What is your motivation? Many people make the mistake that I make often. It’s that I believe that people are genuinely open and willing to share, but the reality is most people are guarded. They might even be uncomfortable around people that are open.
At one point, when I was attending a certain church, a crisis of sorts was looming. The Senior Minister who wasn’t very good in my opinion wanted to build a gymnasium thinking that this would cause attendance to go up.
I had a differing idea and offered to share with him, but he was not willing to listen and actually dismissed me. If he had listened, he most likely would have lasted, but he chose not to.
The annual meeting came up for the church. A friend discussed the issue and asked me to attend.
I said I would, I did and because he wouldn’t listen to me one on one, I told him my thoughts at the annual meeting in front of many members of the Church.
I was sitting next to the Associate Minister and she asked me right after to join the reaching and receiving committee.
I told her that I wasn’t the right person, I clearly identified a major issue and I wouldn’t be a good proponent of the Church until the issue was resolved.
After the meeting, I had several people come up and thank me for saying what they wanted, but were too afraid to say it.
That’s said, because these people are good people, but they aren’t willing to stand up for what they believe in their hearts is the right thing to do. Instead, the risk of being excluded led them to follow a patch that was not right.
Every day we follow paths that are not right because we want to make other people happy so we don’t risk what we have. We’re unwilling to reach beyond and be everything that we could be and many of us live our lives without fulfilling what we want most.
Ask yourself what’s your motivation? Are you too afraid to be everything that you could be?