Noise
“The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.”
- Thoroeu
“Nowadays, men lead lives of noisy desperation.”
- Thurber
The world is very noisy and that seems to be increasing exponentially. It is angry, busy, divided, assaulting, inundating, encroaching, ever-present, and unrelenting.
It seems like helping our leaders simplify and quiet their lives is becoming an essential part of our coaching. A necessary first step before they can even begin to think about the idea of focusing and solving their business issues.
Almost every intentional planning process we take them through, whether it is personal or organizational, has to begin with some process for getting quiet, cleaning out the clutter, and allowing them to focus on the things that most need addressing.
We are aggressively applying philosophies like Essentialism, Your Best Week, etc., but our biggest wins are coming from applying the teachings of the Ransomed Heart team as they translate the life of Jesus into everyday practices to combat the increasing noise of our world.
As a quick example of what this looks like, we have had to change even the common practice of things like writing a vision statement. Vision is all about imagining the world as it should be and releasing yourself from the confines of life as it is right now.
We have a very elaborate process for doing that. It involves getting your team together, a bunch of steps, working through categories, building tangibility, refining, and then executing. The time we are living in has made it necessary to make that process even more elaborate.
Before we can do any of that, there is a quieting and clearing of the decks that we are finding immensely helpful. The preliminary steps before we get to the actual vision crafting are:
consecration - setting aside all our agendas, preconceived ideas, and other motives
declaration - we align our intentions with God’s intentions for our businesses
agreement - we break agreements with all those negative thoughts or lies we carry about our leadership or business future
replace - replace those lies with God’s truth
inviting - with a clearer mind and heart, we invite God to guide us in the process of redesigning our future
While many of those practices aren’t familiar to our clients, they are pretty shocked by how necessary they feel and pretty wowed by what is happening as a result.
Because I have had the privilege of working a little more closely with the Ransomed Heart team over the last couple of years, I have already been exposed to many of the ideas now contained in John Eldredge’s Get Your Life Back: Everyday Practices for a World Gone Mad. They have been a real rescue to us and many of our clients already.
I would first encourage you to add John’s book to your library, but I am going to spend the next few weeks briefly highlighting some of the tools he offers there as well as our experience with them. Adopting any one of these into daily practice will change your life. I challenge you to try at least one, build it into a routine, and then look to add another.
Consider
Does it feel like the world has gone mad?
What are you practically doing to combat all that noise and distraction?
Do you know that these uncommon and extraordinary times are going to require some uncommon and extraordinary practices?