TILT #43 - Consider dying empty

I was catching up with some of my podcasts and heard this one a few days ago from the Global Leadership Summit (GLS). I've followed the GLS since 2003. That was the year I heard from leadership gurus like Ken Blanchard, John C. Maxwell, and Patrick Lencioni. The Summit fueled my search for purpose, meaning, and excellence. In the middle of all that was the repeated call to tend to our colleagues and work teams as human beings and not as numbers or as a means to an end (profit). It was eye-opening, to hear that my hopes about living and leading with compassion was not absurd, that in fact, a life-giving method of leading organizations and groups.

The podcast I heard was from Todd Henry. He was talking about his book, "Die Empty". The title came from a question he was asked about what he and the group he was working with thought might be the most valuable land in the world. It wasn't the oil fields of the Middle East nor the gold mines of South Africa. Quoting Miles Monroe, the person who asked the question noted that the most valuable land is the graveyard.

The graveyard, where all the dreams and plans (unlaunched businesses, unreconciled relationships, unwritten books and songs, etc) that people carried to the grave that never got realized...the risks they never took that they carried with them which got buried in the ground, never to be seen by human eyes.

Wow.

Just, wow.

Hearing that response, Todd Henry decided that he would spend his life ensuring that he would "die empty" so that when he got to the end of his life, he'd know that he had not left his best work inside of himself. He wanted to pour out all his plans, dreams, gifts, energy into the world.

Lemme tell you, beloved, I started crying in the car.

So, here I am, and I know, I know, I know, that I want to "die empty". I need to start pulling my dreams down from pillowing clouds to anchor them in the ground on which I walk today.

What shall I do first?

Photo from Pixabay