About a month ago I was in a meeting with a group that I'm involved, a group within my church. One of the group leaders shared a lesson that he learned from someone else, it was a lesson on "busyness". As I've been thinking about busyness in my life and the brief lesson I heard from our group leader, I learned that busyness and doing the things that I really want to do are two different things. Sometimes we are so focused on the urgent that we let important things pass by (Whetten and Cameron, 2016, p. 98). For example, I used to be the kind of person who had a really hard time saying "no". The thing is, great opportunities were presented to me and because they were good, fun, and noble, I thought I should do them; thus, I would say "yes" before praying about things or considering the other things I had already committed; sometimes important things would be neglected because of my lack of balance. However, now I have learned (am learning still) that the best way for me to balance my life is to remember and honor my priorities. There are so many good things I can do but I cannot do them all, not at the same time anyway. I did an inventory (review) of my life and started moving the most important things at the top of my list...this meant that I had to say "no" to commitments that were not as important as others.
In the same meeting that I described above, our group leader laid out a challenge for us. He said (I am paraphrasing), the next time you pray to God, try getting on your knees and instead of voicing your prayer concerns, be still, and ask God to speak to you in the silence. Our group leader talked about his experience and how challenging it was to remain silent for 3-5 minutes; 3-5 minutes of silence was a challenge for him because he, like most of us, is on the go, not just physically, mentally. Our minds are so consumed with worry, home-life tasks, work-life tasks, etc., that the thought of absolute silence and stillness not only seems impossible but quite intimidating. I decided to try this "getting on my knees and being quiet" for myself...it was hard. It was my prayer time so I felt like I needed to say something; what's neat is that in that brief moment of silence, God said something to me. This experience taught me that prayer is less about my asking and more about my listening. So, how does this connect with Andy's technique? They are quite connected, actually. As I tried Andy's technique, I thought about so many things at first: I thought about decisions made during the day; I thought about how much cleaning I should be doing; I thought about my emotional health--all of these thoughts rushed through my mind in a matter of (what seems like) seconds! Instead of trying to run the thoughts away (which could be more challenging). I looked at them and let them leave, then I started concentrating on my breathing and resting my muscles; it was the most relaxed that I have been in a very long time. Ten minutes of doing nothing turned into 19 minutes as I looked at the time on my phone.
Through Andy' exercise and the challenge issued by my group leader, I am learning that most of the noise I battle is internal. I battle the noise of expectation; I battle the noise of insecurity; I battle the noise of unmet desires; I battle the noise of regret. So, although so much around me is sometimes silence (as an introvert, I require it!), I have to be careful to also silence my mind because my mind can be the loudest noise around me. Therefore, I want to continue Andy's techniques and continue in quiet prayer so that stillness is my focus, not just externally, but inside also.
Whetton, D. A. & Cameron, K. S. (2016). Developing management skills, 9th ed. Boston, MA: Pearson.
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