“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” - James Clear

As I write this, I’m sitting in the bleachers next to the pool where my older daughter’s swim club practices. I watch as the coaches shout instructions from the pool deck and the swimmers splash through lap after lap, pausing to catch their breaths after each interval before sliding into the next drill assigned by the coaches. I don’t know all the ins and outs of swimming - I’m a runner, and I’m much more comfortable on trails than in any pool - but this routine over the past few months has led many of the team members to improve their times significantly, my daughter included. And this is where I see a valuable lesson. As much as my daughter loves swimming, she wouldn’t have grown in her form, speed, and skills as a swimmer without her coaches who have taught her and held her accountable in practices. Though she has an internal love of the sport, it’s the external system of the swim club that has facilitated her growth.

Right now I’m also benefiting from external systems of accountability in several areas of my life. Here’s a rundown of them, listed according to the different areas of life in which they’re pushing me to grow: intellectually, creatively, professionally, and physically. Perhaps as you read you’ll recognize areas of your life in which you, too, would benefit from more systems to support your growth.

(1) Intellectually: I recently travelled to Pittsburgh to join the inaugural cohort in Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s “Preaching in a Post-Christian Age Initiative.” For three days, I learned alongside church leaders from across the country, seeking to discern how to communicate about faith in an increasingly secular world. I may write more about what we’re studying in a future post, but for the purposes of today’s topic I just want to observe how this program has turned on portions of my brain that had sat dormant for a few years.

For this opening course in the Preaching in the Post-Christian Age Initiative, we were asked to read a novel (Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World Where Are You) and a short work of academic sociology (Hartmut Rosa’s The Uncontrollability of the World). We were also given lectures to watch in advance, reflection questions, and an assignment to bring artifacts representing ourselves and our contexts to the opening gathering. In recent years I’ve completed separate training programs in coaching and spiritual direction, but they haven’t included dense philosophical reading. I’ve read plenty of novels recently, too, but I haven’t analyzed any in this depth since I was in college. This experience at the seminary feels like being back in a graduate level classroom. I’m being asked to raise my level of intellectual engagement, I have received a syllabus to follow toward that goal, and I have a community to hold me accountable to it. So I’m doing the work, and I’m growing.

(2) Creatively: I am still working to complete the writing project that I started during my sabbatical last summer. Though I care deeply about the content that I’m writing and want to share more of the lessons from last summer’s travels and studies with others, I have repeatedly let more urgent ministry matters intrude on my writing time. Without someone expecting me to hand it a finished product by a certain date, I’ve procrastinated on finishing what I’ve begun. So, one week after Easter, I found myself saying to a committee in my church, “I need accountability to finish this. I want you to set a deadline, otherwise I’ll just keep pushing this off in favor of doing things that are more urgent.” Now I have a deadline: our church’s summer retreat day on June 28.

But simply having a deadline isn’t enough, so I signed up for extra accountability by joining a creativity cohort at our local library starting in June. The work we do for that cohort will be distinct from my sabbatical project, but I’m hoping it will spark my creativity, keep me in a regular rhythm of writing, and help me build relationships with other local writers.

(3) Professionally: I am an ICF Associate Certified Coach. (For those who are new here, think leadership and life coaching, not athletic coaching. Read this page for more explanation.) At this level of coaching, I’m required to renew my credential every three years. This means accruing hours of continuing education credits from a variety of topics. Recent courses I’ve taken have covered somatic coaching, eco-coaching, team coaching, ethics, mental fitness, and positive intelligence. In addition, I’m going through Mentor Coaching, a process in which I submit video recordings of coaching sessions (with the client’s full awareness and consent) to be reviewed by a mentor who evaluates my coaching and provides advice for improvement. (I only need one more recording to complete this requirement, so if you’d like a free 30 minute coaching session in exchange for letting me record it just hit the message button below!) All that said, the external accountability provided by the International Coaching Federation keeps me growing as a coach.

(4) Physically: I recently started listening to Ryan Holiday’s “Daily Stoic” podcast and have noticed that some of wise sayings of Stoic philosophers he shares are paralleled or echoed in the Bible and in the writings of the desert fathers and mothers of the church. For example, consider the similarity between Epictetus saying “We treat the body rigorously so that it will not be disobedient to the mind” and the Apostle Paul saying “I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27). To that end, I have heard Holiday say more than once (including in this recent episode) that he deliberately doesn’t train toward competitions or races. The daily discipline of exercise is the marathon for him.

That’s admirable, but I don’t work that way. Just as I need an external deadline and a community to hold me to it to do my best writing, I am my most disciplined at exercise when I’m training for a race. So I am currently training for the Grand Mesa Ultras 55k. This event includes the Crag Crest Trail, the trail on which I learned to hike as a child. In recent years, I’ve enjoyed running the trail whenever we’ve gone back to visit the cabin that’s been shared within my dad’s side of the family for generations. I’m looking forward to both the challenge of the run and to being on familiar ground. This is what gets me out of the door to run now before 6:00 each morning. I’m also following the same training plan I’ve used for two other races of a similar distance because I know I can’t improvise my way into the shape I need to endure for 34 miles that day. I need the wisdom of (athletic) coaches and trainers who are wiser than myself to accomplish that goal.

If you’ve read this far, you probably care about your own personal growth in one or more of these areas of life. What is one way you’d like to begin growing right now? If you could use some external support and accountability seeking that growth, the coaching I provide may help. I have room for new clients this summer and it’s easy to schedule your first appointment using Calendly.