Minute With Mallon: The Lie That’s Quietly Holding You Back!
Welcome to Minute with Mallon!
Something I Taught:
At the beginning of March I spent nine or ten days in Kenya with a group of 18 men working primarily with the Maasai tribe. This was our eighth trip, and we have seen God work in so many ways through it.
Each morning we gathered for a devotional. A different man led each day, and every single one of them was outstanding.
One of the talks was about the lies we tell ourselves. We all have internal conversations running in our minds that simply aren’t true.
After the talk, we were asked to pair up and share one lie we may have believed about ourselves.
The young man I paired up with was named Tyler.
Tyler told me that growing up his parents often introduced him as “the quiet one” or “the shy one.” That was how they differentiated him from his siblings, and over time he began to believe it.
“I’m the quiet one.”
“I’m the shy one.”
The problem was that this belief had followed him into adulthood.
Now here’s what struck me about Tyler.
When I say he’s talented, it’s actually an understatement. He’s extraordinarily intelligent and can do things with a computer that I don’t know anyone else who can do. He has also built a very successful and lucrative business at a young age.
The problem wasn’t Tyler’s ability. It was the story he believed about himself.
Years ago I heard a man named Brian Tracy talk about something he called the Law of Expectation.
The law says this:
Whatever we expect with feeling tends to become our own self-fulfilling prophecy.
Tyler had been expecting the wrong thing. Somewhere along the way it had been programmed into him that he shouldn’t speak up. I’m sure his parents never intended that to happen, but it did.
So we wrote down a new statement:
“I am a man who confidently speaks up naturally.”
Then we made a plan.
Every single day Tyler will speak up confidently at least once—even if he doesn’t feel confident when he does it.
What I know will happen is this: through repetition and by stepping outside his comfort zone, speaking up will eventually become natural.
Over time he will begin doing it unconsciously—without hesitation.
So I challenged him to do this every day for a year.
Yes… a full year!
What I do know is it may take him just a few weeks for the change in thinking and confidence to take place, but the change will happen. I have no doubt this will allow him to live up to his God-given abilities.
And it made me wonder… what belief might you be carrying about yourself that simply isn’t true?
Don’t rush past that question too quickly.
Something to Ponder:
“Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.”
M. Scott Peck
Something I Learned:
Recently I discovered something that has been pretty helpful — and Tyler from the story above actually showed it to me!
I tend to think faster than I type, and sometimes that slows down capturing ideas. An app called Wispr Flow solves that problem. You simply speak, and it instantly turns your words into clean, well-written text that you can use in emails, notes, documents, or just for capturing thoughts.
It’s surprisingly accurate and much faster than typing. If you like tools that help you think and work more efficiently, this one is worth checking out.
As a matter of fact, I wrote this entire newsletter using it. It saves a huge amount of time speaking instead of typing!
You can learn more here:
Something I Saw:
Peanut Butter & Jelly on a rock in the middle of Kenya! 😋
To your growth,
Robert
