Craig Groeschel

You mess up, you fail, you fall short, you try something that doesn't work, that's not gonna kill you.

But if you're successful and you don't have accountability and strength around you, you will likely self-destruct.

And it doesn't sound like a great place to end a New Year's podcast, but it's ridiculously important.

And for me, when I was younger, I was afraid of failure.

I was afraid of letting people down or making the wrong call.

But I actually learned that failing is many times easier than managing success because

If you're not careful, success does something to you.

Yes, you grow in your confidence, but there's also something subtle and dangerous that if left unchecked, success isolates and insulates.

And this is horrible.

If you're not careful, the more successful you become, the more isolated you are and the more lonely you are, and you have to intentionally work against that.

Because without the right people around you, without people that have the authority to speak into your life and leadership, you are more vulnerable than you can imagine.

And I'll give you three reasons that are super important.

One is the more successful you become, the less likely people are to challenge you.

They just kind of let you go off and do dumb things.

The second reason is the more gifted you appear, the more blind spots you can ignore.

You're gifted, so you're getting things done.

And so if you've got a blind spot, nobody even, you don't notice, they don't notice, and you think everything's fine, but it's not.

You get a real vulnerability.

The third thing is the more success you experience, the more entitled you're tempted to feel.

And this is dangerous beyond measure.