The People on my Bus

This week I attended a conference at Group Publishing headquarters, while there Mark Devries and Jeff Dunn-Rankin talked about their book The Indispensable Youth Pastor.  They had a lot of good things to talk about, but there was one session that spoke to me the most.

Mark described the concept of your emotional bus.  The people on your bus are all of the voices you have picked up along life’s journey that “speak” into your life.  Some of them are positive, and some of them are negative.  Some of them talk louder (and influence you more) than other voices.  Whenever you face a stressful time, or an important decision, or even just walk through your every day routine these people are the inner dialogue that happens within yourself.  The challenge he gave us was to name all of the people on our bus, because once you acknowledge their voice you can balance their influence.  The names are not significant, the opinion or perspective that comes from them, which we try to live up to, is very significant.  The only rule we were given is we couldn’t put Jesus on our bus, because we would all put him on our bus (since it was a room full of youth workers that definitely would have happened).

These are the people on my bus:

An Oompa Loompa

take my commands, get it done for them just because they asked so they are pleased with me being around

Doug Fields

I need to build and create, I have a lot of ideas trying to get out, I get bored maintaining

The rich young ruler (Luke 18)

I know I should leave stuff behind and care about God more, but I really don’t want to

Adam Sandler

forget about what anyone thinks or accomplishing anything significant and just have fun

The butler in Mr. Deeds

know it all, arrogant, sneaky, has everything figured out, and secretly wants to be in charge

Lewis or Clark

explorer, push forward, battle through the challenges, dredge through the unknown, might leave a few people behind – but it’s worth it if we reach our destination

My 2nd grade Teacher

She embarrassed me in front of the class which has made me scared to put myself out there, so when I do I tend to “over do it” with too many words or too much passion

With all of these voices going on inside my head sometimes I get pretty conflicted as I drive through life.  Obviously a few of these personalities don’t agree with other people on the bus.  But admitting who is on my bus will hopefully help me get a bit more sleep, because instead of ignoring them I can deal with them, maybe even just tell them to be quiet.

Who are the people on your bus?  Do their “conversations” keep you up at night?  Are you telling the right people to be quiet?  Who do you need to ask to speak up? Who are you letting drive?