An old Rabbi once told the following story: "When I die and have to present myself before the celestial tribunal, they will not ask me, ‘Why were you not Moses?’, because I would say ‘Moses was a prophet and I am not.’ They will not say ‘Why were you not David?’, for I would say ‘David was a king, and I am not.’ […] But I will be asked ‘Why were you not YOU?’, and to this I will have no answer."
Maturing Emotionally.
God wants us to live the life He has intended us to live. He invites and encourages us to, together with Him, find the answers to the question who we are in His eyes, and how we can live after His plans (s. Eph. 2,10). God loves to see how we keep developing, both in our personality and in our relationships, and He is eager to watch us growing in emotional health, out of an intimate connection with Jesus.
I started to read, ponder and write about Emotional Healthy Leadership some years ago. And I'm still on this (seemingly lifelong) journey of exploring and understanding what it does comprise and unleash, both for me personally and in the context of leadership in general. More than ever I'm convinced that living and leading from a status of deep emotional maturity has the power to influence and change today's leadership culture massively. Here is my belief and (kind of) working definition of living and leading emotionally healthy:
Living and leading emotionally healthy requires the personal willingness to act and lead from a conscious and changed inner life – by giving God (and myself) the permission to get full access to my honest thoughts, feelings and emotions, allowing Him to talk to me through my thoughts, feelings and emotions, and to use this process to transform and progressively change me after His heart (see Ro. 12,2).
Dealing with our Feelings.
Emotional Health has many facets. One is to learn how to recognize, understand, label and manage our feelings better. God encounters us in our feelings – in the positive ones as well as in the ones that we perceive as negative. When people connect with the Holy Spirit we often experience how emotional healing happens through God's presence and the declaration of His truths.
It is important for us to learn to express our feelings with words. Lists of feeling words and tools such as the Mood Meter (by Marc Brackett) can help us doing this:
Personally, I haven't learned how to handle my feelings well. In my family of origin, feelings were more or less ignored or suppressed. Mental pain and emotional wounds occurred and shaped my personality and identity. It takes a decision and process to readjust and become free, step by step. Few weeks ago, God reminded me of certain people (in particular one teacher), as well as a couple of statements and situations in my childhood that made me believe that my best place has to be "in second row". This is a lie, as well as the emanating belief (coming together with feelings such as being 'discouraged', 'hopeless', 'lonely', etc.) that God doesn't want to use me (because "others can do better"). God helped me discover that lie and get rid of it. Quite a liberating breakthrough!
Building Identity and Integrity.
Growing as Emotional Healthy Leader has an impact on our identity, our integrity, and our true self:
- We re-discover our God-given identity: Who am I? Who am I not? What's the unique calling and purpose God has created me for?
- We raise personal integrity – integrity with God, integrity with myself, and integrity in my leadership.
- We learn to be our true self, i.e. staying connected to people as well as to the culture around us, without allowing our emotions, reactions or behaviors to be determined by them.
Growing as Emotional Healthy Leader requires, and leads to Spiritual Growth.
Emotional health and spiritual growth are intertwined. Pete Scazzero says: "It's not possible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature". Vice versa, growing in emotional health requires to mature spiritually. Growing as Emotional Healthy Leader only works together with Jesus; otherwise we tend to manage our behaviors by our own efforts, which is just cumbersome and fruitless. It's an an exciting adventure (and for most of us quite unfamiliar) to learn how to pay attention to our feelings and contemplate questions such as "God, what is it that you want to tell me through them?".
Prompt: How do pay attention to your emotions in order to listen to God? How emotionally healthy are you? Are you YOU?
