What we are going to be talking about today is progressing in transition. I don’t know about anyone else, but I do like being in control of what happens in my life. That’s no secret. Well, I would like to be in control because if this thing goes south, I can hurry up and get it together and try to fix this thing before it just blows all up. Or, you know, just having that whole thing, me and God, we battle about that.
I learned to submit this year because COVID has taught all of us a couple of things. This pandemic taught me a lot about being out of control and being in transition. And one of the things is that, sometimes when we’re in transition, we feel like we’re stuck because we don’t know sometimes.
You don’t know what’s going to happen next. So, there’s the known transition. And then there’s the unknown transition. So, the known transition, is like maybe you’re going from one job to the next, in the career and you just left your other job and you have a new job that’s coming. And for a fact what’s going to happen with this is, where I’m going, this is where I’ve been hired.
And so, you have these processes that occur during that known transition. And then you have transitions like the ones that God seems to love putting all of us in, which is the unknown transition.
You often don’t even know what’s about to happen next. You have no idea what is around the corner, and you’re just in this trusting trance. Like you’re in this position to where you just have to trust God, that he’s not going to screw up your life.
Like, you’re just in this place where you’re like God, all right. It would be nice to have a little bit of cliff notes or something. Can’t I know what’s happening next? or I mean, what’s going on? And God is just like, silent. All right, God, you’re not saying anything. So, I’m just going to have to continue to trust you in this season of transition.
And one thing that everyone has to understand about transition is that, it can happen without your permission. Transition can happen without your permission. God doesn’t need your permission to take you from one stage in your life to the next stage in your life. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t need your permission for a lot of things. He may ask you rhetorical questions, and you answer them but at the end of the day, like transitions are just going to happen.
So somewhere down the line for your life because you might not be in a transition right now, somewhere down the road for your life transition is going to happen. Whether you give God permission to allow that transition to happen or not, but transition can either decelerate or accelerate your progress.
You might have goals, you might have some dreams and visions things that you’re just like, this is what I’m definitely going to work on or I know that this is going to turn out this way for me or, I’m going to be married by the time I’m twenty-eight. I’ll have children, all of that stuff, you’re by forty-two and you like glory. Then I’ll tell you when that be married to have children by the time, I was 28.
You can have all of these goals, academic goals, health goals, financial goals, whatever, some of you may have had financial goals, to be at a certain place in your in your finances this year, and then COVID came and maybe, not saying you lost your job. Maybe some of you did lose your job. Maybe some of you have lost your stocks, maybe, when the stock market just was going all over the place, that was a different type of transition for you. And, so, transition can either decelerate or accelerate your progress moving towards those goals.
But what you have to understand is the way that you perceive what happens during this transition. It definitely influences your progress, even if you’re in a deceleration moment. Okay, even if that transition seems like it is causing things to be held up, you had some momentum. Now things are slowing down and you’re just like, wait a minute. This is not how it’s supposed to be working out for me in 2020, your perception influences your progress. And I’m talking to fellow leaders And I do believe that you have some leadership ability in you.
I’m talking to global leaders, I mainly deal with millennial leaders, but global leaders, millennial leaders, your perception influences your progress.
So even if you are stuck in America for the time being, and you are having to navigate all of this change in this transition, and prepare for a semester to be completely online with new software that the university has just given you and given your colleagues, doesn’t matter what it is, your perception, if you have a good attitude about it, if you have a good attitude and you’re like Lord, this is something new, that I can be able to add to my CV. I’m with an international university, you know, with a Sino British program.
So, I’m working, basically with the program that I’m in, we’re working with China and with the UK, and I’m here in America. So, your perception has a lot to do with your progress. Because if you perceive that you are being held back, if you perceive that things are not in this transition that’s just really decelerating. My progress is causing me to lose out on some things, that negativity is going to fester within you. That negativity is going to cause poison to just spread all over your progress, and then you’re not going to be progressing at all. Your mouth will follow what your mind says.
And if you just haven’t had all of these negative perceptions, you speak out that negativity, you speak out that bad, it’s going to affect your reality. So have a good positive attitude about your transition. It might be hard. I know, trust me, I totally understand. It might be hard dealing with the transition at this moment.
But you have to cast down every vein and negative imagination as soon as it pops up, because it will affect the way you perceive what you’re going through at this moment. And your perception is the thing that actually causes the acceleration with your progress or the deceleration. Because if you perceive that it’s something good, or something that you’re supposed to learn from at the moment, you’re going to keep going, you’re going to keep moving forward and progress is inevitable. You want to keep moving forward.
So, transition is inevitable, but so is progress if you keep moving forward. There is no way that you cannot move forward in the right direction if you keep moving, if you keep moving forward, you still have some type of activity. You got some action going towards your goals. Progress is inevitable. That’s just life, transition happens. But progress does too. If you keep moving. You can get from point A to point Z. If you just keep moving forward.
Okay, you might have to go through all of that just to get to your final destination. But you have to if you just keep moving forward, progress isn’t evitable. You got to put some type of action, some type of life, some type of activity, to your dreams, to your goals, to your task, to your projects, regardless of whether or not you’re stuck in a transition. So, a transition is not an excuse for you to stop working, or for you to give up.
A tough transition is not a valid excuse for you to be like, maybe this wasn’t something I was supposed to do. Maybe it’s something you’re supposed to fight for, so that you can get to the other side. Because progress is inevitable if you just keep moving.
So, here’s my challenge for you, I want you to take a moment to think about a project or a task that you feel is stuck or is not moving forward. Maybe you had a little bit of momentum going at the end of 2019 and even in the beginning of 2020, but then, everything got hit, things begin to shut down and so did your dreams. So, it seems like your progress just stopped as well. Ask yourself, what can I do something within my power, what can I do to get this project, this task, this dream, this goal, this baby, what can I do to get it moving in the right direction again?
But, if you would like accountability with getting moving like, hey, I know that I have about four months left. First of all, 2021 is like tomorrow. I don’t understand how it was just February I was only supposed to be here in the states for like two weeks. It’s been a real long time. But also know that my time is winding up. So, I have been working overtime on so many different projects, making sure that I have them together before I return to China because, these passive sources of income they need to be rolling in while I’m making active income. Teaching because that’s not passive at all.
Okay? But while I’m taking care of that I need other stuff to still keep moving in the right direction, keep progressing. Just because I will be transitioning back to China doesn’t mean that certain goals and dreams that God gave me while I was here, that they should stop moving in the right direction doesn’t work like that. So, again, ask yourself the question, what is something that I gave up on? Or that I just got frustrated with because I’m in a transition? What is something that I can do to get moving in the right direction again?
I believe in you, your goals, your dreams, your talents, your abilities, your character and your reputation and if you are in a place right now, and in a transition where your reputation is being rebuilt, let the Lord rebuild it because, if you can over me, you can do it for you. I’m telling you about that He can take you far if you don’t give up. I understand transitions are so tough, but you’re tougher. You’re much tougher than you believe. So, don’t give up. Keep the faith. Keep fighting and keep moving in the right direction so that you can progress in transition. And share this with someone else who may be feeling traumatized by transition, let them know that they can still progress even in transition.