Don’t Miss your Message Because It Came from the Wrong Messenger

For those of you that don’t know, I’m a PK, yep, a preacher’s kid. I guess I’m a double PK because both of my parents were/are preachers. If you’re a PK like me or grew up anywhere near the church, you have probably heard this saying or something similar – Don’t miss your message because it came from the wrong messenger. It is true in the work world as well. Sometimes there are people that give us the best advice and we ignore it because it didn’t come from the person with the title, position, or power. Or worse yet, we follow horrible advice because it came from the person with the title, position, or power and we think to ourselves, “that doesn’t sound quite right, but they said it, they have the position, so it must be right.”

That very thing happened to me this week. Someone very close to me suggested that I listen to a particular sermon. They told me that I probably needed to hear it because it was about rest and I’d been extremely busy lately. They sent me the link to the sermon, and I thought to myself, “I will listen to it when I have time” and I just filed it away. Now this particular individual is a college student, one that has few responsibilities, and in my mind couldn’t possibly understand what it takes to be a parent, a spouse, run a household, hold an executive position in corporate America, and run a few entrepreneurial ventures simultaneously. I put the message they sent me on the back burner. However, because the young folks in my life are literally my heartbeats, I wanted to keep my word and listen to the sermon because I’d promised I would. I finally listened to the sermon and when I tell you that the message was tailor made for me, it was tailor made for me. The message, “your blessing is your resting”. I almost shouted right here at my desk. When the sermon concluded I texted (because that’s how the young folks communicate) a very heartfelt thanks.

The sermon is not the point of this blog though, the point is that I almost missed the message that I so desperately needed because it was not wrapped in the package, I thought it should be wrapped in. It wasn’t given to me by an award-winning author, world-renowned motivational speaker, CEO, or someone I’d deemed worthy to be advising me. It was one of the young people in my life that I’d poured so much into, trying to pour into me and I almost missed it. I almost got in my own way. Now listen, you must have trusted advisors, mentors, coaches, etc., but you can also learn from everyone and every situation. As I reflected on this past week, and it was a rough one, I realized that I needed to take my own advice. I’d done a ton of study on reverse mentorship but wasn’t putting those principles into action in my own life. We live in a world that is full of information that you can utilize to continue to grow and develop. The world is moving at warp speed and sometimes it is the youth in our lives that know better than we do. Sometimes it is the person with less experience that can help achieve our goals. For me it is my nephew sending me a sermon that I really needed to hear, my daughter teaching me the ins and outs of Instagram and hashtags, my son saying, “mommy only old people use Facebook, you need a YouTube channel”. Don’t limit yourself to only listening to those that have title, position, and power; learn from everyone (even if you are learning what NOT to do). The world is ever evolving and changing. You should be ever evolving and growing. Don’t miss your message because it came from the wrong messenger.