Reclaim Your Supernatural Kingdom Identity – What is Success?
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Hello, and welcome to the fifth video in the “Reclaim Your Supernatural Kingdom Identity” series. I’m Randy Crane, from Leaving Conformity Coaching.
We’ve spent 4 sessions now gaining clarity on who God is, on your Supernatural Kingdom Identity, and how those affect your actions and attitudes. You have value. You have worth. You have significance. Isn’t that nice? You feel better about yourself and can get on with life now, right?
Not quite! Everything we’ve talked about so far requires changing and renewing our minds.
But this isn’t just to make you feel good about God, or about yourself. We start from understanding who God is. Then we can start to grasp our Supernatural Kingdom Identity in Him. We define words like success, significance, and value as He defines them. And then we begin to live that out in our actions and attitudes. And one way you can do that, which will affect virtually every other area of your life, is to define “success” properly.
Success means different things to different people, so how do you define it? Not just the Sunday School answer; be completely honest. This is between you and God.
If God were to look at your life, how would He define success for you?
God’s measure of success involves our obedience and faithfulness to Him, regardless of opposition and personal cost. His measure of success is whether or not we are being loyal to Him in our personal relationship with Him and in our life, and whether we are accomplishing His goals & purposes for our life.
John 17:4 – “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.”
Success is not measured by the kind of profession you’re in or how much you add on for yourself. Success is measured by how faithful you are toward His calling for your and in exercising the talents, gifts, skills, abilities, and passions that He’s entrusted to you.
John Maxwell said, “Success is…knowing your purpose in life, growing to reach your maximum potential, and sowing seeds that benefit others.”
Of course, part of this success means identifying the calling & talents He has given you, and then being a good steward of them. That may mean that you’re successful by the common definitions, too, but that’s not the goal. Success is being who God made you to be, and living faithfully in that. At times that may be easy, but at other times it may be very difficult. There will be challenges to overcome and maybe some hard decisions to make. But true success, success as God defines it, is worth it!
Now, with an understanding of who God is, your true identity in Him, and His definition of success in mind, let me encourage you to set yourself up for success. I want you to get incredible value from this course, so I’m going to give you one of my very best tools for this so you can start doing it today.
In 1953, when Walt Disney was looking for someone to determine the economic feasibility of the best location for a new project unlike anything attempted before—Disneyland—he contracted with Stanford Research Institute, or SRI, and the project was assigned to Buzz Price.
Without the benefit of computers, Buzz combed through demographics, census surveys, land records, and more, to find the best location. Ten sites were proposed and ranked, with the #1 choice being 160 acres of orange groves at the intersection of the Santa Ana Freeway and Harbor Boulevard. Walt chose this site, but moved it ¼ mile south, away from the freeway.
12 years later, Buzz and his team at SRI measured the center of gravity for the Southern California area, and it was found to be 4 miles from Sleeping Beauty Castle. Not too shabby!
Buzz went on to work with the Walt Disney company until Walt’s death in 1966, and then continued on for a several years after that. When Buzz was named a Disney Legend in 2001, Michael Eisner said, “Buzz Price was as much responsible for the success of the Walt Disney Company as anybody except Walt Disney himself, in that he worked with Walt not only on finding the sites of both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, but on many other new initiatives, like the 1964 New York World’s Fair and the 1960 Winter Olympics in the Lake Tahoe area.”
All of this put Buzz in the unique position of knowing how Walt Disney approached challenges from a strategic standpoint. He says, “In working with Walt, I quickly learned the language of ‘Yes, if’. It would be more useful to him in editing and adjusting the flow of his ideas than a relentless harangue of ‘no, because.’
“‘Yes, if’ was the language of an enabler, pointing to what needed to be done to make the possible plausible. Walt liked this language. ‘No, because’ is the language of a deal killer. ‘Yes, if’ is the approach of a deal maker. Creative people thrive on ‘yes, if’.”
That’s the tool, and you’ll be amazed at how effective it is. Develop the habit of framing all challenges and negative talk into a “Can I…?” question, then answer it with, “Yes, if…”. Don’t allow yourself a ‘No, because…” answer.
“No because” holds you back. “Yes if” frees you to move forward. And if you’re moving forward in your Supernatural Kingdom Identity, with a full and balanced understanding of who God is and who you are in Him, incredible things can happen.
It’s usually easier to say no, but things usually turn out better when you turn it around and think it through and answer, “Yes, if…”.
In the next and final video, I’ll talk about what the next step is to take all of this information and use it to live out God’s unique purpose for you.
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For Reflection:
- How do you define success? Is it different now than before you watched this video?
- What is one situation or challenge you’re facing right now where you can use “Yes, if…” thinking? Try it now. What new perspective or possibilities does it bring?
- Do you truly want to know how to live out God’s unique purpose for you? On a scale of 1 – 10, how important is this to you?