Hawthorne?

The Hawthorne effect

There is well-documented social science phenomenon called the Hawthorne effect, whereby people change their behavior as a result of knowing they are being observed. Never has this been more important in my life. Yesterday my mom was admitted to a nursing home. She may never leave this place. How do you know that the people you have entrusted your mother's care to, will do an appropriate job? The Hawthorne effect.

When folks know they are being monitored, their actions are more consistent with stated objectives, than those people who think no one is watching, neither today nor tomorrow.

But who is watching me? Who is watching you? Who are the stakeholders in our lives, the people who benefit from our actions? What do they see? Do you realize that you are being checked, tested and measured all the time? Of course this has spiritual dimensions as well, but honestly, I think you can see this as a blanket covering all that we do that matters. Someone is always observing and taking our measure. What is your grade today? How are you improving the value that you bring to your family, your clients, your stakeholders and yourself? I think I need to keep the Hawthorne effect on my radar screen all the time to remind me to keep moving forward.

Summations

This month has been a 20,000 mile flying month unfortunately. Back and forth across the ocean, urgencies and need driving me around like a bad chauffeur. But well practiced at this as I am, I make the best of each challenge and each day. At least as I fly over the Atlantic I get some blessed silence in my life. Not required to speak (nor listen) to anyone. Evidently I got the last seat on these last two flights, which at least explains the high price, not to mention that I purchased this flight about 7 hours before departure! Mom and dad have an emergency, 24 hours later I am at their house, travel worn and stained, but here nevertheless, from a quarter globe away.

This ability to live at the speed of sound is something one must guard against. Especially people like me, mobiles, who travel to another country each week for work. Steady dependable systems of work, relationships and structure prevent the worst elements of such a life, from overtaking you. As I was just reading this week on the hbr blog site, in a 75 year study that Harvard did, good relationships make life the healthiest and richest it can possibly be. So I stop and write one of my top 10 buds. I call one up on google hangouts, I FaceTime with another. I take one out to dinner when they show up in my town. I have coffee with another. I go drinking with yet another. I have to consciously and intentionally maintain this critical web of relationships, so that flying doesn't become my epitaph on my tombstone - "Here lies a man who flew everywhere, but had no friends." Or some sick moniker like that. Who wants that to be the definition of their life??

Instead we want the summation of our lives to read, "Here lies a man who changed the world, invested in many, loved well, gave generously, lived with his hands open, transparent and kind to all, someone to imitate." Or something along that gist, as I am no poet. We all want to matter.

A violent shift in worlds

I knew I was back in my element within moments of arriving in Istanbul. Having just left the placid cow pastures of Northeast Georgia, the slam-packed Istanbul airport was a jarring impact to the senses. You can hardly walk at a normal pace through the airport as there are so many people, and from every point in the world where East would meet West.

I headed out onto the terrance where I promptly fell into an extended conversation with an East Indian, a Bulgarian, and myself of course an American who lives in Macedonia - all within the confines of the Istanbul airport. Our conversations covered African countries (which one’s were the most dangerous at the moment and which ones were the best business environments), skiing, spicy foods (which even the East Indian admitted Thailand holds the Gold Medal), to marathons, to diving to cave diving, to banking and insurance (the East Indian who goes by the name Samil, is a banker) to engineering and communications (which covered Alex the Bulgarian’s expertise), to non-profits and leadership and cultures.

The scope of the conversations reflects the world I was made for, and after nine weeks in the USA (and ridiculous conversations about Dump Trump and Hell no Hillary), it was a shot of pure adrenaline to my psyche and soul. There is so so much more to the world that we live in, than the cows mooing at one another over barbed-wire fences. Its good to be home.

Lesson One. - Never undervalue you already have

A bed. Beds are underrated wonder mechanisms! They hold and support you in so many loving ways, even the bad ones. But they are under-cherished, under-considered, under-appreciated items that every single person reading this has . . . and I know this because I was one of you, until I rode across America on my bicycle.

Then it was eight complete solid weeks of camping, i. e. sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor with nothing between you and the cold cold floor except a one inch thermarest air mattress, that is, if it remains inflated all the night long. While indoors, it is truly still camping. Trust me. I am now an authority on this. Can you actually sleep in a sleeping bag on a thermarest for eight weeks? Actually yes, but not well, nor deeply, nor comfortably, unless you are also eight years old. Never undervalue your bed.

A shower. A shower is truly a marvel. In the last 48 hours I have literally taken seven showers. I finally feel clean for the first time in eight weeks. I wish I were still in the shower instead of on this airplane! Showers have the power to change your perspective, attitude, feelings, outlook, futures, present, memories - they are the wonder drug! Taking a shower with 20 other guys, in some of the moldiest, dirtiest, fungi-infested, stopped-up-drains, no water pressure, no lights sometimes, even in a baptistery once!, horror movie kinds of places for eight weeks, gives one a deeply spiritual appreciation for a modern shower that all of us have in our personal homes.

Showers that have hot water, and showers that have knobs from which we can call on that hot water to come-to-me experiences. Instead we had showers where you have to hold a "button" in, under pressure, sometimes under extreme pressure, in order for the water to trickle out. Try washing hair with one hand! Hey, trying washing anything with one hand while holding "the button!" Try wetting your bar of soap and rolling it around in your hand (singular), while holding "the button." It will invariably shoot across the scum infested floor to the other side of the shower directly under someone else's feet who is also trying to accomplish the same feat. Never undervalue your shower.

Finally a toilet. And of course we DID have a toilet in every place we stayed. The part you have to appreciate is that most often it was a single equal opportunity throne, to be shared with 20 other guys. Electronics were immediately banned, as were all reading materials! And trying to keep the girls from hijacking your single throne was almost impossible! Unless it happened to be one of those wonderful places where the door would not lock and the stall had no door! Assuming your place even had a stall surrounding the throne!

And while we did have a toilet, there was no, absolutely none, zero, nada, privacy ever. Imagine brushing your teeth each morning to the music of others on the throne! Imagine the hope of toilet paper which might not do you permanent damage when used. Number 10 grade sandpaper would have been kinder! Imagine never having enough TIME to finish your business, because there was only one throne and 20 guys. It's like being on the golf course and having someone constantly hurry your every shot! Never undervalue your toilet/privacy.

Never undervalue what you already have. Take some time and appreciate what you already have. Be grateful, thankful, and overwhelmed by how good you have it!

Grit?

Today was a beautiful 80 mile ride day through Ohio, on rural roads, light traffic, low humidity, and ok, we did have a headwind, but that was just a wonderful cooling breeze as far as I was concerned, although there was a great deal of whining about it from the other riders that came in after me. Today is a blog about consistency.

All my life I have gotten to where I am going, by consistency. What is phenomenally disappointing is the amount of jealousy and resentment that this has caused in so many people. Riding across America has just been a repeating story-within-a-story of what I have experienced my whole life. We have been riding on this 3500 mile ride for over seven weeks now, and the whining and complaining (jealousy) about my "speed" and "how fast I am" is just ludicrous. First of all I am riding the heaviest bike of all riders on the entire ride - the one and only mountain bike. Most people's entire bicycle weigh less than my front RockShox fork weighs! Try pushing that up the Rocky Mountains! Secondly I am a chronically weight challenged, middle-age grandfather of three. Come on people, look at the facts here!

Today is a perfect example of most days out on the route. I start off slow and steady to get my old bones warmed up and the blood flowing (which seems to take longer each and every day!). I am often at the end of the long line of riders, but sometimes I start in the middle and occasional near the front. But today is the example we are using - I started 12th out of 29 riders. At the end of 10 miles I was 9th out of 29 riders. By the time we reached the first rest stop at the 20 mile marker I was 7th out of 26 riders (because we had 3 drop out for the day at this point) By the time we reached the second rest stop at the 40 mile marker I was 4th out of 26 riders. By the time we reach the third rest stop at the 60 mile marker I was 2nd. And then at the end of the 80 mile ride I was first. Typical day. I was as surprised as always. It is called consistency, faithfulness, stubbornness, grit, focus, tenacity, determination, luck or stupidity - depending on what your point of view is and what kind of person you want to be.

Every single person can choose to ride at the exact same speed as me. They ALL have better equipment, they all have the same tools or better, many of them have youth on their side as well, and they all have excuses. I wonder what would happen if I did not stop to take pictures along the way?? My one and only point here is that consistency can produce astonishing and unexpected results over and over again. It is the story of my life. Try it and don't waver, and be amazed.

Your real face

An early early Sunday morning at Starbucks, getting a legit coffee and hot breakfast (compared to the breakfast cereals I have had to eat these last seven weeks). Sitting in a soft chair, soaking up some atmosphere and peace before heading back to the biking group, and the pain of group dynamics. I had never realized how much of an introvert I can be . . . don't laugh, because it is a big enough adjustment without you laughing at me! And yes I have snickered about this quite a bit over the last month, as the realization has come to me.

Is it possible that I have been forced into a public persona that oozes charisma and energy and extrovertism and all that exhausting group leadership stuff all these years? Is it possible that this is what I thought a pastor/missionary/leader had to be? Is it possible that this is not very much me at all??  Whoa!! 

Does anyone else find the effort to speak out loud, especially early in the morning, to be excruciating, almost beyond possibility? Do you find that not entering into every fight or conversation (ala Joe Callaway) to be freeing? Do you wish that there was a lot more silence and quiet in the world? Do you find you can impact and lead indirectly just as well, perhaps even better than from the front? Do you wish frequently that the idiots would shut up? 

Then perhaps, maybe, perchance, your real face is something other than you have practiced for 50 years.

Are we helping?

Are we helping?

This is a question that is repeatedly coming up in my trek across America. Two blogs back I ranted about the "sweeper" role on our team, and the more I think about it the more I see it as handicapping other adults from taking responsibility for themselves. A second one that is driving me crazy is the expectation to "Chalk the Turns" for those following you in the peloton. I mean you have a Garmin, and an iPhone, and the route sheet hardcopy, why the hell am I supposed to be making chalk marks on the asphalt for you? You have better tools than I do to route your way to our destination. Put your big girl panties on and find your own damn way. Think of it as scouting (Girl Scouts Boy Scouts) and you have a number of compasses and they are all pointing you a certain direction if you would just take the time to USE them, instead of expecting me to stop my ride and make a chalk mark so that you don't have to look at your multiple tools.

So both sweeping and marking penalize the faster (i.e. harder working, sweating, more disciplined) riders, in order to "help" the slower riders. This is complete bullshit. We aren't helping them, we are keeping them helpless in their own minds. Apologies to those who think this is about bicycle groups moving slowly across the USA, the leadership principles here, apply to many of not most other fields of execution. IF this were a race, then these tactics could very well be helpful to the whole team. But since this is not a race, and everyone has permission to travel at their own chosen pace (within limits), then these tactics are not helps at all.

But just so that you don't think I am only pissing and moaning about the slower riders (who I am sorely tempted to call the "complaining" riders, because listening to them non-stop whining about how I did not mark the route with large enough markings, or that we were pushing them too hard as sweeps is getting really old) I am also plenty disappointed about another set of riders who want you to "pull" them along. When you get in a pace line of riders, proper etiquette is that one rider leads for generally about 3-5 minutes and then the next rider in the pace line takes the lead and the front rider goes to the back of the pace line, because being in front is alot more work than being in any other position in the pace line. In fact that is the entire point of sharing that load of leading, so that you can go farther faster and expend less energy as a group. So we have a set of riders who eagerly join my pace line every single day, but never take the lead off my hands. This is complete bullshit. (I actually "pulled" for 22 miles three days ago waiting for someone else to step up and take the lead a single time! Did. Not. Happen.)

I have stopped pulling these people period. I just either stand up on my pedals and outpace them so that they can't keep up or I just stop and take pictures until they are out of sight (although one time last week two of the morons stopped and waited while I took pictures rather than pull their own weight and keep on riding!!) These people are not leaders. They may be fast, they may be strong riders, but they are not leaders. Leaders don't wait for others to take responsibility. Leaders don't wait for others to pull their weight. Leaders lead, and that does not have to happen at the front of the peloton, it can happen wherever you find yourself in the line or process.

The biggest value

The biggest value

For far too often I thought the best value I provided was what I did. But I could not have been more mistaken. Don't get me wrong, doing a job well, with careful excellence has great value.  But not the most value at this stage of life. The biggest value comes in careful thinking, and you absolutely must be alone in order to do that. 

Alone time, thinking time is the single most underrated activity in all my clients worlds, and mine too. Fortunately for me, I actually really enjoy my alone time, actively seek it out, start to feel desperate if I don't get it in regular doses. But my more social peers can't get off the hamster cages of expectation and opportunity for social interaction long enough to get any real thinking done. 

The best work in my opinion involves super intense quiet times followed by robust interactions with the appropriate people. You need the quiet in order to have something significant to contribute at the point of interaction. I am super appalled at how many conversations in the real world are banal nonsense! I have to carefully choose not to help that wasteland continue. Contributing real value requires real work between my ears.

Sweeper? Tradeoffs?

Today I was asked to be sweeper for the team. I said "no thank you" which was really difficult, because most of the folks on this team believe volunteering to be sweeper occasionally to be a critical part of being on this team. Not. Going. To. Happen. Again. I did it already. Once. Can't waste that much time again (five extra hours) for such weak reasons. First of all I don't agree with the Fuller Center's insistence for sweepers. I mean who sweeps the sweepers? It is redundant nonsense. (Sweepers are the two people who stay behind the slowest members of the group to make sure everyone gets where they are suppose to go, and there are so many assumptions at play here I can't even start to explain) Who makes certain the sweepers arrive? How is that any different than the last person in the peloton doing that themselves and (horror of horrors) taking responsibility for themselves! Read the route sheet for pity sakes! Use a stinking GPS that is on every single phone if nothing else! Get a life people!

Moreover I need to write you. This is a far more productive activity than babysitting people who don't meet the minimal requirements for riding on a trip like this, (12 miles per hour is a minimal requirement and if you can't ride that fast, stay home or work out more but don't waste my life). I need to work with my clients around the world. They are changing the world and I want to be a part of that, not watch some pre-menopausal over-weight woman stay stuck in 1st gear for 91 miles. 

So I will strive to be more attentive, encouraging, helpful, hard working with the chore teams, first to volunteer for work that others don't want (which are practivcally helpful to the team), but I have to stay firm in my refusal to squander my life in pointless activities, even when those around me perceives them to be important. It's called a tradeoff.

Up and down these monsters

We have been crossing Colorado and Wyoming at a frantic pace this week. Frantic in a bicycle sense, not a car/motorcycle sense. The Rocky Mountains are serious climbs and descents, and I have a burnt all my available energies this week, making my way up and down these monsters. I think I could go to bed at 7 pm each day! Of course the schedule does not allow for that, and so I have to stay up late each night and get up early each morning.

Because of all that is going on in my life right now, the beautiful fatigue I have each day is perfect. It keeps me level and balanced and just tired enough that I don't join in every fight/conversation/discussion/argument I am invited to attend. However it has a downside, in that I don't have nearly enough bandwidth to emotionally navigate all the relationships in my life, especially the ones that surround me on this adult camping trip known as The Fuller Bicycle Adventure.  I am discovering that when in such a state, that I don't have nearly as much patience or tolerance or longsuffering as I normally experience in my life. I have less willingness to allow others to dominate, or win, or perhaps rather it's a super sensitivity to the finely-tuned abuses of leadership, or position or power. In other words, long story short, I am that curmudgeon that I always suspected that I was. No one is less surprised than I am.

The reality that I take away from this, is that much of what I do and say and my public persona is relatively shallow and skin deep. Those important characteristics and core virtues are not nearly as foundational nor deeply embedded as I would like them to be. I have a great deal of work and restructuring to do still . . . yet knowing these deficits is at least half the battle, and perhaps the most necessary starting point. Your can't change what you don't know for sure needs changing. You can't address that which you are not convinced needs improvement. So the exploding awareness that I still have quite a ways to grow, is a gigantic step in the right direction. This is the up and down of the real monster.

The completely me me

Today we crossed into Colorado from Utah. Utah was spectacular. I had flown into Salt Lake City some 19-20 years ago, and I had driven into tiny snippets of the state before, but nothing like this slow four days in state on a bicycle - it was amazing. Let's hope Colorado offers as much along the route that has been selected for us. Spent the afternoon talking to my peeps and texting my niece and listening to folks struggles with life and death.

But my daily speed bumps concerning my brother's death 8 weeks ago are slowly growing smaller I think. These three plus weeks on this trip across the USA have been wonderfully brutal and therapeutic. The 1400 miles we have traveled so far have been so scenic there are almost no words to express how beautiful the trip has been so far. Yes yes yes I understand Nebraska and Iowa are coming, but flat cornfields have their own beauty I am hoping. If they don't, some other place in my near future will and I can wait.

The best part is that I don't have to BE anything for anyone on this trip. Sure I still have clients and I have affiliates and I do have to care for them, and I call my parents every single day, but the 25 people that I am crossing the country with on the FCBA tour, I have never met before and after the trip will likely never see again. There is a much needed freedom in this adult camping trip I find myself on right now, where everything is tight and significant, but temporary. There is a never experienced (for me at least) freedom to completely be whatever I need to be today kind of feel to this. I don't have to bring my best self to work, nor do I have to bring my business suit out, nor do I have to be the leadership guru, nor do I have to be "the missionary" or "the pastor", instead I just get to be me. The me of this moment. The completely me me of today. My only worry is that I might not want to go back to my other life.

Making the most of it!

Sitting in Heber City Utah, enjoying a fine beverage from the breweries in Maryland, a hamburger made from the cows I see in the pasture before me, snow still on the peaks even in mid July, and so many other things to appreciate about this moment, this beautiful Saturday. So much to be thankful for, so much to be blessed by, so much that I get to do. 

A number of people have questioned how I can get up at 4:45 am everyday and then bike 80-100 miles a day with our group? What they don't understand is that I GET to do this. It is no chore, it is no hardship, because I remind myself 49 times day that I get to do this. This one small window in my life where I don't have to work my normal schedule, where I don't have to keep my usual office hours, where I get to survey the Rocky Mountians slowly and completely each day at 15 miles per hour. It is awesome and I won't likely get another chance to do this. Making the most of it!

No language is acceptable at the most frustrating dinner ever

One of the most frustrating and amazing phenomena in dealing with 20 somethings as I travel the world, is that every single phrase and word choice and adjective that I speak, they can find something objectionable about it. There are no possible solutions to this challenge on my side. Because no matter what language I choose to employ, one of them will find something wrong with it. Simple speech does not exist any longer. Straightforward conversation cannot happen any longer. Truth can't exist nor thrive in an environment where every word is loaded with assumptions and implications in the mind of the 20 something. Regardless of the topic, homosexuality, people of color, trafficking, orphans, churches (and all these terms I just used in this sentence are also objectionable in some fashion!) they are all loaded.

Don't get me wrong, I love 20 somethings. All three of my young adult children are 20 somethings. They are very special people. But in their conversations with me, they assume the best possible meaning of each statement, of each sentence, of each vulnerability. Whereas, the 20 somethings I just had dinner with, assume every possible slight, harm, evil intention, wrong morals, bad character, and worse possible position to each word that comes out of my mouth. There is no possible way to have a conversation in that context. While we are both speak a form of the English language, we have attached different meanings to each of the words that we are speaking, and thus, while we technically "understand" what the other person is saying, we completely lose and forsake the true and actual meaning of what was said, it feels like (and this is coming from a totally multi-lingual person) like I am speaking English and you are speaking Greek. There is not much communication taking place.

And once you feel this horrible communication doldrum, and experience the agony of failed shared meanings, you see that it happens in so many spheres of the world, business, politics and society in general. We use the same words in general, but attach completely different meanings and nuances to those words, and so the results are unpredictable, and are very much like hugging a cactus. #themostfrustratingdinnerever

Too hot to be used

Yesterday I got a message on my phone that I had never seen before. It said that the "iPhone was too hot and could not be used at the moment" or something similar and it had a thermometer icon there showing red. Of course I would need the phone at that exact moment to determine if we were heading in the wrong direction or not! Thats what I get for leaving the phone in the sun. And I was very surprised to hear that almost everyone in the group that I was with at that moment had received similar messages on their phones or iPads, because this was a first for me. In Asia, my iPads get very hot.

I think we often allow our lives to get overclock, over-revved and over-heated too, and we can't really function until the temperature comes down to a manageable level. Self care and self awareness are at least two ways to stay on top of this problem and PTA - protect the asset - you and me. We need to monitor how hot our lives are getting and take appropriate steps to keep them in the prime operating range, in our high performance range. We can't expect to bring our best selves in the arena in our leadership if we don't watch the stovetop and make sure things aren't boiling over.

David is looking to get his groove back . . .

Overwhelmed and overclocked is what life in the modern world feels like, all the time. Today is the first day in . . . forever it feels like . . . where I have had the margin to do the mundane and necessary. Like changing a blown light bulb, repairing the license plate holder on the car, and the not so mundane, like taking my wife out to breakfast, and writing a blog post. For a guy who takes margin and space in life very very seriously, this is like blasphemy.

So I decided to turn the day upside down in order to try and regain my leverage on me. As my good friend Jeff said, "I think I know what you mean about clarity, priorities and leadership "being in your head". Self-leadership is almost certainly the most important variety of influence! The way I think through and operate on my priorities, how I self-motivate, self-regulate, and self-assess are pretty critical functions in a world where no one is looking out for you, no one is planning your career, and no one owes you anything, regardless of what the politicians say. The day each of us creates is a function of that self-leadership."

Notice that last phrase, the day each of us creates is a function of self-leadership. Ouch. Even a leadership focused/oriented/driven guy like me, can let the urgency of the immediate and loud, drown out the discipline of purpose and the important. Granted life is a constant flux of cycling demands, but Jeff has it right, the day I create is a function of self-leadership, and I can't lay that at anyone's feet but my own.

Birthday travels - or trains planes and rental cars

I am fairly well traveled, but I still make lots of mistakes while traveling. Yesterday I even made a dry run for the Gatwick Express to make certain I knew how and how long to take the correct steps to get to my flight to Madrid from the center of London. However in my enthusiasm to cross my T's and dot my I's, I purchased a one way ticket yesterday to Victoria station to speed me on my way this early morning. That. Won't. Work. You can't do that on the London tube because the date is printed right on the ticket and the British transportation authority simply won't let you.

Luckily for me, there are actual humans working on the tube who will listen to a sad foreigner tale and allow one to pass even without the correct ticket. I encountered three such individuals on my way to Gatwick this morning, and all three of them endeared the UK to my heart. They were so helpful and ever so polite. Dear God in heaven, may Spain be the same! I have never been to Spain, and I don't speak Spanish (the only class in undergrad I ever failed - due to excessive absences), and I have a rental car to fetch, 200 kilometers to navigate, a hotel to find, and refugee project to observe, affiliates to test, and a birthday to celebrate. We all need helpful peeps along our path to assist us in our arrival, no matter how much we have traveled.

The negators and the instructors

The negators and the instructors

There are always those people who are negative or who are going to be negative about what you are doing, or how you are doing it, or where or why you are doing it, or that you aren't doing the right thing nor the right way. It is simply the law of averages or the law of human behavior or both. You simply cannot avoid critiques. And unique to spiritual ministry (and politics I believe) is the phenomenon that the majority of people in the world think that they know how to do your job at least as good as you, and that they have the right, perhaps the obligation, to tell you how to do that job of yours that they have never done themselves.

I heard it 1000 times as a pastor, 1000 times as a missionary, and I hear it now that I am in the consulting (with a church ministry focus) business. It is simply the most frustrating and flabbergasting thing ever. I heard it on the way to the airport this morning, as my driver informed me of all the things wrong with his church, all the changes that must be made, his list of criticisms of the pastor, all from a guy who has never pastored a church for a single minute of his 55 years of living. I hear it in every single conversation about politics and "how it ought to be" or "how it would be different if I were in charge" perspectives.

There was something my dad taught me, and that I have tried to pass on to my children, in that every job in the world is much more difficult than it appears at face value, and that the more effortless it appears, the greater the master who is accomplishing it. That aside though, does not explain why these two fields in particular are consistent targets for criticism and advice. Perhaps it is as simple as the shallowness of the understanding of the negator or instructor? Maybe. I mean how hard can it be to pastor a congregation and lead a church? My grandfather always said that I only had to work one a day a week. No matter how often I pointed out to my grandfather that a pastor must excel at theology, public speaking, counseling, business, leadership, problem solving, organizational development, people development and often music as well. That is nine different fields of excellence! Even worse yet, your skills are at least equally impacted by your charisma, character and morals.

How many times someone has instructed me about how to reach more people on the mission field, even though they themselves have never learned another language, they have never learned another culture, they have never lived (much less thrived!) away from their families, traveled internationally, nor have ever worked in the church as staff! These mono-linguistic, mono-cultural, un-traveled never left their zip code negators or instructors are telling me, a professional who has 35 years of education and 30 years of experience in this work, how to better accomplish my responsibilities! The arrogance and ignorance is consistently one of the most ridiculous and insane regular occurrences in my life work. 

However the conundrum is this, these negators and instructors hold one key part of this work, one tiny sliver that gives them the right, to give me input, instruction, negatives, demoralizing derogatives, and criticism in their minds . . . they enable the work with their financial resources. This is a transactional event for them. Whereas in most industries and fields, workers exchange their time for money, which involves instruction and direction from the employer, ministry workers are servants of the public, and servants of God. In other words, we exchange our LIVES for the honor of being the one's who serve, the one's who are diminished, the one's who everyone else thinks they should be accountable to ... well everyone. 

The learner in me wants to honor the one voicing a concern, to listen carefully and see if I have missed something important or overlooked a critical element of the work, to be approachable and understanding. No one knows everything, even if they have my education and experience. But there are positive ways to accomplish this, it does not have to be negative nor instructive. But arrogance and ignorance are not the path to growth on either side of the equation. 

We have to live with the fact of negators and instructors exist, who have little if any idea whatsoever, about what they are negating or instructing, but we don't have to let it be important. If you have a calling, if you have a passion, then go do it better than anyone else. Build, create, innovate and disrupt the world for the sake of what is inside you and your heart. Negators and instructors be damned.