Your Next Season Requires a Different You
The Strengths That Built Your Last Win Might Be Quietly Sabotaging Your Next One
Before we get started with this week’s Examined journal, I’m excited to let you know that I have a really exciting announcement tomorrow. I’ll be officially announcing the release of one of the most important projects I’ve been working on and this community will be the first to know! Keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow.
Now…back to our regularly scheduled Monday journal.
There a mistake that many successful leaders make in seasons of growth and transition. They will walk into that new season carrying the same toolbox that made them successful in the old one. Because of that past success, they carry the same instincts, same strategies and same grip on control that once felt like a gift.
And within a few months, we notice something strange. The things they were once known for are now the things that are holding them back.
There’s something very important about the story of Peter in the bible. So often, christian circles point to the reality of Jesus calling a brash fisherman to build his church on.
But a truth we never really talk about is the reality that Peter, the brash fisherman, could not have led the church at Pentecost if he never changed.
The same hands that hauled nets on the Sea of Galilee, the same gut instinct that made him the loudest voice in every room, the same confidence that let him jump out of a boat first, none of it was built to stand in front of three thousand strangers in Jerusalem and preach a sermon that would launch the global church.
Jesus knew that.
So the three years between the fishing boat and the sermon were not only preparation. They were demolition and reconstruction.
Jesus took Peter apart piece by piece.
He let him walk on water and then sink in it.
He let him swear undying loyalty and then deny he ever knew the man.
He let Peter fail loudly at the very thing he was most sure of, and then He rebuilt him into someone the old Peter would not have recognized.
By the time the upper room came, the fisherman was gone. We don’t love that because it challenges the very identities that we’ve come to depend so deeply on.
But, look at the evidence. The new Peter waited ten days in a locked room because Jesus told him to stay put until the Spirit arrived. The old Peter would have likely been out the door by day two, organizing something, fixing something, talking. Patience like that doesn’t come from a personality tweak. It comes from a man who has been rebuilt.
The Tools That Built Yesterday Will Not Build Tomorrow
I have walked into new seasons holding old tools more times than I want to admit.
Every time I tried, a similar thing happened. The skills that made me effective in the last chapter started working against me in the new one.
The knowledge that anchored me in one season hardened into stubbornness in the next. The hands-on involvement that built something from nothing turned into micromanagement the moment the thing outgrew my reach. The patience that carried me through a long wait became passivity right when God was asking me to make the difficult decisions.
Nothing was wrong with any of those qualities when they were first formed. In fact, they served their intended season well.
They just came with an expiration date I did not want to admit because it felt like stalling.
For years I believed good leadership meant managing people well. So, I did. I built the schedules. I tracked the tasks. I kept everything on time. That worked beautifully when the team was small and the targets were simple.
Then God started expanding what we were building, and those same skills became a ceiling. The team no longer needed someone to manage tasks. It needed someone to multiply leaders. And I kept showing up with last season’s playbook, wondering why the room felt smaller every week.
Why Letting Go Feels Like Losing Yourself
Transitions throw you off balance because you are doing two hard things at once.
You are learning new things while unlearning old things that used to work.
Walking away from a weakness is easy. Walking away from a strength cuts deep, because your identity is wrapped around it.
That strength is part of how you see yourself. Surrendering it can feel like surrendering you.
I have lived through seasons where progress crawled. I wanted the results to match the effort I was pouring in. So, I pushed harder because in my mind forward motion mattered more than waiting on God.
It cost me. It came back to me in the form of strained relationships, lost momentum and a team that felt divided instead of led.
Those seasons exposed something I did not want to see but really need to understand. That I trusted outcomes more than I trusted God’s vision. The very drive that helped me build in one chapter was the thing keeping me from building in the next.
Here is what God taught me in those seasons. Slow, difficult progress is not wasted time. He was working under the surface on parts of my leadership that would not have survived the next level. I could not see it happening. That did not mean it was not happening.
Formation Rarely Feels Good While It Is Happening
Your next season might not need a better version of who you already are. It may need a fundamentally different one.
And the process of becoming that person almost always involves losing pieces of yourself you assumed were permanent.
When Jesus called Zacchaeus down from the tree, He did not just adjust his perspective. He sat down in his house and rebuilt his whole life from the inside. The same thing happened with Peter. Jesus did not merely train him for ministry. He tore down the fisherman and built an apostle in his place.
So the uncomfortable season you are in, the one where old habits are being pulled up by the root and new ones have not fully grown in yet, might not be punishment at all. It might be the exact place God wants you.
Paul knew that ground well. Writing to a church under pressure, he said:
Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
Romans 5:3-4 NIV
Read the chain Paul builds there, again.
Suffering does not break the leader who stays in it. It produces something greater.
The pressure is not the enemy of your formation. The pressure is sometimes the method.
What Worked Then Will Not Work Now
Leaders get stuck because they refuse to release the thing that made them successful in the beginning.
The founder who cannot stop putting his hands on every decision when the organization is begging for vision. The pastor still preaching to 100 people the same way he preached to 15, wondering why it no longer lands. The executive who built the whole company on raw hustle and is now burning out the team trying to scale that same energy onto people who cannot carry it.
What got you here will not get you there. The sooner you make peace with that, the sooner your hands are free to build what comes next.
When the progress feels slow, I keep reminding myself that faithfulness always produces something, even when nothing is visible yet. God does His quietest work below the surface, long before the results break ground. The right perspective can turn a demanding season into a defining one.
The Question You Need to Sit With
Is God forming something in you instead of delivering something through you in this season?
If you are standing in a transition right now and it feels like everything you knew how to do suddenly stopped working, hear me on this. You may not be failing.
You may be standing in the middle of your own demolition and reconstruction.
I know that is tough to hear when you are in it, but the discomfort is not a sign you are sliding backward. It is a sign God is preparing you for something you could never have carried as the person you used to be.
The old tools got you here are not always meant to build what comes next.
And that is exactly how it is supposed to work.
Be patient, Leader.
— Jared