The last 18 months in the life of my church have been nothing short of tumultuous.
The Lord has kept us, but it’s been a long ride. And as a deacon, I’ve felt it in possibly more intimate ways than even many of my other brothers and sisters.
But we have a new pastor now, and yesterday was called Forward Sunday. It was a day of vision casting for our church, transparency as we worked through our new budget, and even presented a new project to get some improvements done.
I keep coming back to something my pastor has said over and over again: “If God is going to do a work in our community, though some church, then why not us? Why not OUR church?”
Amazing, in that it’s not difficult to understand, it’s extremely logical, and yet it takes a LOT of faith to believe for ourselves: Someone will win. Someone will make an impact. Why. Not. Us.?
So I’d like to propose that question to you. Why not YOU? Why not ME?
I think we simply forget to believe in ourselves. Can you identify with that? I know I can!
Belief is such a strange thing. Your mind informs everything about what you do, how you do it, and the way you feel about it. The battle to WIN in business is not against any competitor or market. It’s against your mind.
Every day when you wake up and get to work, you battle your beliefs. And your beliefs are a hard thing to change.
BUT — think about how liberating this is!
What’s happening “out there” is just a clever facade. We make up all manner of things to comfort ourselves in believing that the reason we’re not winning is “out there.”
The players have changed over time, but the game is the same:
AI is killing web design.
Web design? Everybody knows you can’t make a living with ONLY web design, you have to do marketing.
Wix and Squarespace are going to kill custom website design work forever.
Omg have you seen Canva?! Photoshop is dead.
None of these things are/were true, of course. There are boring technical reasons for this that have to do with how users adopt new technologies over time.
But my point is way, way simpler.
Some people wake up believing they can’t win because of these things and more. The stuff “out there.”
But the real battle is being fought in your mind. The real battle concerns super non-sexy, boring work, like:
Showing up every day
Working a calculated plan to get more leads and customers
Thinking through what’s working, what’s not working, and what’s going to get you to the next place of success
Networking and collaborating with people who can take you to the next level
Overcoming FEAR and self-doubt — “imposter syndrome” — as it is sometimes called
And that last bullet point, if we’re honest, is the unspoken answer we give deep inside to the question, “Why not me?”
“Because I’m me.”
Let me tell you a little something cool about you:
You are not here by random chance. Life is an incomparable gift. Using the assumption there is no God, and with a little back of the napkin math (thx, ChatGPT!), the probability of your existing is about 10{-2000137}.
The odds of winning a typical lottery are about 1 in 108
The probability of flipping a coin and getting heads 100 times in a row is approximately 10{-30}
The number of atoms in the observable universe is estimated to be around 10{80}. Picking one specific atom out of the entire observable universe is approximately 10{-80}
Imagine a gigantic lottery where every atom in the universe represents a separate lottery ticket. Now, imagine repeating this lottery process for every atom in the universe, and doing this not just once, but enough times to fill up a new universe with all the tickets used in each lottery. Finally, you win every single one of those lotteries in a row. The probability of this happening is still far greater than the probability of a specific human being existing as they are.
The odds of your existing are impossible, yet here you are. What a thought!
Look, there are all kinds of things I want to say right here about you having a MISSION and a PURPOSE and all that — and it’s all true — but maybe you’ve “heard it all before.”
So we’ll make a more modest claim: By the math, you shouldn’t be here. Your life is a gift. You owe it to yourself to use the gift of your life to make the biggest dent in the universe possible.
But you can only make a dent if you believe that you can. For your own sake, I NEED you to believe in yourself.
Why not you?
I believe if we approach every single day asking “why not me?” and then take the ACTIONS necessary to win, we can win.
So whatever that business or lifestyle goal you have is that feels like a stretch. Yeah, you know. The one that FREAKS you out because your friends wouldn’t get it. Your family wouldn’t understand. People might think about you differently. That one.
Why not you? Are you going to let how other people think of you affect your dent in the universe? Are you going to let fear and self-doubt cloud your judgment and take away your gift of life to make an impact on someone else’s?
Business, at the end of the day, is just service. You are awarded with little green “certificates of appreciation” for having done good work and making a positive impact in someone else’s life.
Don’t take it too seriously. And yet, at the same time, take it more seriously than anything. Go make a dent, it’s okay. You have my permission.
Why not you?