Pacing Your Life Like A Pro!
Pacing makes all the difference!
One of appealing aspects of living in Chattanooga is all the amazing hiking options. Recently my husband shared one of his favorite hikes with me that is mere miles from our home. It was a perfect day for hiking – happy warm like spring is here in the south rather than the sweaty warm (HOT!) of summer.
I thoroughly enjoyed the hike! It was brisk and happy for me! Along the way, there were spots to inch off the trail and edge up to the lake which was still and peaceful that day. At other points the trail traversed cliffs that surround the lake with amazing panoramic views. It was gorgeous!
I was in my happy place!
My husband, on the other hand, completed the hike feeling very different! While normally this hike is his happy place, the path on which he contemplates life and arrives at powerful conclusions, but on this particular day keeping up with my quick pace truly sucked the joy out the experience for him. It was not the pace he had hoped for or one he liked.
That day highlighted once again that my preferred hiking pace and my husband’s preferred hiking pace are not the same.
God’s Pace
In my life, I’ve discovered that God’s pace is often significantly slower than my pace. God really takes His time. He is not in a hurry. Yet when He eventually shows up, it’s perfect! Every detail lines up and whatever I’m waiting for typically exceeds my expectations. I’ve also noticed some other benefits to God’s timing:
- I grow and mature in the process of waiting.
- God is glorified in a greater way.
- My faith is strengthened.
- Others are impacted more favorably in the process.
What’s Your Pace of Life?
Be honest…are you navigating life at breakneck speed – outpacing those around you including God – or even moving a bit too fast for your own good?
Or are you doing life at a slow and steady pace like my sweet husband and really savoring all that life has to offer?
There is a healthy pace for life, but the challenge is that your pace and mine might be very different. And God’s pace is probably slower than yours or mine!
A Marathon Runner’s Pace
I ran a half marathon back in the day, and while I finished the race, I didn’t come close to setting any records! In fact, I had horrible shin splints and have not attempted another half marathon since! Eliud Kipchoge on the other, has an incredibly impressive record! He accomplishments include…
- Multiple big city marathon wins
- 2 Olympic gold medals
- The first man to complete a marathon in less than two hours. (2019 – Challenge in Vienna, Austria – an “unofficial” event.)
With those wins, I consider him a man who knows something about pace! How does Eliud train? He runs twice a day except on Sunday when he skips his afternoon run. He accumulates 200-220km (about 124-137 miles) a week! That’s a LOT of running.
Consistency is a priority, but of his 13 runs each week, 10 of them are slow, easy runs. In other words, the majority of serious runners would have no trouble keeping up with his pace. The remaining three runs each week he pushes Himself – that’s 23% of the time.
Eliud has excelled at running marathons by running mostly slow!
In other words, “train to race don’t race in training.” Or put another way, “hold back more so to go faster when you need to.”
That sounds like incredible wisdom for life too. I might rephrase it this way: Go slowly day to day and only pick up the pace when absolutely necessary.
A Funny Irony
I demand a lot of myself, so sometimes being self-employed is worse than having a job. Sadly, in the past I felt like I had to work non-stop in order to achieve my business goals. If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ve probably heard me mention a time or two how I have been making an effort to slow down and work smarter not harder. To put my efforts into what I feel God is guiding me to focus on and what would allow me to be most fruitful.
Despite working smarter and following God’s lead, every now and then I have a week that feels extra full. And when that happens the temptation is to step into overdrive and speed everything up.
This past week was one of those kinds of weeks for me. In spite of deadlines, I took several hours off in the morning to slow down, pause, and read a book.
Because sometimes even though it may feel like you have too much going on to slow down, it is exactly what you need! You’ll be surprised at what that break does for you! It allows you to step back and breathe so that when you get back to what needs to be done you are able to approach it with a fresh perspective and a slower pace.
Fear wants you to believe the frantic pace is a must, but I know that God longs for me to trust Him and surrender to His pace and His pace is not frantic nor does it overburden me.
When Was the Last Time…
You chose to disrupt the whirlwind of activity? Simply slow your pace and trust?
Thinking back on the pandemic, the isolation was not healthy, but being forced to slow down was! It felt good!
Thank heavens you don’t have to wait for another pandemic to adjust your pace – you can choose to do that now!
Is Your Pace Too Fast?
Have you been ignoring the signs that you are zipping along at breakneck speed? Signs like…
- Feeling stressed and/or overwhelmed
- Lacking focus and/or unable to prioritize
- Having very little or zero margin in your life
- No longer practicing self-care
- Neglecting your relationships
- Not enjoying life
- Feeling exhausted and/or not sleeping well
- The Inability to relax
- Multitasking becoming a way of life
- Habitually checking your phone
A Frantic Pace Is Costly!
Have the perceived demands of life and work quickened your pace? Have you convinced yourself that faster is better? That you are able to accomplish more in less time if you hustle?
Have you over-committed yourself – stretched yourself beyond what’s humanly possible or beyond your own personal capacity?
Are you perpetually trying to catch up? Making more mistakes than you’d like? Forgetting things? Feeling void of the creativity you need to address the problems and challenges you face? Perhaps it’s time to take control of the pace of your life.
The truth is that the quality of your work, relationships, and health all suffer! Sadly, by the time you realize how harmful your pace is, it’s often too late!
Honing In On YOUR Pace
When it comes to hiking, the pace that works for me doesn’t work for my husband. In the future, if we want to hike together, we will both have to adjust our pace. That’s a valuable lesson for leaders! It also highlights the fact that when it comes to pace, we are all different. It’s essential that you know the pace that works best for you.
How does that translate to life? You must know your limits – what you are capable of handling well and the pace at which you operate at your best and when to slow your pace down.
In my experience, after peeling back the layers, the odds are good that fear is lurking underneath all the hurried activity. It may be your Fear Monster at work, the fear of failure, or the fear of missing out (FOMO). Perhaps your rapid pace is an attempt to avoid something your afraid of and would have to deal with if you did slow down.
Fear fuels some pretty funky beliefs that keep us in overdrive like the belief that…
- Success requires you to work hard, very hard!
- Your worth is tied to what you do, so you must do a lot, and fast!
- There isn’t enough time so you must hustle and hurry to get it all done.
- Overextending yourself to help others in order to make them happy or to feel valuable.
- To achieve, be successful, or significant you have to hit remarkably high standards or be perfect.
- Achieving, being busy, etc. equals significance, worth, or value.
- What other people think of you matters!
Believing the truth is the antidote to those fear filled funky beliefs. The truth that you are deeply loved by God regardless of what you do – His love is not something to be earned, it is something to receive. You are worthy and valuable simply because He is your maker and He says you are!
Truth
The truth that God created “human beings” rather than “human doings” and set up life to function best with regular times of work and rest. In fact, God is delighted when you slow down and rest because that demonstrates your trust and confidence in Him when you do!
When you slow down and step back, God has space to work in ways that lead to some pretty surprising results – results that your frenzy of activity will not lead to!
How is your pace impacting your life and work?
