Growing up I wanted to be anybody but myself.
I remember when I was 12 years old, visiting my cousin Frankie, who lived by the Jersey shore, (before the Jersey Shore became a thing) and loving these cool Vans that he was wearing.
No one in my town had sneakers like these. I wanted a pair so bad, I begged my mom for a week. She finally relented and I found a pair of slip-on white and black-checkered Vans at the mall.
I felt like THE MAN man walking into middle school that day, but then that feeling soon turned to an insecure frightened little boy when I got teased relentlessly all day because of my new sneakers.
The Vans went back into the box along with my ego.
The awkward tension of being conformable in your own shoes never really goes away even after school.
Sometimes I still feel like Cory Matthews from "Boy Meets World"; with the brother with the good hair and the cool best friend, and I am the awkward sidekick with a voice that sounds like Kermit the Frog.
Making that transition to adulting can still be as scary as the first day of school; especially if you are in a position of leadership.
I am a pastor of church in Northeast Pennsylvania, in an area where negativity is currency and tradition is king.
Every Sunday, there are moments where I find myself going back and forth between being myself and being what people want me to be.
I remember when I turned 30, starting the church, I felt like I needed to dress, well… 30ish (whatever 30ish looks like). In my mind at the time, it was Chandler from the 90s sitcom "Friends."
I thought it was a great move. It was not.
It was a safe move and safe is boring.
The desire for people to like you can be exhausting because their dislikes can be heartbreaking. If you don’t do or say what people expect you to say, they often come up with some excuse to leave; and sometimes give no reason at all.
People vote with their feet, (or Yelp, which can be brutal. Have you seen some of those reviews?).
Whether you are a pastor, a chef, or small business owner, there is a pendulum that swings between being who you want to be and being what others want you to be.
A TV show that I love to watch is "Restaurant Impossible" with Robert Irvine. It features the celebrity chef with the huge Popeye arms and a commanding British accent. He whips struggling restaurants into shape to be successful again with clear and simple strategies.
One of the common themes from week to week in the show is to simplify the menu, because you can’t be everything to everyone.
It is easy to say, but hard to live out, because there is a part in us that wants people to like us.
We think pleasing everyone or offering something for everyone will put more butts in the seats but often at times it just leaves you on your butt frustrated and burnout.
And that is exactly what happened to me last year.
The need to please and keep people became a mountain that I was unable to climb.
I learned that leading for likes never got me to the top, because there was always one more expectation to be met.
And I found myself leading something that I didn’t even like anymore because it wasn’t unique anymore.
So now I am on a journey to find my voice in leadership again.
Some people have transitioned to other churches, and that is ok.
The truth is, I love what the church has become again, partly because I started to love who I am again.
If you can’t love yourself, you can’t love what you are leading.
I recently purchased a pair of those black and white checkered Vans, and preach with them often on Sunday mornings to push pass the fear of pleasing people and embrace the joy of being me.
And sometimes I think that is what true leadership is; the courage to lead yourself.
