I attended the Global Leadership Summit with my dad last week.

It was our seventh year going together, and honestly, they are two of my favorite days of the year, every year. There’s so much to be learned about how to lead well – especially in this day and age – and the only thing I know for sure is that it is not a game of perfection.  It’s much more like a never-ending, always beckoning call to dive in and swim deeper.

The takeaways from this year’s summit are simple, but far from easy.  I share them with you here for even the slimmest chance that you may also gain from them.

BE UNDAUNTED

The more the theme of being undaunted arose, the more I was reminded just how often scripture urges us not to be fearful.  365 times.

365 times.  One command for each day of the year.  “Do not fear.”  Not a suggestion or a wish or a far-off hope, but a command.

Consider fear in the context of the self-doubt that will undoubtedly creep in and try to tell you that you’re unworthy; the nay-sayers who will proclaim that you can’t do what you’ve been given to do; the critics who will try to cut down what you’re pursuing, creating, or building; and the good ole logic, reason, and common sense arguments in your own mind that will try to be the tellers of your tales and the designers of your days.

Remaining undaunted in the face of fear is paramount.

And I truly believe that what you’ve been given to do is too important to be silenced by a liar like fear. 

DO IT NOW

The call to act now is one that never seems to go away.

Oswald Chambers wrote that once one hears the call of God and knows the mission he/she has been given, it haunts like a ghost until it’s being tended.

I know that truth right now in real time.

We have no idea what tomorrow’s circumstances may bring.  Be them ease or drought, strain or flood.  We must use our minutes with care, and I’m challenged in this every day.  You’ll hear much more about this in the coming non-fic series Life Unchained, but for now, I wonder how this challenge will inform your choices today.

What do you know you’ve been asked to do that is haunting you like a ghost because you’re not acting on it yet?

DO NOT QUIT

Well, that’s pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it?

The temptation to give up is always there, like a little devil sitting on my shoulder telling me that what I’m doing isn’t worth the energy.  Just yesterday I told a friend I’d like to do nothing more than drive to the beach and check out of life for the foreseeable future.

Quitting sounds so deliciously relaxing right now.

But then there’s that ghost of my calling, speaking into my other ear, telling me I was created for such a time as this, to create what He’s given me to create.  To do what He’s asked me to do.

The war is real.  The battle is on.  Pray for me, as I do for you, that none of us, ever, gives up.

No one else can build what you can build.  No one else can do what you can do.  No one else can create what you can create.  And I believe our world needs you.  Specifically, you.

Condoleezza Rice spoke at the summit this year, and I heard her say something that will never leave my body.  I share it in the hope that what she said encourages your next step.

She said,

“Our charge is to be undaunted; we must move forward, fearless; making the impossible seem inevitable in retrospect.  And we must do it now.”

I don’t know what you were made to do.

Maybe you don’t know yet either, but you will.  It took me the better part of thirty years to figure out, but I don’t think the time spent in understanding our calling is our greatest challenge.

I think our greatest challenge – our charge, as Rice put it – is to be undaunted, fearless, and relentless, first in the understanding of our callings; and then in our pursuits of them.

Not for us.  Not for self-aggrandizement or self-actualization or philanthropy or altruism or legacy. 

But for the pleasure of bringing glory to the One who created us to do it.  He, the Great Artist, made every single one of us uniquely, distinctly for His glory.  Therefore, the only you there is, was made for work that only you can do.

Let nothing stand in the way of our expressions of that.

More coming soon, but for now… here’s to losing sight of land.

-Nic

IG Artist @wherehappinesshappens