I’ll admit to never giving the Dirty Jobs star a shot at being actually über intelligent. But this talk blew me away. I love a good old-fashion contrarian.
Buck the system Mike, buck it.
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How to Stop Being Boring
Photo by Ryan Heaney via Flickr (Creative Commons) Most people are boring.
Thirteen years ago, in our first apartment, Kristen and I lived on the 15th floor of a high rise apartment building. If you looked at just the right spot you could see Lake Michigan. And if you hung your head out the window you could look south down LaSalle Boulevard towards the loop or north towards Lincoln Park.
You could also see directly across the street into your neighbors apartment. (And I’m sure they could see directly into our apartment, too.) It’s hard to describe how fascinating it was to know that 50 feet away were people living life– just like you. All you had to do was look outside and you could see into the apartment windows of hundreds of neighbors.
It was like a human safari right outside your window.
Let me say this. We weren’t perverts who spent all night staring out the window. But it was just one of those things, you’d get up to go to the kitchen, walk by the window, and something would catch your eye…. so you’d stop and stare for a minute without even thinking about it. A light would turn on or something would move just enough to catch your attention. So you stopped and looked until you realized how creepy you must look to other people looking out their window at you.
At first we were curious that we’d see ultra-interesting things. Like crazy parties or people having sex on balconies. All our lives we’d been told that people were freaky in their private lives and here were hundreds of people’s private residences completely open for us to look at if we wanted to.
A couple weeks of living there we both came to the same conclusion: People are pretty boring.
There were times each week where something would capture your attention. But pretty quickly you’d realize that it was just a light turning on or something like that and your curiosity would lessen.
In the year that we lived there were only 3 things that were worth looking out the window for:
- To show visitors the view. We’d point and say, “Yup, there’s Lake Michigan. Cool, huh?”
- Car accidents. I vividly remember the sound of crunching vehicles in the middle of the night.
- The Chicago Marathon. It was really cool to look out our window and see people filling the street all the way down LaSalle Blvd.
Other than that– it was people watching television.
On any given night you could look out the window and see the same thing. Half the windows were dark. (Meaning people weren’t home or were sleeping.) 25% of the windows were mostly dark with the flickering glow of a television. 25% of the windows had lights on, but with people watching television on the couch.
Kristen and I concluded– most people’s lives are as boring as our own.
One of my favorite bloggers, Mark Cuban, wrote about this the other day.
TV is the best cure for boredom. That is what makes TV so popular.
TV is the path of least resistance alternative to doing nothing. When you do nothing. Time passes too slowly. When you are doing something, even something that barely requires consciousness, like watching TV, there is the chance that time will go by more quickly. We look for the path of least resistance to passing time whenever we are bored. All it takes is a click of the tv remote. The boredom ends and there is even the chance that we will be entertained and really like what we are watching. So there is also significant upside to watching TV. So we watch a *&$#load of TV .
I bump into this phenomenon in a few different ways related to my blog. I love meeting blog readers… especially when someone tells me for the first time that they follow. Typically, people want to know when I have the time to write so much. (I don’t watch much TV.) People tell me that I do really interesting things. (Maybe, but maybe I just write about things that are interesting and 90% of my life is pretty boring?) People ask me where I get all of my ideas. (I’ve written about that before. It’s not that I have more ideas than anyone else. It’s that I’m disciplined to write them down for later.)
I don’t think its that my life is especially interesting. But I’ve come to my own simple conclusion: My life is boring by default.
So I make a conscious choice to not be boring.
How to Stop Being Boring
- Put down the remote.
- Do something. Anything.
- Put aside any excuse you can think of. (“But I don’t have money to do something interesting!”)
- Understand this axiom: There is nothing more fascinating than doing something interesting with nothing. Isn’t that what reality TV is? Think about the things you find interesting enough to watch on television and at their core they are typically things you could do for free.
- BONUS: You can stop being boring by doing nearly anything. But it’d be awesome if you fought boredom by doing good.
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Lead Me
- To lead is to serve.
- To lead is to listen.
- To lead is to suffer.
- To lead is to give.
- To lead is to offer yourself.
- To lead is selfless.
- To lead others means taking people where they would otherwise not go.
To lead isn’t to tell others where they need to go or what they need to do in order to be like you.
To lead is a willingness to go to that place I’m afraid I can’t go on my own, and ask others to go with you. Their action of following is what makes you a leader.
Until they follow you’re just a dude waving his hands and saying some words.
Too many people think that they are leaders. They think that because they have a microphone in their hand they are a leader. They think that because they got hired to a leadership position, they are a leader. They think that because they have a great education or once led people somewhere great, they are a leader. They think because they have a skill set or a nice smile, they are a leader.
The world is full of fake leaders.
And the world is in desperate need of men and women who are willing to lead.
The only measurement of a leader which truly matters is whether or not people are following.
Want to be a leader? Figure out how to get people to follow you somewhere they need to go, but won’t.
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Jimmy McMillan for Governor
First, the clips from the New York debate.
Then, the song from his website. Again, he’s for real.
Then, this brilliant remix.
I don’t know. He’s got a point. I hope he gets some votes.
p.s. Sorry about the curse word. But the rent is just too high.
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Time to move in
Kristen and I had a realization a couple weeks back: We’ve lived in this house nearly two years and, in some ways, we never moved in.
- There are a lot of boxes in the garage filled with stuff we don’t need, but never took the time to toss or give away.
- Since we moved into this house we’ve bought nearly no furniture. We’ve had things we’ve used from previous places we’ve lived, but nothing for here.
- All of the walls are still “rental apartment white” and bare of things hung up even though the landlord said we could paint and do whatever.
In short, we’ve lived here for two years but never fully made it our home.
With baby #3 on the way in February, plus a rental relationship we actually enjoy, we know we aren’t going to move any time soon.
About Southern California living: There’s a misconception that all of Southern California is a horribly expensive place to live. This hasn’t been our experience at all. It’s not cheap– but it’s not unlike any metropolitan area we’ve lived. (Chicago, Detroit) Renting a 3 or 4 bedroom house in a safe neighborhood is going to be expensive in any big city. When we look at our total housing budget for our house in Romeo, MI compared to our house here, it’s probably only 10-15% higher. How? We pay a lot more in a lump sum to rent but that is made up for in smaller bills in other areas. We don’t pay property taxes, renters insurance is a lot cheaper than homeowners, and our utilities are about 33% of what they were in Michigan. Of course, if we lived in a beach neighborhood or a super nice suburb it’d be more expensive. And if we compared square footage to square footage it wouldn’t be the same as our house here is about 50% of the overall size of our house in Michigan. But it is a little bit of a myth that all of Southern California is crazy expensive to live in.
Our “make a rental feel like a home” plan:
- Buy a deep freezer for the garage so we can store up on stuff better.
- Paint the living/dining rooms, finally hang some pictures in those spaces.
- Buy a new sofa/love seat for the living room.
- Build a bed frame for under Paul’s loft with storage underneath. (He stopped sleeping in his loft and has slept on a mattress on the floor for about a year!)
- Install a wall of storage cabinets in Megan’s room. (Since she’ll be sharing with Tres.)
- Spend a little time and money sprucing up the front of the house landscaping-wise and get more serious about the backyard garden.
- Get a nice grill so we will be able to enjoy our patio area a bit more in the warm winter months to come.
It’s really not a lot. But the hope is that we’ll be able to do a little here and there that will make this place feel like home for the next couple of years.
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Fact: Brian Berry Hates Boobies
It is true. Journey Community Church senior high pastor and NYWC presenter, Brian Berry, hates boobies.
At least, I know for a fact he hates the “I love boobies” bracelets which are all the rage these days with high school students. I’ve heard his rant about them a few times in person, so I was glad he finally blogged about it so I could use this sensationalistic blog title– I’ve been dying to use it:
I HATE THE “I LOVE BOOBIES” BRACELETS!!!
I hate them.
I’ve pulled them off 10 year-old boys on my soccer teams, called out guys in our high school program for wearing them, and questioned girls who walk proudly with them on- the latest of which was earlier today.
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NO, IT’S NOT ABOUT BREAST CANCER.
Wake up!
No 16 year-old dude is wearing a bracelet that says, “I love boobies” because his mom has breast cancer. That guy didn’t do the breast cancer walk or raise money for breast cancer awareness and if you ask him to give you $10 to fight cancer and skip the bracelet, you’d raise no money. He will happily check your breasts for suspicious lumps however.
My grandma lost one of her breasts to cancer. She was a breast cancer survivor. We constantly teased her for leaving her foam “replacement” boob everywhere. “Grandma you left your boob in the kitchen again”. I can’t imagine in a million years wearing a bracelet that says, “I love boobies” around my grandma who only had one. Maybe I should have bought her one that says, “I love boob”.
I was in vegas this summer for 5 hours on our way to Idaho and asked this teen guy if I could take his pic in circus circus. Read the location as an intentional pun on this stupid pic.
Photo courtesy of Brian Berry Look… at least he has one that really says it… “I love your boobies”
He has a point. Certainly, they are all over the place and the people raising money are clearly using the word boobies to get boys to buy bracelets which allegedly help raise money for breast cancer research.
I think this is worth talking about with our students.
I’m pretty sure that young men and boys just love boobies and enjoy the opportunity to have a reason to declare it publicly.
Plus, the word “boobies” is fun to say. Just ask my 7 year old.
My only real thought
I’m glad Lance Armstrong’s bracelets didn’t say, “I love testes.”
Now that would be awkward.
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Getting away from pendulum thinking
Our culture is dominated by pendulum thinking.
We have a tendency to think in extremes. There’s something in our cultural make-up which makes it difficult to think about minor corrections as we default to massive swings.
It’s “either or” thinking… and it drives me mad.
It’s been going on for a while. In fact, it is engrained in Western thinking.
An Example
Nearly a decade ago, I worked at an Evangelical Free Church in Northern California. Part of the job offer was that I would pursue ordination within the denomination. As I began the steps in that process I was assigned to read a series of books about the denominations history. I was shocked to discover that deeply engrained in the history of the denomination was a protest mentality from the fringes of the protestant reformation. The very word “free” in the denominations name was a protest against Scandinavian Lutheranism. They were free from Lutheranism! The Lutherans had a hierarchical structure, churches were interdependent and structured into synods. In response, the E-Free world had a lack of hierarchy. The Evangelical Free Church of America won’t even call themselves a denomination. They are a group of autonomous bodies tied together by historical culture and common beliefs. (Er, that’s what a denomination is, isn’t it?) Lutherans had ornate churches so E-Free churches tried to make their buildings stark white and plain in protest. Lutheran churches had a problem with pastoral abuses so E-Free pastors have virtually no power in their congregations. On and on... so much of what made the Evangelical Free Church distinct was actually pendulum swings from their past life in Scandinavia. I’d set those books down and think, “Only by God’s grace could such a rebellious attitude reach lost people.”
More Examples
- A church replaces a highly relational pastor with one who prefers books to people.
- A company used to sell gas guzzlers, but now they just sell hybrids.
- A country goes from electing a very conservative president to a very liberal one.
- A person retires, having lived in Cleveland their whole life, and moves to Costa Rica, sight unseen, for retirement.
- A family hates pets their whole life and on a whim they buy 3 dogs.
Pendulum thinking is interesting, isn’t it? It assumes that the only way to change is to go from one extreme to another! We don’t live in a culture of nuanced differentiation– we live in one filled with extremes.
In all likelihood the change you are looking for, the growth in your organization, the new product that will balance your budget, the educational principle that will revolutionize your classroom, and even the happiness you seek is not going to be found in the extremes.
One pendulum swing just leads to another.
What you are probably looking for is just a little bit to the left or the right.
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Thank You, YMX
Yesterday, we we went public with a decision to end Youth Ministry Exchange after about 5 years.
For the last couple of years it has been trickling and trickling… and so we figured, “Why not just have a celebration of life and let it pass now instead of letting it go from 200 members per day, to 100, to 20 (where it’s at now) to 10, to 5?”
I’m thankful for YMX and the hundreds of core people who made it a vibrant community. 200,000+ posts— yowsers! While there were a couple thousand members– there were 100-200 regulars who made it not just a forum, but a forum community.
Five years ago, about this time of year, I started to get an inkling of an idea that I wanted to create a new home for the defunct YS forums. There was a core group of about 20 youth workers who did an AOL group chat just about every night. And when YS closed their forums about 5 other forum sites popped up as substitutes… but none of them were run very well.
I talked to Kristen about it and she was kind of meh about the concept. “You don’t really know much about that kind of thing. And you really don’t know much about running an internet company.” Both were completely true but I took that as a blessing! Then, a few weeks later, I brought up the idea with Todd Porter after he visited our church. He got really excited– which added energy to the idea.
So, mid-November 2005, I put together a private chat with 5 people I thought were strategically the right ones to talk about this idea. That discussion generated even more energy. And in early December 2005, we were open for business.
I spent $72 to start the company. And the first 24 hours we made over $250. It was awesome!
As time went on, the company went about 1,000 directions as I tried various initiatives. Business plan? Um, I didn’t have one! How could I? I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it.
From 2005 to 2008 we continued to grow… this was really the peak for YMX. We published a lot of user-generated content, we pushed out a regular newsletter, we had a podcast, the forums were vibrant, and some of our satellite sites were doing pretty well.
In truth, I had no idea what was next. I was learning a lot about business along the way but I wasn’t sure I knew how to navigate YMX past a new hurdle. Subscriptions were declining, interest in the web content was skyrocketing, and the site was struggling to pay the bills.
Thankfully, in June 2008, Youth Specialties stepped in and ended all the angst. They bought most of the web properties and hired me to come help them figure out how to bring some of the flavor of YMX to YS.
About the same time Facebook took off. Then Twitter took off. And forum communities hardly seemed to be the wave of the future that they once were. We infused some serious marketing efforts into YMX as part of YS. But it was obvious that masses of youth workers were going to flock to Facebook and Twitter while the decrease of interest in YMX continued to decline.
Certainly, there are those who think that the forums could have prevailed if I had focused more attention on them. I don’t value my presence there quite that much. I only had 4,000 of the 200,000 posts. Hardcore forumites know full well that in the last year or so I’ve largely turned the reigns over to Patti Gibbons and the rest of the moderator team. It just wasn’t humanly possible to do the work I needed to do at YS while maintaining things day-to-day at YMX. I heard the grumbles but couldn’t really do much about it. I think if those people saw the world from my vantage point they would have invested energy in the same places I did.
It was a two-way street… I was doing the best I could in my new role. And the moderator team did a great job ministering to the forums.
So, long-story short, we went public with the decision yesterday. It was a bit more sad than I expected. It truly felt like the end of an era.
It was a good era and one I’ll be fond of forever.
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Second Fiddle
Last night, a co-worker posted a link on Facebook to a Mint.com blog post called, “Top 10 Things That Determine Happiness.”
That post resonated with me because a lot of people in my life are unhappy because they don’t want to be happy. They seem to have a co-dependency with angst. And they tend to take it out on me because I’m a generally happy person.
Here’s a couple of my favorite parts of the list:
No.10 – Having a short memory
Are you one to hold grudges? Do you need the jaws of life to pry forgiveness out of you? Well, don’t expect these attributes to contribute to your happiness or to your overall health for that matter. This ability to forgive and forget, to go with the flow, is frequently cited by researchers of centenarians as being a key factor in their ability to live to see their 100th birthday.
No.5 – Developing a skill
According to psychology professor Dr. Timothy A. Pychyl, the route to happiness is simple enough, “Live it, don’t buy it.” This is especially relevant in the modern world, where instant gratification can be purchased — but only to a point, before it hits a wall.
He quotes a professional base jumper, who says, “You’ve got to have the passion to do your time. If you haven’t done the time, you just can’t get there.” He goes on to argue that only by paying one’s dues through time, effort, devotion, and experience can we, “develop the rich experiences that make life meaningful.”
No.1 – Liking yourself
Liking oneself is arguably the principal characteristic of happy people. It’s been revealed in study after study after study: happy people like themselves. They think they’re pretty great people. They have high self-esteem, meaning they think highly of their own intelligence, they consider themselves to have strong ethical standards and to have far fewer prejudices than others.
If I could be so bold to add one to the list, for youth workers, it would be:
No.11 – Embrace your role as second fiddle
Being satisfied in your ministry role will mean not being the most important person on your church staff. Ultimately, your role is to elevate the overall ministry of the church. When the student ministry is successful it compliments the overall mission of the congregation. The position of second fiddle is nothing to be ashamed of as it often earns many of the perks of the person in charge, but with little of the pressure of being the star. Conversely, the least satisfied youth workers tend to carry an attitude of, “I don’t play second fiddle to nobody, I’m a leader!” This disconnect between their role in the organization and where they see their role leads to dissatisfaction and unhappiness.
What do you think? Is a key to happiness in youth ministry being satisfied in your role that you’ll never be the star?
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When your kids hate church
My kids don’t get excited about going to church most Sunday’s. That’s putting a nice bow on it, isn’t it?
Let’s take the pretty bow off for the sake of this post.
They hate going to church.
Yesterday, I sat in the car with a child who refused to participate. Not all Sunday’s are like that. But sometimes the feet literally stop moving and the tears start flowing. It’s hard to look in your child’s eyes and see them tearfully say “please don’t make me go,” and then force them to go.
I can’t stomach it. That is, clearly, not the type of relational connection I want my children to have with Jesus.
To my dismissive friends– it’s not just our church. It’s pretty much any church we’ve tried out. Trust me, we tried to blame the churches we attended. It’s not their fault. And it’s been going on for a very long time. Yeah, they even hated churches I worked at.
I don’t know any other way to say it. They hate going to church.
[Insert our painfully banging of heads against the wall.]
[Insert the fear of all the comments I’ll get with suggestions for how to make them love going to church. I know, it’s easy for you. Thanks in advance for reminding me I’m a failure.]
[Insert Freudian comments and Freudian comments veiled as Bible verses– trust me when I say we’ve thought them all already.]
As a parent I could get lost in the emotions of this. I mean, how is it that mom and dad can have a first love… Jesus and his church… and our kids aren’t loving what we love?
This is where the rational side of our brains takes over and comforts us.
- We don’t want them to fake it for our sake.
- We want to raise independent, critical thinkers. That includes giving them the freedom to question us within the boundaries of our authority over them.
- We believe Jesus wants to capture their heart, not their body. It’s OK if that takes time. Jesus’ offer to love the church stands the test of time, he is patient.
- We recognize that there is a difference between rejecting Jesus and not liking the action of going to church. They don’t hate Jesus, they hate going to church.
- We believe ultimately that it’s more important that the kids go to a church their parents love than one that the kids love and the parents tolerate. I find church strategies that try to hook parents with a McDonald’s approach to kids ministry often have equally crappy methodology elsewhere.
- We recognize that some of the reason they don’t like church is that daddy used to work at one, like 60+ hours a week. And repairing the equation that church equals dad loving other people’s kids and making other people’s kids a priority over them will take years to repair.
- We are willing to find expressions of church they might love. We’ve introduced Awana on Wednesday nights. It is is so developmentally appropriate for them that they are really digging it. (Even though it makes dad cringe a bit.) And this summer they will go to camp. For Kristen, Awana was a big part of her middle childhood. And for me, camp was huge from about 4th grade through high school. (Even though letting them go for a week makes Kristen cringe a little bit)
- We are willing to look in the mirror enough to recognize that being compliant at church does not equate to loving church. When I went to church as a child, I hated it and swore that I’d hate it forever.
- We aren’t going to give up simply because they don’t count down the days until Sunday. Their attitude towards church doesn’t drive us to make stupid decisions as parents. So it’s not like we’re going to stop going to church as a family.
- We are willing to lose the occasional battle for the sake of hopefully one day winning the war. That’s a crude way of saying we don’t force them to participate. We expect that they will, but allow them some ability to say no.
Maybe I’m not supposed to talk about this? Maybe writing this makes me look bad? Or maybe, just maybe, my kids are normal?
