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May 19, 2021

How to Set Goals That Are Rooted in Your Core Calling

At the start of this year, we wrote a post about how the R.O.O.T.E.D. Goal Setting System can be a game-changer for how you set goals this year. Over the next couple weeks, we are going to dive into each aspect of this goal setting system. If you missed that first post, take a minute to go read it now!

The R.O.O.T.E.D. system helps you to identify and reverse-engineer relevant, strong, essentialist goals that will help you bridge the gap between those big and important things that you know matter most and the life you’re living right now.

Sustainable, Life-Giving Goals Are:
  • Rooted in your core calling
  • Organically growing out of your context
  • Outlined for clarity
  • Tailored to your lifestyle
  • Etched into your memory
  • Developed by Providence

I have to admit—as thrilling as the first phrase in the acronym may be (‘Rooted in your core calling’), it’s also pretty intimidating. 

But tapping into your core calling is an essential part of creating goals that fully resonate, that compel you to follow-through in the execution of them, and that produce a lot of satisfying fruit along the way. 

So let’s begin uncovering essential soil for every sustainable and healthy goal you’ll ever set. 

The Core Calling of all Humans

Your “core calling” is a multi-layered concept. Let’s start with the most foundational layer—the layer of “calling” that is common to each of us.

In the first chapters of Genesis, we learn something very important about God’s heart for humanity. God created us as individuals made in His own image, and placed in the covenantal context of communion with Him, each other, and the world. From the dignity of being Imago Dei flows our purpose to steward this world God created by cultivating abundance and communion in every area of our influence.

Our generous God made so much space for us to walk with Him in love, to imagine, to engineer, to grow ourselves and our families and our projects. He equipped us with strong minds, strong bodies, strong capacities for relationships and nuance and wisdom. 

But then something terrible happened. The Enemy of communion and goodness and light and Love came in and planted seeds of doubt. He peddled the concepts of scarcity and conflict of interest to a world that was burgeoning with abundance and founded on a perfect harmony of interest. The real world had no space for his lies. But instead of pointing to reality and defending the world from the Liar, our first parents started to listen to him. They repeated his words in their minds until they sounded plausible. And then they decided to test the theory. They made a grab for exclusive control of resources—and in doing so they sacrificed their mutually-trusting relationship with God (and each other) for the opportunity to dominate without reference to God’s code of ethics. 

Humanity revolted against its core calling. Fallen human beings began to greedily contend with others for resources and eventually created entire systems of domination. The result has been a world fraught with scarcity, distrust, pain, and conflict ever since. But something else happened six thousand years after that fateful moment that barred humanity from Paradise. The Son of Man (the incarnation of God Himself) made our fallen world His home and started His renovations.

“That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf: “Be reconciled to God.” He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” — 2 Corinthians 5:19-21

He started by reconciling people—individuals made in the Image of God—to Himself. In Christ, our hearts are changed from deserts of scarcity and conflict into small (but powerful) oases of hope and healing. 

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” — 2 Corinthians 5:17-18

We are made into temples where heaven meets earth. Our lives become the context where God chooses to interface with the world around us.

In Christ, we are restored to our original Imago Dei calling to cultivate abundance and communion in every area of our influence. Christ takes the lead in our hearts by demonstrating that the redemption of the world can only follow spiritual transformation. But lest we think this means that we live our lives in some kind of floaty disassociation from real world problems, let’s consider the clear instructions of Paul to the Thessalonians (which is, of course, applicable to us all).

We are called to: 

(Taken from 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12)

  • love one another as we are taught by God
  • intentionally abound in that love
  • live peacefully
  • tend to our direct responsibilities
  • build wealth through enterprise and skillful industry (this is the literal meaning of the Greek word “ergazomai” in 1 Thess. 4:11; Gal. 6:10 makes it clear that we should take every opportunity to “ergazomai” for the good of all, and especially our brothers and sisters in Christ)
  • behave decently, respectfully, and ethically even toward strangers
  • abound so well in our own enterprises that we are not permanently dependent on the industry of others

In summary, sister, you and I (and every Christian woman reading this) will find that we have in common the renewed calling and impulse to cultivate abundance and communion in every area of our lives. Our efforts will be continually brought into alignment with the loving, peaceful, and respectful code of ethics that the Lord has restored to our hearts. And we will all be seeking ways to build wealth and independence by leveraging the unique resources and opportunities the Lord has given to each of us.

Your Core Calling as a Unique Individual

So how do you recognize and leverage the unique resources and opportunities that the Lord has given to you?

I’ve learned both from personal experience and from my coaching work with others that grasping the unique calling of God for our individual lives is a process

Digging down into our general calling to live out the dignity of being image-bearers who have been redeemed from our errors, adopted into the household of God, and given our heaven-meets-earth roles as truth-advancing royal priestesses (1 Peter 2:9) obviously provides an amazing amount of direction for our energies.

But 1 Peter 4:10 makes it clear that we are not lumped amorphously into the Body of Christ without any specific missions of our own. We are individual stewards of the “varied grace” of God. This means God has given us each special and unique graces in the form of our unique giftings, impulses, challenges, insights, resources, ideas, concerns, and desires.

This is because our One-and-Many God celebrates both the Unity of the One, and the Diversity of the Many. He doesn’t tend to the extremes of either uniformity or discord. His heart is for a world of peaceful unity that is also popping with invigorating diversity. 

So when I point out that there are reasons that you as an individual think about and pursue the things you do, that you have the desire to solve the problems that you notice, that you have important gaps that you were uniquely created to fill in the world—I’m not just the trumpeting modern “follow your dreams” marketing jingle. I’m pointing out a solid truth.

The Process of Getting Clarity on Your Unique Calling

Based on my personal and coaching experience, my study of the Scriptures, and the reading I’ve done on the concepts of calling, vocation, and purpose (from both Christian and other perspectives) I’ve developed a three-phase process to help you explore and uncover insights about the unique calling God has placed on your life.

  1. Explore your unique intrinsic motivations. Use the Venn Diagram worksheet to find the overlap between the things that give you life, the ways you are moved to serve people, the ways you build wealth, and the skills in which you excel. You will begin to see core themes that overlap in tightening circles—themes that serve as major hints into your core calling. Pray for the Lord to place the desires He wants for you to have in your heart—and know that if you’re in Christ, He’s already been doing that!
  2. Explore your unique extrinsic motivations. Explore the long-term things that motivate you that are outside of yourself, and which are present now. For many people, an easy answer to this is their spouse and/or children, their desire to have a family), and/or others who are under their care. In addition, what are the things that your mentors or friends most commonly ask you to do? What are the top skills for which people have paid you, or have offered to pay you? If you struggle to see what others value in you, ask a trusted friend to help you create a short list. What are the common injustices and/or serious needs that you always seem to notice? What types of invitations from others get you really excited? Ask the Lord to help you see which of these external motivations are part of His Providential direction.
  3. Plant a few seeds and leverage every opportunity to grow in skill, focus, and love. Did I mention that getting clarity on your core calling is a process? It can’t all be done while cozied up with a notebook and coffee. You have to engage real challenges and solve real problems in the life you’re living now. You might be getting a good feel for the soil of your core calling, but you won’t really know what’ll grow until you start planting some seeds. Notice which challenges you’re drawn to tackle and which problems you excel at solving. Plant a few seeds in a few different directions by experimenting with new things that give you life, that serve others in a way they need now, that add so much value that someone is willing to pay for it, and that you’re really good at. While you may not find that perfect combination right away, when an experiment seems to be remarkably successful, follow that avenue and see what else you can pursue there. Don’t overcommit yourself, though! Keep ample space in your life for daily responsibilities, rest, reflection, and play. Without breaking important commitments, give yourself the liberty to declutter your expectations often. Just because you try something doesn’t mean you have to permanently keep doing it. If something is draining you, try going at it from a different angle that aligns better with your unique giftings, get counsel about it, and/or let it go altogether. Never forget the people on the other end of your decisions, and keep your priorities straight (the most vulnerable people in your care come first, even if they’re not demanding the loudest). And no matter what, leverage every commitment you make or responsibility you fulfill as an opportunity to build strong skills, hone your focus on what matters most, and serve with authentic love. These three elements (skill, focus, and authentic love) act as the vitalizing fertilizer that fortifies and directs the good things that will start to grow out of the soil of your core calling. 

From what I’ve read, very few people actually know from a young age exactly what they’re uniquely called to do. And even fewer have a really fleshed-out understanding of what their calling entails. If you’re overwhelmed by this stage—don’t be. You don’t have to get it all right immediately. As you begin to nurture the soil of your core calling (even if you don’t really know what it is) by doing these exercises and by building skills, honing your focus, and growing in love, you’ll begin uncovering more and more direction as you go. 

Where Do You Go From Here?

The next step is to get extremely practical. We’ll be looking at your daily lived context, your current responsibilities, and the order of priorities. By overlapping where you are right now with the unique giftings God has given you (which forms the soil of your core calling), we will be able to begin identifying the most immediate goals you can set that will help you really move the needle forward in the essential areas of your life.

Homework
  1. Print out the Core Calling Worksheet and fill it out. 
  2. Use the flex space of your planner to work through the rest of the journaling questions I asked you in Phase 2. 
  3. Schedule in a few events, meetings, projects, or other forms of experimentation with the new ideas that are coming from your examination of the soil of your core calling. 

By doing all of this, you’ll be cultivating a rich plot for setting goals that are truly rooted in your core calling. 

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Our quarterly subscription box of Monthly booklets will open to new subscribers tomorrow! Join the waitlist to be among the first to know. Don’t miss the chance to build a strong planning habit that will carry you through 2021 with intention towards the things that matter most to you.

March 17, 2021

Understanding Social Energy & Communication Styles

​Last week, we wrote about productivity personalities, how to feed strengths and compensate for weaknesses, and how these ideas have played out in our Evergreen Team dynamics. In this post, we’re going to look at social energy and communication styles, and the ways doing all this work around who you are and who you’re working with can help you work more compassionately and productively as an individual and on a team.

Social Energy

Way more popular than productivity personalities, is diving into the concept of being “introverted” vs “extroverted.”

Once Shelby realized that she is an extraverted worker, everything changed. At first, she was thrilled at the prospect of working completely alone. The work she was doing at the time was extremely intellectually stimulating, and was exactly the kind of material she’d hide in the closet for hours on end to enjoy in silence.

But after weeks of focusing alone on a project, she felt like she was going insane. Even with plenty of socializing outside of work, it wasn’t enough. Working alone was miserable. ​

Then, during an inner work journaling exercise something she wrote down hit her like a lightning bolt: if working alone was not life-giving, why not set a boundary to no longer accept projects that would have her alone for hours and hours on end? Why not prioritize work that would connect her with an energizing team?

It was a pivotal moment for Shelby and paved the way for a series of decisions that ultimately resulted in the Evergreen Planner finally getting what it needed to flourish.

So ask yourself: Do you get your energy from working primarily alone or in a team? How can you choose a new path that energizes you instead of one that depletes you?

Communication Styles

Whether you are energized by working solo or in a team, you’ll always need to communicate with others.

It really helps to understand that there are two types of communicators:

  • The external processor needs to talk it out (or write it out) in order to process something. She will work through issues best during a conversation, and often times the position that she seems to be taking dogmatically at the beginning actually evolves during the conversation, and by the end, can be radically different. This can be very confusing to others, but it’s just because very little processing of information (which is where the consideration of different perspectives, the reasoning, the prioritizing, and the negotiating come into play) happened before the conversation was ever had.
  • The internal processor operates, in many respects, in just the opposite way. She will be very hesitant to make a decision or give feedback on an idea without first being able to take time alone to think and process. Overall, her communication may seem minimal, which can be confusing to others who want immediate feedback on an idea or project. Her silence may be perceived as negative feedback, when really it is just her hesitancy in offering any opinion before she has considered every angle in silence and solitude.

Ask yourself: Which one resonates most with you? Are you an internal or external processor?

Like most things, being an external or internal processor has it’s strengths and weaknesses. However, there are specific practices and habits that can help you both honor who you have been made to be, while also honoring the needs of others who are different from you.

  • If you’re an external processor (like Shelby), a trick to stop confusing others or making conflicts worse is to journal out your thought processes before engaging in conversation. Writing can be just as effective as talking something out, but it will help you to objectively look at your own reasoning before someone else has to call you on your own inconsistencies. An effective journaling habit will make your communications with others much more efficient, effective, and persuasive. However, because talking it out is often easier and more enjoyable, it also helps to designate certain (willing) people in your life to be the recipients of your brainstorming sessions. Tell them in advance that you’re calling them specifically to bounce ideas off of them, talk through a problem, or just get thoughts out of your brain where they’re clogging everything up.
  • If you’re an internal processor (like McCauley), a key to avoiding frustration with others is to give them the assurance that you’re thinking over the things they’ve brought up and that you will get back to them with a conclusion. Then give yourself space to think through the issues in silence. You don’t have to answer them in that moment, even if they’re pressuring you to. You don’t have to go against your gut if you really just need the time to process alone before making a decision. However, keep yourself accountable to doing the work needed to be able to give the feedback that others need from you in a timeline that makes sense for the project or decision. Communicate when they can expect an answer from you.

Do the Inner Work

It can take some journaling and discussions with loved ones in order to figure out some of these things for yourself, but it’s worth the effort.

When you bring other personality dynamics to the table, the discussions for how to understand and mutually support one another deepen in complexity. But we’ve found these musings and discussions to be exceedingly fruitful in our homes, our businesses, and in our communities.

Try pulling out your planner and journaling through these questions:

  • Are you an extravert in your work, or an introvert? Do you need to spend time with a team in order to be energized? Or do you need to make sure you’re getting a lot of time to work alone?
  • Are you an external or an internal processor? What about your spouse? Your closest coworker? How can you support them better in their communication needs?
  • Are you okay with leaning into who God uniquely made you to be? Do you think it’s better to have different personality traits? Why or why not? Are you open to the idea that, as long as you’re within God’s ethical guidelines, your unique working personality is actually a specifically designed blessing for His Kingdom?

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Don’t forget that in addition to taking time to work through the above questions, we also offer an incredibly simple quiz to help you determine your productivity personality!

March 10, 2021

Do You Know Your Productivity Personality?

Despite ourselves, we are pretty big fans of personality research. I think both of us have tried to quit the whole personality-test scene about a dozen times, but we keep coming back to it.​

Truth is, we know that God loves diversity, and has built it into His Creation in some pretty astonishing ways. One of the most interesting, delightful, and sometimes confounding ways is the diversity of human personalities.

Within the boundaries of healthy ethics is a vast array of valid differences in which individuals perceive, engage, and respond to the world around them. Observing these differences, naming and cataloguing them, and then discussing them in light of God’s Word is work that seems to fall along the same lines as what Adam started doing with the animals in the garden. Only, unlike animals, God has put eternity in our hearts, and so our psyche is impossible for humans to fully comprehend and define. But to us, that truth only serves to magnify the intrigue of personality science. So we keep on discussing all of these significant differences in order to cultivate understanding, cooperation, and fruitfulness across the board.

We also research these things in order to better understand our own tendencies, identify any needs we’ve been ignoring, address personal weaknesses, tap into our core motivations, and better leverage our strengths.

Just like learning your top Love Languages can help you build into your marriage, or pegging Enneagram numbers can help you better respect your friends, learning your Productivity Personality can really help you begin to develop the most effective conditions in your home, office, and team systems for getting things done.

Working Personality

In his immensely practical book, The Synergist, Les McKeown outlines three types of people on your average working team:

  • the Visionary: this is the person who is constantly imagining ways to get to the next level
  • the Operator: this is the person who is consistently getting things done
  • the Processor: this is the person who obsesses over the systems that make everything work sustainably

Most of us have a dominant trait, and then a secondary one. And, like anything else, every type has strengths and weaknesses.

For instance, Shelby is a Visionary-Processor. She is always seeing the bigger picture, and then feeling the urge to create some kind of list or calendar or habit to get the team from A-Z. The problem is, all the ideas and systems she produces aren’t always super realistic without a lot of healthy feedback to tame them into something doable. It’s also easy for her to feel irritated that the letters B-Y are full of a lot of minutiae that distract from the initial burst of inspiration or the ending triumph of accomplishment.

McCauley is an Operator-Visionary. Getting stuff done and then dreaming about the next big goal are both her native language, but she can often feel overwhelmed by not being able to see how everything is working together to a single strong end. She never questions the amazing possibilities, but she does tend to tame Shelby’s chomping-at-the-bit to up-level with the same serious question: “But have you finished this other vital task?”

McKeown’s book urges the reader to identify their own working personality and the personalities of the other influential people on their team, and to understand the various strengths and weaknesses, and the ways that each personality can clash. The goal of all of this inner-work is to become what he calls a Synergist: someone who is realistic about the team’s dynamics, can patch personality holes when hiring, can work to resolve conflict, and can weave the team’s various strengths into a singularly powerful force.

After Shelby read this book in 2019 and we examined the Evergreen team dynamics, we began praying that we could find a Processor-Operator to join the team. We knew that pulling another Visionary on the team could serve to drown out McCauley’s common-sense approach that wanted to see the results that come from consistency before jumping into a new strategy. We also knew that my hankering for organization and sustainability would solve the overwhelm problem—so long as the systems we created were actually practical. We also knew that a mere Processor (without an Operator wing) would bog us down a bit too much with systems, without having that can-do, problem-solving spirit that our tiny startup needed from every single member on our founding team.

Not too long after, Shelby was having a conversation with Clari at a family reunion (fun fact: she’s my husband’s cousin by marriage), and she mentioned that she was a Virtual Assistant. Something was seriously clicking. After an interview and trial run, we quickly realized that she was the Processor-Operator we’d been praying for.

Knowing your working personality is useful for so much beyond just hiring. It can be useful in any working relationship. Knowing that McCauley is an Operator has helped Shelby make sure that she included progress updates in team meetings. Knowing that Shelby is a Visionary has helped McCauley understand that Shelby’s not flaking out on the here and now—but that she’s hardwired to be envisioning what’s next. She also has learned that I’m a well of ideas that can be tapped at any time with a single question—and McCauley is always there to help Shelby prioritize the next best idea.

Knowing your working personality can also help you identify your personal weaknesses so that you can stop spinning your wheels.

Shelby was able to identify that she didn’t have many Operator tendencies. This meant that while she was a natural at reverse-engineering huge goals, it was really tempting for her to try to skip the consistent effort necessary to turn those goals into a reality. So she started to create planning habits that helped her focus on action over more strategizing. She started to use her planner to record “tada lists” (things that I got done) instead of just todo lists, as a way to spur herself into doing what she knew was needed. She also started to be honest about her tendencies to procrastinate follow-up and project completion, to eliminate distractions that limited significant progress, and to reach out to others for accountability.

But even while building these essential habits, Shelby also fed her inner Visionary-Processor by listening to podcasts that stretched her imagination, externally-processing dreams with certain designated people, and giving herself permission to flesh out new ideas for the future when the time was right.

So how about you? Take this incredibly simple quiz to gain more insight on your productivity personality.

Then, take time to journal through the following prompts:

  • How can you mitigate weaknesses through intentional planning habits?
  • How can you feed your strengths?
  • What strengths does your team have? Who do you need to hire?

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Today is the last day to purchase our Q2 subscription box! We ship our sub boxes four times a year and they contain 3 Monthly booklets along with curated planning accessories. The Monthly is the muscle of our planning system. It’s a five-week undated day planner featuring week spreads, habit trackers, timeblocked day pages, and plenty of bullet grid flex space to make the planner completely yours. We can’t wait to see what you do with the right tools in hand!

February 3, 2021

Reversing Limiting Beliefs

Last week, we saw how the Gospel has dealt a fatal blow to the legitimacy of the limiting beliefs holding you back from serious personal growth.Then, you were prompted to pull out your planner and make a bullet-point list in response to this question:

What are the limiting beliefs holding you back from getting serious about your core calling?

Today, we wanted to share with you the EXACT limiting beliefs journaling exercise that changed the Shelby and Kyle’s lives forever.

Limiting Beliefs Reversal Exercise

This exercise is incredibly simple. Grab your planner, and use some of the flex space to answer the following series of questions for each limiting belief you hold:

  • What is one limiting belief I hold?
  • Is it true?
  • How do I react when I believe the thought is true?
  • Who would I be without that thought?
  • What biblical principle backs this?
  • What is my new choice?
Here is an example from Kyle’s actual worksheet back in 2015 (shared with his permission, of course!):
  • What is one limiting belief you hold? I’ll never be financially successful.
  • Is it true? No
  • How do I react when I believe the thought is true? I get discouraged from working diligently to come up with viable solutions for income.
  • Who would I be without that thought? I would work confidently to build our income and savings.
  • What biblical principle backs this? Psalm 128:1-2, “Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.”
  • What is my new choice? To labor diligently and confidently steward the time, resources, and opportunities God has given me to increase our income and savings for the future, as well to help others and to leave an inheritance for our children.
Here’s an example of how he worked through a limiting belief that was true.
  • What is one limiting belief you hold? I don’t trust God’s providence in uncertain times
  • Is it true? Yes
  • Is it absolutely true? This is my usual reaction.
  • How do I react when I believe the thought is true? I become despondent and fearful, and cannot think straight because of paralysis.
  • Who would I be without that thought? I would confidently trust in God’s providence through troubling times.
  • What biblical principle backs this? Psalm 37:25, “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.” Psalm 94:14, “For the LORD will not cast off his people, neither will he forsake his inheritance.”
  • What is my new choice? To rejoice in the future, confident that God owns the future and is directing our steps. Our duty is to obey Him and work diligently with our hands, prudently.

 

What were the life-changing results of this journaling exercise for Kyle and Shelby? It honestly marked a turning point in their thought lives. Instead of allowing limiting beliefs to run amok and paralyze all attempts at progress, they became very intentional to reverse these thoughts and make healthier choices with their brain power. It laid the foundations for Kyle and Shelby to go from broke and barely making it, to steadily building real wealth (instead of debt) and diversifying their streams of income. It made space for the abundance mindset and personal growth they needed to provide real value in the marketplace, strategize solutions, and trust God with the rest.

If you feel stuck, this exercise is a powerful starting point for arresting a negative thoughts and emotional patterns and reversing it with intention. Out of the heart flow the springs of life. We love that our planner system gives us a very practical way to guard our hearts with all diligence.

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Are you ready to launch into an entirely new way of planning? We created the Evergreen Planner System because we felt continually limited by each planner we tried. The Getting Started Kit is the perfect way to try two of our core products – the Annual and the Monthly. Don’t wait until we launch our next subscription box – get the tools you need today!