My TEDx Talk: The Co-existence of Sacrifice and Self-Stewardship

This past October, I was given the opportunity to talk about an aspect of my research at a TEDx event on the campus of Houston Baptist University. The theme of the day was "transformations" which fits in with my research of nonprofit organization leaders and the use of intentional change theory to assist them with human flourishing. I'll explain the topic and you can download the slides and transcript below, but for those who just want to see the video, here it is (add some good comments please):

For those still reading... in our lives, extreme passion for a cause can lead us to sacrifice our wellbeing, but self-stewardship can co-exist with sacrifice. Research has shown that there are ten areas of our lives that are affected by sacrifice, but focusing some self-stewardship on any one of these at a time can elevate our entire wellbeing... therefore helping ourselves so we can help others. The goal is to not only be sustainable leaders (ones that are in it for the long haul), but flourishing leaders.

The entire transcript of the TEDx talk is below, but in a nutshell the most extreme cases of declining wellbeing comes when a personal mission is tightly aligned with a professional one as in the case of doctors, pastors, and my focus... nonprofit organization leaders. But there are principles and practices that can combat this decline like focusing on the vision of the organization, not getting caught up in the weeds, and boosting emotional intelligence to have better dealings with employees, clients, the board, and other stakeholders.

My main finding has been that by instituting renewal practices and sustainability principles in our lives... we can actually boost our professional effectiveness... and increase the effectiveness of our organization as a result. I now feel like I know what the definition of my life motto is... FurtherFaster: lasting longevity with accelerated achievements.

I discovered my life motto in junior high. Supported by family, friends, employers, professors, and advisers, the motto shifted focus from myself and became a mission to realize how others could get further at a faster pace. The motto has been carried through my BS/MS in Computer Science from Kent State, MBA from Rice University, but really came to life during the research in my PhD. in Sustainable Systems from Case Western Reserve University.

If you want more information about any of this... I'm excited to share what I've learned. Contact me anytime. For now, I've made the slides and transcript of my TEDx talk available below. Download the slides from slideshare by clicking on the slideshare logo and the download button the following screen. If you would like to download the transcript of the video, click on the box link. I've also included the full transcript below in this post for those who want to continue reading.

https://app.box.com/v/JeffFreyTEDxHBUTranscript

The Co-existence of Sacrifice and Self-Stewardship: Living a FurtherFaster Life | TEDxHBU - http://bit.ly/jeffdfreyTEDxHBU

What do you care the most about? What is something that you care so much about you're willing to sacrifice everything for it? Think of it, truly. Is it a place? Is it a mission? Is it a status? Is it wealth? Is it a grade? Is it an individual? A people group? Think of the thing that you care the most about that you'd be willing to sacrifice anything for.

I care about you... well, I didn't always care about you, and I care about myself a lot too... but I care about people who are sacrificing themselves. I'm going to tell you a little bit about my transformation on how I came to care about those people. When I was in junior high I came up with a motto for my life called, "FurtherFaster," and it was all about me. I saw individuals getting degrees, getting jobs, going off and doing some great things, and I thought, "I want to do that. I want to get further than you, at a faster pace. So, let's figure out how to do that."

My mom and dad supported my FurtherFaster motto. Of course, there was worse things that a young boy could get into. They stitched the words on a hat, made me T-shirts, "FurtherFaster"… and that took me on quite a journey. I received an accelerated master's degree. I worked up to a C-level executive. A marathon coach. I lead worship at my church. Another masters. There are a lot of things going on in the FurtherFaster existence, but even though I've seen a lot of transformations, specifically in technology (I've caused some of those technological advancements), even though I've seen those, the ones that I find the most interesting are the personal ones. The transformations that happen inside an individual.

My wife is a marriage and family therapist. I'm married to a marriage counselor. It's a fun time. She would rather sit across from an individual all day and work on their single transformation internally, than any other thing in the world, and I admire that about her. It took me awhile. She didn't have to say, "I told you so" when I came to the realization that internal transformations are the coolest transformations. She didn't have to say it, I kind of did that to myself.

I set about trying to research these internal transformations, and if you haven't figured out yet, I have to do everything to extreme. I wanted to study the darkest and the lightest, the worst of the worst, and the best of the best. So, I set out. How could I figure out the people that I could take from the worst to the best, and make that transformation? What do I do? It turns out in my research, that people who have a personal mission which aligns with some type of other professional mission, they end up giving more of themselves to that mission than any other person. So, think of that thing that you care the most about. You're willing to pour yourself out for that thing, that person, that place, that mission. When you have that personal mission tied with that other mission, you pour yourself out, and you really don't care how much you get back from that. Sometimes, whatever that is isn't capable of giving anything back to you, and you're not really looking for anything else in return.

I found cracks in both sides, in the dark side and the light side.When you think about the thing that you care the most about, think about you pouring yourself out. You sacrificing yourself. When I went to research and find a people group that I could study, that had that sacrificial mission, I found non-profit organization leaders.

Again, I have to do everything to the extreme. I just returned back from the Dominican Republic about three weeks ago. The island that comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic has the highest concentration of non-profit organizations almost anywhere in the world. I met up with a family down there that was going into the streets and rescuing orphans, the abandoned, kids sold into sex trafficking. Rescuing those children, bringing them into their home, rehabilitating them, giving them life skills, job skills. Helping them get scholarships to educational facilities all over the world. Educating them. And, they're so successful at this that they've now multiple houses and multiple families that are doing this. That was true sacrifice. When I think about them, and the sacrifice they're making, and I looked at their organization. I looked at their life. They have chose this life for themselves and their family.

I've got two children of my own. It's just two. They're a handful for me even, but I'd be willing to sacrifice anything for them. See, a big change came to me about three years ago. My father passed away. He was a hero to me, a very good father, a best friend. Every day when I drove home from work I would give him a call, and we'd say, "Hey, what's up?" He passed away from cancer, and at the time I was an innovation professional at a cancer institute here in Houston. When he passed away, I looked at my kids, and I said, "I want to be that dad to my kids. I'm going to invest. I'm going to pour out. I'm going to sacrifice." And, I’ve done that. But at the same time, I was researching sacrificing and what I found was, the more that you sacrifice… you don't have anything to give at a certain point. Not only do you affect yourself and it starts degrade you, it degrades the organization, the people, the place that you're sacrificing for.

So think of this, the thing that you're pouring yourself out so greatly to save, you're actually hurting by sacrificing yourself that much. There's a point at when that happens, and that's what the research shows. The problem is we don't know when that point is, and we get positive feedback for going beyond it. "Hey, it's a good thing you stayed up late all night. It's a good thing you ... Thanks for coming in over the weekend and working. Thanks for doing ... Oh, here’s a pat on the back," right? You get all this positive reinforcement for sacrificing yourself all the time, so you don't really understand. You can't even tell that it's happening to you or to your organization or people, and that's a problem.

So, at this point you're thinking, "Okay, his message is about don't sacrifice." Well, that's wrong. I want you to sacrifice. I actually enjoy sacrificing myself for my kids, and I want my new friends in the Dominican Republic to keep doing what they're doing. So, whatever you're interested in and what you care most about, I want you to continue to sacrifice yourself, but I want you to also practice self-stewardship. They're not mutually exclusive. It's not self-stewardship or sacrifice. It's not instead of, or even a balance. It's both. It's self-stewardship for the sake of sacrifice. I'm going to say it again. Self-stewardship for the sake of sacrifice.

So, now this is what I study. I study those two extremes. I study the self-stewardship and the sacrifice, and how those can co-exist in one person, how you can pour yourself out, but then get something in return. Now if I just left you there, that would be not very interesting. Yay, go do. But, what I found in the research is 10 specific areas where you can self-steward to actually affect the sacrifice. You can continue to sacrifice if you practice the self-stewardship in these areas. Physical health, mental health, emotional health, most of them you understand. Organizational, environmental. Individually they can be named, but they're all connected. So if you affect one, then they all can be tugged together, and pulled along. So, this can happen negatively or positively.

In Houston, we could have never have prepared ourselves for it. Down the street from me there's a rain gauge. At my house we get 45 to 50 inches of rain in an average year. During Hurricane Harvey, we saw over 50 inches in three days. My house was fine. My family was fine, thankfully. Friends of mine, not so lucky. Specifically a friend of mine who when that environmental thing happened to him, it affected his finances. How am I going to pay for this? What am I going to do? It affected his vocation. I'm not as productive as work anymore. That affected relationships with friends, family, wife. Physical health was affected as he stayed up late with anxiety. Started eating improperly. There's a lot of things. You can see how just in just one area when something happens, it can tug everything along with it. But, that doesn't always happen in the negative. It happens in the positive. The same friend chose to focus on one area, relationships. When that person focused on relationships, he was able to build those relationship across his vocation, and his family, with his neighbors. And soon, all of the rest of the pieces, parts of his existence followed suit. So just like this can spiral down, this can spiral up too.

Why is this important? Why is it important that there are 10 areas that can be named, but they're all connected? Because, when you look at a sacrificial life, you sometimes look at a life that's got a lot of things going on that are negative. You look at a mountain, and you think, "How can I ever do anything with this mountain?" But what I'm telling you is, if you just pick one area of existence, and you choose to make a change in that area, then you can pull the rest of life with you. So one step towards that mountain will bring the whole mountain down.

I told you before, I'm a marathon coach. I was hoping running would be one of those major things. I would say, "Hey, running is a cure for a lot of things," and in the research it is. Specifically, around physical health. If you run in the morning, and you exercise every day, yeah absolutely you're going to have better physical health. And, it starts to tug other things with it. Mentally, your thoughts and your thoughts process while you're running, those things get better.

If you run in a group, relationships happen. So, there's lots of reasons for that. But, it does just affect you and your health alone.

In my research, when I looked at intensity of self-stewardship items, and I looked at the variety of self-stewardship items, it turns out the intensity matters to you, like running. It affects you, your personal well-being. But the variety not only helps you, the variety helps the organization, helps the people, helps the thing that you care the most about. So, to bring this home, if you think about it, the more things that you do for your health and your well-being, the more you can sacrifice. The better outcome it has on the organization, on the people, and what are those “things” you can do for your well-being? Playing with kids, whether they're your kids or other kids. Having dinner with friends, and some mindfulness exercises. Of course, exercise for physical health. Pets were in there a lot actually too. Walking my dog and being in nature was a big activity that affected people positively. The more things that you can sprinkle into your day, week, month, year, the more variety you have not only helps you and your well-being, but it helps the well-being of your organization, of your family, of people around you. It's very interesting. It's fascinating.

I was walking across the HBU campus about five months ago, and I saw this white thing in the bushes. I have an infinity towards rabbits anyway. I told you about the FurtherFaster motto. My logo for that is a red rabbit. And so, I saw this white thing in the bushes with its little red eyes sticking out at me (it’s albino), and I thought, "That's a rabbit. That's weird." I walked past it, that was day one. Day two, it's still sitting in the same place, and I was kind of sad for it. Day three, my wife happened to put carrots in my lunch, and I thought, "Well, hey what if I walk over there? Don’t you know it runs out of the bushes, starts eating the carrot," and I'm like, "Oh no, here we go.”

So, I take it and I put it in my office at HBU. I start calling around lost and found, send some emails, other things. There's a rabbit shelter, if anybody doesn't know, in town. They have you foster the rabbit until they find a home for it. I'm not going to take this thing into my house without taking it to the vet, so I put it in a box, and I put it in my car. I'm driving home. I call my wife, "Hey, honey… I got this rabbit. I'm taking it to the vet. Are you okay?" She's like, "Yeah, I'm fine." I get to the vet. My kids are there with my wife, so it's all over, right? We have a pet rabbit now. We call her our angel bunny. It is now stealing salad that my kids don't eat off the dinner table, after they leave. It was on the couch watching TV with me last night. I was petting it. It's like a cat and a dog. We let it run around the house. It's amazing. Anyway, all that to say that she's probably helped me more than I helped her. She’s now one of my wellbeing practices.

The other learning from that is when I look at you, when I am in a stadium, when I am at an airport, I look at the sea of people. And just like I took her out of the bushes and took her home, just like my friends in the Dominican Republic are pulling kids off the street and educating them, I just want to reach down in this crowd and pull you out, and say, "It's about self-stewardship." Continue to sacrifice. Don't get me wrong, don't not sacrifice. Keep up the good work. I love it. But, steward yourself while you're sacrificing. It's self-stewardship for the sake of that sacrifice.

I've learned that it’s the only way to live the FurtherFaster life. I think we're really good at the faster part. Accelerated achievements. Do, do, do. Go, go, go. Reach that potential, absolutely.

It's that further part that we're not so great at. It's that lasting longevity. How do we continue to do these amazing things for a very long time, FurtherFaster?

So, I ask you again not from a place of negativity, what is it that you care the most about? What is it that you want to pour yourself out for? Think of something, and do it. Live the FurtherFaster life that way. Sacrifice yourself.

Now… go help yourself, so that you can help others.

Thanks.

Jeff Frey