Anyone who has ever traveled with me knows this (and maybe hates it). And to add insult to injury, I sometimes pack too much in the bag I am planning to check.

Have you ever done this? You put your bag on the scale, only to have the attendant tell you your bag needs to drop a few pounds, or you’re paying a lot more. The ensuing process will drive you crazy. Running late. Not wanting to pay extra money. Not to mention how embarrassing it is to open your bag in front of everyone (including strangers), to show what’s inside, so you can sort through your personal property. Your anxiety builds as you don’t want to miss your flight, but you also don’t want to leave without the things you need. As I reflect on this process of unpacking and repacking, it causes me to consider what I am taking with me into this new year. No, I’m not just talking about literal items, but what baggage am I bringing with me into 2024?

When we go on a trip, we need to have the right stuff with us, but it is possible to overpack.

There is even a degree of overpacking that can prevent you from getting to your destination.

Over the next few days, you will likely receive an onslaught of messages pushing you to set your new year’s resolutions, but I want to encourage you to do something else first. Even though it can feel frustrating and embarrassing, spend some time thinking about the baggage that you need to let go of to lighten your load in 2024.

Let go of your resentment from the relationship that went wrong this year.

Let go of the family argument that happened over Christmas dinner.

Let go of the frustration you have toward that coworker who drives you crazy.

Let go of your regret from the business decision that didn’t work out this year.

Leave the baggage of 2023 behind, and let go of everything that might prevent you from reaching your goals this year.

Next year stands waiting, with all of its promise and potential. Decide today to lighten your load as you enter 2024.

Decide today to lighten your load as you enter 2024.

I look forward to connecting with you, in person or virtually, in the coming year.

As strife ravaged the country, Longfellow himself suffered a great personal loss. In 1861, he lost his beloved wife in a tragic accidental fire, and at the start of 1863, his son snuck away and joined the Union army against his wishes—risking another life Longfellow couldn’t bear to lose.

With a heavy heart, he wrote this poem in response to the bells he heard chiming that Christmas Day in 1863.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men! The Christmas bells chimed just like they had every year before, and they sang of “peace on earth, good-will to men.” However, between the war and Longfellow’s deep personal sorrow, this message of peace and good-will felt out of place. It felt like a wasted celebration in such a tumultuous time. It felt like a lie. So Longfellow’s response is not surprising.

And in despair I bowed my head;

“There is no peace on earth,” I said:

“For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Longfellow couldn’t reconcile what was happening in the world with a seemingly surface-level Christmas celebration. For Longfellow, there was no peace. There was just hate, and there was nothing left to do but despair.

I wonder if any of you are currently feeling the way that Longfellow felt that Christmas season?

Maybe you’ve put up the tree, you hear Christmas music on the radio, but something still seems off. All of the lights, the wrapping, the cards, and the songs might feel a little like we’re trying to put lipstick on a pig. This world is broken. It’s divided. A war erupted in Israel this fall, while the conflict between Ukraine and Russia is still boiling. Inflation is still making our budgets feel stretched to the limit. Everyone seems on edge. And if you look around, there seems like there is a lot more despair than peace or good-will. But Longfellow doesn’t end his poem in despair. He goes on and ends with hope for himself and for us.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Like all of us, Longfellow needed to remind himself of something—the hope of Christmas does not hinge on the state of our present circumstances. The hope of Christmas does not change whether it’s 1863 or 2023.

The hope of Christmas does not hinge on the state of our present circumstances.

Even when it doesn’t seem like it, we all need the reminder that the wrong shall fail and the right prevail. Why? Precisely because of what we celebrate at Christmas. “For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:

‘Glory to God in the highest,

And on earth peace, goodwill toward men’” (Luke 2:11–14).

My hope for all of us is that we can rest in the hope of the true meaning of Christmas this year.

It’s hard to feel inspired by the politician who uses the latest polling data to make their decisions. It’s difficult to follow the business leader whose mission and vision seems to change every year. It’s frustrating to hear about the celebrity pastor who changes his beliefs on every hot topic in order to stay relevant to the culture. No one wants to follow a leader who is tossed around by every new fad.

Yet, I often find myself making decisions based on what other people think. It’s certainly not wrong to care about other people. It’s a good quality to be aware of their needs, desires, and preferences. And when you can make the right decision and it pleases people, that’s a win-win.

However, it’s detrimental to make the opinions of others the sole basis of your decisions.

Margaret Thatcher once said, “If you just set out to be liked, you will be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and will achieve nothing.”

If you’re like me and care deeply about what others are saying, I want to give you three tools I use to combat my people-pleasing tendencies:

1) Ask yourself what you believe is true about this situation. Push past your feelings and focus on the facts. Don’t automatically take someone else’s word for it. You have your own worldview, mission, and vision for the future. If you’re operating within your calling and convictions, you should keep moving forward.

2) Consider the real implications of your decisions. What’s going to really happen when you act against another person’s opinion? Most of the time, it’s not going to matter nearly as much as you think it will. If this person means a lot to you and cares about you, it’s likely they will forgive you even if they disagree with your decision. If this person is always critical of your leadership, what does one more frustration subtract from your relationship? Even if you please them in this situation, it’s unlikely they’ll move into your camp. Keep a realistic perspective of your relationships.

3) Turn down the noise. Stay focused on your end goal. What are you working toward? If your critics are coming from social media or from your inbox, take a break. Put your phone away. Find some time alone. And remind yourself of why you do what you do.

I believe that each of us have a calling on our lives. We have been put on this earth for a purpose.

If you are constantly worried about what everyone thinks, you could miss out on accomplishing the purpose for which you were created.

The world needs you, and your work is important. Today, I want to challenge you to focus on the task at hand and make thoughtful decisions based on what you are put here to accomplish . . . not the approval of others.

The more I accelerated, the louder the noise, inviting everyone within earshot to look and see me in the driver’s seat. I still remember what it felt like to have the heat rise to my face as I pulled into the school parking lot each morning. I wondered who was going to see me and felt humiliated.

As a 30-something dad of three, I’m not as easily embarrassed as I was when I was younger. With a little more life experience and a depreciating desire to be cool (let’s be real; that ship sailed a long time ago!), I don’t sweat most of the small things that used to bother me. But that doesn’t mean I’m immune to humiliation. Now (I’m ironically embarrassed to admit), I feel embarrassed when my children don’t behave the way I think they should. In these moments, I am not thinking about how to correct them to help them grow, I am thinking about how I can get them to do what I want them to do so it will reflect well on me.

I know that’s prideful, and I need to work on it. Yet, this struggle perfectly illustrates what this blog is about:

In life, you can either have humility or humiliation.

In other words, the degree to which you are humble has a direct correlation to how easily you are humiliated. As you reflect, you’ll find the areas you have the most pride are the same areas you are most set up for humiliation.

In high school and now, I am prideful about the way I am perceived. I want people to think I’m great, so I am humiliated by things in my life that could negatively affect someone’s view of me.

What humiliates you?

The difference between humility and humiliation is that one is initiated by you and the other is initiated for you.

‍Humiliation is something life initiates for you.

‍You’re humiliated by your Walmart wardrobe while your colleagues wear designer brands.

You’re humiliated by your ignorance of a topic everyone at the water cooler is discussing.

You’re humiliated because your idea for a new product was rejected by your supervisor.

You’re humiliated because your budget for Christmas this year is smaller than your friends’. And what you’re humiliated by reveals areas where you need to grow in humility. The good news is we can grow. Humility can be initiated by you. Here are three practical steps toward humility:

1. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

You are human. You are going to make mistakes, and you need to learn to laugh at yourself. Life is too short to be overly-concerned about the way you’re perceived.

2. Think about other people.

Like C.S. Lewis said, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It’s thinking of yourself less.” Actively redirect your tendency to be focused on yourself to be focused on the good of others.

3. Understand what you can control.

Humiliation often comes from the pride of believing we have more autonomy and control over our lives than we do. Understanding where you can affect change and where you can’t can help you grow in humility.

We all need to grow in humility. Understanding this connection between humility and humiliation can help us pinpoint where we need to grow right now and take intentional steps toward humility. I’m challenging you (and myself) to take the first step toward humility today.

“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age I always did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

‍My three-year-old daughter is bursting with imagination.

One Sunday morning this fall, I could hear her talking before I opened the door to her room to get her up. She gave me a big smile and said that she was already having church with her Elsa doll. This same afternoon she played with her toy kitchen and brought us a dozen different food items she “made” for us to enjoy. I remember marveling at how easily she played, falling into different characters and activities, with whatever and whoever was there to play.

I love this stage of childhood. Imaginations run wild, and children aren’t afraid to dive headfirst into them and experience the joy of being or doing something new. Isn’t it sad how these imaginations grow more dim with each passing year? I think it’s because the older we get, the more we realize that we can’t imagine our way out of reality. Life is hard, and sometimes, it feels more safe to only acknowledge what is right in front of us rather than what could be.

Yet, we would all benefit from some more imagination.

‍Boston Consulting Group’s Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller explained it this way: “Imagination gives us the ability to explore the realm of what is not but could be, enabling us to conceive and create new things and to shape what is.”

Imagination doesn’t just help us temporarily escape reality. Often, it helps us create real solutions to make our reality better. By imagining what is not but could be, we lay the groundwork for innovation and begin to seek new ways to grow. This is especially important for businesses. If you want your company to flourish, imagination is essential.

Imagination doesn’t just help us temporarily escape reality. Often, it helps us create real solutions to make our reality better.

Here are four benefits of fostering imagination in your organization:

1. Imagination leads to more outside exposure and influence. Imaginative individuals will be naturally curious about other people and the way they do business. Encouraging your team members to learn more about other organizations (even if you don’t agree with everything they do) can help you stay nimble and grow in places you didn’t know needed help.

2. Imagination fosters cognitive diversity. An organization of people who are only encouraged to think one way will leave little room for new ideas, creativity, and innovation. Imagination encourages many different lines of thinking to join the conversation and make the work better.

3. Imagination breaks the tyranny of metrics. It’s easy for businesses to emphasize measurable results, and they should! But if these metrics become the only measure of success, growth, or value, it will be difficult for an organization to mature to its full potential.

4. Imagination gives autonomy to team members. Most organizations hire individuals for a specific role and purpose, but imagination allows these individuals to speak into and help contribute to the work in a holistic way. Instead of saying “that’s not my job,” imagination empowers individuals to help solve problems across departments and work together toward a common goal.

Imagination isn’t just for children. It’s for you, for me, and for our organizations. Let’s work hard to celebrate it and to foster it in order to make our work and our world the best it can be.

It’s kind of like the word “branding.” Everyone has a different definition about what it means, so when we discuss it in our organizations, it’s hard to justify devoting valuable time and resources to cultivating it.

I understand why many businesses struggle to clarify and prioritize culture work when they are creating a budget and managing pressing issues. Will culture improve the bottom line? Yes. But you might not see those results immediately.

You can't always quantify culture.

You can't measure it.

Even if you pay for some fancy survey, you might not fully know what the return is.

Culture is an investment that ultimately improves employee engagement, makes it easier to attract talent, and ensures that customers feel cared for by your people. This happens over time, and we can’t always quantify it. Yet, this doesn’t make culture any less valuable.

Albert Einstein famously said, “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.”

Sadly, many organizations don’t realize how much they need to invest in their culture until the culture has gone wrong. A bad culture reeks to talented team members. It makes it nearly impossible to recruit and even more difficult to retain, affecting your customer experience and ultimately, your bottom line. There’s an approach to reframe the way you think about culture– I know it’s helped me. Think about culture the same way you think about friendship.

C.S. Lewis said,

“[Friendship] like art has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

You don’t need friendship to survive. But surviving without friends is lonely. Friendships are life-giving.

In the same way, culture might not immediately improve the operations of your business. However, culture makes the work—the profitability, the growth in operations, the overcoming obstacles, the reaching goals—worth it!

Like friendship or art, culture isn’t necessary to the survival of your organization, but it gives value to employee experience, which in turn pays huge dividends.

Here’s my challenge to you today: invest in the culture of your organization.

Schedule the team lunches.

Plan the overnight retreat.

Check in on your team members individually to see how they are doing.

Celebrate wins—big and small!

Extend care to people when they are hurting.

Encourage your team members to go out to lunch and find ways to connect outside of their weekly huddle.

Income alone is not enough to attract and retain talented individuals. Inspiration is crucial to fostering the kind of culture that your team members want to be a part of for the long haul.

So, what are you waiting for? Go for it. Invest, encourage, inspire. Prioritize culture in your organization and see how it makes the work worth doing.

Wait a minute.

Some of you read this blog for leadership insights.

Others of you are looking to improve your corporate culture and develop your team.

A few of you were just looking for a feel-good Thanksgiving story this week!

And now you’re sitting here wondering why I’ve opened this blog with a statistic about depression.

Here’s why:

Thanksgiving—and the holiday season—is a time when many people have a heightened awareness of their deferred dreams and unmet desires. If you’re already clinically depressed, or even just discouraged, this time of year can make it worse. There is no quick or easy fix to depression or despair, and it doesn’t discriminate between people. Wildly successful actors and comedians like Dwayne Johnson and Jim Carrey have both opened up about personal struggles with depression. Even heroes from the Bible weren’t immune to it. There was even a time when Moses asked God to take his life, and David asked himself a question that many of us can relate to: “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” (Psalm 42).

Though Thanksgiving is a time we’re supposed to be grateful, it often reminds us of the things we’ve lost or the things we’ve always wanted.

The bad news is that I don’t have an easy solution to lifting this heaviness, but I do have three pieces of advice that I’ve found can offer both help and hope when things are heavy:

1. Turn down the noise:

Spend less time with people who discourage you and less time consuming news and media that gives you anxiety. It’s good to be informed, but it’s important to be influenced by what is true, which brings me to my next point . . .

2. Replace the noise with truth:

Spend more time with the right people, the kind of people who remind you what is true. And spend more time consuming books, articles, and media that help you think about good things and meditate on what is true.

3. Develop a rhythm of thanksgiving:

‍Make gratitude a daily habit by cultivating it in your life. This could mean keeping a thankfulness journal, starting your day in prayer, or focusing on the bright spots of your day. Whatever practices you adopt, stick to them and make Thanksgiving a part of the rhythm of your daily life.

While this season can bring sadness, it’s still true that gratitude is good for us when we are struggling or feeling down. When we focus on what we do have, instead of what we don’t have, we can experience genuine gratitude and contentment, even in the midst of longing and loss.

When we focus on what we do have, instead of what we don’t have, we can experience genuine gratitude and contentment, even in the midst of longing and loss.

I sincerely hope you experience this kind of gratitude this week as you celebrate with your family and friends. A simple shift in your focus from what you don’t have to what you do have can go a long way.

Happy Thanksgiving!

So chances are, if you turn on any sports network, you’ll hear plenty of “coach speak.”

Sure, there are some fun one-liners from Prime Time Deion Sanders, the head coach at Colorado. And Alabama coach Nick Saban, always seems to entertain when he gets frustrated with members of the media. But most of what you’ll hear are coaches (and the student-athletes), who have been painstakingly prepared with PR training, saying only the right things on camera.

I respect the discipline, but it typically means interviews are far less fun. With all this “coach speak” flying around, I was encouraged to come across this video of University of Georgia coach Kirby Smart (Go Dawgs!) from the pre-season SEC media days. It’s no wonder that coaches are concerned about how they and their players appear on camera; their leadership places them in a position where what they communicate carries a lot of weight.

This is why Coach Smart gave his time in front of the camera to talk about something bigger than football—the cost of leadership. He gave three examples of difficult things good leaders experience:

1. They make hard decisions that sometimes negatively affect the people they care about.

2. They will be disliked despite their best attempts to do the best for the most.

3. They will be misunderstood and won’t always have the opportunity to defend themselves.

‍

His comments reminded me of the Leadership Triangle.

The Leadership Triangle illustrates a truth that not everyone looking for a higher leadership position realizes. On one side of the triangle, we have influence and on the other we have responsibility. As your leadership increases, so does your influence and your responsibility. Most of us like that part. But we often overlook the middle word: choices. As your influence and responsibilities increase, your choices narrow. Why? Because the stakes are higher, each decision becomes more important, carries greater impact, and has far-reaching consequences.

As your influence and responsibilities increase, your choices narrow.

Like Kirby Smart explained, a leader's decisions are weighty. The cost of leadership isn’t something you can ignore. The question is: Are you willing to pay the price of leading?

Consider how your own degree of influence and responsibility affects your choices.

If you wish you had more influence and responsibility, count the cost.

If you have more narrow options than you like, don’t begrudge your responsibility and influence; lean in. Are your choices limited? Yes.

Is it worth it? Absolutely. Your position is a privilege, and you should use it to make a lasting impact.

I spend my time at work helping business leaders and much of my time at home caring for children. So in a room full of high school students, I am the opposite of cool . . . and at a recent speaking engagement, I felt it.

Off the stage and in between sessions, I walked directly up to Heather, one of my key leaders, and said, “I am not speaking to students anymore.” I felt like nothing I said was connecting with this group. I tried to manufacture energy and enthusiasm with every funny joke, and I was telling every good story I had in my arsenal. It seemed like nothing worked. It hasn’t always been this way. I used to love speaking to high school students. At one time, I was a younger guy traveling the world and able to share about my most recent adventures. However, my current reality seems so irrelevant to students now that it’s tough to tell if I’m able to connect.

At this same event, I spoke to a second group of students. Thankfully, this group felt slightly more engaged than the first. At the end of this session, a student came up to me and wanted to talk about Essential Exchanges. She shared a personal story of how she had given up stability for significance. Through broken English, she explained that she moved to the United States from Moldova to seek an opportunity for a better life.

While she is in high school, she is also working a job to help provide for her family. She moved away from everything that was comfortable and affirmed that my challenge to exchange stability for significance was one she has made. She told me that my talk helped her feel that the sacrifices she made, and the ones she's currently making, are worth it.

This conversation encouraged me . . . and it also made me feel like a total jerk.

Why didn’t I want to speak to high school students again? Honestly, because I was more concerned with being impressive than being impactful. I was focused more on myself and how I’m perceived rather than how I can best encourage or inspire the people to whom I’m speaking.

This was a reminder to me of the truth that our ADDO team works hard to teach to organizations around the country:

Your work has worth.

Regardless of the task you’re doing, you have a purpose. And when you remember your purpose, the mundane becomes meaningful. Focusing on myself makes it so easy to forget why I do what I do. I’m grateful I’m surrounded by people who are constantly helping me remember that I have a purpose bigger than myself.

I don’t know what your engagement level at work is right now, but I want you to know that the antidote to disengagement is purpose.

The antidote to disengagement is purpose.

We are all prone to discouragement, but you must remember that your work has worth.

If you’re working the cash register at a restaurant, your work matters.

If you are a customer service representative sitting in a call center, your work matters.

If you’re teaching your fifth Geometry class of the day, your work matters.

If you’re the founder of an organization who is experiencing the shifts of a new leadership team, your work matters.

If you’re a stay at home parent caring for children and needs that nobody sees, your work matters.

If you don’t know why your work matters, it’s time to identify your purpose. Why do you do what you do? What are you working for that’s bigger than yourself?

If you know your purpose, tell it to yourself every single day, and even in the moments of disconnection and discouragement, you’ll be reminded that your work has worth.