Have you ever met someone that was so funny you thought to yourself, “They should really be performing?” Have you ever played a pickup game of basketball with someone and said to yourself, “If they had taken time to master their skills, they could be in the big league?” Have you ever looked in the mirror and said to yourself, “I wish I would’ve spent more time practicing or preparing?”
I remember going to a career fair when I was about to graduate from college. From that career fair I was able to obtain several interviews with some pretty good companies. In almost every interview I was asked, “what would you like to do?” At the time, I didn’t know and I definitely didn’t have any understanding of my purpose. The only answer I could give was, “I know I can’t sit at a desk all day or in a cubicle.” In one interview after I gave my response I watched the two interviewers look at each other and seem kind of bewildered. They proceeded to tell me, “you realize that you’d spend most of the day doing exactly that…” Needless to say, that interview ended rather abruptly. Clearly, I needed more thought and preparation.
PREPARED in PRIVATE
How you prepare in secret will be recognized in public. I heard a pastor say, preparation is the process. The idea is that knowing what you should do or are called to do is different than being ready to do it. No one becomes great overnight. Gold must be refined. Basketball players must train hard. Doctors must study and practice. The process can at times be grueling and can make us conjure thoughts of quitting, slacking or choosing an easier path. However, I believe we need to have the proper perspective in our understanding of preparation. It’s far better to have a grueling process in private than to have a gruesome showing in public. As a speaker, I always have in the back of my mind the desire to over prepare when no one is watching so that when everyone is watching and listening to me I don’t end up embarrassed and they end up benefitting from hearing what God has blessed me to say.
One study indicated how some people who don’t believe they can accomplish anything don’t plan long-term and therefore never accomplish anything. To be clear, for some people, it is the lack of long-term planning that put them in their current situation as opposed to a result of their circumstances. In this case of the chicken and the egg the chicken was a lack of preparation. Make sure your ‘egg’ of purpose is properly prepared to hatch.
POSITIONED for PUBLIC
If you are a leader, the best thing you can do for any person under your leadership is position them based on their gifting and not based on your need at the moment. People end up hating their jobs often because they are called to do something that, although they have the capacity to accomplish, they were not specifically designed to do. If 90% of ‘you’ wants to reorganize leadership structures and 10% of ‘you’ is able to sell clothes, being asked to spend 90% of your time selling clothes is counter-intuitive to being used in your area of mastery. It’s true that we have to pay our dues in the workforce and work our way up but some of us spend our whole lives working our way up and never getting there. Additionally, we tend to lose focus on the purpose we had in mind at the outset. Not living in your unique God-given ability will cause you to compete for room on a crowded highway instead of blazing your own trail and charting a different course.
When we are properly positioned in the proper environment where our unique purpose is most necessary there is little to no competition. The irony of settling for what seems to be the easier and more common route is that doing so actually increases our competition and thereby our stress level. Tim Ferris said, “It’s lonely at the top. 99% of people are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for ‘realistic’ goals, paradoxically making them the most competitive.” In essence our thinking of remaining in the safe zone should more accurately be called the ‘stress’ zone. Position yourself to pursue your purpose and you will exit a life of mediocrity and enjoy the fruits of mastery.