 How y'all doing? I'm doing great. I'm glad you guys are here with me. This is fun. I feel like this is one of those topics that kind of appeals to everybody because everyone knows the anger and frustration of hitting the wall. Sometimes it's we hit the wall because of external forces and sometimes it's internal forces. And so this is something that no matter what your focus, your discipline is in terms of creativity or music or art, whatever it is, hopefully this is really beneficial for you guys. I'm gonna start out, go into the word here. God has some stuff to say and it's usually pretty decent. So I think we'll start there if you guys are okay with that. In numbers 13 and 14, we find the story of Moses and Aaron sending the spies into the Promised Land and they're going to scout and check things out and bring back a report. We all know the story, it's pretty famous, but I'm gonna read a couple of the sections of verses in that story, because they really set up the stage I think really well for kind of how I wanna approach this conversation and how I think we can take a kingdom perspective of a very practical problem. So numbers 13, 25 through 28, at the end of the 40 days, they returned from spying up the land and they came to Moses and Aaron to all the congregation, the people of Israel and the wilderness of, I'm not even gonna try to cadash, I know that one. They brought back word to them into the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land and they told him, we came to the land which you sent us and it flows with milk and honey and it is fruitful. However, the people who dwell in the land are strong and the cities are fortified and very large. And so then from there, there's a few connectors that if I read, we'll all fall asleep. So numbers 13, 30 to 31, I'm just jumping ahead a little bit. And so they've described their enemies and basically they're describing that these are impossibly large foes. They are giants in the land. And in numbers 13, hey, Audrey, I keep feeling like I'm moving the mic back and forth. Where's the sweet spot for you? Is that good? Okay, great, I'll really try hard. No promises. So numbers 13, 30 to 31, but Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, let us go at once and occupy it. I love Caleb, he's a man of faith. Let's go up at once and occupy it and we are well able to overcome it. I mean, it was a very confident statement. We are, like the other guys are cowering in fear and he's saying, no, we've got this. This is Pee Wee Leagues. We'll take them, no problem. Then the men who had gone with him said, we are not able to go against the people for they are stronger than we are. And in chapter 14, right after that, the people start lamenting, they are overcome with anxiety. Everyone is freaking out because of the giants and the resistance and these obstacles. Then Moses and Aaron, I'm skipping to 14, five through 10. Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation and the people of Israel. And Joshua, the son of Nun and Caleb, the son of Jafuna. Man, what a name. Sounds like a Disney character, doesn't it? Hey, Jafuna! So bad. Who are among those who had spied on the land, tore their clothes, instead of all the congregations of people of Israel, the land which we pass through to spy out is exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into the land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord and do not fear the people of the land for they are bred for us. They looked at these people in opposition as the actual opportunity and blessing. Their protection is removed from them. I mean, what a statement of faith. It's like, these giants, they're bred. We're gonna get the bred. And let's slip it in, it's fun if you know you know. And all the congregation said to stone them. And the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the people of Israel. So God literally had to stop the two men of faith from being stoned to death. And they were motivated to kill those men of faith in their report because of fear. And fear is a really common theme when it comes to resistance. And I'm gonna pray real quick that the rest of this time, I'm passionate about this topic, not because there's a million mental models out there and books and TED talks and all these things that you can listen to to get into inspire your way around this topic. But I think that there is something, there's an opportunity for us to tap into something that one of the phrases I really love is when something is supernaturally natural. There is very natural things we can do, but we can have a supernatural approach and a supernatural perspective. And that gives us a totally different result than just some trick or model that anyone can try to employ when they're facing resistance in their work, whether that's circumstantial or internal or external or whatever. So Lord, we just asked this afternoon that you would be with us, that you would bring clarity to the places of confusion for everyone in this room, whether it's circumstantial, whether it's mental, emotional, occupational, whatever the external forces of resistance are. And even if it's you Lord, you resist us sometimes. We ask whatever it is that you would bring clarity today and understanding, not knowledge and answers, but clarity and understanding so that we can have your heart for how to partner with you and our mission, how to partner with you and reaching the lost world around us. Now we can do it in the face of opposition with excellence in the name of Jesus, amen. So the children of Israel were standing at the doorway of promise and their inheritance was literally within reach. I mean, you ever been like, I remember being a kid and it's like, you're trying to reach for the thing you don't want to get up, you're like, God, it's like the tip of your finger is touching the thing and I, oh, but now I got to get up. You know, they are so close. And so that's why these people are freaking out because of the report, because they're so, so close. And they felt like it was out of reach and the thing that's so strange is that the promised land was not out of reach because of the giants. It was readily available by faith through the giants. So the giants were the pathway, not the obstacle and they misinterpreted an opportunity to partner in faith because, you know, when we're stepping into something great, man, the Lord wants us to have some skin in the game. It raises the stakes, but also raises the reward. And so they looked at the opportunity of partnership and blessing and fulfillment as being cut off by a curse. When really the Lord was as it was an opportunity for God to do something even greater because you gotta realize they're coming from the wilderness. They're getting manna every day. Open the door, pick up the bread, eat the bread, move on, set up 10, it was probably really maddening and annoying, but it wasn't that much hard work. And he was saying, if you wanna enter the promised land filled with milk and honey, you're gonna have to tend the land, you're gonna have to take care of the land. He wanted them to own and possess the land, not just inherit the land. And so, but they misinterpreted it because they were not tapped in to the heart of the Lord. And to us as creatives, every creative person has to experience persistence at some point. It's, I mean, for me, it's like every other hour. I don't know about you. I mean, it's not like, oh, remember that one time it was hard to think of the thing and do it? I mean, that's like, remember that one time it wasn't is more like, I've had Nick maybe one time it wasn't. I don't know about you, but I'm assuming since you're sitting here that you're experiencing resistance on a regular basis in your work. And the most common areas that I think that collectively as creatives, we feel the resistance are the areas of inspiration, ideation, clarity, focus, discipline, opportunity, resources and relationships. That's a lot of things. Some of them are on a Venn diagram and they overlap a little bit, but all of them come with unique sets of resistance and it's the reason it's helpful to identify what kind of resistance, what the source of the resistance is is because once it's almost like Caleb is going, no, we can take them. Once you know what it is, you know, you can take it. And sometimes it's confusion and a lack of knowledge that freaks us out when we don't have the knowledge, but sometimes you don't need knowledge. Sometimes you need understanding on how this thing is working in you. So I want to kind of go through and define these. I'm going to define these in a positive sense. So inspiration, feeling energized and encouraged to do the work, right? You just know it when you're in that zone and you're like, man, I feel it, I can see it. You know, you just, it's almost like this kind of transcendent inspiration and those are fleeting moments, just like honeymoon, right? Like it's here and gone, right? But oh, it was so awesome, but it's here and gone. And so now it's time to get to work, right? But that's inspiration. It comes in flashes and usually it's unexpected, but when it hits, it's undeniable. Ideation is envisioning that which is not yet. Clarity is seeing the pathway forward with understanding. Focus is working effectively without distraction. Discipline, operating from a place of maturity and healthy habits. Opportunity, the kinds of blessings, luck, and open doors that you can't control. How many know that there's a, it's so easy to get into the poison of comparison game, right? Where it's like, well, if I had their opportunity, if I had their this, if I had this platform, if I had been there, I would have been a part of, and opportunity becomes this idol. And the reality is, is just you gotta get over it because you can't control where God puts you. And I said this, and if you've been, was anyone in the storytelling workshop? I have a couple of things I'll be redundant on, so I apologize. You'll just hear it twice, it's twice as nice, right? So, but the, man, I lost my thought on one of the bunny trail, and I totally took myself out of the zone. Good going, Joel. The, I'll just skip it. I'm sure it'll come back to me like five minutes and I'll double back. So opportunities, we can't control them. Resources, the practical limitations that come with, like with things like location and money, like resources all have limitations. There's always a cap, right? So sometimes it's higher than others, sometimes it's lower than others, but resources is one of those things we feel in, and relationships, networking and collaboration, who you know. I found a lot of the things, it's who you know, not what you know. And so I know that what you know is important. You gotta know something, or else who you know doesn't matter, right? Cause like if you're not useful, who you know, they have nothing for you to do. So it is, it's not a catch-22, but they are a little interdependent, but there's a lot of people who, man, they just happen to be in a relational sphere and they didn't have the tools, but someone who they know saw the potential and they get an opportunity. And it's very easy to be on the outside of that and go, man, why can't I have that? And again, it's just something you can't control. And that's actually, let that be a relief. Like it's okay to be relieved by your lack of control, cause if you don't have control, you're absolved of responsibility. Let God do his part, right? So resistance is a universal experience, but overcoming resistance is not a universal experience. And why is that? If we all feel it, why doesn't everyone overcome it? Because it's an internal, mental, emotional, spiritual thing. It's resistance is rarely fixed by external solutions. And sometimes the external solution plays a part, it's a part of the breakthrough, but it's not the breakthrough. Breakthrough comes from a person. The Holy Spirit is the one who brings us into that place of breakthrough and how he does it, we don't get to pick. So why doesn't everybody enter into that? And there's probably a bazillion reasons why. I'm not gonna go into every reason here. You're welcome. I think one of the things is that, because few people endure long enough to realize that overcoming resistance is not achieved by evading it, but by going through it. It's about pain tolerance. It really, really is. And I'm probably gonna go through this quote again at some point later, but it's this quote that's just been really resonating with me for a long time. And it's that you can choose the pain of discipline or you can choose the pain of regret. And it's a really great quote because it fits into this, even though it's not quite the exact same point, it's that you are going to get somewhere either by what you choose or what you don't choose. And a lot of people when they feel the pain, it's like the toe in the water, it's cold, I'm not going in, you kind of have to be a glutton for punishment to get through resistance. And it hurts, it may hurt mentally at times, it may hurt emotionally, it may hurt circumstantially at times. And making really hard sacrificial choices is sometimes the price of doing business. Just like if you wanna be a filmmaker, the price of doing business is an editing suite in a camera at its most basic level, right? And a lot more than that. If you know the trade, there's a lot more that goes into it than just two things, but there is a price of admission. And so the resistance is not an obstacle to your success, the resistance is the pathway to your success. It's not the resistance of your success, it's the pathway to your success. And so I wanna reflect on a few things that have worked for me and overcoming resistance in work. And it's whether it's literally writer's block or whether it's just an idea that's just not working, whether it's, this stuff even comes into relationships and stuff. It kinda covers the whole gamut of the human experience. But I've got a few things that have really worked for me. And I'm gonna go through these. And once I get through this stuff, I really don't have a ton more content, I restrain, because I could write forever. Sometimes I'm the kind of guy that I have to write to figure out what I know, so I could like, if you ever get a text from me, like, get out your readers, sit down, take off your shoes, it's gonna take a while to get through this text message. Joel has written. And so what I didn't wanna do is get bogged down in content for this. I wanna hear from you guys some of the examples. And using this as a backdrop, maybe this may spark a particular question for you, but I wanna just talk with you guys and just kind of have it be more of a conversation because sometimes it's like very easy to hear the existential mental models that Joel has created for overcoming resistance. But how does that work for me? I own a small business and I'm managing three employees and my creative process looks like different things and means different things than making a promo video. So how do these things apply to that? And so I feel like I've had a pretty broad range of experiences with different people in different contexts, different clients, different things where these things have really served me consistently. And so I wanna just talk about that stuff. So I'm gonna get through this and I'm just gonna open it up and I'm hoping that we can just have a great conversation and hopefully be more practically helpful for you if we do it that way. So hope you're cool with that. So reflections on what have worked for me for overcoming resistance in my work. The first thing that has really helped me is approaching everything with flexibility. A lot of times we get very rigid with our process and our goals and the way we're defining and looking at the entire thing and we think, okay, the thing is this and so we're gonna do this, this and this and then we submit ourselves to a rigid process that a lot of times is unproven. Like we get more and more confident sometimes to cover up the insecurity of we don't know what we're doing but it's on the outside, it's like we're sticking to the plan and flexibility does not mean you change your direction. Or I'm sorry, it doesn't mean you change your destination but it means you may be wind to the place instead of a straight line. We want the straight line. We wanna hit the button on the microwave and have the thing cooked. And we live in a microwave society but we serve a crock-pot God. So sometimes getting there takes longer, has more pressure and sometimes it requires us to throw away ideas that man, have you ever heard the phrase you gotta kill your darlings? Like sometimes you've got a really good idea that you think is awesome but everyone around is telling you it sucks or it's just not working and you're just gonna go, it was so sweet, I've gotta let you go, Jack, you know. It's a really bad example. But being flexible, sometimes the best idea is not your first idea and sometimes the pathway forward and what worked for them may not work for you and you've heard the phrase, right? Like what got us here won't get us there and so there's things that have gotten us to this point. Let's just take True North for instance. We did this thing that was not a thing before and now it's a thing and we're not gonna plug and play and do it the same way next year. I'm sure, we're gonna learn from this, we're gonna grow and we don't know what problems we have yet until we debrief about this thing. We go, oh hey, here's the things we were terrible at that people couldn't get confused by and man, we could serve our people better when they come to this thing to make this a more fulfilling experience. How do we do that? I don't know. If we knew how to do it, they wouldn't have had a bad experience with this in the first place so let's figure this out. So you have to have flexibility and when you have flexibility, you don't break but if you are rigid, you will snap and we've all snapped. You'll be emotional, mental, in your career, whatever it is, you will snap eventually because only so much tension before you break. The second thing that has helped me is to maintain a strong deliberate connection with imagination. I don't know if this is the best way to put it, I don't know if you'll all relate to this but there almost has to always be in the back of your mind, like you have to contend to kind of stay in a state of play. When you're a kid, you discover things you're passionate about through play and when we're adults, there's things that we put behind us that are childish, right? Obviously, some of us are slower than others. But we stop consuming the things that bring joy. I'm not talking about circumstantial happiness but joy, the things that resonate with you and those evolve over time. The things I love now are not the same things I loved when I was 12 or 20 or 25. I'm 35, some very old wise man now I've got it all figured out just why I'm up here obviously. But things I love when I'm 45 are gonna be different than what I love when I'm 35. Some things will stay constant but most things will evolve and if you're not diligent to kind of tend to the garden of imagination you will find yourself without inspiration eventually. And so, even sometimes if you're just doing creative work there was times, I did freelance film stuff for years before I came back into ministry and there were times you just step up to play and you crush a home run on the first swing and then there's other times where it feels like I'm playing like 75 strike kick ball. Like this should be the easiest thing. Why doesn't my leg just connect with the enormous ball rolling out of snail space towards me? I'm whiffing over and over. It's like in a dream when you can't run, you know? And one of the things that helps me in those moments at times is other than just fighting my way through it I kind of play my way through it. And so I'm like, you know what? I'm not feeling this but I remember when I was thinking of this concept for this project and I sold them what the idea was gonna be and they were like, we love it, go for it. Now it's not working and it's terrible and I hate everything and I wish I never said yes to this and I'm losing money because I put like 80 hours in the sun that should have taken 10. I gotta go back and go, you know what? What sparked the inspiration for that to begin with? And usually if I can get back to that point or find a different point sometimes it's just getting out of your office or getting out of your house and just putting yourself in a place where you engage in either mentally or physically which was right in a different way and that gets hard because especially when you're a result when we're a results driven culture and if you've got a job that the result matters sometimes we think the more like dignified smart thing to do is no, stay at the desk till it's done. And while that is true, like you have to do that sometimes sometimes you just gotta get the thing done. Other times you're gonna spend five hours fighting with your computer screen or you could spend one hour rejuvenating your mind through imagination sparked by inspiration. So it's just being cognizant of when and that's rhythmic, that's only you. You can feel that out but like be willing and give yourself permission to do that. And a lot of people they love that point. It's like, oh, I just need to go to Disney for a week and I'll be inspired. No kidding, right? Like who wouldn't be? I love Disney. I wanna live there right now forever. I will quit right now if I can live at Disney. Nah, I won't but I'd like to go on vacation there. It's very fun. But it's not about living there using this as a permission to not be productive or not do the work, but it's very helpful and you have to make that choice. Another thing that's been helpful for me is designing intentional systems for everyday life. Everybody in this room has a system for everything they do. It's just a matter of if you've deliberately designed it or it's been formed through arbitrary inaction. You either did it on purpose or it happened by accident but everything you do is systematic. And so, you know, I'm not equally, I'm more creative than I am analytical but I have to live in both spaces with just, I'm wired that way but also my job and so, but I'm not the systems guy. Like no one's coming to me going, Joe, we need you to architect the production management software and I'm like, I'm not your guy, I'd rather be homeless, thank you. You know, like, I'm not gonna be your guy for that. However, I know that if I don't choose the pain of discipline to create some systems, then I'm gonna choose the pain of being terribly inefficient in areas by default. And so, I had to look at the times and you really have to be a good self-auditor which is very difficult. That in and of itself is a years-long process where you get to know yourself and the thing that helped me get to know myself best was being a freelancer because they're just not gonna hire you if you're not good and they don't care how you feel and all these things. So I had to learn how to self-audit very quickly, make adjustments on the fly of, hey, this isn't working in Y and if I don't get disciplined in this area, have a system for this, then I can't deliver the product. If I don't deliver the product, they're not gonna hire me again. They don't hire me again. My four kids aren't gonna eat. They eat so much. How can I do this? I gotta get the food. And so, you know, there's some motivation there, there's some Y there, but I realized like I have to create systems for how I did. So when I'm hitting that roadblock, man, I know what I'm, if I'm riding in the roadblock, I know sometimes for me like, riding comes very naturally, but I will, I won't have to go search for inspiration to write, but I'll just need to get away from it. Whereas if it's a video and I'm, you know, doing the whole thing from top to bottom, I may hit a roadblock and the antidote for me in that situation is to not get away from the computer but to go, you know, I'm gonna go check out what these filmmakers are doing because man, I just, it may be a video that has nothing to do, but like, I don't know about you. I was, you know, an artist all growing up and stuff. So lots of art classes and my art teachers, especially as you get more advanced in high school, they'll have you do things like, don't draw the chair, turn it upside down, get a mirror and draw the space between the chair. And so it was like, the same object is there, but I'm seeing it from not only a different angle, from a different perspective. And so I was like, okay, this video is not working. The content is not working for me. I need to see the space, I need to see the negative space maybe instead of the positive space. I need to see, you know, maybe that, okay, the subject matter doesn't work. Man, this visual idea isn't working, but you know what? Maybe the visual idea is not working. Maybe it's the coloring. So I'm gonna go watch something else and I love the color grade on this video. So, and I can work my way out of the block there, but I do it differently than I do it with writing. You know, so it's not a one size fits all. It depends on your craft. If you're a painter, you may go, you know what, I'm just gonna go take some photographs. You know, it's like, it doesn't help you get the painting done, but maybe it just sparks something when you go process the film or you're editing the photos afterwards, you go, oh my gosh, see how these lines interact? That's the thing. Oh my gosh. So you have to be intentional about building some of those things into your everyday life so that when you encounter resistance, you have some backup plans for not ditching the project, but just getting there a different way, which comes back to the flexibility. Next thing is doing the work when you don't feel like it. Now this is one we all relate to. If you say that you always feel like it, I mean, you come up here and take the microphone because I need to learn from you, sensei. There's not, I don't know anyone who's ever felt it all the time. I said this quote earlier today. I probably said it twice today actually because this is my third workshop. But it's so applicable to everyone in every situation, and particularly in this instance. And I don't know who the quote is attributed to originally because I've heard like 10 different authors say it 10 different ways, but it's all the same thing. They're all stealing from each other because that's what great artists do. Good ones borrow, great ones steal. There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't. It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. Like the discipline to just do the work, and it's the difference between being an amateur and a professional. There's a really phenomenal book I would highly recommend on this subject. It's called The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. And the whole book is literally devoted to the external forces of resistance and how that actually strengthens you doing your best creative work. So it goes deep into this, but really it's the difference between approaching it like an amateur and a professional. And I don't mean literally occupationally. In the book, one of the reasons his anecdotes and his ideas are so powerful is because he did not break through professionally and actually become a prolific writer. He was like in his mid 40s or late 40s. He failed for decades and yet he kept pushing through the resistance. And then he broke through. He was like one of the most prolific writers in the world. Like it's pretty remarkable. Some people break late. You might be one of those people, but if you don't sit down and do the work, you'll never find out. And so you'll know if you've got the will to sit down and do it when you don't feel like it, you'll know that I should take this seriously. But if you're like, I don't feel like it. And I don't really care what the results are anyway. It's probably not worth fighting through. Just give it up probably. You know, like be real with yourself. It's really helpful to be realistic, but if you're really passionate about it, if you're like, man, no, this is who I am. This is what I wanna do. The worst thing you can do is go like, oh, I'm gonna do these 10 things. I'm passionate on all of these 10 things. And then you're never great at one of them. And every time there's resistance, you don't have enough depth, history, knowledge, expertise and compounding growth in any area to propel you through. But when you really start to buckle down and invest in something, then when you meet that resistance, you're like, no, I've gone this far. It's that last lap. I'm not giving up now. I don't wanna do the work. I wanna go to bed. And a lot of times you use the excuse, oh, I don't have the time. There are times when you just don't have the time. And I get it. I got four kids, my wife and I both work. And when I was working freelance from home, one of my kids was in school. That was it. I had three kids running around and I was trying to build a full-time freelance career. And it was horrible. It was horrible. But you know what? Excuses to me, and I know this is harsh and I'm sorry in advance if this hurts your feelings, but excuses are the language of incompetence. If you don't care that much to push through the hardest thing, then don't do it. Find that thing for you that is that. But once you found it, man, double down. Double down, do the work. The view of, and I said professional versus amateur. Maybe in this instance, that's not really right vernacular. Maybe it's owner versus employee. Owner versus hired hand. David was an owner. He fought the bear and the lion. He went to bat for the sheep. Hired hands fled when they saw a lion because guess what? It's a lion. It will kill me if I fight it. But David said, no, it's personal for me. It's connected to my purpose and my purpose is to honor my family and serve my father and all these. And he did that stuff even after he was king or after he was anointed king. You know, it's a king that sends him back out. It's not like you're king. All right, it's king. It was like an office awkward moment after Samuel Lee. So, guess you're king. All right, go back out on the street. You know, it's like, so he still had to have that sense of ownership. And so, you gotta tap into that for you. And that's one of the hardest things to do is to, it's really easy to imagine them. Oh, wouldn't it be cool if? But to be so focused on, like it's unacceptable for me not to do this. Like I have to do this. And you're still gonna feel the resistance that everyone else feels when they're not that purpose driven. But that, when you break through, that is a huge step forward when it's like, I'm exhausted, I'm tired, I'm waking up an hour earlier than I was normally going to tomorrow because I know that I'm on the brink of breakthrough. If I can just get another hour, if I can, and it's not about becoming obsessive in the sense of like unhealthy. But man, I went, I went pretty far into the unhealthy workaholic thing. To be honest, I was, when I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker, I put in about 80 hours a week for about four years. I did nothing. I said no to relationships. I said no to anything. Other than like falling asleep to Netflix after the day was done, that was about it for me. And I'm not advocating that. But that's what I tapped into was an unstoppable will to do this. And I was like, you ever heard of the 10,000 hour rule? If you do something for 10,000 hours, that's when they say you master something. So it takes about a decade to do that. They say, if you do it full time. So I was like, how fast can I get my 10,000 hours in? Like four years. Okay, I'm going. And I did it. I'm not saying I mastered anything. I'm far from mastery. And the further you get into it, the more you realize you don't know. But it's that drive. And that's what I'm talking about is when you doing the work, sometimes it's harder than anything else. So just sit down and do the work. Do the work. Because that's the one thing you get to control. And that's the one thing that most people don't want to push past. And once you push past it, man, the benefits are huge. They really, really are. All right, I'm not going to keep talking about that. We'll move on. The next one is taking risks and embracing failure. You know how everyone loves to fail, right? Oh, wow. Joke did not land. Apparently you really do love to fail. Okay, this is for you then. Taking risks and embracing failure. If you're not taking on challenges that make you feel at least a little bit afraid, then you're not growing. Best example, I really learned this lesson. I was like, I think I was like 25. And I was drumming a lot. I was in the studio recording an album with the band I was in. And the producer is a phenomenal producer. Phenomenal drummer. I mean, he's a part of a lot of big stuff. And so I was already like, are you sure you shouldn't just play drums on this record? You know, like totally intimidated. But he was a friend. So it was a little easier than that. We got to this one song and I don't know if there's any drummers in the house but there was this beat. He was like, hey, what if you tried this? And it was this really complex polyrhythm. And really essentially what that meant was it all sounds right, but it feels really counterintuitive to play. And it was like, all right, I got this. I sit down and I was like, all right, I quit. I'm out of here. And I was like, why don't you just do it, man? Why don't you just do it? He's like, no, if you feel like you can't do it, you're about to get better. And so he made me stay there and do it in front of the band. It was hours of me trying to do this thing. And everyone's just in there, like drinking Mountain Dew, watching me through the glass. And I'm like, yay, failing is awesome. But then I broke through. And man, my drumming went to that extra level in the months that followed that because I was willing to look like an idiot for a little while. But then I just listened and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna take the risk of believing you right now. I'm okay with looking stupid. I'm okay with feeling ashamed that I can't do this beat that they all think sounds easy to do. But I know it's hard and you know it's hard, but you're gonna push me to it. And sometimes we have to do that for ourselves. We have to go, you know what? I need to feel a little afraid right now. I used this analogy earlier today in one of the workshops. I can't remember which one. I think it was the one that was up here. But it was about, you know, motorcyclists have to have fear to survive. It is the biggest thrill in the world riding a bike. It is so fun. I rode for years. I stopped, you know, my kids, I forgot like, I'll wait till they're out of the house. I don't wanna risk anything. Once they're out, I'm fine. I'm gonna go on the road. But at the, when the time I did it, the thing that, part of the thing that made it exhilarating, but the thing that kept me alive was the fear. Now God has not given us a spirit of fear. And I'm not talking about fear and intimidation, but there are times, oh my gosh, our clients have been so mad at me if they knew. I said yes to stuff I had no idea how to do. And I was like, yes. And I will guarantee it in three weeks. And I was like, hang up the phone. It's like, ah, alarms going up in the background, freaking out. But then guess what I did? I got to work. And I watched videos and reverse engineered them. And I sat down and I tried stuff and I failed my computer's crashing. Why is it crashing? Because you suck at this and you don't know what you're doing. So I'm not gonna do it that way. I'm gonna try it this way. Oh, it's crashing because, oh, there's too many things going on. I had to figure things out. That's because I embraced fear and I embraced failure. And that's what risk looks like. Risk is a very brave act. Now there's stupid risks. Don't take those, okay? Like there's really, really dumb risks. Like the last thing you wanna do is be like, all right, I got a Mac book yesterday and I've got iMovie. And so now I'm gonna go make a commercial. It's like, if they're relying on you to get a return on their investment, but you don't even know how to export a video yet, that's a stupid risk. Don't lie about who you are and what you're capable of. But when you know when something is just out of reach, man, just try it. The next time you're like, hey, can you do this? I don't know. If it's not just out of reach, it's probably not worth reaching for. And so doing that, embracing that and going, I'm gonna take the risk. And sometimes you're gonna fail. A good example is for me, I was doing a video and I had never done anything animated at all and I was like, oh, I got this really cool idea of these paper cut-out things that'll kind of be like a comic book and it'll be really cool and I started doing it and I was like, oh my gosh, I know nothing. What am I doing? And I put 500 hours in and then I threw it all the way and started it over again. But man, it ended up awesome. It took a lot of time. And I took a risk. Like I put a lot of time in and then I was like, man, I can finish this the way this is right now. But it's not what I know is possible and it's not what I was reaching for and it's not what I promised. So I can either say, yeah, sorry, or I can burn them in a little for some weeks now and I can get back at it, use what I learned and I looked at that 500 hours of failure as an investment in my future. Failure is always an investment in your future if you'll get back up and all that people say, oh, it's okay to fail. It's not okay in the sense of like, so hey Joel, if Jake's back there, Jake's not my thing, he's a designer, he's awesome, right? He goes, oh, hey, I didn't do the thing you asked for. That's a failure. It's not an acceptable failure. Go do the thing I asked you to do, right? Like you promised me, you were clocked in, like you were getting paid to not do anything. Now if he comes in and says this doesn't work but he was trying something new, I go great, investment in the future, now let's make it work, let's hit the deadline, let's do this. And you use it as a motivation because when you're embracing failure, you're not absolving yourself of completing your task, you're absolving yourself of completing your task comfortably. And so that's something that for me has been really, really crucial in overcoming resistance. And then tapping into your motivation, like why are you doing what you're doing? Like why, what is your why? If your why is weak, you're not gonna ever overcome. You know, like the Israelites endured a long time in the wilderness and they had a lot of ups and downs, right? They had a lot of ups and downs, but man, they had a promise. They had a promise from God. What's your promise? What's the thing that, and promised isn't always a position. Sometimes promise is just a person. Sometimes Jesus and the thing he's put in your heart and what this means for you and your family or your friends or your church or your community. Sometimes that's the payoff and it's more qualitative and quantitative, but you gotta have a why motivating you. And if your why is weak, if you're like, why are you, I'm having trouble coming up with the design. Well, why are you doing it? Because it's cool. It's cool, it's weak. It's weak. You can be cool and weak. And you just, so you gotta tap into your why. Your why is so important. And for me, man, when I was experimenting with failure and risk as a freelancer, I had to succeed because I had a family to provide for. Like, I was like, God, this is so hard. Why are you doing this? And he's like, just trust me. Just trust me, you need to feel a lot of pain because you're so stupid that pain is your only good teacher. So you need to do this. And sometimes we gotta, and resistance another way is pain. I mean, pain is, you know, you're in the gym. I don't go to the gym a lot. I know you can't tell. People are like, wow, he's so fit. When you go to the gym and you're lifting weights, you don't get stronger by not feeling an enormous amount of soreness and resistance, right? And I know that's such a low-ing metaphor. So I didn't wanna go there, but I am. Here we are. But you have to, you have to, you have to. What's your motivation? What's your motivation? If your motivation is to get healthy and get fit and be strong, then you gotta go to the gym and you gotta be able to pain. If your motivation is to provide for your family, you gotta show up and do the work and you gotta press through and you gotta take those risks. Because you don't take the risks, you're never gonna set yourself apart either. And we're not trying to set ourselves apart so that we can do it unto our own glory. We're trying to set Jesus apart so that people can go, whoa, I never knew he was like this. Man, I didn't know he was so good. Man, I didn't know that the father was actually kind. I didn't know he wasn't disappointed. Man, I didn't know that I didn't have to earn my way out of this thing. Man, I didn't know, think about those things and think about the impact. What if you don't overcome the resistance in your way? And you prevent somebody else from having the opportunity to use your journey as a pathway to their destiny. Think about that. You don't do it and someone misses out. And we don't know, you can't quantify that, right? I can't say, hey, if you don't do the thing, five people are going to hell. Like, that's so stupid, I'm not trying to say that. But what I am saying is there have been so many times where I did this thing and it was hard and I pushed through and I failed a bunch and I got it done. And then you're like, oh my gosh, like I thought this was going to be a cool idea. But that person, it changed their life. Like they responded to an altar call because I played a role in this thing. Like, man, what if I didn't push past the resistance? And if I hadn't pushed past the resistance in 2013 in my apartment, then I would not be a, we've had 290 people get saved since the New Year here. That is not one, I mean, Pastor Lee is a phenomenal preacher. I mean, the dude could talk about duck tape and people would be like, take it, take my soul, God, it's yours. So I'm not saying that like I'm the reason. But I know I played a part and I know I played, and I know that we were all in this together shooting for the same thing. Maybe that wouldn't have happened if I didn't do the thing in 2013. What's the thing that you're not doing right now that you know you need to do? And sometimes it's easier to let go of hope. Man, letting go of hope's a lot easier than holding on. It really is, but don't let go. And you don't let go by overcoming the pain and the resistance. So I know I'm getting all preachy now. So I'm gonna dial it back. Come on, no good. Anna shut me down, but in sign language. So I know I went a little bit longer than I was hoping to go. So it doesn't leave a whole lot of time for Q&A. I'm gonna stay for Q&A as long as you guys want to. But the time we do have before people start filtering out because I know you guys have dinner plans and things like that. Who's got something that you want to talk about? Maybe it's a question about something we just talked about or maybe it's something you're going through. I suffer from that element. I think the negative side of perfectionism is you care about how you look. If I care about how God looks, then perfectionism is maybe worth it. And sometimes it's not that epic or that profound, right? Sometimes it's a video of someone saying, hey, come to our youth group. I can't obsess over someone saying something on camera to a point, right? Because you don't want to be a poor steward of the task in front of you. Sometimes being in the deadline is maybe more important than obsessing over details that no one will ever see. But the details that no one ever notices are the things often that they feel but can't quantify and identify. And so I think excellence is something only you and God can be accountable to each other on. And perfectionism and it's only, I know I'm not perfect. Like only God is perfect. So I can't get it perfect. I know that, but I'm going to be as good of a steward as I can be. And I'm not gonna, I know I can't lie to God about did I go all in on this? Did I give it the best I had? If you leave it all in the field and you collapse when you get in the locker room, then that's a win. It's a win. So that's what I would say to that. Well, they will. Popularity is the insidious cousin of prestige. Popularity gets you nowhere. If you want to look back on your life with legacy and go like, man, I left it on the field. Man, I gave it my all. And it's not a fair example, right? Monet, they hated him. They thought he was crazy. They thought he was color pink. Color by numbers or finger painting was basically the equivalent. Until he died, no one thought he was a master. It was like, they realized later, oh my gosh, the brother was ahead of his time by like 50 years, you know? And I'm not saying that that's like what you should aim for, like, because it's very easy to get self defensive. Like, you can't judge me. It's my art. It's my truth, you know? It's very easy to get defensive. I think you have to strike the balance. So I do not care what people think about me, but I care how I affect them. So for instance, I'm not going to show up and act like a fool and then not care that I act like a fool. Like, that would be just like incredibly self-absorbed and narcissistic. But I also go, if I showed up and I was me and you rejected me, like, I'm not going to waste my time caring about what you think about me. Like, I've got one me and one relation with God and I didn't get to pick I was this way. And so if you've got a vision for something and it's important to you, you're going to die with regret if you did not go after it. Like, do something new. And the thing that you're imagining that maybe the lyric or the beat or the melody or the style or the fusion of styles that people will scoff at, they probably will. But man, that's going to, it's going to help you go, am I doubling down on this? Because if I hear the criticism and I feel shame, then man, maybe they're right, I don't know, we'll see. Or maybe you're like, no, no, I know this. Like, you have to stick it through the criticism. Complaining is like, it's people fronting knowledge. Complaining is the easiest thing to do when you want to sound smart. So complaining and critiquing, it's why social media is the way it is on the negative side of things, right? Like, because people can sound so intelligent if they destroy something. But I think that there's something really special about making something and facing that resistance is going to make you more resolved and it's going to make you more excellent. And I think it's going to make you pay attention to details you would take for granted if you had it just made in the shade and the pathway forward. But at that point, you're just echoing people. I mean, it doesn't sound to me like you're interested in being an echo. So don't be. And you may not end up what you think you're going to end up, it may lead somewhere else. But like, man, I'd rather be original and scoffed at for a few years than popular with my group of friends and than never known. Like, it doesn't sound like you being known, but it's about your work matter and like God gave you this thing to steward and to invest. And I think for you, Matthew 25, the parable of the talents, the one, you know, one servant's given this many, they've both doubled their investment, the master's pleased with him when he comes back. The servant who was given one talent, he buried it in the ground out of fear. Said, I know you're a shrewd man. I didn't want you to be mad at me. I didn't want to lose the $1 I had. These guys, they had $10 to invest. If they screwed up with one, they could rebound on the other nine maybe and da, da, da, da, excuses. The language of incompetence. He buried his talent and he didn't come back and go, man, you missed out. He called him a wicked servant. And what you don't want to do is go before the Lord on your final day and he goes, why did you bury your talent? Like, you have the opportunity. God never said you were wicked because he never indicted him for having maybe lost it. Like, and I'm not saying you should go like, hey, make it rain, lose all the talent. Who cares? God's not gonna care. I invested it in the people at this party. Like, it's not like that. I'm not saying just throw it away and be casual about it. But I do think you have to go like, am I a wicked servant if I try to conform to what my mental construct says success looks like? So, define success. And really, you gotta be before an audience of one at the end of the day. Ah, who had it up first? Honor system, go. I have the benefit of delegating the things that are hard for me to other people. No, we don't work like that at all. That's not a value. I'm just totally a joke. Please hear me on that. You know, there's a unique kind of resistance that you can encounter in collaboration. My disposition naturally is to do it all myself. It's not because I have a spirit of control but it's because I know I can produce if I do this thing. And sometimes it's a lot harder to collaborate with people that have maybe inverted strengths or maybe they're even complimenting strengths but maybe you've got kind of opposing weaknesses. We're like, when I fall short in, they fall short in so we don't see eye to eye on this thing. Or maybe you go, hey, you know what? I really respect them. They're good at what they do. But we have different tastes. So there's different types of resistance than what I just talked about. But I think at the end of the day, you really look at, I always come back to what is loving in this situation? Is it loving to just defer and not be truthful? Because I don't lie to my friends. That's not loving. But if they're working for me, they're on my team. They're supposed to be a relationship there. They're supposed to be mutual admiration, respect, and trust, and that's friendship at some level. So I'm not gonna lie to you if I'm not seeing it your way. So we may encounter some, a rub, may encounter resistance, but you know what? The chances are I'm gonna challenge you and if your idea is great and I'm just missing it, my challenges aren't gonna penetrate that and change it. It'll rise to the occasion. Or maybe you have the seed of an idea and it's not the right idea. So I'm gonna challenge you because that's loving to do. And it may take us a few hours extra to get to the point, but we're gonna find the sweet spot. And so I think that you have to just be prepared for complexity and ambiguity. But again, flexibility, one of those points, that's kind of how I would tether it to be flexible and how you overcome those challenges with your team. Because every time a new team member comes and goes, every time you use a new volunteer, every time you collaborate with a peer on something, new variables. There were some people I would collaborate with, whether it's on my team or it was before when I was freelancing. Like some people just go, Joel, do it all. I was like, sweet, control, got it. Get done, had a schedule, awesome, delivered. And other times I kind of play along. And it's not like, oh, I gotta play along. But there are times when I was like, man, this is frustrating, but man, we got a better result. But oh, the resistance made it better. Does that make sense? No more philosophical and practical, but. And then as time has gone on, it's not like a matter of fear or not wanting to sit down and do it. But I just feel like over a period of time, the inspiration and motivation has almost become like dry bones. You know, like it just stopped coming. And when I would sit down to write, it just wouldn't come. Yeah. And I guess I just don't know what to do with that. It's like, I sometimes still write, but it typically comes from all from the same place, so it all feels the same. Yeah. Dude, we all go through it. Like, you know, the microwave crock pot idea is painfully relevant, painfully relevant. You know, we love it. We're like, God, you've got to break through. And I know it. I'll be patient for weeks. And he's like, how about years? Like, we have a God who is extremely patient. And then he moves suddenly. And so, when you, I would change your perspective of the challenge. Because I gather that this is a pain point because you're passionate about writing and poetry. Right? Or else you probably wouldn't be asking this question. What I would say is, Lord, like, what are you trying to teach me that I'm missing? Because he cares more about, you can't separate the work from the author. And so maybe there's something he's trying to do in you that he's going, you know what? I can let you keep achieving this amount of excellence and success because it's coming naturally to you this way or I can take you through the valley, take you through the wilderness. You know, we freak out about the wilderness sometimes. But if you look at this computer right here, and this is all the wilderness, and I'm over here and the promised land is over here, we're like, oh, if I could just avoid the wilderness, that's the long way, bro. The shortcuts through it. And so you might be in a wilderness and not everyone's wilderness is the same. Some people have a two day wilderness because they are saints and they know how to learn fast. Some people have a very long wilderness. Abraham, man, did you say 25 years in Abraham? You really think it's gonna happen? You know, 25 years, but man, the longer you wait, you have compounding interest in heaven. God will restore things sometimes quickly, but sometimes he knows what's in your best interest and he's less interested in restoration than he is restitution. So when you get to the other side of it, he goes, I'll restore that. I can restore that right now, or you can compound interest and I'm gonna pay you back. Tenfold. And he sees the end reward as a way, it's the pain of the discipline of the moment. He's qualifying you for something. Really profound idea. And when you look at the life of Jesus, I said, please the Father to chase in the sun. Chasing, what's the two things that come to mind? Correction and purification. When I chase in my children, which is only like every other hour, three boys, so, you know, angels all the time. Three boys and a girl. The girl's obviously pretty freaking chill, she's pretty easy. The boys, man, whew, it's tense. Love them though. But I chase them because I want to purify and help them grow and become disciplined. And so it's correction a lot of the time, right? And so those are loving things to do. But Jesus is perfect. So did he need purification? No. Did he need correction? No. So what is it? On Hebrews, it says that he was made perfect through the cross. And the way that word is used there, perfection essentially hearkens to qualification. To become the captain of your salvation, he had to become qualified through the crucible. And you may be going through a crucible right now. And it may be five years, it may be 25 years, it may be five months. But God's not interested in having you achieve something in your own strength easily. He wants to qualify you for something greater that you can't obtain on your own and no money can buy. So look at the wilderness, not as the thing that is preventing you from writing. Maybe it's preparing you to write the best thing ever that's gonna impact other people. Who else? Yeah, I'm a musician as well. So I can relate on multiple levels, but this applies to everybody. You know, when the pain of not achieving what you're passionate and purposeful in outweighs and momentary embarrassment, that's when you, that's the goal. The goal is not to not feel embarrassed. The goal is to be so obsessed with doing the thing that you know you're called to do that you don't care. Because sometimes there's a cost to everything. And sometimes the cost is embarrassment. And I am really okay with being temporarily embarrassed for long-term results. And that, you only get there. Like it sounds like I can put that on a fortune cookie and people are like, oh, that's so true. But like you have to do it. You have to look like a fool. That's not fun. So like there is not a cure for insecurity, but I think part of it too is like, who are you listening to defining your identity? Like if you're comparing yourself, you are slowly sipping poison. Comparison is a poison. And there's two things that involved in comparison that will absolutely destroy you. They're equally deadly and they're inverted. One is rejection and one is praise. They're both poison. And your goal should be to walk that tightrope in between the two and go, you know what? And they reject me. You know what? I don't care. If only I was more like Jesus, people wouldn't reject me. He was the most beloved and most hated and he still is. He's the only God who has a curse for it. Like you know what I'm saying? So rejection is a part of achieving your destiny and your calling and your gift things. And to me, feeling embarrassed and feeling rejected is so much better than never doing anything and people meeting me within difference. So I think that your goal should not be to preserve these things that you're struggling with now. Your goal should be to tap into like Lord, like how did you do it, Jesus? Like read his life. Like how did you do it? Like he was not welcome in his own hometown. He would scoff that. He would like cast a demon out and they'd be like, oh, doing it by demons. Like what? I just, forget it. I'm not welcome on my own, I'm down. You know? And so get really comfortable in your identity with the Lord. And a lot of that, man, sometimes that just comes on as like you gotta go to some places that you don't wanna go to emotionally and spiritually. Maybe it's based on relationships. Maybe it's based on friend groups and maybe it's based on some painful experiences in your church and stuff. But at the end of the day, none of those things are God. And so I would encourage you like Lord, what do you think when I sing? What do you think when I write? And if you have an audience of one and your main concern is when you stand before him at the end of the day, you go, you know, he goes, I heard every one of those songs and I love them. Shoot for that. That's how you overcome anyone else. As far as creativity and I'm in turn pushing me to be more creative, what inspires you? But it's finding what inspires you that I'm having a hard time with. What would be a good place to start? To be honest, you don't really know what inspires you. Yeah, that's good. What would be a few? That's not good that you don't inspire. I'm just saying it's good that you know that. Self-awareness is really important and artists aren't known for having it. Start with, because you're trying to find what inspires you to be creative. Where would be a good start? Yeah, one of the most helpful things for me has been holistic self-education. So what I mean is I wanna be a better artist so I listen to audio books about running a business or I go into biographies. One of the most, stories are so powerful because we find ourselves in them. So go after some biographies and even things that maybe are counterintuitive. So what's your area? You say you're an intern. What are the main? Is it like graphic design, music, vocals? Worship. Worship, okay. So first of all, it's not unfair to go, you know what, I thought this was me and my calling, maybe it's not. But maybe there's something connected to this that is for me. But you're never gonna find that if you don't search outside of it. And there are things, man, there are podcasts. My house is 20 minutes from here and this is where the creative offices are. We have two campuses and I work over here. And so I've got 40 minutes a day and they say that if you're an average commuter and maybe the commute would need to be a little longer than 40 minutes round trip but if you're an average commuter in America you can get a master's level education in three years if you just listen to content. So sometimes I just gotta put, I mean Sunday mornings I'm listening to gospel on the way in, it gets me fired up. You know, other times I just need to listen to the goofy podcast that makes me laugh but 90% of the time I'm looking at my dead time in the car that I'm battling a road rage in. I'm investing in my future and it's usually in ways I don't know yet. And so it's just like learn how to learn and don't try to just learn about music. Like listen to some audio books. Like The Wright Brothers, it's on my wish list. I haven't done this one yet but there's this, I don't remember who wrote it. I bet if you search it, if you search Wright Brothers it'll probably be like The Best Seller or whatever. But the opening line was something like birds never soar in the calm. It's the opening line of the book. And I was like, what? This is so cool. I don't care about airplanes. I don't care about airplanes. I mean, I got like that they get me from this place to that place, right? And I love having no leg room. I mean, who doesn't love that? But all of a sudden I was like, man, this whole thing started off with this powerful metaphor of like you have to be in like insanely resistant winds in order to soar on heights. So that like brings me I'm like, what am I gonna learn in this thing? This is about airplanes but it's not really about airplanes, right? So I would tap into, you know there's this really great book called Creativity Inks by Ed Katmell. He's the one who invented computer animation helped. And he was one of the three co-founders of Pixar. And he's the president of Pixar and Disney Animation. You gotta be pretty creative guy to have that job. But he's also a scientist. So he's got this weird dual role where he is a computer scientist by trade and also a creative leader. And the whole thing is just full of, it's really, it's a book, it's partly story, partly memoir, partly how to lead creative teams and manage creatives and stuff. But don't think of like, oh, I'm on the team. So what am I, what's gonna help the people on the team? Start to think elevate your vision. You don't drive looking at the road two feet in front of you. You gotta look to the horizon. So look past where you're looking because if you're not finding inspiration in your proximity, you're probably just looking too low. So get into some other areas and go like, hey, okay, maybe this isn't for me. Maybe this is, but I'm gonna look at, maybe instead of, you know, reading the book about the guy who wrote the song, maybe I'm gonna read a book about the agent who discovered the guy. Maybe there's something there to learn. Or maybe I'm gonna read about another really awesome book. It's called The One Thing. Oh, this is first name, last name's Keller. Keller Williams Realty. Gary, there it is. I don't care about real estate. I mean, I care that I have a house, but I'm not, I have no ambition to be in real estate. But that book was transformative for me. It was all about doing the one thing, the most important thing in prioritizing your life. And man, it like changed my perspective. So you may actually get things out of things that you don't even know are there until you just like get out of your comfort zone and get out of your interest zone. How old are you? 20? Man, I had a kid at 20. Ugh, it's hard. You got a long way to go. I didn't discover what I really wanted to be when I grew up until I was 28. I'm sorry if that's discouraging. Who else? Well, if no one else, that's no problem. I am not offended. I'm gonna hang out for a few minutes. We're done and thank you guys for being here.