Moving the Needle
Christmas is over and in a few days, 2022 will begin. For many people, there’s great anxiety, worry and fear about what this next year will bring.
Let me ask you this: As you look ahead to the next 12 months, what is going through your heart? Notice I didn’t say “head.”
“What’s the difference, Steve?”
There’s a huge difference. Our minds can get out of control and engage in what’s called, catastrophizing. If we are unaware of how we are feeling in our hearts, our brains will take over and we will react to what we think is true, when it’s not reality.
This is that time of year to make those proverbial “New Year’s resolutions.” Now, I’m not saying don’t plan and don’t set goals. I’m just saying, give yourself some grace as you ponder what those are.
If you’re like me, a self-confessing Enneagram 1/wing 2 (The Perfectionist/Loyalist), I used to set lofty expectations on myself. Year after year it was something new that I wanted to do. Eat more healthy. Exercise. Make more money. Buy that home or the car. Get that promotion with the fancy title after my name. It was all about working harder to attain the things I thought I needed to find my worth. Exercising, eating better, etc. are all good things to purse. But when we set super high expectations to never miss a single day, and that’s the only way we measure improvement, we can end up spiraling downward.
Can you relate to any of those?
The Father has taken me on this journey over the past 6 1/2 years to show me my heart and who I am. For me, I have been striving for over 50 years to do and attain things so I would feel significant and earn respect from my family and others. What I came to realize as I dug deeper into my soul was that I was more focused on the outcomes than I was the journey.
“Moving the needle” is about looking at the bigger picture of your life. Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘You can’t see the forest through the trees’? At ground level we feel like we’ve made zero progress. All I can see are trees everywhere. We think we are lost, or going in circles and making no progress toward our goal. But ask another person to look at your life and they see something altogether different: growth. Why? Because he/she is above the trees and sees the forest. They are giving us truth while we are stuck in our heads reacting to a host of things.
Growth is about moving the needle forward.
Focus on the view from the forest as you journey through 2022.
Oh - and don’t forget to give yourself grace. I have struggled with that all my life. Enneagram 1’s want to “get it right” all the time and that’s just not possible. We learn from our mistakes. Failure is a prerequisite to growth.
Next time your head is telling you, “you’re never going to make it” - or you’re feeling inadequate, hopeless, or helpless - listen to your heart and believe in who you are! Then, watch from the above the trees and see how the needle moves forward in your personal growth in 2022.
If I can be of any help to you in your journey, email me at talk@bringingkingdom.org
