Didn’t See it Coming: Overcoming the Seven Greatest Challenges That No One Expects and Everyone Experiences by Carey Nieuwhof

Didn’t See it Coming: Overcoming the Seven Greatest Challenges That No One Expects and Everyone Experiences by Carey Nieuwhof was one of my favorite books of 2018 and one that I think every leader should read. Everyone will see themselves in one (or more) of the seven struggles he talks about.

My favorite chapter was the section on cynicism, which I’ve written about here.

22 leadership quotes from @cnieuwhof.

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Here are 22 quotes from the book that stood out to me and will hopefully encourage you to get it:

  1. Cynicism begins not because you don’t care but because you do care.
  2. Most cynics are former optimists.
  3. Hope is one of cynicism’s first casualties.
  4. Busyness is the enemy of wonder.
  5. Character, not competency, determines capacity.
  6. Perhaps the hardest part is that eventually your life and mine will get reduced to a single sentence.
  7. Competency gets you in the room. Character keeps you in the room.
  8. Confession and progress are inexorably linked. You won’t address what you don’t confess.
  9. Healthy people treat reasons as explanations, not justification.
  10. The leaders I admire most and who have accomplished the most tend to be people who never seem in a rush, who have all the time in the world.
  11. Unchecked, most of us live in the decade where a lot of our tastes, knowledge, and experiences were shaped.
  12. The more successful you are, the less likely you are to change.
  13. One sure sign of insecurity is that your opinion of yourself rises and falls with how you perform or what others say about you.
  14. There’s a difference between taking things seriously and taking things personally.
  15. Insecure people struggle with celebration.
  16. If you’re insecure, someone else’s victory means your loss, with the opposite also applying.
  17. Only humility can get you out of what pride got you into.
  18. Humility is never attractive to the people who need it most.
  19. Someone once said that 70 percent of discipleship is a good night’s sleep.
  20. Ministry is a series of ungrieved losses.
  21. If you want to beat emptiness, find a mission that’s bigger than you.
  22. Self-aware people understand not only what their own emotions and actions are but also how their emotions and actions affect others.