Usually, leadership or spiritual growth books and articles are focused around adding things to your life.
A new principle.
A new practice.
A new person.
Many times, that can be good, and sometimes even necessary. But I’m learning more and more that the opposite is just as, if not more, important…removing things from your life.
As great as it is to add to your life, if there are things in your life that are taking up space or are exerting a negative influence, they will quench whatever good the good things could bring.
Who cares if you learn a new principle if the old ones you’re still living by contradict it?
Who cares if you adopt a new practice if your life is too cluttered to actually practice it?
Who cares if you hire an A+ staffer if the rest are D-?
What if going to the next level in your leadership and your walk with God didn’t look like putting something in but instead putting something out?
Maybes it’s:
- The insecurities in your life that are keeping you from believing God.
- The excuses that are keeping you from obeying the voice of the Lord when He calls you to greater, higher places.
- The fears that are raging in your mind that try to confront your faith and back you down from believing God that the best days of your life are ahead of you.
- The regrets of your past that are trying to paralyze the potential of your future by keeping the spotlight on who you used to be and keeping the potential of who you might become in the dark.
- The voices of negative people who always have 1,001 reasons why it won’t work but won’t lift a finger to help you get to the place where God wants you to be.
- The people who are keeping you tethered to your old way of life before you came to God.
- Old paradigms of thinking that are just too small for what God wants to do in and through you.
Whatever it is, one difficult but essential solution is required for each of these if you want to go to the next level: Put them out.
Or they’ll put your chances of going to the next level out.
