Jim Huling - Why Am I Here?

Show Notes

Jim Huling - Why Am I Here? by Browncroft Community Church

What is Why God Why??

If you could ask God one question what would it be? The “Why God Why” podcast is dedicated to exploring the questions that matter most in your life.

Deep questions often don’t have easy answers. We realize that we won’t solve all the world’s problems in one podcast. Our goal is to share our life experience, interview knowledgeable guests and look at how Jesus might interact with our concerns. We also hope to have a ton of fun in the process because even though the issues might be serious, it doesn’t mean that we always need to be.

No matter where you are on your spiritual journey, we are honored to have you with us!

Peter Englert: Welcome to the Why God Why podcast. I am the co-host of this show. My name is Peter Englert. I'm here with our fantastic producer, Nathan Yoder. We exist to respond to the questions that people don't feel comfortable asking in church. Today's question that we're asking is, "Why am I here?"

Peter Englert: We have a guest. He's worked in business. He's an author. He's running his own company. His name is Jim Huling. You might know him from the co-written book. He wrote The Four Disciplines of Execution. So we're so grateful to have him. Without further ado, Jim, welcome to Why Why God.

Jim Huling: Peter, thank you so much. I met you a few weeks ago. We had a great conversation, and I think it was not only a meeting of minds. I think it was a meeting of hearts as well. So from that day to this, I've really been looking forward to this podcast, and having a chance to just have a great conversation that perhaps may help a lot of people. So thank you for letting me be here today.

Peter Englert: Yeah. I always love episodes that feel like I'm having coffee with someone and we just are recording a mic for a couple thousand people. So that's all good.

Jim Huling: Coffee provided.

Peter Englert: Coffee, and I've got my water. I'm a little coffeed out.

Jim Huling: Good for you. Good for you.

Peter Englert: Well, Jim, why don't you take a moment to introduce yourself? Tell your story, but also just let us know about your faith journey up until now.

Jim Huling: Yeah. I'm happy to do that. That question in and of itself is really symbolic of, I think, your whole approach to this platform and to the type of conversation. I love that you start with that. I will tell you, quite honestly, my career journey and my faith journey are inextricably intertwined. I mean, they're really the same journey in a lot of ways. So I'll try to do justice to that question without using our whole time to answer only this one for you, but I'll start in an interesting way. In fact, a lot of people who know me will have never heard me open up in this way, but I think it's a good place to start.

Jim Huling: First of all, I have been a person of faith as long as I can remember, thanks to my wonderful mother and father and all the tenets of my upbringing. I even had a chapter of my life in my youth when I was a youth pastor and did youth revivals around the country and had a chance to see what that felt like to be a messenger of those words and that important information to lots of young people around the country, and I really loved that period of my life.

Jim Huling: It's interesting. I don't think about it so often, but I just spent, as you know, Peter, the last 14 years giving more than 500 keynote speeches in 20 countries around the world, thanks to the incredible success of this book called The Four Disciplines of Execution, which by the way has been a remarkable success in faith-based organizations, no, purpose-based and faith based organizations have rallied around this book. It's now in 16 languages all over the world, and we did publish the second edition this year.

Jim Huling: I don't mean that to be a commercial. I just mean to connect two very important points in my life. Here's a very early experience as a teenager long before I was on any basis qualified to be a messenger, and then many, many years later, after a long and happy business career, finding myself with, in my view, the world's greatest company, the Franklin Covey organization founded by Dr. Stephen Covey and still operating today by his principles. I found myself there and then given the privilege to be an author and ultimately a keynote speaker.

Jim Huling: So in a way of speaking, I hope I'm doing a good job on this first one, Peter, my life, in a sense, came full circle because I started out delivering a message that I believed in, that I thought had life-changing capability. I ended up delivering a message that I hope and believe has life-changing capability, and infused in all of that is a sense of purpose, and mission, and calling. That's been with me almost my entire life.

Jim Huling: So when you're my age, Peter, the answer to your question could literally take a day and a half. So maybe that's a good place to stop as we see where else you might like to go or, of course, if you'd like, I'd go even deeper on that.

Peter Englert: Well, let's actually back up before we go there. I find it fascinating. I grew up wanting to be an NBA basketball player. We've never met in-person. I know I talk like I'm 6'5". I'm only 5'6", but I ended up becoming a pastor, and many of our pastors' stories and people that become pastors, it's usually some career failed and then they decided to become a pastor, but you, on the other hand, were in ministry and you were following Jesus and serving the church, and then you decided to go into business. Talk about that transition and what that looked like from you, and just even just the career change for that.

Jim Huling: Sure. I love the question. Sometimes, Peter, I'm in a conversation with someone remarkable like you, and most of what we're talking about is a book or a particular message. I'm really honored that you're starting off with questions that are more about me and the person that I've been and then maybe how that gets reflected on work. So thank you. Thank you for taking a little different path on this conversation.

Jim Huling: So I've said already, and I hope I'll make it clear in everything I do that the overarching backbone of my whole story is one of faith, but also one of purpose. Even in the days when I didn't know how to articulate it, I still felt that I was supposed to be doing something. For some reason, I thought I was supposed to be talking with people and helping to influence them in a good way probably long before I had the credentials that would've justified that.

Jim Huling: I also had a period of my life when I was a musician. I really loved music. I grew up with some ability in music. I went to a music conservatory school, graduated from that, lived in New York for a very short period of time, did a concert tour throughout Europe singing. I had a real legitimate chapter of my life as a musician. Then in a probably divinely orchestrated set of events, my parents both passed away right as I was ending my college career and beginning to, as I say, launched this what I hoped would be a professional singing career.

Jim Huling: For anyone, the loss of their parents is a pivotal moment in their life. My parents died about 18 months apart, and I had just finished college. So at a time when you're just about to leave the nest, metaphorically speaking, you're just about to fly with your own wings, you're always grateful if you have your two parents flying just below you in case you slip a little bit, and I had to leave the nest without them.

Jim Huling: So I think what that did for me was it grounded me in my faith without having, and I wish I had had, but without having my parents there to lean into as I was trying to launch my own life, I didn't have anything else to lean into except my faith. I didn't have any other family and no relatives at all. I was, in the very real sense of the word, utterly alone in the world.

Jim Huling: I'm not trying to say that to be dramatic or to generate anybody's sympathy because, my gosh, the whole story is phenomenal, and it ends up in such a, well, it hasn't ended yet, by the way, but it ends up in such a great place, but I think that's important to know.

Jim Huling: Then last of all, there I was in that pivotal moment ready to launch a music career, but now alone in that and having to find a different way to do it, I suppose. A very good friend said to me some very wise words. I don't know if he meant to be a prophet on this particular day, but he certainly was one in my life. He said, "I think you should think very carefully about whether your number one priority is to build a great career or your number one priority is to build a great life."

Jim Huling: I know a lot of people might take offense at me presenting that dichotomy because, certainly, you can argue that you can have both, but at that point in my life, I think he was really helping me. I was very young. I really didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I had some sense of calling, but it wasn't a profound clarity in terms of calling. I think this was the perfect advice for me at that time.

Jim Huling: So with a little bit of thought, I decided that even though I loved music, I did not love the life of a musician. It really wasn't going to be the life for me. So instead of spending 10 years coming to that conclusion through a hard one road of wins and losses because of that advice, I had the opportunity, for me, I'm not saying this will be right for everybody, but for me to say, "This is what feels right."

Jim Huling: So to the great shock of anyone who knew me or who had been part of my musical journey and any competitions that I had won or anything I had done professionally, I literally just walked away from that and said, "I'm going to start a new chapter and I'm going to start a new chapter dedicated to building a great life."

Jim Huling: So I may be giving you answers that are too long, Peter. You'll have to help me if I am, but that's an interesting story in its own way, isn't it, of how just when we need it, guidance appears. I really believe there are signs everywhere, and I think we're never alone. I think we're never unguided. We're never without resource. I believe that is part of my personal faith.

Peter Englert: Wow.

Jim Huling: We just don't tap into it. We don't pause long enough to say, "Hey, wait. Excuse me. Which way should I go, left or right?" We don't really seek that out. We don't try to listen nor do we watch for these things. So here was this wonderful person who I trusted saying, "If I were you in your age, I would think about this very question," and that very question created a pivot point in my life. Where would I have gone without that advice? I don't know. By grace, I hope I would still have had a great life, but I certainly have had a great life, a blessed life, and I feel that I've done some things I'm going to be very proud of when it's all over, and I would not have taken this exact path had it not been for that wonderful moment. Just when I needed advice, the advice was there.

Peter Englert: I want to keep backing up, and I'm glad that we're off script because I think your story just really elevates this question. So losing both your parents in 18 months, what's the difference when that moment happened of you asking the question, "Why am I here?" versus you today? Bring us back because it sounds like you had a fairly positive relationship with your parents and just-

Jim Huling: Oh, my! Yes.

Peter Englert: Yeah, and it seems like there's been a process of how you process even this question, "Why am I here?" How did that shift when your parents passed away?

Jim Huling: Yeah. It's a great question. In fact, compliment to you, nobody's ever asked me this question. Of all the podcasts I've done, can you imagine how many times I've been honored to be in a conversation? No one's ever asked this the way you are. So congratulations to you for going deep very quickly in our time together.

Jim Huling: I'll tell you the one thing that stands out. I was actually saying a small prayer right now that I would have the wisdom to answer this in a good way for everybody who's listening. I come back to the one thing that has been the central message of my life, which is I believe, Peter, and by the way, I will not say this in a doctrinally correct way. I'm not educated enough to use all the right words. So please, everybody, apply a healthy dose of grace to a very amateur way of talking about some deep principles, but with that caveat, I'll say I have lived because I lost my parents so early. I said this already. I had to lean into my faith for the foundation of my life to have something to stand on, to feel safe in the world with and, frankly, to just not feel all alone. Even though I was physically all alone, I didn't want to feel alone.

Jim Huling: So I had a gift, really, in a sense, at about 21 years old of having to lean into my faith to provide that for me. While I wouldn't wish that journey on anyone, Peter, I think it served me. I think it helped me tremendously, and then it leads me to the real answer to your question, which is from that very time in my life until this day, which is a long time, I'm a lot older than you are, Peter, which anybody on video can see, I have always carried with me the sense of purpose that I am here for some reason.

Jim Huling: You know the scripture that says, "I knew you before you were born. Every day of your life was written in my book"? I not only believe that, I have lived that. I lived that experience of anchoring myself in the sure knowledge that I am known, there is a plan, that I was given certain gifts for a reason, I've been brought into contact with certain people and opportunities for some purpose.

Jim Huling: So I don't know if people on audio only would get this, but it's like, Peter, I'm grabbing my shirt, it's like your purpose will just pull you into life. If you'll let it, if you'll open your heart to it, your purpose will pull you into life.

Jim Huling: Peter, interestingly today, I coach a lot of people. I'm most active today as a coach. I coach mostly senior executives because of having been a CEO and because of The Four Disciplines book, but I also have a practice of giving away two free coaching sessions a week to anybody who wants them, first come first serve, and it enables me to cross paths with people that aren't senior executives that I might not ordinarily see.

Jim Huling: Every time I'm with them or talking with them, whether they're senior executives or otherwise, professionally, there's so much energy being invested in this idea of finding your purpose. I don't know if you would agree with me and, again, give me a signal if I'm giving you too long an answer, there seems to be this huge idea of you got to invest all this time and all this energy, and it may take your whole life to discover what your purpose is.

Jim Huling: I couldn't believe anything that's more different than that because I think we had it to begin with, and I think that's part of what that scripture means is that it wasn't random, it wasn't an accident. We were born for a reason. I was crafted with my unique set of gifts and personality, if I can say that I have one, for a particular reason. I was crafted for a certain role, so were you. So I don't have to waste a lot of energy trying to find what that is. What I have to do is be still and know what that is. I have to let that come through me because it's already there. It's not lost.

Jim Huling: It's not like the other day. I couldn't find my car keys and I turned my house upside down trying to find it. Purpose is not like that. Purpose is already in us. So our job, our task to get started is to simply be open, is to have greater and greater degrees of openness whatever those messages or signs or influences or casual conversations that say, "If I were you, I would think about this." My whole life changed on that one question. I have three other stories just like that where the right person at the right moment intersected my life and I went off in a different direction, but I had to be open to that to be able to do it.

Jim Huling: So I hope I'm making sense in the way I'm saying it. I feel I have so much to say that it's hard to get it all out and then it may be too much. You'll have to guide me a little bit, my friend, but I hope that made sense so far.

Peter Englert: No, that made a ton of sense. I guess the reason why I think your story is so helpful to our listeners is we, as people in our 20s and 30s, we're actually looking more for wisdom and we want to sit and listen. One of the facets that you've brought up about your story that I think I'd love to just hear more about and keep listening to you because I think you're leading us in a great direction is you had that person that said, "Do you want a career or do you want a great life?" As I process about why am I here, I'm thinking about with someone like you, Jim, there's a fear of if I get exactly what I want career-wise in the next 10 to 15 years, am I going to be like Alexander The Great and sit there and say that that's all there is or if I decide to sacrifice my career for my family and I decide, "You know what? Maybe I'm going to live in the same area. I'm going to work for the same company," it just feels like I'm sacrificing something for my family, for my relationships, but as you look back at your life, walk us through because you're married, you have kids, you have grandkids, how did you manage that tension of finding a life instead of just finding a career?

Jim Huling: Yeah. What a great question. You asked it so warmly. It makes it easy to answer. First of all, I would really want to make sure I don't get misunderstood. Peter, I'm totally content at this stage of my life. Anybody in the world can disagree with me and, gosh, I'll be quiet and learn from them if they have a different way of looking at life or career or the things we're talking about. It's all fine. I'm not presenting myself as the world's leading expert in these areas, but I also want to make sure I haven't said something that gets misunderstood by anybody. So give me just one second. I'll clear that up.

Jim Huling: I'm not saying to anyone that you can only have one or the other, and I wouldn't want anyone listening to you or me, I've certainly had both, and so I don't want anybody to think I'm saying that, but here's what I am saying, and it's a little bit challenging. So everybody will have to decide what they think about it. Everything can't be priority one. In fact, Peter, this may sound like a clever way of saying this, but I really mean it sincerely. If you try to make everything in your life priority one, what will really end up being priority one? It's not a trick question. Nothing.

Peter Englert: Nothing, yeah. There you go.

Jim Huling: There's nothing. That's right because if you think about that question quite literally, first of all, you can't do it. If you try to make everything in your life priority one, you will end up being decidedly mediocre at just about everything because you'll be trying to spread yourself equally across everything, and I don't think that's how it works.

Jim Huling: So what I think is life has to be integrated. I'm not a fan of life balance like people have this idea of different savings accounts and I put $2 in this one, I have to take $2 out of that one. I have this much time with the kids and now I got to go spend this much time with the work. I don't really think think. First of all, I don't think I'm smart enough to keep track of all those accounts. Secondly, it's never been my experience that that's how it works. I really believe in life integration.

Jim Huling: So I said to you a moment ago, my work, my writing, my teaching, my coaching, my faith-based work is all integrated into a seamless hole. On any given day, I may spend more time with my kids and less time on my job or on the very next day, I may spend twice as much time at work and come home late and have a little dinner and go to bed and I had no time with my family at all, but my life is fully integrated so that I am always working through the process of living out what I have hoped to be in all those different dimensions of my life.

Jim Huling: I think that's a really important thing to remember, but I still end where I started, my friend, with something that is challenging, which is at any moment in time, I think we need clarity. I think we have to have real cold-eyed clarity about what matters most to us in our lives. I would never, on any broadcast anywhere in the world, tell anybody what should be number one in their life. I think that's between you and your creator, but I would tell you this, you better know what's number one in your life, and you better know what's number two, and three, and four.

Jim Huling: You can always change those priorities if you want to as well, but for right now, today, what's one, two, three, and four? Then I think, and this is all of my life experience comes into this language, I hope it's good language, you not only have to know what matters to you, you have to know how you're doing. You have to have some sense.

Jim Huling: So for example, when I'm coaching people, the very first thing I like to do is what I call a life assessment. I do it in a very warm way. I hope I sound warm in this podcast, Peter, because it takes a lot of trust and vulnerability to do this, but I just have my clients make a list of the seven most important aspects of their life, no more than seven. You don't have to have seven, but let's just say you did it, you had the seven most important elements of your life. Well, what are those?

Jim Huling: "Okay. Maybe family's number one."

Jim Huling: "Great. Okay. What's number two."

Jim Huling: "Well, my faith. My faith ought to be number one."

Jim Huling: "Yeah, but you've already done number one. So what's number two?"

Jim Huling: "Wait a minute. Where's my kids, and where's my education, and where's my physical health, and where's my wellbeing, and where's the work I'm called to do in the world?"

Jim Huling: I'm saying all this very quickly, Peter, but you can tell, can't you? These are non-trivial questions and it doesn't take long. In fact, Peter, when people are coaching with me, in about the first eight minutes, they've made up their mind. They either really are glad they're here or they really wish they hadn't called because this is uncomfortable. This is uncomfortable to decide, but then once we make that list, which is in order of priority, we then give ourselves a grade. Back to grammar school, A, B, C, D, E, F on each of those areas, and that's where the coaching starts.

Jim Huling: So can you imagine when a person has an item that is priority one or two and their grade is failing? The grade they give themselves is failing. I was just on the phone this week with a wonderful, brilliant young man, quite wealthy, owns a dozen companies, and family was number one, and the grade was D. So the gap between importance and performance is what I mean when I say, I used this phrase with you the other day, to get radically clear about where you are.

Jim Huling: I'll stop with that because I think that's a good example, but I'll just leave you with this final point. Until we get that clear, we're really kidding ourselves. We can say, "Oh, no. I balance everything out equally. I mean, really, everything's priority one to me, Jim." When I hear a person say that to me in the coaching arena, first of all, I love them. My heart goes out to them and I somehow have been called on this very day to say, "You're living under a great illusion, my friend, because none of what you just said is true. It's not actually possible."

Jim Huling: Then I go about showing them how to construct a life, how to build a life that is what they truly feel called, it's what they want, and the end byproduct that most often, not always, but most often is when you build a great life which integrates work and life and family and all that, surprisingly, Peter, you end up doing very well financially.

Jim Huling: Now, it's not three steps to be a millionaire. I'm not trying to say that. It's hard work and not everybody has the same results, but I have almost always found that people of purpose who stay on purpose, who fulfill the blueprint with which they were born into this world as a byproduct seem to live in financial abundance, not always, but very often. So I'm trying to go back to your original question. You're not really choosing between success and family, money and poverty versus a life of service. I don't see it that way. I see it as all strands that are tightly integrated, and our job is to just make sure at the end the picture is the one that was metaphorically, not scripturally speaking, planted in our heart before we were born.

Peter Englert: So how did you manage that? I actually don't like the word balance either. So I completely agree with you.

Jim Huling: Good.

Peter Englert: I think what I heard you say in your life, even today, is there's certain seasons where you push the gas pedal and it might be work, writing, interviews like this one, and there's other seasons that you push the break, but you've already stated to us, you said, "I had a period where I was speaking in a ministry setting. I was a musician. My parents passed away," and then you went on to a corporate career and a family. So I guess, fill in the gaps there of how you navigated creating a life and even your priority list. How did that work out for you?

Jim Huling: What a great question. What a great question. Let me try, my friend. I hope I'm doing a good job for you today with my answers.

Peter Englert: You're doing great.

Jim Huling: I'm a Southerner by birth and my grandfather was Irish. So I was predestined for long answers, I think. I apologize in advance to all your listeners for that, but I will tell you, it's only right to say right upfront. I want to answer your question quite directly. In fact, I got chill bumps when you asked me that question because it just felt like maybe that's why I'm here today is to answer that question. It wouldn't be right to not say one of the great early influences in my life was Dr. Stephen Covey, and his writing, and his work, particularly The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. So much of what I want to offer you is my version of how I metabolized everything I feel he taught me.

Jim Huling: So here's what I did. I came upon a system, started with Dr. Covey, but eventually made it my own, which said in every dimension of my life, as I've spoken about already, five, six, seven, whatever the slices of the pizza are for my life, I want to start by being really clear about what I think excellence is, a vision of excellence. So if you can imagine this, this is how this really started for me. I was a consultant with a really big company. I guess it's probably good not to say it right now, but a huge corporation, multi-billion dollar corporation. I was a regional manager for a consulting organization. I had ended up on a consulting assignment for two years in a very small town in Alabama, which I don't mind telling you it was not my career dream, Peter. It was actually Montgomery, Alabama. It was a very small city in Alabama. No disparagement to the great city, great people there, but it wasn't where I had planned to be, but here I was on a two-year assignment.

Jim Huling: I had been traveling five days a week, lots of airplanes, lots of hotels, lots of driving to different assignments. It's the life of a consultant I had been living in those days and I was not happy. I had a family at home, a wife, and a son, and a daughter, who I missed terribly. Even though I loved the work, I didn't love the life. By the way, isn't that interesting? The pitfall I avoided as a musician, I fell headfirst into as a consultant. Isn't that interesting? Same. I wish I'd had the same advice. Maybe I would've taken a detour, but if you can, picture me in a small motel room in Montgomery, Alabama on a Thursday night miserable, literally sitting in this little hotel room wanting to be home.

Jim Huling: Peter, I don't know if I'll be embarrassed when I admit this to all your listeners, but I'll just say it. I'm sitting in the hotel room all by myself and I shouted out to the walls, "This is not the life I want." I don't know what my neighboring room people were thinking, but I mean, as loud as I can shout. I just shouted it out to the motel room walls, "This is not the life I want."

Jim Huling: I want to let you in on a very small secret, and I don't know if you'll find it humorous or not, Peter, but I'll tell you this, that, first of all, when you start talking to yourself alone in a hotel room, that's a sign. You're in a bad place, but I also want to say that I think if you shout out a question to God with your full heart, you're going to get an answer. It may not be the answer you want, but don't ask this question if you're not prepared for the answer because you're going to get one.

Jim Huling: On that night, in that moment, my experience was I heard the answer. Now, I'm not trying to say that the profits came down and there was a burning bus and I really got my ... I'm not trying to say that at all. Whether I heard a voice or not would be up to everybody's belief system, but my experience of it was I heard a voice. What I heard that voice say, which I believe was the voice of God, literally said to me, "What is the life you want?"

Jim Huling: I don't know how to illustrate this anymore powerfully, Peter, except to say to everybody who's listening, I realized in that moment, I didn't know the answer. I knew what I didn't want, but I had not invested any time, energy, prayer, thought, petition into wisdom and insight. What did I want? Can you imagine how stupid I am? I'm sitting here in the hotel room, I shout out a question, and God actually answers, and I'm stumped. Now, I don't know what to do because the answer was a question in and of itself, "What do you really want?"

Jim Huling: That night started a journey for me. So as the story goes, I stayed up all night. By the way, there were no laptops or things in those days. I had a yellow legal tablet and a number two pencil, but I wrote 11 handwritten pages of what I wanted, what I felt called to, what life I felt called to, what did I want to do with my life, what kind of father did I want to be, what kind of husband did I want be, what kind of friend did I want to be, what kind of professional did I want to be, what did I want the impact of my life to be.

Jim Huling: Peter, to this day, I still have those 11 legal pages, much older now, frayed and worn. I think often about having them laminated because they may not stand the test of time, but what I hope is that one day when it is my last time, when I'm finished on this earth, my wife and my children may stand before all of my friends, and I want them to read out those pages. I want people to know what I set out to do and then make their own decision about whether I arrived at that place or not.

Jim Huling: From that day to this, I have lived out what I wrote in those pages. I have done it. I became the dad I wanted to be. I've been married 40 years to the most extraordinary woman I've ever known in my life and hoped to get at least another 20 more. I became a bestselling global author, and a CEO of a really incredible company, and I'm healthy, and capable, and I've made a difference in people's lives. I can go down that list, and I don't say it in any way that's bragging. I hope I don't sound like I'm bragging. In fact, I feel so humble when I say it, but yet, I offer it as an answer to your question.

Jim Huling: I took the time to go deep on what excellence looked like, what did purpose look like. I tried to answer the hotel room question, "Well, what life do you want?" I tried to really say, "Okay. I'm going to answer that question," but I wrote it all out, and then I used that writing as a roadmap. From that day to this, I have done every single week one or two things in every one of those areas, sometimes very small things, Peter, that have enabled me to become the person I wrote about in that small hotel room in Montgomery, Alabama almost 40 years ago to this day. I've been able to do it in very small steps.

Jim Huling: So that's really my system. Go deep. Figure out what you really want. What are you called to? What do you think your own purpose is? Then commit yourself to an unending set of small actionable steps every week that you commit to and follow through on, so that it's not overwhelming, so that you don't start big and end badly like most of my 10K races do. So really, you start well and you finish well. Try to do both.

Jim Huling: I don't know. I hope I've answered your question well, but that's how I do it. Create a vision then follow through on that vision but in small actionable steps has been the key to everything I've ever been able to do.

Peter Englert: No, I think that that's super helpful. Just like you said, you feel out of your lane talking about theology and doctrine. I feel very much out of my lane talking about business. I read Four Disciplines of Execution for a reason, but what I love about what you're saying is, as someone that studies the Bible for my life, God doesn't give these huge specifics. Right now, I'm studying this passage in Colossians where Paul writes about what type of relationships we should have, and he talks about gentleness and compassion and love, and those are very broad things.

Peter Englert: I think sometimes we want God to give us the specific details of our life without becoming the person, whether you call it character, whether you call it the fruits of the spirit, and in somewhat, what you're trying to live out and this tension that you're helping us with is when you ask the question, "Why am I here?" and I know that there's a lot of our listeners that are different religious perspectives, we're coming from a Christian perspective, there's actually far more room. I guess, and you can push back on this, I see those 11 pages of that legal document as a form of prayer. You're not saying, "I was demanding God to do this."

Jim Huling: Oh, no.

Peter Englert: What you're saying is, you're saying, "God, with the character you've given me, I know the type of person you want me to be, but I also know here's some dreams and here's some vision. I'm going to write it out. There's things that I can control and there's things that you can control, but I'm at least going to try to be intentional." I think that's what I hear you saying. Is that right?

Jim Huling: That's perfect. Oh, it's perfect. I was not in any way trying to portray ordering stuff on Amazon and being frustrated when it doesn't get here in day. I wasn't trying to do that at all, but I was trying to let something, instead of coming from me, I was trying to let it come through me, this visioning because I simply didn't know the answer.

Jim Huling: It's interesting, Peter, you say this. My own pastor said a week or so ago, "God never made a table. God never made a chair. God never made a boat. What God made was a tree, and the rest was left up to us." Again, I've already apologized. I make no proclamation of being doctrinally correct on anything. I don't have that kind of background, but I'm going to tell you, that speaks to me. That statement speaks to me because I feel like that's what my story of my life was.

Jim Huling: God gave me the ability to speak and to write, and I pray the ability to lead people in some ways. So the rest of that was what I did with what he gave me, along with a calling in my heart to want to do it and to want to be great at it.

Jim Huling: You know what? I always worry about, Peter, when I'm talking about this. It's so easy for me now at 68 years old to talk about in the rear view mirror, "Here's the life I've led," but I don't want anybody to hear that and think, "Well, that's overwhelming. I can't do all that," because I didn't start there either. I started really small, and I'll give you a really quick example.

Jim Huling: A couple of those pages were dedicated to my sweetheart, the love of my life, but here I am newly married. I'm in this hotel in Montgomery, Alabama, and I'm writing in these pages what I would want her to be able to say at the end of our relationship about it, what is the destination that I'm trying to reach. So I imagined her saying in that moment, maybe imagine it's my eulogy or something, saying, "He never failed to do the things that reminded me that he loved me," something like that. I'm paraphrasing slightly, but that's about it. That's what I wrote.

Jim Huling: So then after I wrote that, I thought, "Okay. I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning. How do I actually now do this? How do I do what I just wrote?" I knew in the case of my beloved that one of the things she loves most in the world is flowers. So on that day, I said, "You know what? Every week, I'm bringing home flowers." Arbitrarily, I decided every Friday I was going to bring home flowers from that day forward on Fridays.

Jim Huling: Peter, in the beginning, we didn't have any money. We just had kids. So in the beginning, I couldn't buy flowers. I didn't have enough money to buy flowers, but please don't think less of me now, Peter, but there were always beautiful flowers in the landscaping of the office buildings where I work. So I would even keep a pair of scissors in the glove box of my car. Friday afternoon as I'm driving, I just snip a few and bring them. Then I graduated to buying them from the grocery store, but here we are now 40 years this year, I have almost never missed a Friday in 40 years of coming through the door with flowers.

Jim Huling: Now, it takes me about 10 minutes a week to get those flowers. Today, I stopped at a grocery store, run in, come back out, $15 bunch of flowers. I'm not buying $100 bunch every time I'm just remembering, but I come home with those flowers almost every Friday for 40 years. So something that took me 10 minutes to do has an ROI with the person I love most in the world that can't even be measured. Am I making my point well? I hope so. It doesn't need to be overwhelming. It just needs to be heartfelt and consistent, but you can't be heartfelt or consistent if you don't know where you're going.

Jim Huling: So that's why I really believe, start with some vision. We all know without a vision what happens to the people, right? So start with some vision, and then commit yourself to small actionable steps across whatever period of time that vision calls for to be able to one day say, "I became the person I hoped I would be, I felt called to be in that arena."

Jim Huling: I could tell you a similar story, but I won't. Today, as a parent or as a leader or as an athlete or as a writer or an author or speaker, I've used that same approach to literally every dimension of my life, and it's been the key to the things that I've been able to do.

Peter Englert: So I actually think this is a good time to talk about The Four Disciplines of Execution because I actually think all of your answers have led to this for those of our listeners who've read the book, but I think the thing that's surprising, I'm a little bit more relational than task-oriented. I do like getting stuff done and that's probably more programmed from the environment I've been a part of, but I guess I'm just curious on your end. You have this wonderful way of saying, "I really love my wife." So what that looks like on a very basic level is buying flowers every Friday.

Jim Huling: That's right.

Peter Englert: That is a very, very unique heart and hands task in relationship, and I'm fairly certain if I had your wife on the podcast she would say, "No, it never became old," and partly the way that you framed it, the way that you did it. So I guess as someone that wrote The Four Disciplines of Execution and seen trying people to implement it, it seems more task-oriented, but you are someone that is just super in tune, relational, self-aware. I mean, as you look at the success of that book and as you look at your life now, would you put some caveats to it or has your heart always been like, "I really want to help people live out their priorities"? I mean, how would you help shape people because, obviously, there's people that read that book and they're like, "All right. We got to get our lead measures and that'll lead us to our lag measures"? No. Walk us through because it seems like you've been through a transformation on how to live out that tension well.

Jim Huling: Yeah. I love this question, and I hope in a good way it will make my story cohesive and seem full circle to all of your listeners today. It's always really important to me to acknowledge Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, my coauthors in the book. So I wouldn't be sitting here with you without those two wonderful people and their dramatic influence on my life, but for people who come to know the four disciplines, I think there's two things, Peter, that I could say that will mean the most to your beautiful question.

Jim Huling: First of all, the most heartbreaking thing in the world is a person who had a calling and did nothing about it. That's the most heartbreaking thing of all or who felt a pull, who felt excited and felt drawn to something and then did nothing about it.

Jim Huling: So in a very real sense of the word, in the four disciplines, we set out to solve that dilemma because in the business world, the most heartbreaking thing you ever encounter is a grand and beautiful strategy that never gets executed. It's really the same thing. We talk about life and we talk about business.

Jim Huling: So the four disciplines became a way of saying, if you know what you want, your strategy, here's how you can have it. Here's how you can actually make it happen. Peter, I don't know if your own life experience echoes this, but I'm optimistic that it does that the gap between what we want to do and what we actually do is often quite large. Just look at the volume of New Year's resolutions that go unfulfilled after 17 days, I think now is the average lifespan of a New Year's resolution.

Jim Huling: So think of it any way you like, a business that has a strategy that doesn't get executed or a person who has a vision or a dream for their life who never sees it fulfilled. That's the same problem. That's the gap between strategy and execution. So in the writing of The Four Disciplines book, I think we set out to offer a solution to that, a solution we had found, we had all found together at Franklin Covey.

Jim Huling: Interestingly, I hope I've done this well so that this seems like you and I almost pre-planned it even though we didn't. Discipline one is about deciding what's wildly important. The very thing I started this discussion with you on is saying the first thing you have to do is decide what matters most. Well, that's really discipline one. So it's based on that same idea. You can't execute at the highest level across everything you do. So you have to choose the things where you will give the very best you have versus the things where you will sustain an acceptable level of excellence, but you can't be world-class at everything. So that's discipline one.

Jim Huling: Then discipline two is, really, its close sibling because discipline two says, once you know what the most important thing is, what are the most impactful actions that are likely to make that come true? Now, in my little small story, I told the little small example of wanting to be the greatest husband I was capable of being to the woman I love most in the world, and one of the actions I chose was her favorite thing in the world, which was to get flowers. So in other words, that was my lead measure.

Jim Huling: Now, if I was running a sales team and I wanted to increase sales, if that's what mattered most to me, what I might decide to do as an action is to have world-class face-to-face meetings with our clients and prospects. I might decide that that action is the true driver of this outcome, right?

Jim Huling: In the hotel business where we worked with so much, they found that the greatest driver of guest satisfaction was the cleanliness of the hotel room, which should be no surprise to anybody who's ever stayed in a hotel. That's the first thing you evaluate when you walk in, right? What we learned together was that the real driver of the perception of cleanliness of the whole room was the cleanliness of the bathroom. So in other words, in each case, we're deciding what's most important, what is the outcome we want, and then we're finding the small actions that can be done consistently that will create that outcome in the most powerful way. So we call the second discipline the discipline of leverage. The first one is about focus, but the second one, find your leverage, find those actions that really create the result you want.

Jim Huling: The third discipline is the discipline of engagement, which is the discipline of keeping score of winning, of watching yourself progress, of knowing that you're getting better, of being, as we would love to say nowadays, all in, you're all in the game. Well, I'll tell you, Peter, one of the greatest learnings of my life is realizing that how you keep score changes how you feel about the game.

Jim Huling: So we don't have time for a full explanation today, but just a simple example, a leader will often say to me, "Jim, man, we love all the four disciplines. We're going to do all of them. The discipline three, the scoreboard one, we think we're just going to use a simple spreadsheet or keep it on some paper somewhere. The important thing is the other ones, but we'll find a way to do that."

Jim Huling: I immediately say, "I'm so sorry to know that you're going to actually fail in the four disciplines," because this is the one where we go from our mind to our heart. We get engaged, well, anything that gives you that sense of winning. Now, for me, I've obviously kept track of how often I brought home flowers. When I reached my goals as a CrossFit athlete, I obviously kept track of how many times I worked out and how much weight I lifted. I kept track of all kinds of things because that's what helped me take ownership of the outcome.

Jim Huling: Then last of all, discipline four is the discipline of accountability. It's the discipline of every single week identifying and committing to a small action that drives the outcome, something you personally can do, and then being accountable to at least one other human being in the world or your team that you actually followed through one week later. You really did what you said you were going to do.

Jim Huling: Now, Peter, I tried to say those really fast. We could go an hour on the four disciplines, but for anybody who's really listening, and I'm sure we have people who are driving their car or eating a cheeseburger or something while they're listening to you and me, but you still probably got it. Even if you're driving, you said, "Wait a minute. Those four disciplines, that's the same process he was using to describe his life system," and it's exactly right. Clear focus, leveraged behaviors, high engagement, and high accountability, that's the formula for getting anything to happen, whether it's your vision for your congregation and your church or your outreach, whether it's your personal goals that you have for who you want to be or how you want to perform in the world or whether it's highly aspirational, your divine purpose, what you feel you came to this world to do. Those same four things apply to all of those types of outcomes, and hopefully enable people to actually one day stand on the mountaintop and say, "I did what I came here to do." It's, I think, in a way, the unspoken wish of everybody, at least those that are called to it.

Peter Englert: Wow. This has gone way too fast. I feel like we have another three hours, but I want to close with two questions. So the first question that I really want you to focus on is, as a pastor, I'm very aware that when it comes to calling, purpose, and career, there's a lot of people that I serve that they have this idea that, "If I'm not running a nonprofit or if I didn't become a pastor, if I'm not doing something directly like that, that I have a lesser calling." I wrote a whole master's thesis on that. So I'll save you, but I guess where I want you to engage for a little bit, you mentioned your pastor, who's fairly well-known, and I guess as our listeners are trying to process, as someone that was a pastor now and into the business world, how would you encourage people to really look at and even value their calling, even though they might not think it's the one that's the most important, and the caveat, I don't think being called to be a pastor is the most important calling. I think there's the priesthood of all believers. I'll go to my side, which is the theology, and I'll let you go to your business side, but yeah.

Jim Huling: Please, thank you. I'm much more comfortable over there.

Peter Englert: So I mean, how would you encourage people because you seem to be someone that's really prioritized faith, calling, purpose, and somehow have really intentionally tried to integrate that? How do you encourage that person?

Jim Huling: Yeah. Gosh, what a great question. I'll be brief because I know, tragically, we're in the final moments of this great conversation. Although someday I hope we might have another one somewhere along the way, but I would want to say one thing with my whole heart, and if I was in the room with you right now, I would put both hands on your shoulders and I would get about two and a half inches from your face because I would want to use everything I've got to transfer this message from me to you, which is to say there is no order of magnitude in callings. There is not. There is no calling greater than another calling. We all have a part to play, and every part is indispensable. If we can zoom out far enough, the smallest action may be the very thing that enabled the greatest outcome to actually come true.

Jim Huling: So if you're walking around today thinking, "I have a small life," or "I have a small calling," or "I don't really make any difference in the world," or "Does my life really matter?" or you and I have already agreed on our favorite question in the world, "Why am I here?" if you're walking around troubled by those thoughts today, I would tell you, look to your left or your right, and within your field division, you will find someone who could use your help or who could use a kind word or who could use the simple practice of being seen, and known, and observed as a human being. Bake some bread and take a loaf to your neighbor. Pull some flowers out of your garden, give them to the lady down the street who has all these potted plants. You can find your smallest actionable step anywhere you look. In fact, you're probably stumbling over them.

Jim Huling: What you can't do is evaluate or ever know the never ending ripple effect of those steps. So Peter, if I were close to you, and this would be too close, I'd be invading your personal space, but I'd be wanting so much to say as a person at my stage of life speaking to a person at your stage of life where literally the whole journey is still out in front of you and you're going to make a huge impact on the world, I'd want you to hear me. There's no order of magnitude in callings, and all that is asked of us is the next actionable step we are able to take in the pursuit of that calling.

Jim Huling: I think if everybody got that, the rest of it would take care of itself. I don't know if I have another 60 seconds, but I'll give you this story really quick. It may be a good place to close. You guide me, my friend. I'm here to serve you in this podcast.

Peter Englert: Keep going. Keep going.

Jim Huling: A story that has meant so much to me, I'm going to speed up, I'm going to talk faster than Southerners like to speak to get this story out real fast. So imagine me as a consultant the last 14 years. Every day, I'm probably in another city, I'm giving a speech at a different hotel hoping to impact lots and lots of people and help teach them the things that I've learned. My practice was almost always to have dinner alone in a restaurant in the hotel before going the next morning to the ballroom and giving a speech, and then by the way, getting on an airplane, going to another city, giving another speech the next day.

Jim Huling: So I'm in a distant city, and I'm sitting there all by myself in a restaurant, and I'm eating my normal dinner in the restaurant all by myself. Peter, all of a sudden, I don't know how to explain this other than I had this tingling on the back of my neck, just literally. I mean, it's like Spider-Man it's. It's like a buzz on the back of my neck, and it's that feeling you get when you think somebody is looking at you. Do you know what I'm talking about? Almost everybody has had this at least once. So I'm sitting in the restaurant, I have this feeling in the back of my neck and it's so strong, it's palpable.

Jim Huling: So I just put my knife and fork down and I looked around the restaurant to try to see who is connecting with me in this way because I feel it. All the way on the other side of the restaurant is a young lady who has come through the doors of the restaurant and is waiting to be seated, but she's staring directly at me. I don't know her. It's not anybody that I think I've ever met, and I have no idea what's about to happen, but I'm just going to tell you, my heart rate sped up quite a bit because she began to walk across the restaurant, and behind her were three small children, and behind the three small children was a bewildered husband shepherding the three kids like ducks across the road, but clearly, the dad and I made eye contact and he had no idea what was happening at this moment.

Jim Huling: This family makes their way across the entire restaurant, comes to my table. When they get to my table, the young lady doesn't speak to me. She turns back to her family and she says, "Honey, kids, this is Jim. This is the guy I'm always talking about."

Jim Huling: Now, Peter, really fast. I paused. You realize this story right now could have gone either way, right? This could be a good story or not a good story, and that's exactly how I felt like, "Dear Lord, what is about to happen in my life? Who are you? Oh, I hope we had a good relationship." So she turns back to me and she says, "You don't remember me, do you?"

Jim Huling: I said, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I don't. I feel like I should, but I don't."

Jim Huling: She said, "I worked for you 14 years ago. 14 years ago, I was a junior project manager right out of college."

Jim Huling: I realized in that moment, she's talking about the period of time when I was CEO of a very large corporation. She says, "It was my first job out of college, and I led my first project, and it went really well, and at the end of that project, you wrote me a letter."

Jim Huling: Now, Peter, from time to time, I would write people letters to try to express our appreciation for their talent and their time. By the way, that was one of the things written on the yellow legal pages in a hotel room in Montgomery, Alabama, but I had done that, but I didn't remember her and I didn't remember the project or anything, but she said, "It was my first project ever." She said, here's the end, "You're the CEO. I got this handwritten letter from you, and you said congratulations and I had done a good job," but she said, "At the bottom of the letter, you wrote these words. You said, 'I see in you someone who will one day be a great leader and will impact the lives of many people.'"

Jim Huling: Now, I'm trying to be so honest all the time, Peter. I don't remember writing this letter. I don't remember this young lady, but I must have in that moment felt called to write those words because they were beyond my physical experience with her. Then she, in a stunning moment, reached in her purse and pulled out this letter with ragged edges and coffee circles all around it, and what looked to me, I swear, like tear stains.

Jim Huling: She said, "I've carried this letter with me for 14 years, and every time I've had a boss that didn't believe in me, I would go back to my desk and pull out this letter and I'd read it again, and every time I had a project that I thought was too big for me, I would read this letter and I would believe in myself again."

Jim Huling: Now, I've tried to be so vulnerable in this, Peter. You can tell how emotional I am right now. This is not a story about me. This is a story about the power of the inspiration that can pass from one person to another in the smallest possible act. It probably took me two and a half minutes to write this letter. I probably knocked it out at the end of a long day, had my assistant put it in the mail to her. I did something I thought was a good thing, but you have to be really careful to hear that it's not a story about me. It's a story about love in action.

Jim Huling: There she was 14 years later and, by the way, she said, "Today, I run the largest call center in the Eastern half of the United States. I have 3,000 employees, and every leader who works for me writes letters like this to their people every week."

Peter Englert: Wow.

Jim Huling: So I use that story. Oh, God! I got so much emotion right now. I use that story to say to everybody listening to you and me, there is no order of magnitude in callings, and there is no action that is insignificant. So on a given day, I took five minutes, I wrote a nice letter to a junior project manager, and I'm sure I closed my briefcase and went on about my life, and the power, the impact of that act is still rippling outward because every leader that works for her is now doing that same thing for the people that they lead and they have 3,000 employees.

Jim Huling: So anybody who's walking around thinking their life is too small and they have no calling and they have no opportunity to make a difference is simply not looking to the left and to the right because there are people everywhere that need it. They need help. They need encouragement. They need love. They need to see something in us that makes them want to be people of faith. They need that, and all we have to do is be willing to show up. We have to take a moment right there, and in order to do that, I think the four disciplines of execution is the most beautiful framework I've ever seen in my life. Total bias acknowledged for simply saying, "How do I close the gap between what I dream of and what I do? How do I close the gap between what I'm called to be and what I actually am? How do I close that gap?"

Jim Huling: The Four Disciplines of Execution, with total bias, I'm not trying to sell any books, I'm just trying to say something I feel to the deepest part of my soul, those four principles in that book are the best way I've ever seen to move from wanting to be something to actually being it.

Peter Englert: Wow. If you saw me, I had goosebumps listening to that story. So we always close with the same question. We close with the question, "What does Jesus have to say about this topic?" So the good news is is you get the last word, and as we've been joking through this whole thing, you get to clean up whatever mess this pastor makes or co-host. So what does Jesus have to say about why am I here? Jim, as I've listened to you and just processed just on the fly, and as I've thought about this episode, I keep coming back to what the gospel of John said that Jesus said, "I came to give you life and I give you life more abundantly."

Peter Englert: Something that I'm even picking up is I've talked a lot about Colossians 3. I've been focused on that, and the apostle Paul says that, "You've experienced the death resurrection and new life of the gospel," and I think what you're saying is in the why am I here that God's called us to experience a life that's way more abundant. What that looks like is sometimes death, which included in your story, grief, it included pain. It's dying to ourselves saying, "Hey, I'm willing to give up this dream of music," or for me, give up that dream of basketball to experience resurrection and new life that opens the door to something else. I think that's what Jesus does. Why am I here, the reason you can be intentional is because the sovereignty of God in our life to be able to live in such a way that we can write an 11-page legal pad as a prayer and The Four Disciplines of Execution are about, "Hey, there are habits and practices that are in my control, but I don't control when I write that letter and give it to someone," how God uses that to be a person that says, "Hey, you will write a letter."

Jim Huling: That's right.

Peter Englert: So I think the question, "Why am I here?" God is asking us and inviting us for an abundant life, and it does come through death, resurrection, and new life. So that's how I'd close the episode. How would you?

Jim Huling: Oh, my goodness. I have to follow that? I will not be as eloquent as you, my friend, nor as learned as you are. So I'll say in my own simple way, I cling every day to two verses that have been the pillars of a lot of what I've been able to do. One, I've already said, and I'm sorry that I quoted badly in your presence, Peter, because you probably can say a word for word, but, "I knew you before you were born. Every day of your life was recorded in my book." That tells me beyond dispute that there was a plan, there was a purpose. Every day of my life was recorded in my book. There's something I am here to do. I believe in that.

Jim Huling: Then I hold tight to the words of the savior when he said, "By this will all men know that you're my disciples, that you love one another." So to me, everything I've said to you today and everything I've tried to teach in all these years that I've been all over the world teaching has under either overtly or slightly below the surface always been about love.

Jim Huling: There was something. I was powered by love when for some reason I took a minute and wrote a handwritten note to a young project manager who I didn't really know well at all. I was powered by love when I sat alone in a motel room and shouted out to the empty walls. "This is not my life." I was powered by love every time I've stopped at the grocery store and bought a $12 bunch of flowers. It's powered by love.

Jim Huling: So believing that there is a purpose for my life and believing that the single greatest action that demonstrates the fulfillment of that purpose is powered by love, those two things I hold to. I realize I've said not very doctrinally, but I hope authentically. That's how my life holds together between those two things.

Peter Englert: You're never going to lose any credibility with me when you quote Psalm 139:14. That's the verse we picked for our daughter. So you're good with it.

Jim Huling: Nice.

Peter Englert: So Jim, as we close, where's the best place people can find you and follow you?

Jim Huling: Thank you. You're so kind to offer me that. Peter, I'll say two things very quickly since you've opened that door and there's no commercial in this. One, I post something every day of my life on social media that's a meaningful thought about life or love or leadership. I think I'm on 152-day streak of posting a new meaningful quote every morning or new meaningful thought every morning. So if you're interested in social media, any of those kinds of things, there's that.

Jim Huling: Then secondly, my website is a little bit long so I have to say it carefully. I'm sorry. We should have done a better job with this. My original first book in the world, which we didn't get a chance to talk about today, but a lot of my story is in that book is called Choose Your Life. So my website is chooseyourlife, all one word, dot Jim Huling, J-I-M-H-U-L-I-N-G dot com. So chooseyourlife.jimhuling.com. I'm so sorry, Peter, how long that is, but everything I'm doing nowadays you can find, and then if I can take 10 more seconds, I'm the most excited right now. My four disciplines chapter is in its beautiful place. I guess I'm the elder statesman of the four discipline. Chris and others are still out there traveling the world spreading that message.

Jim Huling: I've turned my attention to something that's more intimate to me, which is I've created a program called Find Your Fire, which is an unapologetic system for helping people awaken their sense of purpose and their willingness to act on that purpose called Find Your Fire. If you go to chooseyourlife.jimhuling.com, you'll see a link to it. If you're interested in it, I hope you'll give it a chance to see. I hope it becomes the thing that makes the greatest difference in the world of all the things I've ever done, and it's brand new. So it's just getting started. So Peter, thank you for letting me at least chat quickly about those three things.

Peter Englert: Thank you so much, Jim. As always with Why God Why, you can find us, the best place is to go to our website, whygodwhypodcast.com, click the subscribe button. You'll get episodes like this one and many others. Thank you so much for joining us today.