Higher Leading with Jay Meyer
Jay has spent his life studying and practicing leadership. After leading a successful business for twenty-five years, Jay has spent the past couple of decades coaching leaders across nonprofits, businesses, and faith-driven organizations.
Through all those experiences, one truth became undeniable: leadership is at its best when it’s anchored to a higher calling.
That conviction fuels his Higher Leading podcast, where he helps leaders grow in character, courage, and purpose—so they can serve with impact that reaches far beyond themselves.
Higher Leading with Jay Meyer
Give Up. Clean Up. Grow Up. Live Up.
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Reflection
As National Recovery Month comes to a close, I’ve been thinking about what nearly four decades of recovery have taught me and summarized it in this podcast.
Recovery is an ever-evolving process that involves a focus on what I consider the four keys to recovery:
Give Up. Clean Up. Grow Up. Live Up.
Give Up. Recovery begins with surrender. I had to stop trying to run the whole show and admit that my way wasn’t working. Surrender wasn’t giving up on life—it was giving up the fight that was keeping me from life.
Clean Up. Getting sober didn’t erase the wreckage. Recovery required me to take responsibility, make amends, seek forgiveness, forgive others, and allow God to clean up things inside me that drugs and alcohol had helped me avoid.
Grow Up. Sobriety is more than not using. It’s learning how to live. Recovery has challenged me to become more self-aware, emotionally mature, humble, teachable, prayerful, and willing to admit when I’m wrong. Nearly forty years later, I’m still growing.
Live Up. Eventually, recovery turns outward. Step Twelve calls us to carry the message to others and practice these principles in our daily lives. God can take the parts of our stories we once wanted to hide and use them to help someone else. Our mess can become our message.
For me, the progression has looked something like this:
Help me.
Change me.
Use me.
That's the journey.
God didn't give me a second chance simply so I could survive. He gave me another shot at life so I could use my experiences—good and bad—to serve Him and others.
The scars remain, but their meaning changes. They serve as evidence that healing occurred there.
So, as we close this month, maybe recovery—and life itself—comes down to four questions:
What do I need to give up?
What do I need to clean up?
Where do I need to grow up?
How is God calling me to live up?
Recovery isn't perfection. It's progress.
It isn't arriving. It's becoming.
It isn't simply getting sober. It's getting free.
And ultimately, it isn't simply about living longer.
It's about living for Him.