samng.me

Posts tagged with #Rest

Dream big

My sons,

One of my favorite games to play with you when you were young was the sleeping game. It was a silly little game that was designed to get you two to stay still and quiet for as long as possible. The game was simple - everyone lays down and sleeps, and the first to move around or to make noise loses. Not a very creative game, I know, but hey, I was a young dad who needed some peace and quiet, and you two were these tiny, loud, and rambunctious little things.

That didn’t change the fact though that I love sleeping. All my life, I’ve always loved sleeping. I slept a ton as a teen, and even as a young adult I’d spend Saturdays sleeping in as long as I can. The primary reason I loved to sleep? I loved dreaming. I loved the feeling of waking up from a wonderful dream and laying there, languishing in the feeling, trying to hang on to the last traces of it as consciousness permeated through.

One of the reasons I love dreaming is that dreams suspended reality. They allow my mind to build worlds, to create scenarios, to fully live out relationships and fanciful experiences that my real life didn’t enable. They open my mind, expand my horizons, and give me space to freely explore things that otherwise seem impossible. They provide an escape when I need, but most importantly they embolden me to think about the world as it ought to be, or even as it could be, instead of as it is. And then to do something about it.

Shaping our dreams

As I’ve looked back on my dreams over the years, I’ve recognized that they have been largely shaped by the inputs that I had in my life at any given time. The obvious (and probably mortifyingly funny) ones were the ones about girls. Yikes. My teenage years were filled with romantic flights of fancy with my crush of the day (and yes, there were many!). Combined with a healthy intake of rom coms (“She’s all that” starring Rachael Leigh Cook was my teenage favorite) and sappy love songs (“Kiss me” by Sixpence none the richer), I imagined many a sunset walk on the beach or a picturesque convertible joyride through the hills.

As I thankfully moved past those years, my college life of computer science, helping out younger class mates, and learning to ride motorcycles moved my dreams in those directions, and I found myself dreaming of working at Microsoft, of being an adjunct professor, and of exploring the continent on a motorcycle. Graduation brought dreams of success, of starting a family, of having two wonderful children, and of finding my place on the long road of adulthood.

But then a strange thing happened. I began to read more. I began to deviate my life from the daily grind, and began to fill my mind with books and with the ideas that those books brought about. While my childhood and adolescent reading was primarily filled with fiction which helped me dream of new worlds and encounters, and my regular, socially accepted inputs like watching Friends for a decade filled my dreams with common and relatable topics, in my thirties I started to really read. I read to learn, I read to grow, I read to become a better person.

Books like Mindset by Carol Dweck, The top five regrets of the dying by Bonnie Ware, When breath becomes air by Paul Kalanithi, Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella, and Infectious Generosity by Chris Anderson again shifted my dreams, this time in a much more elevated fashion. My dreams now turned to making an impact on our world, on figuring out how the world ought to be, and on finding my place and impact in it so that I could leave the world better than when I entered.

And slowly but surely I became convinced that we can shape our dreams. By controlling our inputs, by being intentional about the things that we exposed ourselves to, and by being staunch guardians of the inputs we allowed to influence us, we can guide and direct our dreams to topics and explorations of ideas that we want. Instead of allowing the activities of our subconscious minds to be governed by things like media (traditional or social), advertisements, and the general pessimistic and sensationalistic existence that is our societal norms, we can endeavor to shape and guide our unconscious thoughts and musings intentionally and according to the things that we value.

How do we do this?

We need to first recognize the impact that our daily experience has on our dreams. The environments we’re in, the worries that we have, and the set of activities we apply our efforts to in our conscious and waking moments all impact what our minds expand on in our subconsciousness.

One of the most beautiful characteristics about the human race is our ability to dream, to be inspired, and to find our own meaning and purpose for life. We do not merely exist and carry out our physical functions; no, we take those functions and try to assign meaning, to derive value, and to create joy in our experiences. The bigger we dream, the more our lives expand and the more rich our experiences become.

Dream big

So how do we then dream big? How do we get inspired, both consciously and subconsciously to take on bigger and better things? How do we go from a life that is rooted in the mundane experiences that our society places upon us - going to work, swiping up on your social media accounts, taking kids from place to place, and generally just running the rat race - to one that is uplifted, elevated, and expansive?

1. Notice your posture. Have you ever noticed that we spend an inordinate amount of time looking downwards? Whether it’s physically looking down at our phone screens and the like or metaphorically looking down on other people and on situations that we judge, we spend a lot of our posture looking downwards. Look up. Look up at the heavens, at the grandness of the world above and beyond us. Look up towards the inspiring stories of those who strive to elevate life, to make our world better.
2. Stop and smell the roses. We’re so busy with our lives that we never take time to rest, to have margin, to have space. When we force ourselves to smell the roses, when we turn our rat race running brains off, when we allow our conscious mind to lose focus and allow our subconscious to drift, we begin to rest. We begin to wonder. We begin to wander. We begin to dream.
3. Read. I firmly believe that reading is the most important thing a person can do. If there is only one thing that you learn from me in our time together, if there’s only one thing I can impart on your lives as you grow, my hope is that you learn to love reading. Read books on life, on philosophy, on science, on generosity. Read biographies, fiction, exposition. Read for fun to enjoy a lazy afternoon. Read for study. Read to learn. Read to dream.
4. Surround yourself with dreamers. We become like those around us. We adopt and elaborate upon the shared experiences with those closest to us. We can be lifted up, we can be anchored down. We can be inspired, we can be terrified. By surrounding yourself with dreamers and by creating times to discuss, to share, and to work out those dreams, we orient ourselves accordingly.

And so my boys, my hope for you, my dream for you, and my prayers for you are that you are dreamers, that you become men who both see the world as it is and as it could be, and that you be men of big dreams and even bigger actions to help us get there. I love you guys!

Time

My sons,

We are all blessed with the same 24 hours in a day. Father Time is unbiased In this regard (though some may question His fairness in His numbering of our days). Whether rich or poor, young or old, big or small, male or female; we each get the same 24 hours to apply to a day.

We explicitly say apply here because some may choose to inefficiently lose it, some may choose to squander it, some may choose to invest it, and some may choose to thoughtfully spend it.

Being unintentional with one’s time

When one doesn’t thoughtfully consider how to apply one’s time and apply good intention and boundaries around it, we may inadvertently lose much of it without having anything to show for it in the end.

We all know of that person who may have the greatest intentions to be incredibly productive with their afternoon, but on her way out she remembers that she had a half written email from the night before she wanted to finish, so she sits at her desk to finish that up. In doing so, she sees an ad for that thing she had been wanting, and, seeing no harm, clicks on it and spends a little while tangled up in articles and videos about It. Realizing that a half hour has gone by, she then gets up, resolved to go about her day, but in the 30 minutes since, she notices that the clouds have come in more than she had thought, so she decides to put on a sweater. In going to her closet, she realizes that the laundry needs to be done, so she begins that. Starting her laundry reminds her that some dishes from the previous day are still in the sink, so she begins to clean them. Pretty soon, her entire afternoon is gone and she still hasn’t gotten out of the apartment to do the productive things she had intended to do in the first place.

You might argue that some of those things are good. The laundry needs to be done, the dishes need to be washed, so why is our heroine being frowned upon?

The answer lies in our ability to direct the course of our lives.

Back to our heroine. If we take individual time slices of what she ended up spending her time on and simply tally the time she has “wasted” (more on wasting time later), she may measure up quite favorably. Doing the dishes, doing the laundry, finishing her email correspondence - those are all useful and necessary things, and do effectively move her life forward. Time spent on ads and videos may be arguably useful as well, especially if those activities lead to more clarity and ultimately a purchase decision on something.

When we take a step back however, we see that our heroine has not intentionally moved life forward in any measurable way. Her initial intention was to be productive with her afternoon, which we assume to be an afternoon spent in activities that move the macro needle of her life forward (for example studying, learning some new skill). We may be tempted to give her a pass this time, as her overall time was spent usefully, and in this single instance it may be fine for us to do just that.

The problem arises when we look not at this single slice of her life but when we apply the principle to all (or at least, the majority) of her days. Without the skills and the tools to combat this type of approach to life, we may quickly find weeks, months, or even years have gone by without our explicit direction. Worse, we may decide that the ability to have any input into the grand scheme of our life was a farce to begin with and remove our hands from the wheel altogether.

So what do we do?

Increasing our time

When it comes to our professional lives, it is pretty common for us to think about how to maximize our time. We have trainings and seminars about how to be more productive, and our teams are always trying to optimize processes so that we can be the most efficient in our application of the time we allocate to our professional endeavors. (I’ve recently shared a few thoughts myself on the matter: here and here).

How do we apply similar principles to our personal lives so that we can get the most there as well?

Think Big first

This might be a bias from me working at Amazon long enough to adopt the “Think Big” terminology, but it’s the right term to use here. We must first start by thinking big, thinking long term, thinking grand. What is it that brings us satisfaction and fulfillment in life? What is it that causes us to have that Joie de vivre we’ve heard so much about? What is it that makes us tick, the thought of which brings a smile to our face and an inner warmth in our hearts?

Once you’ve figured out what your “big” is, remind yourself of it daily. Whether you like mantras, sticky note reminders, hung phrases above entryways, or scheduled conversations, you need to remind yourself of your “big” frequently. It needs to be always hovering close to the top of your mind so that you can channel it and recall it instantly.

Our brains need regular reminders of what’s important. We are lazy by nature. Humans are creatures of inertia. When left to our own vices, we always choose the path of least resistance, both physically and mentally. By reminding ourselves of our “big” regularly, we create an environment that aids us in our thinking big and gives us natural prompts to orient our lives accordingly.

It’s worth calling out that there can be many big things in your life, and some of those things can be contextual. That’s totally okay! Put your reminders and in appropriate places in your life so that you have the right frame of mind for the right context.

Prioritize ruthlessly

Once you’ve determined your big things, you then need to ruthlessly prioritize everything else under them. I say ruthlessly because it’s often easier (and much less effective) to say that a number of things are as important as one another.

This is the burning house test, but for your own initiatives (if your house was burning down and you could grab one thing, what would it be?). Remember that if everything is important, then nothing is important. You can only have one best friend. You can only have one top priority.

“But wait!”, you say. “What if I have qualifiers? I have a best work friend and a best childhood friend!”. That’s all fine and good, but taken to its logical conclusion, every person could be “best” in their own category, which means that every friend you have is some type of best friend. This of course makes the title “best friend” utterly meaningless.

The same is true of our priorities. While it is tempting to say that my top work priority is such and such, and my top personal priority is this and that, this still fails the burning house test. Given you have a finite amount of the singular most precious resource in the world (ie time) which you can only allocate once, where will you allocate it?

Now, I’m explicitly not suggesting we starve any of the lower priorities. This isn’t a serialized, only work from the top down type of list. But when push comes to shove and we have conflicting things to do, ruthlessly prioritizing will allow us to drive our life’s course in a direction consistent with our values.

Plan for (and value) rest

The Good Book tells us that on the seventh day God rested “from all His work which He had done” (Genesis 2:3). He instructed His people to observe the Sabbath. He intended for us to rest. For some reason that has gotten lost in translation in modern day America, and we’ve somehow begun mistaking slacking off for rest.

First, we think that after a long week’s work, we owe it to ourselves to veg out in front of the TV and call it rest. It isn’t.

Next, because we think resting and slacking off are the same thing, we think that those who rest are slacking off, which our workaholic culture tells us is an ineffective use of our time.

I had a European coworker say once that they don’t want our American workaholic culture to be carried over onto our Europe team. (For those of you who read that and think, “those Europeans are slackers”, I hope this section speaks particularly strongly to you)

Let me begin by asserting that:

Resting is not slacking off

We need rest. We were made to require it. It is healthy, necessary, and nourishing to our bodies and our souls.

Rest is not simply ceasing to work. It is not slacking off or shirking one’s responsibilities, nor is it passively sitting on the sidelines and letting life do its thing.

It is active. It is intentional. It is thoughtful. It is practiced.

We are all wired differently. We have different motivators, different passions, different fears. And we all rest differently. What is restful to one may be stressful to the next, and vice versa. Just as we must spend the time and effort getting to know what our dreams are, what “big” means to us, so too must we spend the time to know what rest looks like for us, what that soul-nourishing, rejuvenating rest is.

My sons, our world is increasingly hectic. We are bombarded by countless vies for our attention. The world gets smaller, more connected, and more noisy everyday, with a million and one things trying to steal your time. My hope is that you learn to manage your time well and stay in the drivers seat of your lives, so that you can live the lives that you dictate, that you desire, and that you strive for.

Purposeful Pausing

My sons,

Our world is constantly on the go. Everything from fast food to same hour delivery to instant banking, we are a species that is relentless in our pursuit of micro efficiencies. We desire instant gratification and will go to great lengths and pay large amounts to attain it. Millions of people across thousands of companies spanning hundreds of industries all work with the sole purpose of delivering more to you faster, and more seamlessly than before.

We are in such a relentless pursuit of the destination that we lose sight of the journey, and with it the process of learning, and of self discovery.

One of my great mentors said that often we are so caught up in the next big thing; the next promotion, the next big sale, the next accomplishment- that we forget to think about the people that we are becoming. And in the grand scheme of your life, That matters a whole lot more.

As we’ve discussed in the past, the things that matter, the things that last, the things that we’ll remember and want to be known for as we reach the sunset of life - those things tend to be relational. Whether it is directly impacting someone personally or changing the lives of millions through the things we build, we are a relational and social species.

Constantly rushing from one event to the next, we are in danger of reducing life to a string of accomplishments in which the passing of time is marked only by check marks on todo lists. We remove the connection, the deep reflection, and the space to be in awe and wonder at the world around us. I’ve found that in my life many of the most rewarding interactions and the deepest connections have been unplanned, unintentional, not orchestrated.

Have you ever sat down with someone and said, “let’s have a deep and meaningful conversation” and had that actually work? Okay, in all honesty l’ve never tried that, but I can’t for the life of me imagine that would work. Most of my most meaningful and impactful conversations have happened when I least expected them. Connection needs time, and needs the space to spontaneously grow and flourish.

As such, we need to slow down. We need to purposefully pause and give our souls the chance to breathe. Have you ever started on a familiar journey (such as walking home from school or driving to your uncle’s house) and suddenly realized that you’re already there? That’s usually a good indicator that life is on autopilot and that it’s time for a pause to be thoughtful about the routines and the habits we’ve built.

LISTEN

Pausing allows us to listen. It gives us space in an otherwise jam packed life to think, to ruminate, and to process. Our world is filled with noise - media, social media, professional obligations, shuttling kids around from one extracurricular to the next. Our crazy schedule barely give us enough time to sleep enough. Time to think, to listen, and to be aware of what’s really happening around us isn’t even on the list for most of us.

Pausing, then, allows us to really listen. Not just to hear whats going on so that we can formulate our own response, but to really listen. The average person spends more time thinking about how they will respond to someone than they do listening and internalizing what’s being said. This is especially true in America where cutting in, interrupting, and immediately responding before the speaker has a chance to start another sentence is the norm.

BREATHE

Pausing allows us to breathe. When I was a kid playing little league, I used to be a pitcher. I wasn’t bad, but definitely had my share of bad days where my ball control just wasn’t there. I remember one game when I was pitching a particularly uninspired game. My coach called a time out and headed out to the mound to chat with me. He told me that whenever I felt frustrated, I should step off the mound, take my hat off, run a hand through my hair, and take a deep breath before returning to the mound. That piece of advice has done wonders for me over the years. Just breathe.

It turns out that the body is a pretty amazing thing, and that there are many benefits to breathing. Breathing calms us. It creates space for us to think and to process. It allows us to momentarily step back from the situation and assess. It heals, it mends, it expands, and it elevates our countenance.

SMELL THE ROSES

Lastly, pausing allows us to stop and smell the roses. We are so often running from one checked off item to the next that we need others to tell us to relax and take a moment to reflect on our surroundings. Even at work, we need HR to tell us to take our vacations. We need automated systems to harp at us to take time off to recover, rejuvenate, and revive. Never in the history of our species have we been so busy and unable or unwilling to take the time to stop and to smell the roses.

The worst part is that we pass this culture, this lack of balance, and this incomplete view of the purpose of life to our children. We fill our children’s lives with so much noise and activity that they too do not have the space to breathe, and worst of all believe that this is what life is supposed to be.

Even God rested on the seventh day. Jesus’ first miracle was to save and prolong a celebration. My sons, my hope is that by the time you are old enough to read and understand this, we will have raised you as boys who know how to work hard, yes, but who also know how to play hard, to have balance in your lives, and to have a healthy amount of time and space to pause. I hope that my relationship with you both has more play, levity, and joy than it does toil, discipline, and work. I love you both!