At Your BestSýnishorn

No More Crazy Busy Life

By 2006, I had a family of four and was pastoring one of the largest and fastest-growing churches in Canada. Success, right? Except inside me, the pressure kept intensifying. I was tired of feeling like I was always out of time, sick of dragging my feet through day after endless day, and more than done with putting in an eight or 10-hour day and feeling like I had accomplished everything for everyone else and nothing on my own to-do list, despite giving it my best shot. Any of this sound familiar? 

Eventually, it all caught up with me. I slid headlong into burnout. I was numb. It was like my body went on strike and said, “Enough with the craziness.”

I became determined to live in a fundamentally different way. Not having any idea how to do that, I spent the next few years reading widely and hiring coaches and counselors to help me. What I learned was that I had a choice to make. Instead of abandoning everything I’d built over my life to date, I decided to change the one thing I could change: me. 

I rebuilt my life. My family didn’t change; I stayed married to the same woman and committed to our two sons. I kept the same job (not saying you have to, because it’s not a prerequisite for a transformational change). We didn’t even leave town. I just changed what I was doing with my days and how I was doing it. 

As I studied leaders I admire and respect, I realized they moved way past time management and were highly focused on managing not just their time but their energy. Usually, they had one thing in common: they did what they were best at when they were at their best. In other words, they worked in their area of principal gifting and passion when their energy was at its highest during the day. And as a result, they got their top priorities accomplished day in and day out. I started to implement that rhythm in my own life as a keystone habit. 

Often the stress of everyday life can leave you feeling so exhausted that you lose sight of both your gifting and your calling. You no longer even remember who you were created to be. 

God created you to accomplish some meaningful things in this life. What are you best at? What were you put here to do? 

“We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).

What is your top one to three gifts and callings? What times of day are you most alert and productive?