Latest / RHYTHMS OF REST℠ Leadership Podcast / Episode 8: If You Feel Like Slowing Down Means Falling Behind… This Will Change Your Mind
Transcript
- Kent Murawski: You're not burned out from working too much. You're burned out from the wrong rhythm. There's a difference, and that difference is the reason that this podcast exists. I'm Kent Muroski. I coach owner CEOs of companies to restore the four rhythms that make running a company sustainable: relational, emotional, spiritual, and tangible. Like the four rhythms of a heart, when one goes, everything goes. Most leaders spend years patching symptoms. We fix the structure. Welcome to the Rhythms of Rest Leadership Podcast. Before we get into it today, the Rhythms of Rest Assessment, if you haven't taken it yet, will let you know which of your four rhythms is breaking down and give you one move to make this week. Not next quarter, not next week. Five minutes it takes. It's free. And you can get that at Kent Moroski.com forward slash assessment. Let's go. Well, those of you that are watching ⁓ this week on YouTube, ⁓ you'll notice that I'm in in a different location. I'm doing one of my semi-annual retreats, and I am at Singing Hills Camp in Plainfield, New Hampshire, and I'm having a wonderful time. ⁓ I'll I may go deeper in one of the upcoming podcasts about ⁓ retreats and the power of them, but for now. ⁓ just know that I'm in a different place and it's great to be with you. I'm looking out the window at beautiful mountains and trees and and ⁓ just really enjoying my time here. But I'm going to start with something that I normally wouldn't lead with. I'm tired. I've felt genuinely worn down, and yes, I'm aware of the R the irony. The rhythms of Rest Sky is officially fried. Now, here's what the last several months have looked like for me. I won't go into detail, but I was writing a book and ⁓ getting that out to my early readers. I was finalizing a three-hour workshop for executives. I was rebuilding my quad and still am, my quad muscle from scratch after a patellar tendon rupture last year. And I was trying to and am trying to be present with and for my family. ⁓ you know, lots of my fan, several of my family members were having important crossroads in their lives, and I wanted to be. Fully present in their life. So I'm not saying all this for sympathy. I'm saying it because I know a lot of you are living some version of this right now. Now, the moment I knew I was fried was the night before a three-hour workshop I was leading for a group of executives. It wasn't just normal speaking jitters. I've spoken many times in front of lots of different audiences, but I was so anxious, not quite crawl out of my skin anxious, but. ⁓ anxious enough where I could feel my chest tightening. And I I remember that night I snapped at my wife. That happens sometimes when I'm tired, but this was different. I wanted to bite her head off and all she did was ask me a simple question. One of my tells is when I start getting irritable with people I love for little or no reason, I know that that I need to pull back. So A lot of my deadlines closed at the end of April, and ⁓ it's a month later, and I'm just starting to come out of that ⁓ that feeling of just being worn thin. Now, here's what I know from my own burnout history 20 plus years ago. I now have a built-in alarm system and my alarm system was going off. Here's the thing about burnout: it's it's ⁓ by the time you feel it, you're already further along. than you think you are. And that's not meant to scare you. It's just a wake-up call. ⁓ you know, by the time you're saying I feel burnout, you're further along than you think. The good part for me was I knew April was going to be like this and there was an end in sight. The bad part was at the end of it, I was still fried. And now it's early June and like I mentioned, I'm just starting to come out of it. Well, I'm feeling a little better now and ⁓ I want to help you with some of the things I've learned. I've got my coffee. ⁓ it's albeit decaf because it's later in the day and I'm ready to go. Here's how I want to help you. Summer is coming. And I guarantee that many of you business owners and leaders, you feel the same way. Maybe more than you want to admit. You're feeling low energy, you're feeling a bit fried. ⁓ January through April is a push, and you're into Q2 now, and ⁓ you're wanting to just slow down a bit. You wanna enjoy the weather, you wanna be with your family, you wanna probably actually take a real vacation this year, but there's another voice, and I know and you know this voice well, and it says this, something like this. If you slow down, everything falls apart. Well, I wanna tell you that voice is a liar, though it's a convincing one at times, right? ⁓ I wanna help you with what I wish someone had helped me with a long, long time ago in dealing with summers. Summers can always be awkward in leadership, whether it's a business, ⁓ you know, a nonprofit, ⁓ you're in a senior leadership role, whatever that is, you know, sometimes both parents are working. If you have kids, they're at home more than they are during the school year, even if you put them in some camps. ⁓ it can really be a struggle to just know how to juggle everything, can't it? ⁓ so I know it has been for me. Last summer was a bit of a blur, so I'm not gonna use that. It was a blur because I blew out my knee and I couldn't do hardly any of the things I normally do. So I'm just gonna kind of write that one off. There were some other things that came out of that, but as far as the summer conversation is concerned. But two summers ago, ⁓ my business was new and you know still is, it's three years old, and I was trying to push things forward. While at the same time spending more time with my youngest son who was at home for the summer. My wife works part-time. And so, you know, we take some, we'd share some responsibility over the summer for for being with him. And ⁓ the summer before that, we'd done great. You know, we went fishing and hiking and riding bikes and playing basketball. But this particular summer, I was trying to work a half day on the days my wife was at work, and every time it seemed to just turn into a full day. I don't think we went fishing once. I missed a lot, and I don't want to do that again. I only have a few more summers with him, and I want to make sure I'm ⁓ fully engaged and fully present to the degree that I can be while still maintaining the things I need to maintain. So here's the thing I had to reckon with. I pushed through that summer and some other summers when my other two kids were growing up, and it really changed nothing. Did you ever notice that? We can just Push through things and keep going the way that we have been going. And it really doesn't do anything because there's something larger at play with certain seasons that we need to recognize. Okay. ⁓ You know, when I pushed through that summer, two summers ago, the business didn't explode. It didn't decrease either. So here I was trying to do the same schedule I did. ⁓ in the fall and in the spring, and yet ⁓ the business wasn't growing, but it wasn't declining either. ⁓ you know, I didn't hit some milestone that made those hours that I sacrificed with my son worth it. I just missed it. So leaders feel a unique pressure, don't we? Like like si here's what it is. We think that success or failure of everything rests on our shoulders. And ⁓ it doesn't. It doesn't all rest on our shoulders. Now, in the four-hour work week, ⁓ Tim Ferris, who wrote the book, shares the story of his company Brain Quicken. And after two years of 12-hour days, seven days a week, he decided he wasn't going to do it anymore. He buys a one-way plane ticket to Europe. Four weeks turns into eight weeks, and then he decides to stay overseas indefinitely because he wants to test the automation limit on his business. So he ends up Automating everything he possibly can and ⁓ only does one hour of email on Monday mornings. Guess what happened? As he removed himself from the bottleneck or as the bottleneck, the profits increased by 40%. Isn't that interesting how that works? See, we think high performance requires us to be on all the time. But it what it requires is for us to be on at the right time. And working in our strengths. Let me give you another example. R Roger Bannister ⁓ was the first man to ⁓ run or break the four-minute mile. I don't remember if he ran it or broke it or how that worked, but the four-minute mile, that's all you have to remember. And here's what he did. He had tried to do that before, but hadn't hadn't succeeded. And ⁓ leading up to the race again in 1954, instead of training hard. Right up until the last minute, guess what he did? He went hiking for two weeks in the mountains. Then upon his return to England, he shocked everyone further than further ⁓ because for three more days he continued to let his body recuperate and rest. Finally, ⁓ before the race, just before the race, a few days, he re-engaged with a shoot ⁓ a few short workouts, and it was He felt so rested. It was more rest than he had had in a long time. And guess what happened when the day of his race came? He smashed the record and he became the first man to run a four minute mile. According to performance coach Steve Magnus, he says it says it this way In training, we stress the system. In rest, the body and the mind make sense of it. Rest, therefore, isn't quitting, it's Preparation. I want to tell you about a Wednesday morning, no, Wednesday afternoon in 2014, where this scenario, ⁓ or or this faulty narrative that ⁓ you know, rest is quitting, or by resting I'm going to sacrifice something that I can't get back, or that I have to keep pushing because I'm gonna lose something if I rest. ⁓ I wanna tell you how that broke for me. on Wednesday afternoon in two thousand fourteen. At the time I was leading a small church that we'd planted or started four years earlier in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is one of the hardest places ⁓ in the country, if not the world, to to do that. ⁓ there's a number of reasons that make that ⁓ make it so difficult to do, but it was going okay. And ⁓ it was really hard. It was one of the most difficult things I had ever done. But we were getting ready to prepare for a grand opening at the time. And what that meant is a whole lot of work. We were raising 35,000 extra dollars, which fell on me and was no small number at the time for a, you know, a small congregation. It took hundreds of hours of labor. And this was all happening while I was still leading the church and while I was working part-time for the city of Cambridge as an urban youth worker to make ends meet, and most importantly, trying to be a good husband and father. Well, Wednesday afternoons had always been a replenishing time of Set aside for just reflection and prayer and stillness. And that particular Wednesday, my prayer list was anything but still. Every item on it felt urgent, and none of it could wait. I needed answers to the things on that list and I needed them fast. Well, with each prayer, I felt my anxiety level climbing. Okay. And it was climbing back towards a level. ⁓ I hadn't felt since my nervous breakdown 12 years earlier in 2002. But instead of pushing through this time, as my alarm bells started going off, I stopped. And I remember that moment very clearly. As my anxiety grew and my chest tightened and my heart started pounding in a heavy way, I felt like another breakdown was imminent. ⁓ but in that moment, some words that Jesus had spoken ⁓ in the Gospels of Matt in the book of Matthew that Saint Matthew had recorded came rushing into my mind. And it's okay if you're not religious. ⁓ I think the words will speak to you nonetheless. These words came rushing into my mind and heart. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. In that moment, I remember it so clearly, I threw the list, the prayer list to the floor. I laid down on the bed and I just gave up. I stopped pushing, I stopped striving, ⁓ I released control of all these things that I really, to be honest, didn't have any control over anyway. And in that moment, ⁓ just a profound peace flooded my body. As I let go of all these things I really didn't control anyway. I I I was able to breathe again. I just I had felt like somebody was sitting on my chest and the and that like they had suddenly just got up. And I experienced this peace ⁓ like I had never experienced before. Now these words flooded in to my mind afterwards, and I've never forgotten them. And these were the words. You don't have to understand or control everything, Kent, to live and lead from a place of rest. It was like they just sounded out in this blaring sort of way in my mind that I can live from a place of rest if I would just give up control. I still feel anxiety sometimes, and I still feel the the grip to pull tighter or to hold tighter. But what changed is I no longer try to white knuckle the outcome. You know, outcomes are future-based, ⁓ the vast majority of the time. And as far as I know, not one of us can see or control the future. So when we live in the future, it creates anxiety. A pastor friend of mine, ⁓ Joshua Finley, puts it this way, and I've never forgotten this. Look ahead, but don't live ahead. Looking ahead, that's wisdom, planning, preparing, that's leadership. But living in the future, that's when anxiety increases. and that's just anxiety waiting to happen. Now, back to the summertime, I want to ⁓ wrap this up and tie this together. Lying on that bedroom floor ⁓ in that moment ⁓ that I just shared with you taught me to rethink summer, among other things. Though business doesn't stop, and for a few people it may increase. In fact, ⁓ for for ⁓ my friend Phil, who is the executive director here at this camp where I'm doing my retreat, ⁓ things ramp up in the summer ⁓ here. So I know that business doesn't stop, and for some of us. Summertime can't slow down, but but for the vast majority of us, for many of us, summer is a time to recharge. Okay. ⁓ it's time to recharge the batteries. And I've learned three things that have helped me about summer. I call them the three R's, and they're not prot productivity hacks, they're invitations for us. So I want you to think about these three things that are gonna help you just slow down without losing momentum this summer. First of all, rethink what's important. Take some time. You know, summertime, the season itself is asking us this question. What's only available right now that you don't want to miss? There are some unique opportun opportunities this summer that you do not want to miss. Not in a vague philosophical way, but specifically name those opportunities. Is it time with your kids? Is it is it just some time to catch up on on some reading, some fiction that you want to do, or take walks? While the weather is nice, or spend go away on a trip with your wife, or whatever it might be, specifically name it. For me, it's the kids, ⁓ it's the margin that lets me think clearly. It's going on walks, although I do that all year round. I especially enjoy it when the weather's nice. You know, business tends to move in quarters, but life moves in trimesters. So if you have school-age kids, your rhythms need to move with that reality, not against it. So I like to reevaluate ⁓ my schedule as a result. And that's number two. R number two is reevaluate your schedule. See, your calendar doesn't know it's summer. You have to tell it. And I find that life moves in trimesters, especially if you have children and with the school year. So it's January to April, ⁓ May to August, summer kind of starts. Doesn't start in May, but we're thinking about it, and then September to December. So as the season shifts, your schedule actually has to shift with it. Or you're gonna find yourself in September asking where the summer went and not feeling energized. This is tangible rhythm work. It's practical, it's real, it's not just the intention to slow down, it's the actual structural change that makes it possible to slow down. So Let me share a story with you and tell you about Jesh. ⁓ Jesh is a business owner and one of my coaching clients, and he always wanted to take Fridays off since he started his business. For him, Sundays are not a day off, they're a workday. And he wanted to have a full weekend. And so by the time he hit Monday, he never felt quite fully re recharged because he realized, and part of it was the framing is in his mind that Sunday wasn't a work day. He's very involved in his church. He's an elder, and ⁓ Their services are at four PM and so he spent Sunday mornings working and getting ready and then Sunday evenings ⁓ with church responsibility. So he'd go into Mondays ⁓ not feeling refreshed or energized. So we talked through it and finally I just said to him, I said, Jesh, what if you just tried it for the summer as an experiment? What if you just took Fridays off and tried it as an experiment and see how it goes? Well, something about that freedom to do it, the fact that this wasn't some permanent decision he had to make right away, but he decided to try it for the summer. He loved that idea. And here's what happened about halfway through the summer. Halfway through the summer, he landed two new high-ticket retainer clients, the kind that he actually wanted and loves to work with. And his revenue increased by 20% without even trying by the middle of the summer. So Get this, get this. By the middle of summer, he hit his revenue goals for the year, nearly six months early, while taking Fridays off. It's a great story, isn't it? And I think it just speaks to the fact that we think that it's our effort that moves the needle. It's our effort that's gonna change things. But many times it's actually what we don't do because it forces us to rethink the way that we're doing things. And often when we just let off the gas a bit and leave ourselves some space and margin, things tend to come to us, or we have moments of clarity where we have ideas that we wouldn't get if we were just pushing and pushing and pushing. You know, I wonder if that could be you. You know, Parkinson's law says that work expands to fill the time available to complete it. So if you take Fridays off or you lessen your hours for the summer. ⁓ you know, you'll finish your work with the time allotted. If it's Fridays off, you'll finish your work that you need to finish by Thursday at closing time. I guarantee it. The third R is this ruthlessly eliminate. So we've got ⁓ rethink what's most important, reevaluate your schedule, and then ruthlessly eliminate. Say that fast three times. Okay. So summer naturally presses us to change our pace, doesn't it? We got kids home, we've got vacations happening, other things going on that normally don't happen ⁓ other times of the year, things we want to do. The energy that was high in January is low by the time we get to summer. We're in need of a break. So why not, instead of fighting it, why not use it? Why not obey the season, so to speak? Kind of like Sprite says obey your thirst. Obey the season. See, summer, I believe, is time for experiments. It's time to try things differently. What could you stop doing? What could you handoff or delegate? What would happen if you gave yourself one less meeting this week? Because I guarantee this: none of your staff want another meeting in the summertime. The real question isn't, can I afford it? The real question is, what is this actually costing me? Okay, when we so we've got our three R's. I want you to take some time to sit with those this week. I'll give you a question, reflection question, and an action step at the end. But here's where this lands in the rhythms of rest framework. This is the S and the T coming together, the spiritual and the tangible working together in unison. So that spiritual work, you could call it it, and and by spiritual I just mean faith or a philosophy of life. The spiritual work is the internal work. It's letting go of the outcomes that you've been white knuckling. It's ⁓ releasing control over things that, if you're honest, you really don't control anyway. Now, the tangible, the T ⁓ work in this equation is the practical outworking of that internal posture that we just talked about, of that releasing of control. So you at some point you have to actually look at your calendar. And you have to start asking whether it's fighting the season or moving with These two chambers in this case have to work together. You can't do one without the other and expect anything to change meaningfully. If you keep packing your summer calendar the way you pack every other quarter, you're gonna feel bad about how you spent it. You're gonna hit September empty, and you're gonna wonder where the summer went. I know you know what I'm talking about. You've been there before. Let's not waste another summer doing the same thing again. Now, each episode, I give you what I call a rhythms check. It's a moment to focus on one of the four rhythms or two sometimes that are working together in unison. They all work together, but we like to pick one or two to focus on. And then an action step that you can take in the next 24 to 48 hours, along with a reflection question to help you go deeper. This is where the podcast stops being something you just listen to and starts being something you implement. So if you're in the car, sometimes what I do when I get to an action step. is I just tell Siri to take a screenshot. So get ready to tell Siri to take a screenshot. You can go back to it, see where this what ⁓ where the timing was on the podcast and write this down ⁓ you know later when you're out of the car. So the chambers featured this week, spiritual and tangible. Here's your action step for this week that I want you to take in the next 24 to 48 hours. Your calendar does not manage itself. And it needs a fresh set of eyes every season. And so before we get into the heart of summer, right now, before June hits, I want you to find three places where you're scheduled against the grain of summer. Okay. It could be a meeting that you could move or just cancel. It could be a commitment that you could shrink, or it could be a margin that got filled out of habit. I want you to just pick one of those. Three things and adjust just one in the next 24 to 48 hours? What meeting could you cancel or move? ⁓ what commitment could you shrink? What could you delegate? you know, what did you just fill out of habit? Just make one move in the next 24 to 48 hours. Now the reflection question for this week is this. Where in your schedule right now are you fighting the season instead of working with it? And what would it actually look like to stop? So, where are you fighting the season instead of working with it? And what would it actually look like to stop? Well, listen, I want to hear from you on this. I genuinely do. So reply to this episode, leave a comment on YouTube, send me a DM, or or just respond to my respond to the email in your inbox if you're subscribed to the Rhythms of Rest. newsletter and tell me one thing that you're gonna adjust to join the rhythm of summer rather than fight against it. Listen, I'm rooting for you and I truly hope that you'll take just a little bit of time to implement those three R's and to pick one thing that you can adjust in the next twenty four to forty eight hours. You will not regret it. Well one more thing before you go. Every other week I send out a newsletter to leaders who are done reading things that make sense on paper but don't hold up when Monday hits. So each issue of the Rhythms of Rest newsletter shares a story, shares some insight, and goes deeper on one or two of the four rhythms and what it actually looks like to build from a place of rhythm rather than balance. It's absolutely free. Just go to Kent Moroski. dot com forward slash newsletter. I'll see you next time.