✍️ Leadership is often spoken about in terms of strategy, influence, and impact. Live2Lead invites us to think bigger, grow stronger, and steward responsibility well. Yet for me, leadership has never been merely a professional framework. It has been deeply personal.

There are books you read with your mind, and then there are books that read you back.

When I read Leading from the Stop by Elias Kanaris in May 2024, I had no idea what I was doing holding a book on leadership in my hands. I had resisted leadership for decades. I avoided titles, stepped sideways from visibility, and quietly convinced myself that leadership belonged to other people.

Through prayer and healing, I later recognised that I had been living suspended between two silent fears: a fear of failure and a fear of success.

Failure felt obvious. Success felt more dangerous.

In my inner world, success in leadership meant people would get trampled on along the way up the ladder. Ambition equalled harm. Advancement equalled someone else’s diminishment. To succeed meant I had failed morally. That was not a theory. That was my lived experience.

Those conclusions were not formed in abstraction. They reached back into workplace experiences that left a young adult quietly resolving, "If this is leadership, then I do not want it."

🪨 That belief kept me small and safe.

So when I opened this book over the weekend, it was not with grand leadership ambition. I was simply curious to learn more about my new boss, whom I had only just discovered was the author. I expected insight into his thinking. I did not expect excavation of my own heart.

I reached the final pages and encountered three simple statements:

1. You’re not in trouble.

2. We believe in you.

3. We’re here to help.

They were not dramatic. They were not layered in complex leadership theory. They were steady, gentle assurances. They looked gentle. Yet, they felt devastating and they completely unravelled me.

On the Monday morning after finishing the book, I found myself sitting in Elias’ office, crying and trying to articulate what had just happened inside me.

“I believe in you,” he said.

“But I don’t,” I heard myself reply.

“That’s OK,” he answered calmly. “We’ll walk through your healing together until God shows you that you’re worthy.”

I was undone.

How could a man of God, who had only known me for a few short weeks, see so much in me that he would believe in me and what I was capable of?🤔 That moment pierced something far deeper than leadership theory ever could.

✍️ Over the weeks that followed, I began to understand that my reaction was not about leadership language alone. They reached down into childhood soil, into places where little conclusions had quietly formed under pressure, into spaces where survival had once felt wiser than trust.

I discovered that each statement carried a shadow in my heart: judgments, expectancies, inner vows, foundational lies.

“You’re not in trouble.”

Somewhere along the line, I had agreed with a different narrative: I am always one step away from being in trouble. If something goes wrong, it must be my fault. If someone is disappointed, I must have failed.

Deep within, I had long carried the expectancy that I must have done something wrong. Even when I could not name it. Even when I tried my best. The atmosphere of tension in early years had trained my nervous system to scan for fault, to brace, to anticipate correction.

The child who learned to read atmospheres became the adult who assumed responsibility for them.

“We believe in you.”

Belief felt dangerous. Expectation felt heavy. Approval felt conditional.

Belief felt fragile. Conditional. Dependent on performance, compliance, or visible success. Quiet inner vows formed beneath the surface: I will not risk too much. I will not disappoint. I will not need anyone’s belief to survive.

If you believe in me, I must not fail you. If I fail you, I lose belonging.

So I worked. I performed. I over-functioned. I carried more than was mine to carry.

“We’re here to help.”

Help once felt unsafe. Help meant exposure. Help meant vulnerability. Help meant the possibility of being misunderstood, minimised, or dismissed.

An inner vow surfaced: I will handle it alone.

Help implied need. Need implied weakness. Weakness felt unsafe.

Somewhere deep inside, I had made an inner vow: I will not need anyone. I will manage. I will cope. I will not be a burden.

🕊️ The Holy Spirit, so kind and so precise, began gently uncovering these hidden agreements. Not with accusation. Not with force. With light. He did not expose these agreements to shame me. He revealed them to free me.

What undid me was not accusation. It was kindness.

I had no capacity for receiving kindness.

Kindness felt like a setup, like a prelude to disappointment, like something that would eventually be withdrawn. My body braced before my mind could reason. My shoulders tightened before my heart could soften. I was always waiting for the guillotine to drop.

When someone said, “You’re not in trouble,” I scanned for the hidden clause.

When someone said, “We believe in you,” I prepared to prove it.

When someone said, “We’re here to help,” I searched for the cost.

Kindness requires openness. Openness requires safety. Safety requires trust.

Trust had always been costly.

Over the next few months, those phrases became familiar companions, especially on the days when I beat myself up over something I had done wrong. Whenever my inner critic rose quickly and mercilessly, rehearsing every flaw and perceived failure, his steady voice would gently anchor me again in truth:

• “You’re not in trouble.”

• “I believe in you.”

• “I'm here to help.”

What once felt confronting slowly became covering.

Freedom did not arrive in a single dramatic breakthrough. It unfolded through awareness. Through tears. Through repentance for vows I did not realise I had made. Through forgiving those who did not know the impact of their words or silences. Through repentance, forgiveness, and deliberate inner healing, the Lord began expanding my capacity to receive what I had always longed for.

🌱 Leadership, I began to see, is not first about influencing others. It is about allowing truth to lead the hidden places of your own heart.

To lead myself, I had to let those three statements settle where fear once lived.

I am not in trouble.

There is no hidden accusation in the Father’s voice. Conviction is specific and redemptive. Shame is vague and suffocating. The difference matters.

We believe in you.

The Lord’s belief is not based on my perfection. It is anchored in His workmanship.

We’re here to help.

The Body of Christ is not a performance stage. It is a family. Families help one another carry weight.

🕯️ What undid me in those pages was not merely leadership wisdom. It was the confrontation of old agreements with living truth.

The little girl who once braced for trouble is learning to rest.

The young woman who feared disappointing belief is learning to receive it.

The adult who vowed self‑sufficiency is learning the humility of help.

Today, I heard him deliver his keynote for the first time since I had worked with him. The principles were familiar. The voice was steady. The message was unchanged.

This time, however, the lessons on leadership landed differently.

🌱 They no longer felt like a threat to my survival. They felt like an invitation to steward influence without harming others. An invitation to lead without trampling. An invitation to succeed without losing my soul.

Leadership, redeemed, is not climbing over people. It is lifting them.

Purified leadership is not proving its worth. It is stewarding responsibility.

Leadership, healed, is not dominance. It is dignity.

🌱 This is what leading from the stop has meant for me: pausing long enough to notice what governs me internally before attempting to guide anyone else externally.

High performance without healed foundations produces exhaustion.

Trust without inner truth produces fragility.

Leadership without relationships is just management.

🪨 Building high performance teams truly does start with building trust, yet trust must first be built within the heart that leads.

It has been well over a year since I last heard those phrases spoken directly to me, yet they have become foundational stones in the way I now relate to others. As I journey with my groups through prayer ministry, I find myself living those same assurances toward those who courageously unpack their fruit in a quest to lay an axe to the root.

When shame rises in them, my response is “You are not in trouble.”

When self-doubt surfaces, my response is “I believe in you.”

When fear whispers that they must manage alone, I remind them, “I am here to help.”

What once healed me has now become something I carry for others. The covering I received, I now extend. The kindness that once felt unbearable has become a steady language of leadership shaped by grace.

Perfect love has been stretching my capacity.

What once triggered fear now invites growth. What once felt like accusation now feels like covering. What once sounded like pressure now sounds like partnership.

This is the leadership Jesus models.

Not grasping. Not climbing. Not securing a position.

Serving.

Giving.

Laying Himself down.

That is the pattern that reshapes my understanding of success.

What once triggered fear now invites growth. What once felt like an accusation now feels like covering. What once sounded like pressure now sounds like partnership.

🕯️ I am learning that I can lead without crushing, rise without trampling, succeed without becoming what I once feared.

Leadership, in Christ, is service shaped by love.

💡Reflection:

 • Where have I equated success with harm? 🤔

 • What kindness do I still struggle to receive? 🤔

 • Which inner vow is the Lord inviting me to release? 🤔

 • What would leadership look like if it flowed from love instead of fear? 🤔

🎺Affirmation:

I am not in trouble. I am believed in. I am helped. I can lead from love, not fear.

🙌 Prayer: 

Father, thank You for exposing the vows that kept my heart guarded. Thank You for teaching me that success does not require harm and that leadership does not require self-protection. Expand my capacity to receive kindness. Root out fear where it still hides. Teach me to lead with dignity, humility, and courage, reflecting the heart of Jesus in every space You entrust to me. 

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.