I had two jobs, two kids (one of which was a newborn), and a head full of business ideas. I poured every spare second into something new.
No plan. Just “hustle”.
Eventually, the pressure broke through and I experienced a panic attack for the first time.
Out of nowhere, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest. I was certain I was having a heart attack.
I used to think anxiety happened to people who had mental health issues. But I learned that this is what happens when you try to carry too much alone.
At first, I resisted it. I tried to shake it off, but it only made it worse.
Then I came across something that stuck with me:
You only beat anxiety when you stop fighting it.
So I stopped fighting and started noticing it instead.
When it showed up, I didn’t try to fix it. I tried my best to not label it as good or bad. I just noticed it.
As hard as it was, I just let the discomfort be there without trying to fix it.
Like watching a wave come in, then go back out.
What I learned is that peace doesn’t come from avoiding anxiety. It comes from letting go of the need to control it.
A certain amount of stress is part of life. Anxiety comes with caring deeply. There’s no version of life on this side of eternity where those things disappear.
Most people have doubts about their abilities, their future, their relationships, and about God.
Doubt gets a negative connotation, but it can actually be very constructive.
Comfort zones rarely build anything. It’s only in the discomfort of doubt – self-doubt or doubts about others – where we can effectively grow.
The key to healthy doubt is to understand its source.
Dr. Gary Habermas, a well known religious researcher and professor, identifies three types of doubt:
Factual (lack of information)
Emotional (rooted in pain)
Volitional (unwillingness to trust)
What’s interesting is, most doubts aren’t factual or volitional – they’re emotional.
Distrust and doubt stems from the heart, not the mind, and thus isn’t solved by information alone.
This is why a husband who doesn’t trust his wife is never satisfied with knowing where his wife is or what she’s doing at all times. He’ll always wonder, and he’ll always want more information.
It’s because the issue isn’t about information. It’s about the emotional damage of the person who’s unwilling to trust.
Emotional doubt arises when feelings overshadow facts, leading to “what if” questions without evidence.
Anxious or obsessive thinking often fuels emotional doubts and distrustful thinking.
This is what causes people to doubt their salvation or question God’s goodness even though they have the facts that reinforce those beliefs.
There will always be facts to the contrary of what you believe. The question isn’t which side has more facts. The question is, which side are you willing to trust?
To overcome emotional doubt, the brain has to be taught how to process information differently.
For example, instead of running with the first conclusion your mind produces, ask yourself why there’s resistance to trust. Does the idea of trusting hurt? If so, that’s a red flag that there’s pain beneath the surface to be dealt with.
It’s amazing what processing information from a neutral perspective can do. If you can train your brain to simply be an observer of facts, then the pain of trusting can be dealt with separately from the act of choosing a path.
You control your doubts and how you process them.
It isn’t the events in our lives that cause trauma – it’s our interpretation of events and our reaction to those events that causes the most impact.
Faith in anyone or anything should always be grounded in facts. Trust should, in essence, be a conscious decision to stop chasing alternate conclusions and lean on the facts you have.
It’s like the old chair that looks sturdy enough to hold your weight. You can’t know until you release your weight and try it.
In the same way, you can train the habit of faith by learning enough and letting go.
Self-confidence and relationships work the same way. Kick the tires, see if you think you can trust it, then let go and try it. If it holds weight, release more and see if it holds. Continue until trust is built.
You’ll never out-learn distrust and doubt. The only way forward is to learn enough and let go.
“Young people don’t stay at jobs like they used to.”
Did you know that statement is actually not backed by data?
According to Pew Research, “Today’s young adults have been on the job with their current employer about as long as young adults over the past four decades.”
The idea that younger generations are flaky simply isn’t true.
But they are hungry. And they have more opportunities than any generation before.
Just look at the number of job openings in the US – which has increased something like 150% in the last 20 years.
There’s more opportunity now, sure, but good companies are still retaining their people.
Take Summit 7 for example. The turnover rate at Summit 7 last year beat the industry average by 60%.
That’s because company culture is a priority at Summit 7.
Gone are the days of being able to tolerate a poor company culture and still keep talent because they don’t have anywhere else to go.
Culture isn’t complicated – take care of your people.
Make sure they’re paid well. Make sure they have opportunities to win at things they enjoy. Make sure they know that their leader cares about them as a human.
And they’ll stick around.
Young people aren’t flaky – they’re just surrounded by opportunity.
Which means we have to step up as leaders to make sure we’re doing our part to keep them.
Growing mass amounts of crops in a short time produces low-quality and often dangerous results.
Here’s why:
Farming begins and ends with soil.
Nutrient-rich topsoil is a product of ground that has been cultivated by the elements of nature through decomposition and soil regeneration for generations – sometimes thousands of years.
In order to keep the ground from becoming infertile, farmers have to rotate their crops and periodically allow the ground to go unplanted for an extended period of time – typically one to five years.
If the farmer decides to take a short-term approach by planting in the soil repeatedly every season without allowing it to regenerate, the soil loses its nutrients, becomes infertile, and becomes a more inviting environment for pests.
This leads to the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which, as we’re learning more and more, can cause long-term health issues in those who consume produce from these types of farms.
In the same way fast farming produces bad results, striving to gain influence with large amounts of people in a short time produces low-quality impact and often dangerous results for both the “influencer” and the ones being influenced.
Let’s say in any given decade of your life, you have a close relationship with approximately 25 people.
This includes friends, classmates, coworkers, or anyone else you spend a substantial amount of time around.
Now, for the sake of this exercise, let’s say that the majority of those 25 people are exchanged for another 25 people every 10 years.
Now, let’s say you live for 80 years, and 60 of those years are productive, impactful years.
With just some simple back of napkin math, we can see that the average person will have a significant influence on 150 people.
It’s no stretch to say that for every person you have influence with, you also have at least some influence on the people they interact with. In that way, your influence on them then has an exponential effect.
Let’s assume, then, that those 150 people will also have a significant impact on 150 people throughout their lifetime as well.
Conservatively speaking, of the 150 people you will influence throughout your life, you will also likely influence about half of their network indirectly.
So, throughout your life, let’s say you’ll have direct influence on 150 people and indirect influence on 11,250 people (150 people in your network times 75, which is half of each person’s 150-person network).
This is where it gets interesting.
If every one of your 150 people that you influence turn around and then have an influence on 75 people, and those 75 people turn around and have an influence on 75 more people, then the number of lives you have had a substantial influence on would be 843,750.
That’s in just three generations beyond yours.
Carry that out to the fourth generation and you’ve impacted 63,281,250 people. Carry that out to the fifth generation, and you’ve impacted 4.7 billion people.
Apple is easily one of the most influential brands in history. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook is listed as one of Time Magazine’s most influential people in the world. And even at the apex of influence in the world, there are still only around 2 billion Apple customers in the world.
Within just a few generations, you can have a much more substantial and long-lasting impact on the world than even the most influential people and brands, and you can do it without slaving away at work.
If you are intentional about the relationships you build and the seeds you sow into other people, and you’re willing to wait for a return over time, then the impact you can have on the world is truly limitless.
What’s even more amazing is that influencing billions of people over the course of a few generations doesn’t take a substantial amount of effort. It’s actually a conservative goal.
To have a substantial influence on 150 people over the course of 60 years of your adult life, you would only need to impact 2 to 3 people each year.
Said another way, if you spent every few years cultivating meaningful relationships with 5 to 10 people, you would be well on your way to having an exponential impact on countless lives.
I get that the numbers aren’t sexy. It doesn’t scratch the itch of significance that we all have.
For some reason, telling you that you could impact millions of lives in a positive way if you diligently cultivated 20 to 30 relationships every decade doesn’t make you feel as important or as valuable as the idea of building something big and flashy that captures the attention of 1 million people in a single generation.
What’s truly sad is if you spend your time trying to impact 1 million people in one generation, the longevity of that impact is inevitably low.
Having a short term impact on 1 million people in one generation pales in comparison to the long-term positive influence you can have on the world by having a deep impact on only a handful of people in your lifetime.
We’ve gotten this twisted in the age of social media, and it’s evident by the rise of the term “influencer”.
By definition, an influencer in the digital world is someone who has the ability to influence the purchase behavior of consumers online, primarily through social media.
We’ve effectively turned influence into a commercialized product.
As such, influence is seen as something to be maximized to produce the most return in the shortest amount of time.
What we fail to realize, though, is that by reducing influence to an asset to be profited from, we end up gaining influence that is cheap, shallow, and valueless.
You probably won’t change the lives of a million people in your lifetime. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s preferable that you don’t.
It’s much more beneficial to everyone if you spend your life focusing on having a positive influence on a handful of people in a long-term, profound way.
Those people will not only be the ones telling stories at your funeral about the moments you created that mattered deeply to them, but the actions, values, and stories you left imprinted on their hearts will also tell countless generations to come about the legacy you left behind.
And that is the only kind of influence worth living for.
Of everything you’re doing right now, what will matter in a thousand years?
Jesus says in Revelation 1:8 that he is the one who is, who was, and who is to come.
His legacy is timeless, surviving all changes in the earth and all historical shifts in society.
If Jesus’ legacy is timeless, and Scripture says in 1 John that “in this world we are like Jesus” (1 John 4:17) then what are we doing that will stand the test of time?
Think of it this way: who can you name from a thousand years ago?
(I’ll give you a hint. It was the Middle Ages.)
Here are a few names you might know:
Joan of Arc
Charlemagne
Johannes Gutenberg
Marco Polo
Leonardo da Vinci
Genghis Khan
Unless you paid especially close attention in history class, you’d probably be hard-pressed to give any amount of detail about what any of those people did.
You probably know they were important. But were they impactful?
Important means “of great significance or value and likely to have a profound effect on success, survival, or well-being.”
Impactful means “to have a strong effect on someone or something.”
Importance is something we think is valuable. Impactful is something that changes things.
A City Council approving a new park to be built in your community is important. A father taking his son to that park every Saturday is impactful.
Do you see the difference?
Important things include:
Work
Projects
Household chores
Finances
Impactful things include:
Faith
Marriage
Parenting
Friendships
Important things are typically not people-centered. Impactful things always are.
And the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
You can do things that are both important and impactful. You can do work that changes people’s lives.
But important things tend to have a wide and shallow impact.
That’s because important work tends to be about providing something valuable to as many people as possible. In other words, it prioritizes reach over depth.
Impactful things, on the other hand, are all about depth and therefore tend to be more narrowly focused.
To have a genuine impact, it’s very difficult to spread out your efforts. Like drilling a well, impact tends to be an art of focused, consistent effort.
Now, here’s the important distinction:
Important work has the potential to be remembered for generations. But impactful work has the potential of being felt for generations.
There was a survey that asked teenagers to identify the person they admired most as a role model besides their parents.
(David Kinnaman, who directed the study, noted that parents were left out of the potential answers because so many teenagers either have high regard for their parents or feel otherwise compelled to list their parents as role models. To quote the study, “Previous research shows that mentioning parents is almost an automatic response for many.”)
In this survey, the respondents could have chosen musicians, athletes, community leaders, historical figures or any of the many, many, influential people kids learn to admire in popular culture and history classes.
But here were the most common answers:
37% answered a relative, such as a grandparent, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, etc.
11% answered teachers and coaches
9% said friends
6% said a pastor or other religious leader they know personally
In total, nearly two-thirds of teenagers said their closest relationships within their communities were the most influential on their lives.
Entertainers came in at 6%, followed by athletes at 5%, political leaders at 4%, faith leaders at 4%, business leaders at 1%, authors at 1%, science and medical professionals at 1%, other artists at 1%, and members of the military at 1%.
That’s only about a quarter of the total responses that included people outside of close communities (although some of the answers, such as athletes and leaders, could have been local role models).
What’s noteworthy from this study is that pastors and even Jesus were listed less than 10% of the time. That means if you want your kids to learn about Jesus, you have to model it. That’s what they’re going to retain. And that’s what’s going to have the greatest impact.
You might be wondering, “But how? What does being an impactful person or role model look like?”
Well, the study asked the same thing.
And when asked why the participants identified the role models they selected, here were the top reasons:
26% listed personality traits like caring about others, being loving and polite, being courageous, and being fun
11% said they were encouraging, which included helping them be a better person, always being there for them, or being most interested in their future.
In other words, a huge chunk – 36% – of why someone made the “most influential” list in a young person’s life was simply because they were kind and compassionate.
Here were some other answers for why they selected who they did:
22% said they wanted to emulate them or follow in their footsteps
13% said that he or she accomplished their goals
9% said this person overcame adversity
7% said he or she works hard
That’s 51% of the reasons falling in the category of simply being respectable.
If we break all of those reasons down, here are the three things that matter most when it comes to impacting people’s lives:
Having a close personal relationship
Showing people you care
Giving them something to respect by setting goals and following through
You don’t have to be a superstar. You don’t have to be wealthy. You don’t have to be well known. You don’t have to be intelligent or successful in the eyes of the world.
To have a significant positive impact on someone, you just have to care about people, be there for them, and show them what living a respectable life looks like by doing whatever you do with excellence.
This study shows us what we all inherently know is true.
Make a quick mental list of the people you have looked up to most in your life. This list usually includes at least one parent or guardian, probably a sibling, maybe an aunt or uncle, definitely your close friends, and maybe a pastor, coach or teacher.
These are impactful relationships. And impact equals influence.
But that’s not how our culture typically thinks of influence. We think that importance equals influence.
Time Magazine has what’s called the Time100, which is a list of the 100 most influential people in the world. This list includes innovators, musicians, actors, athletes, politicians, and other major public figures. It’s a list of important people.
For example, Patrick Mahomes made this list. He’s important because he’s done something that society deems important – he’s an elite athlete.
But whose life will be changed by Patrick Mahomes?
Kids will certainly be inspired by him to strive to achieve more in their own lives, but if you had to place a percentage on it, whose lives will Patrick Mahomes have a major impact on?
It will be his wife, his kids, his close friends, the kids he coaches and mentors on local sports teams – those are the lives that will be impacted by him. Not the countless people who are entertained by him on Sundays.
But here’s the tough part:
We love important work.
It makes us feel good because we long to build things, and today’s culture tells us that what we should be building is something important.
Important work will always fade away. Impactful work – pouring your life into the people closest to you – is what will matter when you’re gone.
Bonnie Ware, a nurse who provided care for dying patients, wrote a book titled, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. These are the top 5 regrets she listed:
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
“I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
“I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
“I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”
“I wish I had let myself be happier”
These are all relationship-focused regrets.
When we focus on what feels important, we’ll chase things that we think other people will respect us for (the #1 regret) and we’ll de-prioritize margin, rest, emotional health, connection to friends, and happiness (numbers 2-5 on the list).
Harvard’s 80-year study on what makes for a happy life found that, “Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives.”
Maybe that’s why the most common regrets are things that hinder close, real relationships.
Notice what’s not on the list of regrets, though. It doesn’t say, “I wish I had achieved more.”
Stop and acknowledge that.
Deep down, we all know what’s important. And yet we get blinded by what feels important.
Don’t get me wrong, important work needs to be done. We need people doing important work to advance our culture and create a better future for the world. The technological and medical breakthroughs we’ve had allow us to live the lives we enjoy today.
But we have to stop confusing importance for impactful. Don’t get sucked into the allure of important work. Yes, it must be done, but it’s not what matters most.
Focus on impact, first and foremost.
Focus on cultivating the relationships and resources that are closest to us. You’ll often find that important work stems from an impact-first mentality.
Then, in a thousand years, when no one knows your name and your memory is long gone, your legacy will be alive and well, replicating exponentially in the lives of the children’s children’s children of the people you poured your life into impacting.
Somewhere along the way, we started wearing burnout like it’s a badge of honor.
Letting someone know that we’re busy somehow feels validating.
A survey found that 60% of parents feel overwhelmed by the mental load of parenting.
Busy has become our baseline. And without it, we feel unproductive, maybe even unimportant.
(Just imagine saying yes to something that doesn’t have a goal and see how the thought makes you feel.)
Overwhelm isn’t a sign that you’re important. It’s a sign that something needs to change.
A burned-out person is an ineffective person.
You can’t pour out if you’re empty. And you can’t fake being present for long.
Rest isn’t indulgent. Rest is essential.
One study found that regular leisure activities—quiet time, time in nature, hobbies, even just unwinding—are linked to lower stress, lower blood pressure, better health, and better mood.
It’s not about having a hobby or taking a vacation. It’s about fostering a lifestyle that includes rhythms of rest.
But most of us ignore the invitation. We call it lazy or selfish or just plain impossible.
But what if your health and peace was part of the job?
What if letting go is what helps you show up better?
Most people don’t waste time, money, or opportunities on purpose.
They usually just don’t realize how valuable they are.
We naturally think impact comes from big plans and important goals.
But it’s usually the unnoticed moments—a distracted look, a sharp word, a missed chance to engage—that shape the people closest to us.
We overestimate the weight of our intentions and underestimate the power of our presence.
Because you only steward what you truly cherish. And you only cherish what you see as valuable.
A few things worth cherishing:
1. Cherish your insecurities. Insecurity isn’t weakness—it’s insight. It simply shows what you care about and where you long to grow. When you hide it, it becomes shame. When you share it, it becomes connection. Vulnerability is the doorway to trust.
2. Cherish your frustration. Frustration is a mile marker—it points to what matters and where unity is needed. It’s not the enemy; it’s a signpost. The goal isn’t to eliminate it, but to walk through it with purpose. Avoid it, and you’ll drift. Embrace it, and you’ll grow.
3. Cherish the present. The present is the only place you can actually affect change. Everything else—past regret, future fantasy—is an illusion. Who you want to become isn’t found in tomorrow. It’s in the next word, the next moment, the next small step you choose right now.
You don’t need more time.
You just need to value the time you already have.
And when you start to cherish it, you’ll steward it well.
It’s been said that people won’t remember what you say, only what you do.
But I think people don’t usually forget what you said—they just never really heard it.
Not because they’re rude. Because we’re all mostly half-there.
Scrolling. Distracted. Waiting for our turn to talk.
We think we’re listening, but we’re just collecting noise.
Presence has become rare. And rare things become valuable.
According to Forbes, 92% of highly engaged employees say they feel heard at work. In companies that outperform others, 88% of employees feel heard—compared to just 62% in companies that don’t.
Turns out, listening isn’t just polite. It’s productive.
One study found that brain development was increased in children who had interactive conversations where they were being listened to by an adult.
Because being heard feels like being seen. And being seen changes people.
The opposite is also true.
Distraction doesn’t just break focus – it erodes connection.
So the question being asked in the head of someone who’s speaking to you isn’t, “Did they hear me?” The question is, “Do they care about me?”
Listening isn’t passive. It’s sacrificial. It costs you attention, energy, pride.
But it gives something more valuable in return: trust, clarity, belonging.
You don’t have to be brilliant to make someone feel loved.
