#7 | May 2023

Towards the end of March ‘23 I had the privilege to speak at an event in Cambridge, UK which was focused on helping us ‘run the race’ of life well and being ready for what lies ahead. You can find out more about the event HERE.

My talk focused on the subject of ‘Flow’, how do we create a sustainable, healthy rhythm of rest and work, a subject I am passionate about as it combines both my faith, my story and what I have learned over the years, living with a chronic illness.

In my previous ‘Pep Talk’ I shared about the first part of my talk the ‘flow’ we see in creation and the life of Jesus, with me concluding by outlining one practice I believe should be a priority or ‘rock in the bucket’ for us in our lives.

This time I will be focusing in on the rhythms we see in the world today and what individual mindsets we can bring alongside this. I then will share 2 practises that I believe can help us.

These posts are not designed to cover all the bases, but are intended to give you some food for thought that will hopefully lead you to develop a more healthy rhythm of work & rest.

So let’s get into things, let’s start with the the rhythms of our world and some observations we can make:

The Rhythm of the World

No Boundaries

The world today operates on a 24/7 basis, with businesses and services available at all hours of the day and night. There are fewer and fewer restrictions, Sunday closing, Wednesday half day closing are all social conventions that are a thing of the past.

We have access to what we want when we want, and can work flexibility now in terms of hours and location. We have never been so free to do what we want. The canvas is being wiped clean of boundaries.

Fast-paced, Always on, Always Connected

The rhythm of the world today is often fast-paced and demanding, with many people feeling obligated to work long hours, be constantly connected through technology, and meet high expectations in their personal and professional lives. This generates a fear that if we're not constantly working, we'll miss out on opportunities or fall behind our peers. This fear can lead us to check our email, respond to messages, and stay tethered to our devices even when we're supposed to be resting

Hustle Leads to Success

The concept of "hustling" implies that one must always be working, sacrificing sleep, leisure time, and social activities in order to achieve their goals. It is often associated with entrepreneurship and startup culture, where individuals are expected to work long hours and make personal sacrifices in order to build their businesses. Hustle culture can be damaging, as it places an emphasis on productivity at the expense of personal well-being, leading to burnout, stress, and decreased quality of life. Burnout for example is see as a badge of honour.

Individualism

Individualism is a philosophical, social, and political ideology that emphasises the importance of the individual over the collective. It is a worldview that places the autonomy, self-determination, and rights of the individual as primary and often prioritises individual goals and achievements over those of the group or society as a whole. Individualism values individual freedom and choice, personal responsibility, and self-reliance, and is often associated with ideas such as capitalism, democracy, and liberalism. The pendulum is increasingly swinging towards this.

You can do it all & have it all. The culmination of all these observations is that you can do it all and have it all, and be anything you want to if you try hard enough.

The Challenges & Biases We can Bring to the Table.

So we can see that the current of our world’s culture is not heading in the same direction as what we see from creation & Jesus. In addition to this there are challenges or traps we can fall into & factors that we bring to the table, that can hijack our ability to sustain a healthy rhythm of rest and work.

Our Identity

When you introduce yourself, how often do you say your name and follow it with the job that you do. 'Hi I am James and I am a Time & Energy Coach.’ I have identified myself by my name & my job.

We can get into the trap of overly connecting our identity with our work we do and our worth with our performance. We can strive to look good and be deemed of worth, so we work more & more. Our work becomes everything to us. Rest seems to directly contribute nothing. This can be exacerbated if you are driven by a need for external validation & affirmation.

When the Music Stops

Musical chairs, a popular kids party game when I was growing up. Everyone loved it except for the child that was left without a chair when the music stopped.

Work can be like this, we want it to just continue because we don’t want to face our reality when it stops. For example - overworking is used by people to cope with underlying emotional issues such as anxiety, depression, or trauma. They may use work as a way to distract themselves from difficult emotions or to feel a sense of control in their lives.We can be afraid to be alone with our thoughts.

Family Expectations & Upbringing

All in all I had a very fortunate upbringing, I was well looked after and cared for. It was only later leaving home that I really recognised a key aspect of our family culture. Our family only rested when the work was done. Rest was dependent on the level of work done & finishing the task first. We had a work to rest mindset.

Your family background may be the same or may well be different, but it will have shaped you and ‘biased’ you in a certain way. If we are not aware of this and objective about this, it will be a challenge to create a healthy rhythm of work & rest.

Comparison

We live in a ‘Gamified’ culture, the goal of which is to make activities more enjoyable and engaging by tapping into people's innate desire for achievement, recognition, and social interaction. But this can also lead to a fanatical need to win & beat the competition. We don’t want to be perceived as a ‘loser’. As a result we can have a fear of falling behind. We may fear that taking time to rest will cause us to fall behind in our work, miss important deadlines, or lose opportunities. This fear can drive us to work longer hours, skip breaks, and sacrifice our wellbeing in the pursuit of productivity.

Burnout is acceptable.

There is increasingly a prevailing cultural belief that working hard and being busy is a virtue and burnout should be worn as a badge of honour because you have pushed yourself beyond reasonable limits. 

At this point I just want give you a quick side note on burnout. I could dive quite deeply into this. But at this stage I just want to give you the signs to look out for. If you begin to experience an increasing number of these then ask for help: 

1. Your motivation has faded. 

2. Your main emotion is ‘numbness’ – you no longer feel the highs or the lows. 

3. People drain you. 

4. Little things make you disproportionately angry. 

5. You’re becoming cynical. 

6. Your productivity is dropping.

7.  You’re self-medicating. 

8. You don’t laugh anymore.

9. Sleep and time off no longer refuel you. 

These have been taken from the book, ‘I Did I Not see it Coming’ by Carey Nieuwhof, which I would recommend.

I could go on, & talk about mindset, It can’t happen without me, rest is for wimps for example. 

But hopefully you have caught the idea that we each have individual biases that we bring to the table that when we add into the current culture, makes it extremely difficult for us to embrace the rhythms that will help us live well.

So what can we do or focus on to help us. Well here are 2 suggestions.

1.Make the Most of Today

We have probably heard the phrase, take things one day at a time. You often hear this, when someone is anxious, stressed or is overfunctioning etc. We see this as an approach for a time of crisis, rather than an everyday practice.

The Lord gives us strength for the day laid before us & renews that strength as we end the day, sleep and wake up for the next. When we try and get ahead of the game or carry the burdens of two days in one, we often crash & burn. Often because they include future challenges we are not yet ready for.

Here are some simple ideas that will help you stay into today:

Focus on Your Energy Not Time

Time dominates our thinking. Everything is defined, judged and charged in units of time. We all have 24 hours of time in a day, but we will each have different energy levels. The truth of the matter is ultimately we don’t run out of time, we run out of energy. Steward Your Energy. Your Greatest Asset is Energy, Not Time

This has been a crucial mind shift for me as I have learned to live with Chronic Fatigue. You will get more done in a day focusing on doing the most important things when you are the most energised. In reality I am probably as productive & fruitful as I was when I had a higher level of energy, I just use it to do more high leverage things.

Be Present

In a world full of distraction, the ability to simply be present is now a superpower. Removing distractions, simplifying your processes in life will all help you to be more present. When you are more present you see not only how to channel your energy better, you see what God is doing in situations and how you can partner with him.

Eliminate Hurry

Hurry seems insignificant, but it is all about the tempo you run your life at. The world’s temp is ever increasing, and within that environment, our tempo will automatically increase. When you hurry you overstride or overfunction in life, your energy levels diminish quickly because it puts unnecessary stress on your body, the law of diminishing returns kicks in and you usually end up tripped up, face down somewhere.

And just to link the Hurry & being Present. ‘Unhurried presence is the most powerful relational gift we can offer to one another.’

I would love to say more on this, this has been a game changer for me. Check out the book ‘The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry’ by John Mark Comer.

2.Embrace Your Limits

The practices outlined above and my previous ‘Pep Talk’, indirectly point to this, but we need to embrace both limits placed on us by God and put limits in place to ensure we remain running our race and not others. Yet we tend to spend our time trying to push past these limits, causing our rhythms to become unhealthy.

There is a need for intentional rhythm. Given the fast-paced and demanding nature of the world today, there is a need for intentional rhythm in our lives. This involves setting boundaries around work and personal life, prioritising rest and leisure, and intentionally building in time for activities that bring joy and fulfilment.

Put simply, in a world where boundaries and limits are being removed, we need to add some back in.

Be Clear on Your Call & What Matters Most

"The church's greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter." Tim Keller.

It can be the same for us as individuals. Ultimately we are uniquely designed, you have a specific purpose to fulfil. We can spend so much time being distracted with things and go down routes that ultimately have nothing to do with what we are called to.

Intentionally spending time to understand the trajectory God has for your life is a worthy investment. We are not after perfection, but a sense of direction.

You need to be clear on this in order to embrace the next point.

Make a choice - Let your Yes be Yes & No be No.

The unforeseen factor with the ‘you can have it all & do it all focus, is that it paralyses you. It says you don’t have to make a decision. You can cover all the bases. You can go after everything.  However If everything is important, ultimately nothing is important.

I have seen this first hand with my kids. I grew up in an age with more restricted opportunities, wondering whether there was a solution. Today there is a solution for everything (or an ‘app’ for everything), but deciding the best one is the challenge. One of my kids struggled with this world of opportunity and was in the end overwhelmed with all the options, not wanting to choose one in case it was the wrong one or he would miss out.

That is why being clear on your call or purpose is critical as it goes a long way to helping you to prioritise and make choices. If a choice or opportunity you are faced with does not contribute in some way to your call and purpose then you don’t proceed with it.

Alongside this it is important for our Yes to be Yes and our No to be No and for us to accept the cost of the choice. The bible calls for this in the context of Truth and clarity. The same can be applied to our decision making. There will be a cost, but we need to fully own and accept this.

Often today we always seem to be waiting for a better option to be coming along, the result being that we never fully commit to something and then are never really fully focused. Factor this across the decisions in our lives and no wonder our interplay between work, rest and play is unbalanced.

Try this, if it is not a 100% yes then it is a No. 

Adaptability is the new efficiency

Embracing limits also causes you to think creatively and be more adaptable. According to Mark Sayers (A non Anxious presence) Our world is moving from being complicated to increasingly complex, where linear, reliable thinking does not long guarantee success. The challenge ahead requires us to be adaptable, rather than efficient.

Imagine playing chess without a queen. The queen is the best piece, you would usually build your strategy around this piece. Take it away and your strategy completely changes, this limit changes your approach.

In my story, my queen was an assumption of unlimited energy, I would just keep going. Now with a limited amount of energy I have to play the game without my queen. This has caused me to play the game of life differently. My perfectionism has had to take a back seat, that which was important, is no longer. I leave space to respond and adapt, rather than schedule everything efficiently to the minute.

Make it Count

So there we have it, a couple of practices that can help you create a healthy rhythm for work and rest. There is so much more that can be said, but if you completely embed this practice I guarantee they will give you a good starting point and trajectory.

One final point I want to make, just like in my previous ‘Pep Talk’ is around application and it is this.

Insight is not Change.

We need to remember that ‘insights’ are only the beginning, wise implementation / discernment & application of those insights is where the challenge now is.

Hopefully today I have helped you discern which ‘insights’ can help you make the greatest change to create a healthy rhythm. But application is critical.

To help you further apply this simple learning circle tool.

Kairos Moment - Hopefully today you have been prompted on something today, your light bulb moment.

Observe / Reflect - Ask yourself, What & Why questions - for example: What am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way?

Discuss - Deliberately draw someone into the conversation - What do they think & Why?

Plan / Accountability - Deciding what you are doing next as a result of the discussions. As a minimum agree the next step you are going to take. Then share it with someone and ask them to check back on your action in the future.

The sharing in the discussion and accountability phases is critical. Sharing has a number of benefits - not only is it accountability for you (especially if you ask the person to hold you to account for this change), but also it embeds it into your life more, when you teach / pass on what you have learned and how it applies to you.

So, give the above a go and see how you get on. If you want help with this to gain some clarity, simply drop me a message to hello@fruitfulbeing.com or book a free 30 minute coaching slot.

I hope & pray this ‘Pep Talk’ blesses you and motivates you to be more fruitful. Bye for now.

Every Blessing

James.

Go Deeper

Check out my talk from the event in Cambridge, a few resource recommendations and some videos from my archive that touch on some of the aspects mentioned in this Pep Talk.

To Finish…

Some Quick Time & Energy Tips…

Over on Ticktok I have produced 30 short 1 minute videos to help you save time & energy. Here are a couple that relate to this months ‘Pep Talk’.