Not Who I Used To Be

But on my way to becoming who I'm supposed to be

There’s an old saying to the effect of: If you’re the same person at 30 as you were at 20, you’ve wasted ten years of your life.

This doesn’t mean we have to invent ourselves from the ground up every so often. It means we should be actively pursuing the right kind of growth as we make our way through life.

But what constitutes the right kind of growth?

When I started out as a talk radio host, I quickly learned the hot-button issues that could be counted on to spark a reaction and dialogue with my audience.

Conflict always draws a crowd and I discovered that I could build a large, loyal listening audience by appealing to their fear and anger.

I also learned that it’s far easier to get people riled up through enemy-driven thinking than it is to actually open someone’s mind to an idea they haven’t considered. 

There came a point where I realized that I was bringing more anger and fear to an already contentious situation. I knew that I wasn’t making the best or highest use of my skill set.

This realization coincided with my introduction to a classical liberal arts education and the idea that a life of purpose is very different from the life most people choose to live.

It requires us to rethink how we define success.

Up until that point, I was content to be carried with the current. My sense of worth was based primarily on my title or my salary. 

When I thought about what it would mean to shift my focus to individual purpose and what it would take to grow beyond where I was, it was daunting. 

People who are living with purpose, are less concerned with fame and fortune and more concerned about what kind of impact they are having on the world.

If I wanted to have a positive impact, I knew that simply stirring people up wasn’t enough.

A writer by the name of Paul Rosenberg introduced me to the necessity of losing the need to win if you want to be able to reach others. I applied his advice and marveled at how my on-air conversations became less contentious and more productive—even if no one’s mind was changed.

Since that time, I have continued to find myself pulled toward the best and highest use of the skills God has given me and allowed me to develop. This means being a source of truth and light, to the best of my ability and encouraging others who hear that call to answer it.

It’s important that you know that The Fifty-two Seven Alliance isn’t just a fun project that we’ve taken on to pass the time.

Russ and I both feel the call to use our time and talents to serve those who are working to be bearers of light. We want to encourage others to become sources of illumination to all around them.

This can only happen when we have freed ourselves from the contrived outrage and artificial division being directed at us daily. We must be willing to undergo the right kinds of growth.

That can take a lot of different forms but it has more to do with becoming the best possible version of ourselves.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn shared a key truth he learned while imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag. 

He wrote:

“Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”

This maturity of our own souls is where we find lasting satisfaction and self confidence in knowing that we are choosing to be a source for good in the world.

To make that happen, we have to be willing to let go of who we used to be and lean into the hard work of becoming what we were born to become. 

Raising the bar individually is the way to secure greater peace and happiness in a chaotic world.

If that’s a journey you feel called upon to take, we look forward to traveling with you as Allies to turn up the light and turn down the heat.