Moving from being a personality to a character podcast notes

Lebron James
Meryl Streep
Dwayne Johnson
Tom Brady
Taylor Swift
Jerry Seinfeld
Stephen Curry

These are modern day heroes.  These heroes are personalities.  They are entertainers. They are funny.  They lead interesting lives.  They wear great clothes and blow up the internet on the runway.  They are fun to watch.  Interesting to follow on their Instagram feed.

Personalities are interesting and exciting and good looking.  Characters simply have character.  This is what those heroes used to look like. See if you can name these.

Martin Luther King
Abraham Lincoln
Billy Graham
Nelson Mandela
Rosa Parks

I got a hold of a great book on character that made it to number one on the Times Bestseller List. It’s called The Road to Character by David Brooks. This is how he begins.

Recently I’ve been thinking about the difference between the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the ones you list on your résumé, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being—whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed. Most of us would say that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé virtues, but I confess that for long stretches of my life I’ve spent more time thinking about the latter than the former. Most of us have clearer strategies for how to achieve career success than we do for how to develop a profound character.

Let’s be honest. Who struggles with this? You have clearer vision for your resume success than your eulogy success?

1) Having character does not mean that people will not take a shot at you

I realize this is kind of a depressing way to begin a series on character. It’s a little demotivating, but it’s my job to give you the dirty details. The reality is, if you develop deep character, and pour yourself into goals that really matter, you’d think that you could get off without a lot of criticism and haters, but unfortunately that is not true. It may even be the opposite.

If you have potential, people will not see it.
If you have great skills and abilities, people will try to take shots at you to bring you down.
I think I’ve told you my leadership philosophy. If you attempt to make a difference, to care for people and change the world, someone, somewhere thinks you’re doing it wrong.
Our history books are full of stories like this.

A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he said “He has no good ideas”
A movie executive looked at Fred Astaires first screen test and gave this evaluation “Can’t act, slightly bald, can dance a little.”
Baseball great Tris Speaker said in 1921 that “Babe Ruth made a big mistake when he gave up pitching.”
I’m reading a book and this week I read this. It’s from the journal of William Johnson.
“We already have the telegraph, providing communications for all who desire it. The added virtues of voice communication at a distance are unclear. Perhaps in the future, some people will wish to hear the voice of another far away, but there cannot be many. For myself, I think Mr. Bell’s tele-phone is a doomed curiosity with no real purpose.”

I read that in a book and quoted it as fact only to realize that Michael Crichton and the book was fiction. But there are people who feel like that.

If you weren’t depressed enough already, I’ve got one more quote for you. This is my favorite. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.”

Bible characters that were soundly criticized. Who makes your list?

2) A person of character doesn’t hurt people on purpose or by accident.

Daniel was neither corrupt nor negligent. In other words he didn’t do evil intentionally, or by accident.

I don’t really like these verses because it takes away my go to move. “I didn’t mean it.” Do you have that move. There are lots of derivatives of that phrase. Maybe you’ll find your go to move in these phrases.
I didn’t mean to hurt you.
I really meant well.
I wasn’t trying to cut you down
I was only joking

If those don’t work we blame our mistakes on circumstances.
I’m sorry I was in a bad mood today
I apologize, life has been crazy lately
You’re right, but if you understood what was going on at work you’d understand

3) The closer we get to God the more our character grows

Daniel “We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God.”.

We will never find any basis for charges against this man unless it has something to do with alcohol
We will never find any basis for charges against this man unless it has something to do with his 2017 taxes
We will never find any basis for charges against this woman unless it has something to do with her love for money
We will never find any basis for charges against this man unless it has something to do with his search history
We will never find any basis for charges against this woman unless we look at her Netflix account

I’ll stop there because the reality is we probably all have some area in our life that would give our enemies basis for charges. Why didn’t Daniel have any basis for charges. Because he was always pursing God. He kept him near. Listen to these verses

Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:22,23

4) A person of character does not stop doing what’s right when it becomes difficult