Day 3,030 – written by audio recording and transcription as an experiment 😁

Growth:

What I think I’m most thankful for today is a feeling of complete and total discomfort. That’s right. It feels kind of weird. I keep feeling very uncomfortable doing something that I’ve done for 3000 plus straight days. You would think that I would feel pretty confident in my ability to do so, that this is kind of old hat, that maybe I’m stretching myself a little bit by trying to find something different to be thankful for every day. But this has been a really interesting one. For approximately the past 75 minutes, I’ve been on again, off again, thinking about writing my blog for this evening, and I just haven’t brought myself to do it because of discomfort. The discomfort is because I’m doing this in a completely different way than what I’m used to.

Typically I write my blog laying in my bed at night wrapping up the end of the day. Maybe sometimes you know before I go to bed sitting on the couch and typing away on my laptop. But it’s always written. It’s typed up. It’s put together that way. In this case I’m driving back from taking Dominic back up to Minneapolis. He’s going back to school and I’ve got two hours of drive time and I wanted to make the most of my drive time and then the most of my time at home when I get back because it’ll be about 7 30 or so. So I decided I was going to bring my voice recorder along with and I would do my blog as an audio version which I would then transcribe into a written blog post.

Again at the end of the day when you split it up it’s really the same thing right? I’m still putting together a blog. I’m still taking my thoughts and writing what I’m grateful for for growth. What I’m thankful for in general from an appreciation standpoint and a moment of presence that I’m very grateful for as well. Nothing has changed in the net result but everything has changed in how I’m doing so which led to discomfort. So first off I’m thankful for having this opportunity to to push through discomfort because that’s where the real growth always happens.

The second reason that I’m thankful for this is I keep thinking in my head why have I taken so long to start recording? What am I afraid of? What am I nervous about? I can delete this recording and start over. Nobody’s actually going to listen to the recording I have because I’m just gonna put the written transcribed version in anyways. Why am I so nervous? I don’t know. It’s been a great question that I’ve had brewing in the back of my brain now since, I don’t know, after I realized I was hesitant to type this.

I think what it boils down to is there’s a probably an ego issue involved. I’m nervous that it won’t be the same. I’m nervous that I’m gonna feel uncomfortable and I’m not going to do as well as what I normally do. It’s change. It’s something different. All of these things I shouldn’t be afraid of. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to cause hesitation. Yet I still had hesitation to get this going.

And now as I’m recording this, not gonna lie, I’m smiling. I kind of laughed at myself a couple of times. It’s just how silly it is that I was nervous in the first place.

And so to tie this whole thing back together, what I’m thankful for today from the standpoint of growth is the opportunity to find some discomfort because that’s how I know that I’m growing. And thenalso to pause and take a look at the reason for that discomfort. And to realize that it’s just silly. And then think how many times in my life have I let something so simple become an obstacle that it does not need to be.

I’m afraid to think that it actually happens more often than I’d like. Though the next time I run into something that makes me feel uncomfortable I will think back to this and realize again so many great things come after we pass the point of discomfort. And again that’s that’s where the true growth really happens.

Appreciation:

This morning at church our priest had a fantastic sermon and it really boiled down to some interesting leadership ideals. What he spoke about was how as we think of our faith, quite often we we come to ourfaith as the result of knowing someone who has that faith. And we get to knowthat person. We get to see how they live their life. We get a chance to buildtrust with that person. And the more that we get to know them the more we can build a bridge of trust with that person. So we really have to pause and get toknow someone before we trust them. Once we trust them that’s when we can open up to some of those more difficult questions.

The second piece of it was looking at the fact that not only do you have tobuild that relationship with someone first, but then there’s also the fact that they have to themselves get to this point of curiosity. They need to ask a question. If we push the questions or we try to push our agenda, we kind of scare them away. We don’t let what needs to happen actually happen.

At a certain point, as we build a relationship with someone and they see something about us or in us, they might ask questions about it. Once they hit that curiosity, we want to satisfy that curiosity. We want to help answer their questions, but then be careful that we don’t just dump our suitcase of allof everything that we want to say about it or all of our thoughts on a certain thing. Rather, we answer their question and allow them to lead themselves to more questions. It was eye-opening for me, thinking from a leadership standpoint, how many times I want to be able to just point my team in the right direction and show them something, wheresometimes it’s something that they have to experience. I have to have done a strong enough job of building trust with them and deepening our relationship that they feel confident enough to be able to ask questions. Also, I have to remember that everybody comes to thatcuriosity at a different point. If I do my job well, maybe I can help them be a little bit more curious more quickly. But at the end of the day, it’s up to them. If they don’t have that curiosity and they don’t ask the question, I need to sit and wait until they do ask that question.

A little side note here. Kind of funny, I am running into one of the things that is more difficult about doing this audio versus written. When I’m typing my blog, I have the privilege of being able to think through each sentence. I can type the sentence and I can delete the sentence. I can change the sentence and I can cut down the windbaggedness of what I say,which when I’m recording audio like this, I don’t have the option to do until I transcribe it later. Just an interesting side note for future Mike!

So long story short, what I really appreciated about the sermon was it reminded me of a great lesson in leadership. We have to build trust with our teams. We have to build trust with individuals. We have to let them see how we live. And that also means doing our best to live into our best selves, right? That also means living into our values and doing things the right way. And then also they have to have their own curiosity that kicks in. And then once they exhibit that curiosity, then we can help start to satisfy that that hunger that they have.

All in all, it was fantastic to just have such a thought-provoking sermon that left me thinking about a handful of different situations and how I’ve handled them in the past.

Presence:

Today there was something in the natural world that I just don’t typically see. Sundogs. And it was really neat because I saw sundogs early in the morning and then also again in the afternoon. And those are those those rare times when everything just works out just right. That alongside the Sun, parallel to the horizon, there’s almost a halo around the Sun. A rainbow colored halo. And at the point where it’s parallel to the Sun, it brightens up super bright. So it almost looks like if you just glance, it almost looks like there’s three Suns. And it was such a beautiful natural phenomenon to see today.

And what it’s also reminded me isin the cold weather like this and in the snow, it’s so easy to get frustrated and think, ugh, this weather is miserable. But there’s so much cool stuff that happens. Cool. Dad joke. Gotta love that pun. Anyways, there’s so much awesome stuff to see. The sky is so much more clear. There’s just a different set of things. And it just, it feels so refreshing. The air just feels so full.

But again, this morning and then again this afternoon, to pause and to see sundogs, that was just really cool and a neat added moment, a couple of moments, to my day.

Thanks!!!