Hello, YOU ARE LISTENING TO THE MORENOVATIONAL PODCAST THE PLACE WHERE YOU ARE INSPIRED AND EQUIPPED TO LOVE, GROW, AND SERVE IN THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN WHILE FOLLOWING AFTER CHRIST. I AM YOUR HOST, MICAH MORENO. This is Episode One, you have to start somewhere. Today, I am going to be talking about Connections and Communications, Why they matter so much if you are going to be successful in anything. I also am going to give you a snapshot of my story and why time spent as a faithful subscriber will touch on areas that you need to be cheered on if you seek to discover a life of leadership, successful relationships, and a unshakable faith. Connections and communications matter so much because they are the goals and the means for meaningful relationships in your life. As a pastor of a growing church and ministry, I have learned in the last 15 years of pastoral ministry that so much of God being able to do anything in life depends on how you value safe connection verses safe disconnection & How to communicate empathy verses communicating apathy. It was clear to early in my career that if you are going to succeed in any direction, there needed to be known strengths, whether natural or learned, and known weaknessess. natural or through experiences of setback or trauma. When Strength finders by Tom Rath came out about 11 years ago, I was an early adopter to the whole idea of these natural strengths and developed strenghts. Wouldn’t you know it, my top strength was Connectivity. This explained how important it was that the people in my world were part of the cerebral map in my mind with a thin red yarn connecting them to different subgroups and at least 2-3 facts about them. I thought I was odd for this, but I have since realized that this was part of the reason I have empathy and compassion for people, I see where faith, life, and choices intersect. How the connections of God’s wisdom and people’s decisions or ability to devote themselves to them came to manifest in the worlds they would invite me into as a spiritual care giver. But why connection? what is it’s purpose in your life goals, your reason for accomplishing a life that truly reflects one of success and enrichment? Perhaps looking at what we are most comfortable with can shed light on the importance with connection. In his book, Keep your Love on, Pastor Danny Silk explains that the goal of every relationship is either safe connection or safe disconnection. Safe connection or safe disconnection. Whether you realize it or not. In your relationships, the way you speak, the tone of your voice, your body language, the content, all direct the relationship, whether be it a spouse or co-worker, into a direction of safe connection or disconnect. Safe is relative to the person who is providing the input at the moment. I have encountered couples who reach a point in their relationship where they come to the teteering edge of a real breakthrough of intimacy and vulnerability or they chose to reinforce the disconnection by keeping faults of the other person on the forefront or other excuses to not do the important work to break down the walls to reach a place of intimacy. This distance is in every relationship or type of relationship you encounter with each day. How you interact with person taking your Pumpkin Spice Latte to the frequency of deep conversations you have with a family member. The world is filled with superficial or tender connections or apathetic to hostile disconnects. At times I have been able to offer counsel to people in a realtionship who have convinced themselves that the disconnect in their relationship was normal. As if you’re ideal of a relationship is holding hands while each of you stand on either side of a wall that three inches shorter than your combined tallest reach, only pressing your finger tips together. Sure you have a connection, but it is exhausting to keep yourself over extended to enjoy the entire person who is either kept behind the wall by their own choices or it is a group effort. All the while saying to the world, to God, and to yourselves, this is working, this is good enough, and a wall shorter or more permeable is too risky. But the kind of connections that we really want to be looking to build comes about first not settling for superficial or unsustainable relationships second, not being satisfied for a level of distance the we are encouraged to maintain by leveraging each connection for self driven motives. We all have been there when susie started a network marketing business, suddenly out of the blue they want to catch up, and share something amazing with you. How inauthentic and hurtful. But we must develop through God’s word with the example of the body of believers, Christ followers the desire to grow in being comfortable with connections. To realize that our deepest longing is to be known and to know another. In the mindset of the follower of Christ, we can come to a deep point of identity and purpose when we encounter God for the first time or the most recent moment. It orientates us to hunger for this in other relationships as well. So how to we accomplish this? After we have decided that being connected it the preferred place in the world, rather than a dim lit loft with screen friends, with your screen name and your screen life. We look at the nedd to have communication that fosters connection, rather than maintains distance. As a husband, I am put to the test each day with the opportunties to communicate with a result at the end of the day that fosters and draws myself to my wife, or I reinforce the distance or the disconnect that was present the day before. I get in trouble when I offer counterfit communication. Counterfit, meaning that we offer two things in our communication, fake or the real deal. Ever been in a place where people offer a “yes” or “see you there” and it was false? We are so quick to give eachother counterfits when a person who seeks to live their life of integrity, with success, with a reputation that opens doors, will always strive to nod their heads and shake theirs hands with others because it means something true. Also, in communication you have to ask yourself, are you seeking to be understood? or are you seeking to understand. As you have needs like the rest of us, I believe you would find it to the advantage of the realtionship, and yourself, if you could move more into a place of listening, rather than maintaining an apathetic ear. You may respond off the bat with, I am not apathetic. Well, if we look at some of the other words that go along with apathetic, we would read, unconcerned, unmoved, uninvolved, disinterested, unemotional, emotionless, dispassionate, lukewarm. We are so saturated with communication from the outlets we plugin to all day. But why are these one directional sources of information getting more of our response that those who are placed in our lives for deep meaning and purpose. You have these people who are your family, your friends, your co-workers, classmates, and then the people who you are called to serve and live in your community, ask yourself do they see or receive a disintrested version of you? a unconcerned stance with their needs and feelings? Or are we stepping up to the call to lead our selves and others to a place of empathetic exchanges and deep meaningful connections. Try this, when you go about your day, for an hour. How often are you really paying attention those who should be getting the best out of you, but are perhaps receiving superficial, self motivated, or emotionless presence. I wonder what you would find your connections to start realizing if you didn’t settle for the status quo. I have two huskies, siberian, hairy, lovable, and in fact, one is a puppy, and the 1st turne 2 yesterday. I recently read the point that dogs do whatever they can to give their humans the best of themselves. However, it seems that we as human give our worst to those we love. It’s my hope that you can see that your world stands to open up if you learn to expand the depth of safe connection and close in the desire for disconnection. Also if you can put on empathy as a means for both persons in the relationship to reap the rewards that come from being attentive to opportunities and how to partner together to overcoe differences. OUTRO: I hope this have been motivational for you, but I can’t be the only one pushing you forward onward and upward, the hope is that you can take these ideas to those you are in relationship with and in your time of prayer with God. Until next time, I encourage you to subscribe to this podcast and to our website at morenovational.org. You can chat with me at [email protected] I’d be happy to hear how you are fostering connection with God, others, and abandoning counterfit forms of communication. untill then, Keep looking up!