Five Tips To Give Your Leadership a Spiritual Push
Is faith helping you become the person and leader you desire to be?
Mother Teresa said, “Faith keeps the person who keeps the faith.” Faith is an incredible companion; it gives us peace, understanding, confidence, perspective, drive, energy and integrity.
Faith is like a muscle: the more you condition and care for it, the more powerful it becomes for you. So you make it a part of your life! You’ll see how the benefits are just too good to pass up. Wherever you are on your faith journey, move forward. Big steps or small, move forward.
For me, the spiritual life is a pretty big deal. I’m active in church ministry, my brother is a priest, my undergraduate degree is in Theology and on and on. No doubt, faith has molded my leadership.
I strongly believe that the spiritual life is the foundation for all the other pillars in E5: emotional, mental, physical and financial. When I’m strong spiritually, my faith power reverberates throughout all my other pillars.
When I’m right with God, I’m right with life.
Faith brings me peace, joy and hope. Faith gives me the assurance I’m not alone; that there’s someone bigger than all of this, watching over, protecting.
There’s no doubt that faith will give you the power and the renewable energy you need to offset the natural pressures of leadership and everyday living like it does for me. So engage it: make it the number one priority in your life.
By engaging your faith, you’ll become a truer version of yourself. With the peace that faith brings, you’ll attain a greater level of fulfillment.
I like to think of it this way: if we’re the four wheels on a vehicle, God’s the engine with an unlimited supply of gas. So, let God power you to the heights of your potential. Let faith give you more energy, peace and confidence to lead with integrity and with a servant heart.
I want to give you today a few spiritual coaching lessons I use. Consider using these to help give your leadership and life a spiritual push:
#1 Set aside time (a few minutes) in your day to get in the habit of thinking about God.
Make your time with God sacred time.
We make appointments all the time. Begin making them with God. Don’t use this appointed time to say anything: just think about God and the blessings He’s placed in your life. This quiet time will help you become more spiritually open and grateful.
#2 Challenge yourself to pray through the busy-ness of your day.
I challenge people often to develop the habit of habitual prayer. St. Paul says, “pray without ceasing,” and he means exactly that.
Consider closing your eyes and briefly bringing yourself into God’s presence several times a day. The more you do this, the more present God will feel to you. It does not need to be poetic or always structured – just go to God as you are.
#3 Pick up the Bible: it contains an incredible amount of inspiration and motivation.
Leverage the words of the Bible as positive mental fuel for your day. Memorize three or four passages and recite them daily for 14 days and on the 14th day evaluate how much more your thinking is positive.
Maybe start or end your day with a passage – even if it’s two sentences that’s OK – it’s about meditation on the positive words and getting in the rhythm of doing it.
#4 Let Go and Let God is a powerful mindset to live your day-to-day.
Worry and anxiety steal away our peace. Try to let go of the things you can’t change and give them to God. Life’s too short. Don’t hold on to your anxiety or your burdens. Create a method of letting go, such as an action, prayer, thought or writing to help you emotionally unburden.
If you choose to walk alone, without faith as your help, you choose to carry your responsibilities by yourself. After a while they can become an all-consuming, black hole swallowing up your top priorities, your peace, your dreams and your potential.
Don’t let this happen!
If not released, burdens, over time, and the weight of responsibilities will wear you down over time spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically and financially. You’ll be left with frustration, worry, fear and restlessness.
If you’re battling a good amount of unrest right now, consider picking up the bible daily and reading James 1:2 for inspiration. Let the words battle your worries and concerns.
It worked for me.
#5 Pray for those around you and especially pray for those with whom you are in disagreement.
By doing this you are allowing positive and sincere energy to flow through you. By praying for others, you allow yourself to be at peace with situations that are before you, either good or bad. Your supplication for others will act as a peace generator in your relationships and within your conscious and subconscious mind. Holding hate and ill-judgment lessens your effectiveness as a leader and puts you out of balance.
I want to leave you now with a quote from writer and theologian Peter Kreeft:
“One of the few things in life that cannot possibly do harm in the end is the honest pursuit of the truth.”
Go and Grow
I know you may come from a different background, or faith. Maybe you are faith filled or searching or in between the reality is you have the choice to engage the power of faith.
If you feel alienated from God and not sure how to engage faith I would say start small, be curious, and be open to truth – often small steps lead to big leaps.
