So I've really been thinking a lot about time and busyness and all of this stuff that seems to be plaguing us. After all, if you get to the point that the only thing you can think of saying is how busy you are, there's probably something going on that you need to deal with. I think there are ways to avoid the busyness rut, though. Here are three insights that I believe could totally change your perspective of time, stress, busyness, and the whole thing:
#1: Your lifestyle is perfectly designed for the results you're getting.
If you are constantly stressed out or overcommitted, you have to eventually come to the place where you realize that something has to change. After all, healthy habits will produce healthy results while unhealthy habits will always lead to unhealthy results. And since habits are so hard to change, you have to take a good hard look and be honest with yourself.
#2: You'll never have enough time in a day.
We all believe that if we just had a few more hours in a day, we wouldn't be stressed, but the truth is that we'll never have enough time, at least not if we keep living the way we do. The problem of busyness is not a time problem. It's an us problem.
#3: It's not how busy you are. It's how well you prioritize.
I noticed something about myself ten or so years ago. I was always going so hard, so fast, and doing so many things that I constantly reached a burn out point. I wanted to live life to the fullest, so I committed to pretty much any activity that presented itself. But somehow my constant desire to do more and more was not bringing me more life, but less. I stretched myself in so many directions that I was never able to fully experience any of them.
#4: We have to put the big rocks in first.
Have you ever noticed how rocks fall into a jar? Check out this video to see what I mean. If you fill the jar with all the little rocks first, the big rocks won't fit in, but if we put the big rocks in first, all the little ones will fall in around them and you can fit everything into the jar? Life is like this. We seem to fill our lives with trivial things that don't matter, leaving little room for the most important things. We need to define which things matter most in life and put these in first, not last.
#5: It's never too late to become who you might have been.
One of our five core values at Echo is Restoration. We believe that people are never beyond hope and can always be made new. After all, that's what following Jesus is all about. It's about being made new! So if you are looking at your life and you can see how some busyness might have taken over, choose to make a change. It's never too late. Really.
If this blog post resonates with you or you would like to find out more about this idea, I'd like to invite you to join me at Echo next Sunday, March 1st. It will be our first "Sneak Peek Service" to the community and would be a great opportunity to see what God has to say about getting our lives in order.
#BigRocks
