How do you steal second base?
You give up first.
To progress to any goal, you’ve got to give up where you’ve been. As long as you’re all right with where you’ve been, you’re not likely to pay the price to move into the unknown and on to your goal.
Let’s be specific:
Until you’re willing to give up the marriage you have, you won’t get the one you want. I’m not suggesting divorce. This invitation is to give up the way you’re in your marriage and be in it in a whole new way.
Until you’re willing to give up the barely-get-by finances you’re accustomed to, your net worth won’t improve. Not much.
Until you’re willing to give up the pastorate you have now, it won’t be radically different—the way your heart longs for it to be.
See, you can only control yourself.
So, if you want to change your church, your marriage, or your finances, you get to change you. And, changing you is so costly it’ll only happen it if you’ve abandoned all hope of getting where you want without having to change.
My CRM teammate, David Zimmerman loves this from Robert Quinn: “If you want to do something you’ve never done before, you must become the person you’ve never been before.”
Change, on this level requires risk. Leading off only works when you lead off far enough to be thrown out.
Far enough to be in danger.
Change is a dangerous game. It’s especially dangerous to your comfort. And, comfort, most of all, is what keeps our feet planted firmly on first. And you can’t steal second from there.
Making significant change—particularly the kind that undermines what’s become habitual– demands that you over-ride the “auto pilot” inside you. For many of us. the programming of your auto pilot began in childhood, was beta tested in your teen years, and then became codified in the early decades of adulthood. By the time you pass your 40’s the auto-pilot is engaged most of the time.
New client sales call? Auto-pilot.
Good Friday Service? Auto-pilot.
Mother-in-law’s visit? Auto-pilot.
Staff meeting? Auto-pilot.
Budget “discussion” with the husband? Auto-pilot.
Car shopping? Auto-pilot.
Weekend with the kids? Auto-pilot.
Stealing second, from the safety of first, can’t be done on auto-pilot.
You’ve got to grip the controls and force your mind, your heart, and your body
— deliberately —
out into danger and away from all that’s familiar, predictable, safe, and comfortable.
Second base!
great one, Kirk!! I really enjoy reading your blogs.
I LOVE the analogy. I remember playing baseball and getting the sign from the coach to steal the base. It was both scary and exhillarating at the same time. The real possibility of being thrown out- yet, even when I was, my teammates would always give high-fives and slaps for putting myself out there and giving my all. They knew the game wasn’t won or lost on a stollen base. In fact, it’s the spirit of the person WILLING to be thrown out who often ends up carrying the team to victory. Quinn in Deep Change says ‘Unless you’re risking losing your job, you’re not doing your job.’ Even if our current efforts towards living missionaly fail (from a numbers or budget standpoint), I can see coach Jesus waiting in the dugout with a smile for being willing to risk in order to gain. Isn’t that what He did?