Who do you go to when you feel overburdened?
When you feel alone, who do you call?
Who do you have around you that can see your blind spots?
Why is Openness Important?
If you’ve been around me for a while, you know that being honest is important to me, especially when it comes to admitting my mistakes, failures, and conflicts. Today, I want to share with you one area where I failed to be accountable in my personal life. If you don’t know each other, let me give you some context for why I believe this type of openness is so critical.
“I can show my true face.”
When I can share with you the best and worst moments of my life, it opens the door to discussing everything in between. I want you to get to know me, and I want to get to know you as well.
A while back, a business leader in a small group I facilitated told me, “When I come to this meeting, I can show my true face.” It was one of the best pieces of feedback I’ve ever received.
While I have pictures of myself on this blog, I can’t see you, and you can’t see me. But if we were meeting face-to-face, I would hope that we could read each other’s expressions and not try to hide what we’re feeling.
For this post, I’ve chosen a personal example instead of a professional one to protect the privacy of others involved. I’ve discussed this topic with my wife, and she is comfortable with me sharing it here.
A Lesson Learned from Early in Marriage
Early in our marriage, I didn’t involve my wife, Bona, enough in important decisions.
“I wasn’t ready to be vulnerable enough to truly engage …”
Whether I was considering taking a new job or going back to school, I would make the decision on my own without truly consulting her. While I did ask her and others for their opinion, I wasn’t ready to be vulnerable enough to truly engage with their responses. Looking back, I realize that I should have included her in these decisions since they had a significant impact on her life. We are partners, after all.
And unfortunately, at the time no one was close enough to me to notice and confront me with a need to change.
The problem didn’t get fixed overnight.
A Wake-Up Call: Need for Close Friendships
A few years later, my wife and I were sitting in church, and our pastor told a story that went something like this:
“A few years into our marriage, my wife came to me and said, “Mike, you don’t have any friends. And that is a problem. You are not treating me as well as you should, but there is no one to see it except me. And I don’t want to be the one trying to point this out to you. But because you don’t have any close friends, I have to.” My response was to say, “What are you talking about? I have tons of friends. I have friends here. I have friends from college. I have friends that you’ve never even met.” My wife responded, ‘Mike, we’ve been married five years. If I haven’t met someone yet, that person might be a fan or a colleague but not a close friend.”
After hearing this story, we drove home.
After we ate lunch and the kids were watching a movie, Bona asked me, “What about you? Do you have friends?”
How do you think I responded?
“I have David, Gordon, Graham, Aaron.” I immediately rattled off a few names of people I considered to be my friends.
“Something had to change.”
Yet as I spoke, I realized that I was in the same situation as our pastor. Some of the people I had mentioned were close friends and at times in the past when we’d lived in the same city, we saw each other regularly. But they were no longer involved in my life to know that I wasn’t involving my wife in decision-making to the degree I should have been.
My wife smiled.
We looked at each other.
I responded just like our pastor. It was a wake-up call.
Something had to change. If I could be like Mike.
Fast Forward to Today
This change did not happen overnight. I loved the fast-forward button on the old VCR units from like 30 years ago. Fast-forwarding to today, I realize I am skipping over years of counseling, a version of myself over many years that I don’t like as much as the person I am today, a lot of pain and some incredible breakthroughs. Today, I have developed close friendships with a few trusted friends who are willing to tell me when something is not right.
Accountability: Carrot or Stick?
If we were having this conversation over coffee together, I’d invite you to reflect on your own journey.
When have you been stuck?
What would do differently if you had someone close enough to you who knew more about your life?
When I was in high school, I used to think that accountability served as a Stick. I was so afraid of showing up with Dan and Steve and Luke and telling them “I blew it” that I would hyper-focus to try to avoid messing up. The friendships I have today are much more about being known and knowing others.
What’s Next For You?
Have you experienced failure?
Are you still in the phase of not yet knowing what you have to regret in life?
Is it time for a reset?
Your Input on a Self-Renewal Retreat Design?
I’m in the process of re-designing a self-renewal retreat. I’ve been on many retreats in the past and led a number in Albania and in the US. These are often life-changing experiences. If you’d like to be a part of this, I’d love to hear about what would make it the type of experience that you are looking for.
Click here to take the survey and share your thoughts.