the joy of simplicity michael zigarelli associate professor of leadership department of management...
TRANSCRIPT
The Joy of Simplicity Michael Zigarelli
Associate Professor of LeadershipDepartment of Management & Business
Survey Item% of Christians
who say often or always
I feel guilty when I relax
Survey Item% of Christians
who say often or always
I feel guilty when I relax 30%
Survey Item% of Christians
who say often or always
I feel guilty when I relax 30%
When I don’t need to hurry, I tend to hurry anyway
Survey Item% of Christians
who say often or always
I feel guilty when I relax 30%
When I don’t need to hurry, I tend to hurry anyway 30%
Survey Item% of Christians
who say often or always
I feel guilty when I relax 30%
When I don’t need to hurry, I tend to hurry anyway 30%
I rush from task to task
Survey Item% of Christians
who say often or always
I feel guilty when I relax 30%
When I don’t need to hurry, I tend to hurry anyway 30%
I rush from task to task 43%
Survey Item% of Christians
who say often or always
I feel guilty when I relax 30%
When I don’t need to hurry, I tend to hurry anyway 30%
I rush from task to task 43%
I am exhausted at the end of my day
Survey Item% of Christians
who say often or always
I feel guilty when I relax 30%
When I don’t need to hurry, I tend to hurry anyway 30%
I rush from task to task 43%
I am exhausted at the end of my day 51%
Physical/Mental: fatigue, stress, migraines, high blood pressure, karoshi
Physical/Mental: fatigue, stress, migraines, high blood pressure, karoshi
Relational: compromised relationship with spouse, kids, parents, co-workers, clients, friends, neighbors…
Physical/Mental: fatigue, stress, migraines, high blood pressure, karoshi
Relational: compromised relationship with spouse, kids, parents, co-workers, clients, friends, neighbors…
Professional: mediocrity, “Overloaded Circuits”
“The sufferer doesn’t experience a single crisis but rather a series of minor emergencies while he or she tries harder and harder to keep up. Shouldering a responsibility to ‘suck it up’ and not complain as the workload increases, executives with (this condition) do whatever they can to handle a load they simply cannot manage as well as they’d like. The…sufferer therefore feels a constant low level of panic and guilt. Facing a tidal wave of tasks, the executive becomes increasingly hurried, curt, peremptory, and unfocused, while pretending that everything is fine.”
From: “Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Under-perform,” by Edward Hallowell, MD. Harvard Business Review, January 2005.
Physical/Mental: fatigue, stress, migraines, high blood pressure, karoshi
Relational: compromised relationship with spouse, kids, parents, co-workers, clients, friends, neighbors…
Professional: mediocrity, “Overloaded Circuits”
Spiritual: too busy for God
“The most important rule for us is to concentrate on keeping our lives open to God. Let everything else, including work, clothes and food be set aside. The busyness of things obscures our concentration on God.” Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
“Satan does not here fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God.” Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall / Temptation
“Satan will do anything to keep you out of the Word, even if it means adjusting a window shade.” Dwight Moody
A Biblical Remedy
Simplify Your Life
When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to
the other side of the lake
Matthew 8:18
“Bible study, prayer and church attendance, among the most commonly prescribed activities in Christian circles, generally have little effect for soul transformation, as is obvious to any observer…Their failure to bring about change is precisely because the body and soul are so exhausted, fragmented and conflicted that the prescribed activities cannot be appropriately engaged, and by and large degenerate into legalistic and ineffectual rituals.
“…God will, generally speaking, not compete for our attention. If we will not withdraw from things that obsess and exhaust us into solitude and silence, he will usually leave us to our own devices.”
Dallas Willard
From: “Spiritual Disciplines, Spiritual Formation, and the Restoration of the Soul,” Journal of Psychology and Theology, 26:1 (Spring 1998).
Simplify
Do I need to make a change? Am I living a lifestyle of overload and over-extension? Am I experiencing some of the physical, mental, professional, or spiritual consequences of this lifestyle?
To embrace simplicity as a core value, what are some things to which I need to say no, even though they may be good things? Where might I invest that time instead?
How can I make simplicity a long-term habit, rather than just a fleeting aspiration?