier and more fulfilled at the work you do.
Work and Character Development
Christians often have a warped way of looking at work. Unless someone is working “in the ministry,” they see his work as secular. However, this view of work distorts the biblical picture. All of us—not only full-time ministers— have gifts and talents that we contribute to humanity. We all have a vocation, a “calling” into service. Wherever we work, whatever we do, we are to do “unto the Lord” (Col. 3:23).
Jesus used parables about work to teach us how to grow spiritually. These parables deal with money, with completing tasks, with faithful stewardship of a job, and with honest emotional dealings in work. They all teach character development in the context of relating to God and others. They teach a work ethic based on love under God.
Work is a spiritual activity. In our work, we are made in the image of God, who is himself a worker, a manager, a creator, a developer, a steward, and a healer. To be a Christian is to be a co-laborer with God in the community of humanity. By giving to others we find true fulfillment.
The New Testament teaches that jobs offer more than temporal fulfillment and rewards on earth. Work is the place to develop our character in preparation for the work that we will do forever. With that in mind, let’s look at how setting boundaries in the workplace can help us to grow spiritually.
Problems in the Workplace
A lack of boundaries creates problems in the workplace. In consulting for corporations, I have seen lack of boundaries as the major problem in many management squabbles. If people took responsibility for their own work and set clear limits, most of the problems for which I get consulted would not exist.
Let’s see how applying boundaries can solve some common problems in the workplace.
Problem #1: Getting Saddled with Another Person’s Responsibilities
Susie is an administrative assistant in a small company that plans training sessions for industry. She’s responsible for booking the training sessions and managing the speakers’ schedules. A co-worker. Jack, is responsible for the training facilities. He takes the materials to the site, sets up the equipment, and orders the food. Together, Susie and Jack make the events happen.
After a few months of really liking her work, Susie began to lose energy. Eventually, her friend and co-worker, Lynda, asked her what was wrong. Susie couldn’t put her finger on the problem at first. Then she realized: The problem was Jack!
Jack had been asking Susie to “pick this up for me while you’re out,” or “please bring this box of materials to the workshop.” Slowly, Jack was shifting his responsibilities onto Susie.
“You have to stop doing Jack’s work,” Lynda told Susie. “Just do your own work and don’t worry about him.”
“But what if things go wrong?” Susie asked.
Lynda shrugged. “Then they’ll blame Jack. It’s not your responsibility.”
“Jack will be angry with me for not helping,” Susie said.
“Let him,” said Lynda. “His anger can’t hurt you as much as his poor work habits can.”
So Susie began to set limits on Jack. She told him, “I will not have time to bring the materials for you this week.” And when Jack ran out of time to do things himself, Susie said, “I’m sorry that you have not done that before now, and I understand that you are in a bind. Maybe next time you will plan better. That’s not my job.”
Some trainers were angry that their equipment was not set up, and customers were angry that no food was provided for the break. But the boss tracked down the problem to the person who was responsible—Jack—and told him to shape up, or find another job. In the end, Susie began to like again, and Jack began to get more responsible. All because Susie set boundaries and stuck to them.
If you are being saddled with another person’s responsibilities and feel resentful, you need to take responsibility for your feelings, and realize that your unhappiness is not your co-worker’s fault, but your own. In this as in any other boundary conflict, you first must take responsibility for boundary conflict, yourself.
Then you must act responsibly to your co-worker. Go to your co-worker and explain your situation. When he asks you to do something that is not your responsibility, say no and refuse to do whatever it is that he wants you to do. If he angry at you for saying no, be firm about your boundaries and angry at you for saying no, be firm about your boundaries and empathize with his anger. Don’t get angry back. To fight anger with anger is to get hooked into his game. Keep your emotional distance and say, “I am sorry if this upsets you. But that job is not my responsibility. I hope you get it! Worked out.”
If he continues to argue, tell him that you are finished discussing it; he can come and find you when he is ready to talk about something else. Do not fall into the trap of justifying why you can’t do his work for him. You will be slipping into his thinking that you should do his work if you are able to, and he will try to find a way that you can. You owe no one an explanation about why you will not do something: that is not your responsibility.
Many over-responsible people who work next to under-responsible people bear the consequences for their coworkers. Always covering for them, or bailing them out, they are not enjoying their work or their relationships with these people. Their lack of boundaries is hurting them, as well as keeping the other person from growing. If you are one of these people, you need to learn to set boundaries.
Sometimes, however, a co-worker will genuinely need some extra help. It is perfectly legitimate to bail out a responsible co-worker, or to make special concessions to a colleague who uses those concessions responsibly to get well. This is love, and good companies operate lovingly.
In our work as psychologists at the same hospital, we often cover hospital duty for each other or take each other’s on call” time. But if one of us started taking advantage of the other, we would need to stop that. Covering for the other at that point would not be helpful, but would enable a bad pattern.
Favors and sacrifices are part of the Christian life. Enabling is not. Learn to tell the difference by seeing if your giving is helping the other to become better or worse. The Bible requires responsible action out of the one who is given to. If you do not see it after a season, set limits (Luke 13:9).
Problem #2: Working Too Much Overtime
When I first went into practice, I hired a woman for twenty hours a week to run my office. On her second day in the office, I gave her a pile of things to do. About ten minutes later, she knocked at my door, stack of papers in hand.
“What can I do for you, Laurie?” I asked.
“You have a problem,” she told me.
“I do? What is it?” I asked, not having the vaguest idea what she was talking about.
“You hired me for twenty hours a week, and you have just given me about forty hours of work. Which twenty would you like done?”
She was right. I did have a problem. I had not managed my workload very well. I was either going to have to spend more on help, cut back on projects, or hire someone else. But she was right: it was my problem, not hers. I had to take responsibility for it and fix it. Laurie was telling me what that ever-present sign says: “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”
Many bosses aren’t so lucky. Their employees take responsibility for their lack of planning and never set limits on them. They are never forced to look at their lack of boundaries until it’s too late, until they have lost a good employee to exhaustion or burnout. Such bosses need clear limits, but many employees are afraid to set them, as Laurie did, because they need the job or they fear disapproval.
If you are in a situation in which you’re doing lots of extra work because you “need the job” and because you are afraid of being let go, you have a problem. If you are working more overtime than you want to, you are in bondage to your job. You are a slave, not an employee under contract. Clear and responsible contracts tell all parties involved what is expected of them, and they can be enforced. Jobs should have clear descriptions of duties and qualifications.
As hard as it sounds, you need to take responsibility for yourself and take steps to change your situation. Here are some suggested steps you may wish to take:
1. Set boundaries on your work. Decide how much overtime you are willing to do. Some overtime during seasonal crunches may be expected of you.
2. Review your job description, if one exists.
3. Make a list of the tasks you need to complete in the next month. Make a copy of the list and assign your own priority to each item. Indicate on this copy any tasks that are not part of your job description.
4. Make an appointment to see your boss to discuss your job overload. Together you should review the list of tasks need to complete in the next month. Have your boss prioritize the tasks. If your boss wants all the tasks done, and you cannot complete these tasks in the time you are willing to give, your boss may need to hire temporary help to complete those tasks. You may also wish to review your job description with your boss at this time if you think you are doing things that fall outside your domain.
If your boss still has unreasonable expectations of you, you may wish to take a co-worker or two along with you to a second meeting (according to the biblical model in Matthew 18), or you may wish to discuss your problem with the appropriate person in your personnel department. If even then he remains unreasonable about what he thinks you can accomplish, you may need to begin looking for other job opportunities within your company or outside.
You may need to go to night school and get some further training to open up other opportunities. You may need to chase down hundreds or employment ads and send out stacks of resumes. (Consult the book How to Get a Job by James Bramlett for information on job searches.) You may wish to start your own business. You may wish to start an emergency fund to survive between quitting your present Job and starting a new one.
Whatever you do, remember that your job overload is your responsibility and your problem. If your job is driving you crazy, you need to do something about it. Own the problem. Stop being a victim of an abusive situation and start setting some limits.
Problem #3: Misplaced Priorities
We have talked about setting limits on someone else. You also need to set limits on yourself. You need to realize how much time and energy you have, and manage your work accordingly. Know what you can do and when you can do it, and say no to everything else. Learn to know your limits and enforce them, as Laurie did. Say to your team or your boss, “If I am going to do A today, I will not be able to do B until Wednesday. Is that okay or do we need to rethink which one I need to be working on?”
Effective workers do two things: they strive to do excellent work, and they spend their time on the most important things. Many people do excellent work but allow themselves to get sidetracked by unimportant things; they may do unimportant things very well! They feel like they are doing a great job, but their boss is upset because essential goals are not being met. Then they feel unappreciated and resentful because they have put out so much effort. They were working hard, but they weren’t placing boundaries on what they allowed to take up their time, and the really important things did not get their attention.
Say no to the unimportant, and say no to the inclination to do less than your best. If you are doing your best work on the most important things, you will reach your goals.
In addition to saying no to the unimportant, you need to make a plan to accomplish the important things, and erect some fences around your tasks. Realize your limits, and make sure you do not allow work to control your life. Having limits will force you to prioritize. If you make a commitment to spend only so many hours a week on work, you will spend those hours more wisely. If you think your time is limitless, to spend only so many hours a week on work, you will spend those hours more wisely. If you think your time is limitless, you may say yes to everything. Say yes to the best, and sometimes you may need to say no to the good.
One man’s ministry required a lot of travel, so he and his wife put their heads together and decided that he would spend no more than one hundred nights a year on the road. When he gets an offer he has to check his time budget and see if this is something he wants to spend some of his nights on. This plan forces him to be more selective in his travel, thereby saving time for the rest of his life.
A company president who was allowing work to keep him away from home too much made a commitment to spend only forty hours a week in the office. At first, he really struggled because he wasn’t used to budgeting his time and commitments so closely. Slowly though, when he realized that he only had so much time, he began to spend it more wisely. He even got more accomplished because he was forced to work smarter.
Work will grow to fill the time you have set aside for it. If a meeting does not have an agenda with time limits, discussion could be endless. Allot time for certain things, and then keep your limits. You will work smarter and like your work more.
Take a lesson from Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, who, seeing Moses’ lack of boundaries, asked him why he was working so hard (Exod. 18:14-27).
“Because the people need me,” Moses said.
“What you are doing is not good,” Jethro replied. “You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone” (vv. 17-18). Even though Moses was doing good work, Jethro saw that he was going to burn himself out. Moses had allowed good work to go too far. Limits on good things keen them good.
Problem #4: Difficult Co-workers
A personnel counselor will often send someone to our hospital program because of stress at work. When these situations are unraveled, the “stress at work” often turns out to be somebody at the office who is driving the stressed-out person crazy. This person in the office or workplace has a strong influence over the emotional life of the person in pain, and he or she does not know how to deal with it.
In this case you need to remember the Law of Power: You only have the power to change yourself. Yow can’t change another person. You must see yourself as the problem, not the other person. To see another person as the problem to be fixed is to give that person power over you and your well-being. Because you cannot change another person, you are out of control. The real problem lies in how you are relating to the problem person. You are the one in pain, and only you have the power to fix it.
Many people have found immense relief in the thought that they have no control over another person and that they must focus on changing their reactions to that person. They must refuse to allow that person to affect them. This idea is life changing, the beginning of true self-control.
Problem #5: Critical Attitudes
Stress is often caused by working with or for someone who is supercritical. People will get hooked into either trying to win over the critical person, which can almost never be done, or by allowing the person to provoke them to anger. Some people internalize the criticism and get down on themselves. All of these reactions indicate an inability to stand apart from the critical person and keep one’s boundaries.
Allow these critical people to be who they are, but keep yourself separate from them and do not internalize their opinion of you. Make sure you have a more accurate appraisal of yourself, and then disagree internally.
You may also want to confront the overly critical person according to the biblical model (Matt. 18). At first tell her how you feel about her attitude and the way it affects you. If she is wise, she will listen to you. If not, and her attitude is disruptive to others as well, two or more of you might want to talk to her. If she will not agree to change, you may want to tell her that you do not wish to talk with her until she gets her attitude under control.
Or you can follow the company’s grievance policy. The important thing to remember is that you can’t control her, but you can choose to limit your exposure to her, either physically or emotionally distancing yourself from her. This is self-control.
Avoid trying to gain the approval of this sort of person. It will never work, and you will only feel controlled. And avoid getting in arguments and discussions. You will never win. Remember the proverb, “Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult; whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse. Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you” (Prov. 9:7-8). If you allow them to draw thinking that you will change them, you are asking them for trouble. Stay separate. Keep your boundaries. Don’t get sucked into their game.
Problem #6: Conflicts with Authority
If you are having trouble getting along with your boss, you may be having “transference feelings.” Transference is when you experience feelings in the present that really belong to some unfinished business in the past.
Transference happens frequently with bosses because they are authority figures. The boss-employee relationship can trigger authority conflicts you might have. You can begin to have strong reactions that are not appropriate to the current relationship.
Suppose your supervisor tells you that he wants something done differently. Immediately you feel “put down.” You think, He never thinks I do anything right. I’ll show him. Your supervisor may have made the comment in passing, but the feelings it triggered were very strong indeed. The reality is that the interaction may be tapping into unresolved hurt from past authority relationships, such as parents or teachers.
When a transference relationship starts, you may begin to act out all the old patterns you did with parents. This never works. You become a child on the job.
To have boundaries is to take responsibility for your transference. If you find yourself having strong reactions to someone, take some time and look inside to see if the feelings are familiar. Do they remind you of someone from the past? Did Mom or Dad treat you like that? Do they have the same personality as this person?
You are responsible for working out these feelings. Until you face your own feelings, you can’t even see who others really are. You are looking at them through your own distortions, through your own unfinished business. When you see others clearly without transference, you will know how to deal with them.
Another example would be strong feelings of competition with a co-worker. This may represent some competitive relationship from the past, such as sibling rivalry, that has not been worked through. Whenever you experience strong feelings, see them as part of your responsibility. This will lead you to any unfinished business and healing, as well as keep you from acting irrationally toward co-workers and bosses. Leave the past in the past, deal with it, and do not allow it to interfere with present relationships.
Problem #7: Expecting Too Much of Work
People increasingly come to the workplace wanting the company be a “family.” In a society where the family, church, and community are not the support structures they once were, people look to their colleagues for the emotional support a family once provided. This lack of boundaries between the personal and work life is fraught with all sorts difficulties.
The workplace ideally should be supportive, safe, and nurturing. But this atmosphere should primarily support the employee in work-related ways—to help her learn, improve, and get a job done. The problem arises when someone wants the job to provide what he the job to provide what her parents did not provide for her: primary nurturing, relationship, self-esteem, and approval. Work is not set up this way, nor is it what the typical job asks of someone. The inherent conflict in this set-up is this: The job expects adult functioning, and the person wants childhood needs met. These differing expectations will inevitably collide.
Health comes from owning unmet childhood needs and working them out. The problem is that the workplace is not the place to do that. There are expectations at work. They will ask from you without giving because they are going to pay you for your work. They are not obligated to provide all the emotional support you need.
You need to make sure you are meeting your needs for support and emotional repair outside of work. Plug into supportive and healing networks that will help you to grow out of your emotional hurts and unmet needs, and build you up so you can function well at the job, in the adult world that has adult expectations. Get your relationship needs met outside of work, and then you will be able to work the best without getting your needs mixed up with what the company needs from you. Keep your boundaries firm; protect those hurt places from the workplace, which is not only not set up to heal, but also may wound unintentionally.
Problem #8: Taking Work-Related Stress Home
Just as we should keep good boundaries on our personal issues and keep them out of the workplace, we need to keep some boundaries on work and keep it out of the home. This generally has two components.
The first is emotional. Conflicts at work need to be dealt with and worked through so they do not begin to affect the rest of your life. If denied, they can cause major depressions and other illnesses that begin to spill over into other areas of life.
Make sure you understand work issues and face them directly so that work does not emotionally control your life. Find out why a certain co-worker is able to get to you, or why your boss is able to control the rest of your life. Find out why your successes or failures on the job are able to bring you up or down. These important character issues need to be worked through. Otherwise, the job will own you.
The second component is finite things such as time, energy, and other resources. Make sure that the job, which is literally never done, does not continue to spill over into personal life and cost you relationships and other things that matter. Put limits on special projects that are going to take more time than usual, and make sure overtime does not become a pattern. One company we know has such a high value for family that they dock people for working overtime! They want them to put limits on their work and be home with the family. Find out your own limits and live by them. These are good boundaries.
Problem #9; Disliking Your Job
Boundaries are where our identity comes from. Boundaries define what is me and what is not me. Our work is part of our identity in that it taps into our particular giftedness and the exercise of those gifts in the community.
However, many people are unable to ever find a true work identity. They stumble from job to job, never really finding anything that is “them.” More often than not, this is a boundary problem. They have not been able to own their own gifts, talents, wants, desires, and dreams because they are unable to set boundaries on others’ definitions and expectations of them.
This happens with people who have not separated from church and the family they grew up in. A pastor was having great difficulty with his church and the board of elders. Finally, right in the middle of a consistory meeting, he said, “I never wanted to be a pastor anyway. It was my mother’s wish, not mine.” He did not have good enough boundaries with his mother to define his own career path. As a result, he had fused with her wishes and was miserable. His heart had not been in it from the start.
This can happen also with friends and culture. Others’ expectations can be very strong influences. You must make sure that your boundaries are strong enough that you do not let others define you. Instead, work with God to find out who you really are and what kind of work you are made for. Romans 12:2 speaks of having boundaries against these kinds of pressures from others: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” You should have a realistic expectation of yourself based on who you really are, your own true self with your own particular giftedness. You can only do this with boundaries that stand up and say, “This is me, and that is not me.’ Stand up against others’ expectations of you.
Finding Your Life’s Work
Finding your life’s work involves taking risks. First you need to firmly establish your identity, separating yourself from those you are attached to and following your desires. You must take ownership of how you feel, how you think, and what you want. You must assess your talents and limitations. And then you must begin to step out as God leads you.
For God wants you to discover and use your gifts to his glory. He asks only that you include him in the process: “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this” (Ps. 37:4-5).
God also, however, calls you to be accountable for what you do: “Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you to judgment” (Eccl. 11:9).
As you develop your talents, look at your work as a partnership between you and God. He has given you gifts, and he wants you to develop them. Commit your way to the Lord, and you will find your work identity. Ask him to help.
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