Herald for the Hurried

The following blog is the 2nd in a series on “Moving from Hurried to Purposeful” from our friend & mentor Matt Eckert.

As an organizational leader with over twenty staff and hundreds of volunteers, I’ve had to continually remind myself that my first priority is to paint a picture of reality. For the organization, but also for myself. As much as I’ve tried, I can’t lead well unless I’m honest with how I’m doing. How about you?

As a Pastor and former business leader, let me share our top reasons so many of us struggle to slay the beast of hurriedness - and why we often stay stuck without even knowing.

In the previous blog post, we provided the opportunity to reflect on your current state and complete a diagnostic. If you haven’t had the opportunity yet, click here to complete the diagnostic 

Let’s talk about how we most often choose to respond to our given reality. 

First, for the business leader who ended up at the high end of the assessment, “life is flowing well at this time”: nice. I am excited for you. My encouragement for you is to reflect on the reasons that you are in such a good position. Can you remember a time when this wasn’t the case? What are the healthy life and work rhythms that you need to ensure you maintain? Perhaps our 7-part Habits Series that we just finished will be helpful.

If you found yourself in a category that perhaps discouraged you, take heart, there is a way to live that can move you from hurried to purposeful…but you’ll need to lean in, do some honest evaluation, and be willing to make the adjustments.

I’m not sure about you, but I tend to have preset ways of responding poorly that don’t actually get me to the new way of living that I desire. They are my defaults, my ruts. Do any of these responses ring a bell for you? (True confession: I think I’ve used most of these)

1. Stay the course: You’ll keep getting what you’ve always been getting. “If nothing changes, nothing changes”, but it is an option and, it takes no new effort.
2. Work harder: A classic response for the (already busy) business leader. Harder work will “bring more success and finally peace” - or so the theory goes.
3. Get more efficient: Hire an efficiency coach to squeeze more out of each minute of your day. Use beautiful (and needed) LEAN methods to finally accomplish everything, so you can get more “balance in your life”.
4. Ignore it: Hey, if I avoid it, it will go away right?
5. Pray harder: Spiritual responses often sound better don’t they? Isn’t that virtuous and even biblical? Yep, and… if I’m honest and look at my track record… how come I still struggle with “finding the time for my devotions”?
6. Blame others: After all, it must be someone else’s fault that you are stressed and hurried and can’t live the meaningful life that you once dreamed of but have forgotten.
7. Postpone: “I’ll address this next year when things calm down a little. Then I’ll finally be in a better position to do this.” How is that working for you and me?

So, are these the only options? Perhaps you can think of a few more. What is your default response? Are you ready to change the rhythms that are not guiding you to the life that God intended for you and that you desire?

Hmmm… “so we could be whole… so we could be healed.” As a leader of yourself, your business, and your family...how whole and healed are you feeling these days?

Deliberate Reflection

1. Of the 7 responses, where do you find yourself? Why do you think you respond in this way?
2. What is the impact your response is having on your business, your family?
3. Does the vision of a better future outweigh the pain you need to work through in order to achieve this better future? Are you at least willing to believe that there might be a better future?

Next week we’ll take a look back to see how we even got here and what the data is revealing about a hurried life. Be assured, there’s hope! True practical and biblical hope for the busy, hurried Christian business leader. We look forward to keeping this conversation going next week!