EP202: Taming the Beast, Strategies for Overcoming Impulsive Leadership with Jeremy Smith

In a world driven by instant results, we must become catalysts of patience as a pillar of love in our service. Radiate mercy and grace as we welcome Jeremy Smith once more for a conversation on the life-giving power of patience and its life-altering effect on your leadership journey. Tap on the play button to learn more!

Key Takeaways To Listen For

• 2 types of mindset that influence your productivity
• The value of finding moments of stillness in your life
• Powerful reasons to foster patience in your journey
• Why you should offer grace and mercy to others

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

• 75 Hard | The 75-Day Tactical Guide to Winning the War with Yourself
• Dutch L'Abri

About Jeremy Smith
Jeremy’s life miraculously changed when Jesus rescued him in 1996. Since then, personally and professionally, he’s been passionate about helping Christians and non-Christians to think through and seriously consider what they believe, why they believe it, and why it matters. From 2000 – 2010, Jeremy’s professional history included consultative sales roles in the legal industry and educational publishing. From 2010 – 2020, Jeremy served as the Executive Director for Faith Ascent, a para-church organization training college-bound Christian teens in apologetics. In October 2020, with a team of like-minded friends, Jeremy founded ReThink315 and currently serves as the Executive Director. Jeremy also provides consulting services to faith-based non-profits (including churches) and chaplain services to C-Level corporate leaders.

From 2013 – 2020,  Jeremy served as the Corporate Chaplain at Cordell & Cordell. He is affiliated with The Missouri Apologetics Network and St. Louis Reasonable Faith Chapter. Jeremy is happily married to Katie and is a grateful father to Elijah, Lucy, and Lorelei Rae.

Connect with Jeremy
Website: Rethink 315 Apologetics

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr. Nate Salah
Hello my friend and welcome to this episode of A Call to Leadership. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, your host. I'm so glad you're here. On this series, we're talking about different aspects of leadership that embody the mandate to love, to truly care about our followers and how to nurture them. The very first aspect is really about patience. Not just patience as a leader, but patience as a follower too. I've invited Jeremy Smith back on the show. We're gonna break it down. Jeremy. Welcome back to the show. Glad to be back. Good to have you, man. I've been interested in this journey of leadership that I know you're very familiar with, is what we call the love verses in the Bible. We often hear them in weddings. Right. It's found in first Corinthians. It's Paul talking about this idea of love. And I've been fascinated with how to apply that to leadership and what a loving leader looks like and revisiting these attributes from that perspective and talking through what does patience, unkindness, what do they look like as pillars of love from a leadership perspective.

[00:01:11]
And so, like unpacking that, you know, we think about patients in the leadership realm or in life, it almost seems like the busyness of humanity, the need, the desire for instant gratification, it flies in the face of that very foundational first. characteristic, that first principle, that first mandate of love in your view of life. How difficult is patience when it comes to leadership and not just leadership as you, a leader, but receiving leadership, even God's leadership in your life. 

[00:01:45] Jeremy Smith
Hmm. How difficult is it for me in a word? Very. Yeah. Although I'm thankful that from my standpoint, as far as I can tell, It does seem like I'm better today than I was a year ago, and a year ago I was better than five years before that. So, there's a progression, I think, with all things, right? You're not an expert right out of the gate, at least not typically. Some people may have a predisposition to maybe be a little bit more patient. I sure don't, but as it is with strengthening muscles, for example, you know, you start small, you work your way up and you stick with it. So yeah, I'm not very good at it. 

[00:02:26] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah. I haven't been either. I suspect our listener is like, yeah, same. And there's so many areas of our lives that we want to just push through and move forward. At the same time, sometimes we don't want to be slackers. We don't want to be slugs, and we don't want to the point where we have checked out. So there's sort of a meter that goes along with that. Because on the one hand, you could say, Well, I'm just gonna wait on God for everything. And I'm just gonna sit in this chair until something happens. Well, that may not be necessarily what we're talking about here, right? Because that just might be you checking out of your responsibility. Right. On the other side of the equation, we may be saying, Why isn't this happening right now? And it's perhaps the timing isn't right. In fact, I heard it said like this by a pastor many years ago, and he had said, That God is always making two preparations. On the one hand, he's preparing you for his purpose.

[00:03:21]
And on the other hand, he is preparing his purpose for you. And when they come together, that's the divine moment where you can manifest that purpose of life. And so sometimes we're in a hurry. Right? Well, sometimes we're in a big rush and say, well, it's okay if it's not fully prepared. Let's just eat. Right. Maybe it doesn't taste as good or maybe even worse. Maybe it's undercooked. Yeah. Gosh, have you ever had undercooked chicken? 

[00:03:46] Jeremy Smith
My guess is, Nate, knowing you and knowing a little bit about the audience that's tuning in to your podcast, I suspect that most of your listeners lean more towards getting it done quickly, efficiently, very driven. Time-oriented task oriented right you talked about the two holes one you know the lazy sluggard who doesn't do much and just expects everything to happen on its own and the other would be maybe more your audience or someone in your audience who's. Really feeling like unless they're grinding and hustling every minute of the day, it's not going to happen. I feel like these are actually the two ditches on either side of the narrow path, right? And I don't always like talking about balance. I do like talking about tension and I'm oriented by the way, a lot like some of the corporate guys that are listening to your podcast. I feel like if I'm not grinding and hustling and, you know, getting my to do list done that it's just not going to happen.

[00:04:51]
And I know others who lean more towards the maybe more lazy inactivity and all of that. But these two ditches, man, I think they're actually two opposite but equally terrible postures that we can have towards productivity and achieving our goals. And I honestly think, just to borrow a quote from C. S. Lewis, The devil is equally pleased with either extreme. Because in both cases, like there's a lot more. I think it's more negative than positive. And when I'm living in the tension between extremes, if I'm not feeling the pull of man, I'm a little too aggressive here. I'm depending too much on my own efforts and activity. That's one pole or yeah, you know, I'm just gonna sit back and trust God or ignore that or procrastinate That's another pole if I'm not feeling that tension I'm probably drifting one way or the other and so while I don't have all the answers I do know that living in the tension between those two extremes is really important and depending on how you're wired Obedience might look like slowing down, taking a break, or speeding up and making something happen.

[00:05:59] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah, that's good. And I think that goes back to the discernment and it's been said that, well I don't know what God's will is, well it's been said God's will is in God's word. I love that phraseology and understand your journey, your place in the journey, understand the context that you're in. I've been taking time lately to just walk quietly. In fact, I started a program, you may have heard of it and others listening might have heard of it, 75 hard, where it's a 75 day regime. It's not necessarily highly difficult. It's more of a mental toughness type of thing because you drink a gallon of water a day. You can do that through the entire day. You're on a specific diet. It can be whatever it is. It's just a routine that is helpful for your health goals. So it's not that you have to be on any particular one. You exercise twice a day. One time it's 45 minutes outside and then another 45 minute exercise and a few other small minor things that you're doing.

[00:06:51]
And I've started my 45 minute day. At first I started it with listening to something podcast or a YouTube video or an audio book. And then I started not. And just walking in the stillness, and in prayer, and in thought, and meditation, and just listening to every step as I walk, looking around at the trees, and it's been so harmoniously therapeutic for this exercise of patience, because I was almost like in a hurry to learn something new. Like, Oh, well, you know, I need to fill this time with something productive because that's, as you said, most of our listeners are wired in a productivity mindset, right? What's the maximum efficiency and effectiveness of my day. And sometimes I think when we can throttle back a bit and be patient in the moment to allow our thoughts to unwind, to have a sense of continuity and peace about the day. I found that it's been massively life-giving.

[00:07:51] Jeremy Smith
Yeah, I had a great experience in 2015 at a Christian hippie commune. You would have an experience. That's a fun way of phrasing it. It's an old ministry founded by Francis and Edith Schaeffer back in the 60s. And I was at the Dutch Libre, which is one of many homes that anyone can go visit. And you sign up for semesters. So you're there living in community with usually two or three other families that are on site 24 7 and then several what they call students, right? But it could be all ages. Like, sometimes it's gap year, you know, college or high school. A lot of times though, it's people that are just trying to slow down and ask some questions about God, about Christianity, about their maybe big decisions they're wrestling with.

[00:08:40]
Anyway, all that to say, one of the most beautiful takeaways that I had was, let's just call it a new appreciation for life rhythm. Every minute of your day there is accounted for. Right. And it's not boot camp, right? But it is like almost like Ecclesiastes. There's a time for everything under the sun. And so there's a time for rigorous brain activity, studying, listening to sermons, Bible reading, et cetera, et cetera, reading books, taking notes, preparing for discussions that will happen later. And then there's a time for chores. Most of these LaBrie homes are old homes that require a lot of upkeep, so it's not uncommon for, you know, us to be doing renovations, or projects, or fixing things, and then there's a time for food, and, oh man, they know how to do meals. I'll land the plane, I'll get to the point, but something about just the aesthetic, talking about where the ingredients came from, and what went into it, and just slowing down, like, hey, chew slow, think about what you're eating, there's no hurry, right?

[00:09:40]
We've got a lot of time. And let's look at this food that God's providing and then beyond that, long blocks of nothing. Don't read, don't work, like just sit with your thoughts. Maybe you pray, maybe you don't, but be still, right? That was the hardest part for me while I was there. And we're talking a couple hours a day. And yet it was probably the most productive. And this is all under the umbrella of rhythm, right? It's not, if you're super busy, you need to stop being busy and slow down. It's more along the lines of there's a time to be busy and there's a time to not be busy. And if you're not making time for either of these things, your life's going to derail eventually. And the problems are different depending on which extreme you're gravitating towards. Again, laziness or hyper-productivity, but either way you're creating problems. And so one of their emphasis there at LaBrie is life rhythm. How old was I? I guess I was about maybe 36, 37 at the time. I had never really made these intentional efforts every day to just be still. And it was beautiful. It was so good. 

[00:10:58] Dr. Nate Salah
It makes me think about having a centeredness in your existence and in relationship to your vision, uh, for the life that is fulfilling and satisfying. Actually got me thinking about an old story in scripture where Jesus is talking about different aspects of how we respond, in some senses, what we would consider to be Ways people take advantage of us. So if you lend someone money, don't expect it in return. If someone asks you for your coat, I guess we would say today, give them more clothes, right? If someone asks you to walk a mile with them, walk too. And there's a lot of context around that, especially first century Rome. And I won't get into all of that.

[00:11:36]
However, the last one is an interesting one when it comes to this concept of patience. I think, why would I double the time I'm with someone? What would be the benefit of that? It takes tremendous patience to double my time with someone when I'm a busy person. And I think the reason is, if you're really going to have dialogue, if you're going to have relationship, if you're going to move the needle forward and exchange, Sometimes it takes twice as long as what you think it does to actually engage and become part of this human experience together.

[00:12:10]
And for us, it's sharing grace, it's sharing love, it's sharing good news. And in relationship to this idea of long suffering or patience, it puts it in context for me. That sometimes I'm in just too much of a hurry to actually make a difference in the world. I need to check myself against the grand scheme of life, the moments of life. And trusting in timing. You think about, you know, trusting in timing for those relationships, human beings. I look at ideas as seeds and sometimes we want those seeds to germinate and grow and bear good fruit like right away. We don't live in a Chia Pet life. You know, you can't just wake up the next morning and it's fully green. And so even with people in our lives and from a context of leadership, if we're to be impactful influence in life and even through what we're doing with our messages that we send out through podcasts and podcasts. You're getting ready to launch one, which I'm super excited about, and we'll share more about that on a future episode.

[00:13:10]
It takes time for ideas that we present to begin to settle on good soil and begin to take root, and we must have patience and perseverance, and we must continue to be resilient to invest. And involve ourselves and not just give up if we don't see results right away. I think that's one of the biggest detriments to being impatient is the expectation that things need to change right now. Sometimes just not the way the world works. Sometimes there's a deep sense of urgency. I mean, like immediate things. Oh sure. Happen in the moment. Pipe breaks in your basement. 100%. Catastrophic. Yeah. That goes back to discernment. Sometimes maybe we need to walk a couple more miles together.

[00:13:46] Jeremy Smith
I think that agricultural parallels are really lost on us, right? We talk about, you know, planting seeds and watering and all of that, but in our context here in America, you know, fast food lifestyles, most everything is convenient. It's quick, but it is true that the activity up front and I'm not a farmer, but I think, you know, tilling the soil, preparing the ground, planting the seeds. Watering the seeds and then what waiting that last bit is out of your hands like you did the work and again I think this goes back to the rhythms, right a farmer probably had a better sense of rhythm They're not than me maybe you because everything revolves around the seasonal Tasks in juggling family life with work and then the period of waiting It's not like it's something that they're choosing to do. They're not carving it out of their calendar like It's inevitable. There's no way around it. We did what we could. We worked hard and now we're waiting to see what nature or, you know, God, right? What he does with that activity. 

[00:14:52] Dr. Nate Salah
I think we can learn a lot from that and getting back to that because today, I don't believe that from this day and past in history, I don't believe there's a time in history. To the date of this recording from technological perspective from our own desire for instant gratification and instant responses that we've been more impatient and we can use many examples text messaging you just thought that by now that we would have more time on our hands because we have more technology you think the more technology you have to help you to do things then that means gives you more utility more value and more margin for yourselves but it's the opposite now a great example is Texting, you know, if I would have written you a letter 10 years ago, well, I would say 20 and you've ever pen pals. Do you remember that? 

[00:15:33] Jeremy Smith
Oh, just the general term, the concept. 

[00:15:35] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. When I was a kid, the concept was still kind of active and we had pen pals and I would write a letter and I'd wait a few weeks and I get a response. How impatient would someone be if you waited 2 to 3 weeks to send a text message back? In fact, someone say, you know what? You don't care about me. I'm not important. In fact, sometimes there's an expectation, not only weeks, days, even minutes. For a response, Hey, you didn't respond to my text messages. Well, I'm been in a meeting. Have you ever had that where someone has said that to you? Almost daily, daily, right? Because there's a high expectation because there's a lack of patience in this area. When I was growing up and when you were growing up, you remember dial up internet? I do. I remember the lines on a photo and it's like, okay, it's coming in. It's coming in. Right. Eventually you'd see the whole picture today.

[00:16:21]
I mean, that's unthinkable. Uh, people don't like to wait milliseconds for that. So you see today more than ever, we are experiencing massive levels of impatience and it keeps us really from being whole, I think in some ways, and living in a state of grace and mercy. I think that's another area. That we can learn from, especially from scriptural representations of, Hey, you know what? Give benefit of the doubt. And maybe there's a situation that you don't understand or you can't see, especially in what we're talking about leadership or just relationships and just have some grace and some mercy. 

[00:16:54] Jeremy Smith
For me, it's a little bit easier, right? Let's say if I'm texting someone, just to use your example. Because I came up in the corporate world in a sales environment. I'm pretty used to rejection and I certainly don't take it personally. Well, sometimes I do, but more often than not, I don't take it personally. I learned over the years, and even now in my own context, as I'm reaching out to potential speakers or donors or pastor partners or whatever, if they don't respond to me right away, my initial thought is very cherished. Taking cues right from my own life, but also just this whole track record, this history of reaching out to people, waiting for a response more often than not. What I find out after pursuing, right? Maybe I'll wait a couple of days and ping them again. There's that word, ping, right? Follow up, touch base, and more often than not, what I find out is on their end, A, they appreciate the persistence as long as it wasn't pushy.

[00:17:51]
B, they had very good reasons for not getting back to me immediately. And C, a lot of times they are interested in pursuing, you know, whatever activity I have in mind. Or at the very least they're interested in closing the loop kindly and professionally. But the silence, right? To me, it's not an opportunity to immediately assume the worst about someone. And that's partially because I just have all this context and backstory with. Years and years and years of people ignoring me and usually for good reasons, not malicious reasons. She'll hate me for saying this. She won't hate me, but she'll be like, I can't believe you said that. My wife, the opposite in some ways, because not having the same professional background. She sometimes will be a little upset, not like angry, but like a little insecure maybe about a particular person that didn't respond quickly. Like, well, what are they thinking? Or, oh, am I bugging them? And most of the time I'm like, honey, not at all. You can be persistent without being pushy. And what you're going to find out most of the time is that people have a good reason.

[00:18:57]
You know, back to this idea of patience, God is so faithful in teaching us what we need to learn. Whether we want to or not, and if we're running from opportunities to cultivate a more patient posture towards whatever it is, God will chase us and he'll put opportunities in front of us, not in a malicious way, right? This is all for our good, right? This is a loving father. Teaching, sometimes disciplining and correcting his kids. Boy, have I seen that in my own life. Not so much with texts and emails or proposals or whatever, but even just with waiting on God to answer particular prayers. And he is just so faithful to teach us what we need to learn. And he answers prayers. This is a lyric to an old hymn. He answers prayers for grace and faith and patience. Just be careful what you pray for, right? And don't be surprised when he does create situations in your life that force you to cultivate these disciplines, right? Of being patient, waiting on God. Yeah. Thanks for being here. Oh, I'm happy to be here. 

[00:20:05] Dr. Nate Salah
Well, my friend, I am so thrilled that you joined me on this episode of A Call to Leadership. And before you go to the next episode, especially if you're binge-listening, take a moment. I would love to get your honest review right here on your screen. Your feedback is so important. It helps the podcast. It encourages me and it helps me. It helps me to give you more and more and more value, so I can't wait to read your review. I can't wait to be with you on the next episode. I'm Dr. Nate Salah. This is A Call to Leadership.