Kickstarting the TRANSFORMED Conversation

A featured post by Will Hernan, SPL Member & TRANSFORMED Vocational Health Team Lead

This weekend, we’re going to be kicking off the new campaign, TRANSFORMED. To say I’m excited about this campaign is a great understatement. I can’t wait to see the impact this campaign has on the members and guests of St. Paul’s.

For many, however, the topic of transformation has gone without much thought. We have an idea about it but have never really dug deep into the power that it holds. What does it really mean to be transformed? And how does it impact our lives moving forward? My goal for this post is to answer both of those questions for you.

In his book, The Inside Out Revolution, Michael Neill opens up with the following story about what we mean when we talk about transformation:

Imagine that a man comes to you for coaching. He’s about to turn 30 and he’s decided that it’s time to ‘grow up’ and take over the family carpentry business. He wants you to share innovative marketing techniques, work with him on how to make better personnel decisions, and coach him to incorporate technology to bring the business into ‘at least the new millennium.’

Do you really want to work with him on becoming more successful in his carpentry business?

What Michael Neill was getting to was the question we rarely have the courage to ask:

What if every man, woman, and child you meet has the seeds within them to become who they truly are?

And what if that includes you?

Transformation is an Inside Out, Deepening Experience

If you’re like me, you’ve spent a great deal of time and energy asking externally-based questions similar to the story above. What do I need to do to be more successful? What do I need to do and have to be happier? What would other people think of me if I did this?

We bury ourselves in to-do lists and reading “how to” books hoping that a series of techniques and strategies that worked for one person will provide us with a shortcut to getting the things we want.

The only problem with this is that far too often we skim these books because we want quick answers. We are standing at point A, and we want steps for getting to point B. This is great if we’re putting together a bicycle or installing new floors, but less so if we’re looking for sustained happiness, contentment, love, connection, and courage.

For sustained happiness and courage, and to become who we truly are, we need to be transformed.

Transformation isn’t about following a series of steps found in a how to book. It’s not about going from point A to point B in a horizontal fashion.

Transformation is about going inside, deeper than we’ve ever gone before. Because the deeper we go, the more our hearts change. And the more our hearts change, the more our world changes. We start to see things differently. Things that use to drag us down no longer have the same hold on us.

We stop asking what the world can do for us, and rather what we can do for the world. We show up differently and more powerfully in the world because of how we’ve been changed, transformed, from the inside out.

It’s not a series of steps, but rather a series of questions and reflections designed to get to the heart of your hopes, desires, struggles, and fears. Transformation is about getting to the heart of who you truly are.

In this transformation series, we encourage you to be willing to go deeper than you’ve ever gone before. We encourage you to give yourself and those around you permission to open up and to be pushed against the edges of comfort and into discomfort. The act of you leaning into those edges is what will ultimately strengthen and transform you.

The Seeds Have Been Planted

Let’s reflect on the question: What if every man, woman, and child you meet has the seeds within them to become who they truly are? Including you?

The seeds have already been planted. You were created for a purpose. And as it is written in Proverbs 20:5, the purpose in a man’s heart is like deep waters, but a man of understanding will draw it out.

Deep waters: a place that requires boldness to go. We’re not dealing with shallow, comfortable waters here. You must come ready. You must be willing to go deep.

At some level, we know we’ve been walking out of sync with who we truly are. It may be buried deep, but it’s there. We all have that knowing within us that we were made for more, that there’s something (or someone) within us ready to come out.

Let’s draw it out.

Let’s be TRANSFORMED!