Instinct: The Power to Unleash Your Inborn Drive (8 page)

In the galing winds and impending danger, they find that the wings they never utilized in their previous comfortable nest find use in the fall and give birth to their flight. To ensure that they will not come back to the nest, she stirs the nest with her beak so that the prickly briars protrude and make it impossible for them to find comfort where they once rested.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been forced to find my wings by the discomfort of staying where I was. I’ve felt like an eaglet more than once, forced out many times by circumstances I couldn’t control. I’ve screamed inwardly a thousand reasons why the time wasn’t right or I wasn’t prepared. If you are like me, you tell yourself, “But I don’t have the experience or the training or the education or the relationships or the resources necessary to take such a dangerous leap!”

All of which may be true. But there are times when we must disregard the data and distance our doubts if we are ever going to achieve greater velocity toward the goals that roar within us. We must follow our instinct to fly.

O
nce you’ve overcome some of your fears and left the cage (or the nest), you must keep flying. Once you’ve conquered certain limitations, you never stop. The dreams may get bigger, the challenges more daunting, the opportunities more thrilling, but your journey in the wild of life never ends. Once you’ve mastered the new wild, it eventually seems too domestic. It gives way to new opportunities and the next wild is always before you.

However, sometimes the key to following your instincts to the next level of success is all in the timing. It’s not only a matter of when you jump, but your pace as you transition to the next new jungle. Or, think of it this way: eagles may be jumpers but lions are not! Sometimes we must stroll out of the cage gradually rather than jump into the jungle suddenly.

When trainers introduce domesticated lions back into the wild, they do so in incremental steps. The lions leave their cages and spend time in their natural habitat before returning to the cages, then venture out for a longer duration on their next excursion with the trainers. Eventually, they remain in the wild and never return to the domesticated home that once enclosed them.

This model works equally as well and is obviously more cautious and perhaps more practical for many people wanting to follow their instincts out of the cage. Please understand that I do not advocate taking foolish risks and closing doors and burning bridges without some semblance of support from which to draw your sustenance. It’s one thing to take a huge risk, but it’s another thing to live in the jungle on the first day!

So sometimes we stroll out of our cage, explore the terrain, return to our cage for a while, explore the jungle again, and so on until we can navigate the wilderness and forge some semblance of a way forward. To put it another way, we must look ahead and anticipate what we can handle. Scripture tells us that we must count the cost before we build our house, and the same is true with leaving the cage. If you know you don’t have resources to support you for the first year and beyond, then don’t quit your job to explore the jungle of your instinctive passion. Instead, start a side
business or take a class; find a mentor or volunteer in an organization centered on your interests.

This is a safer model of leaving your cage and it balances the external realities of your responsibilities with the relentless longing of your internal instincts. When you take baby steps, you discover the strength of your legs before you try to run. You’re still on a high wire, but there’s a safety net if you fall.

While I’ve done my share of jumping, I’ve also practiced this more gradual method. When we moved to Dallas, for the first couple months I continued to preach at my church in West Virginia before flying to my new church home and preaching there. Many weekends, I would be in a pulpit in Charleston on Sunday morning and in another pulpit in Dallas on Sunday night. It wasn’t easy, but it provided a bit of a safety net as I prepared to leave the security of my past life behind.

You can be wholehearted in pursuing where your instincts are leading you and still be practical. Please understand that following your instincts does not mean you have to make a dramatic departure from everything that you currently consider your cage. My friends in publishing tell me how many people they encounter who quit their day jobs so that they can write best sellers—even though they know nothing about publishing and very little about writing!

Similarly, my friends in the music world describe
individuals who leave everything behind and yet have not prepared themselves for the realities of their new jungle as they compete for performance opportunities and producers’ attention. So look before you leap. Sometimes it’s better to remain in the cage until after feeding time rather than risk starving in the jungle!

It’s perfectly normal to be terrified of making changes. And it’s perfectly normal to stumble, fall, and have to get up again and again as you make your way through your new environment. However, don’t rush when you don’t have to! And don’t burn bridges behind you—enough of them will catch fire by themselves! When you lose your job, then you have no choice but to enter the jungle. But if you don’t have to shut the door of the cage, then leave it cracked open so that you can retreat there as needed.

As terrifying as it may be, sometimes the best thing in the world that can happen to us is for the cage door to slam shut. When the door closes on yesterday, we must bring our energies to today. When we can’t go back, then we’re forced to go forward! Without the safety of the cage tempting us to reverse course, we must bring all that we are—our creativity,
resiliency, innovation, and resourcefulness—to our new jungle.

One of the best things that ever happened to the Children of Israel was when God closed the Red Sea after their triumphant exodus out of Egypt. The water opened before them so that they could escape, but it also closed behind them, preventing them from returning. And later, over the course of the forty years it took them to reach the Promised Land, many of them grumbled and complained that their lives were better back in Egypt—despite the fact that they had been slaves there! But reaching this point of no return required them to depend on God, his provision, and one another in ways that returning to Egypt—or going immediately to the Promised Land—never could have achieved.

When I decided to bring Megafest to Dallas recently, I faced scary, uncharted waters of my own. It had been over five years since the previous Megafest in Atlanta, and so much had changed. Over 50 percent of the staff that had assisted in Atlanta had moved on to new opportunities and new locales. The majority of the members of my church had not witnessed or experienced Megafest from the inside out.

So many questions, many logistical, loomed before me as I prepared to bring this spectacular event to the place I now call home. Could the public transportation systems adequately handle the influx of tens and
even hundreds of thousands of people? Atlanta has long had its MARTA public transit system, which worked quite effectively at transporting attendees to our venues, but would Dallas’s DART system handle the influx just as well?

Atlanta drew many people from the South, East, and Midwest because it was within a day’s driving distance from Charlotte, Birmingham, Nashville, and Jacksonville. The same would not be true for these people when coming to Dallas. Would they still come?

Many people saw that we were holding Megafest in Dallas and assumed it was a slam-dunk, no-brainer kind of decision. But what many failed to realize is that I felt more vulnerable, more afraid, more insecure hosting it here than anywhere else! If it flopped, it would be in my own backyard; its flaws would be front and center for all who knew me best—my church, my community, and my city. This was vulnerability times ten!

So my team and I took nothing for granted. We worked harder and longer to make Megafest in Dallas a bigger success than we had before in Atlanta. Leading up to the event, I traveled and promoted it extensively: London, Australia, New York, Chicago, and across our country. I conducted media interviews with the
Today
show,
Entertainment Tonight
, and every major newspaper, magazine, and online site that would have me. I knew I had to do everything in my power to ensure
success; I could take nothing for granted—certainly not past successes.

When there’s no turning back, your instincts will lead you forward.

As you leave the cage, the transition into the jungle will definitely be challenging. You take a few steps forward and a few back. You stumble and fall and get back on your feet. Such is the way we learn to lean forward and keep stumbling toward success. For the newborn baby, as well as for a first-time mother, those first attempts at nursing can end in painful disappointment for both. The baby has to learn how to receive nourishment from the nipple when it is offered. The mother has to learn patience and stamina as she passes the nutrients of her milk to her child.

In other words, it is totally normal to struggle as you leave the cage and acclimate to the new wilderness before you. Toddlers typically stumble, bumble, and trip before learning to walk. But they keep getting back on their feet and tottering forward until they no longer have to think about keeping their balance. Similarly, when learning to ride a bicycle, whether it be as a child or an adult, one is bound to lose control and crash until the complexity of simultaneous skills becomes second nature.

Many people do not get admitted to college, pass the bar, or become licensed in their field until after several failed attempts. But they persevere, undeterred, wiser and more committed to achieving their goal than they were during the previous attempt. My mama always said, “The world is our university and everyone you encounter is your teacher. When you wake up each day, make sure you go to school!”

It’s not how many times you have failed; it’s what you’ve learned each time you got back on your feet. Did losing that job a few years ago help you discover the kind of work environment where you can thrive? Did auditioning for that role you didn’t get make you more determined to practice harder the next time? Did declaring bankruptcy for your home business enable you to manage your finances better for your new company? Each time you fail, there’s a clue to your future success.

We need to fail boldly if we want to succeed extravagantly! So often successful people do not reveal their failures—and why should they? We cannot fault them for not wanting to make their mistakes front and center, especially when they have clearly overcome those obstacles to reach the summits of their particular mountains. But we must remember that the person whizzing by you as you struggle to keep pedaling has just as many skinned knees as you do! Successful people follow their instincts beyond the emotions of their failures.

Let me share one of the most educational experiences of my life—or, to put it another way, one of my most spectacular flops! Early in my career as a pastor, I decided to stage a production of my Gospel play based on my book,
Woman, Thou Art Loosed!,
and take it on tour. Talk about a comedy of errors! Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong!

I was trying to preach at the same time the show was going up, dividing my attention and keeping me stressed on stage and in the pulpit. Rehearsals were disastrous, and the blocking seemed clumsy and awkward. Ticket sales were so poor that we had to give away a large number at the last minute to fill the auditoriums we’d booked. I soon realized I had hired the wrong people and ended up having to fire some of them the same week we opened.

There was simply so much I did not know about how to open a show and take it on the road. I didn’t know that you open it in small markets to work out the kinks before taking it into large cities. I had no clue how to effectively market and promote this kind of dramatic endeavor. I didn’t know which people to hire and which to avoid, or which venues were better than others and which to avoid altogether because of how they’d scalp you!

This experience presented a great opportunity to give
up. I had invested my own money in it and couldn’t afford to keep it going for long. I couldn’t afford to ascend the steep learning curve that continued to loom before me. And yet… I couldn’t afford to quit. I loved seeing a story inside my imagination come to life on the stage. I felt compelled to share a message with an audience hungry for hope. It wasn’t just the financial and emotional investment in the show; it was the investment in my future I could not afford to give up.

So I knew I had to find a way to keep going, one way or another. You’ve heard the saying “fake it ’til you make it”? Well, I “faithed” it ’til I made it! I learned the hard way how to make cast changes at the last minute and how to market plays and sell tickets so that the cast could get paid. I learned about lighting, music, theater acoustics, and the difference between amateur and professional actors.

I also met a young playwright and actor named Tyler Perry who was touring with a play of his own,
I Know I’ve Been Changed
. After being so amazed at his dexterity with language, storytelling, and acting, I requested a meeting with him and asked him to help me with the script for my own play. He graciously agreed, and we formed a friendship and professional relationship that continues to this day.

Through working with Tyler, I realized that often when you’re laboring to come out of the cage, you must follow someone who’s already a few paces ahead of you. These other risk takers already know where to
find water, where to look for food, and who to avoid in the jungle. They will often help you if you ask and allow them to impart the wisdom they’ve acquired in the wild.

As you can see, I learned so much from that string of painful mistakes and frustrating miscues. Should I have quit after that first disastrous run? Probably! But could I quit? No, my instincts wouldn’t allow it.

And for good reason. Then I could never have imagined that now, over three decades later, I would be making films, consulting on scripts, casting, filming locations, and budgets. The exhilaration I felt at the premiere of my first major movie,
Woman, Thou Art Loosed
, could never have occurred if I had given up. If I had followed logic, I would have lost so much more than the education that can only come from mistakes and the school of hard knocks. Following my instincts, even through what felt like the valley of the shadow but was actually just a new jungle, led me to the fulfillment of my gifts.