Stop The Madness

The designer, Joe Duffy, is challenging all the creatives out there to "stop going to work!" Specifically, he's encouraging people to get out of the office so they can think more creatively and see things more clearly. But what he's really talking about is being more intentional about designing your life. 

Duffy writes: "We live in a world where burnout is rampant. No wonder why, when we now have the ability to be connected, 24/7. We have to ask ourselves what we want to be connected to. There have always been workaholics but today we see many of those behaviors shunned by a new generation of people seeking greater balance in their lives. We now have the ability to blend what we do for a living, what we're passionate about and every other facet of our lives into a much healthier/happier life, a designed life." (Read the whole article here.)

We think Duffy's on to something important. 

The consumable approach that characterized the modern era is hanging on in way too many of the organizations we care about. It'll kill you too, if you let it. What are the symptoms of a consumable approach to life? Here are just a few: 

• You feel like you never "have enough" even though you have way more than your parents did at your age.
• You get into arguments with your significant other about money (how you're spending it, how much of it you have/need, etc.).
• You're stressed out enough that you're losing sleep. 
• You shop to feel better but then you feel sick when you see the credit card statement.
• Your friends and family are encouraging you to find another job that won't suck the life out of you but you're not doing anything about it.
• You feel like you don't have time to do the things you love to do.
• Your coworkers don't know what your laugh sounds like and your friends say you don't smile as much as you used to.
• Deep down you wonder why in hell you're working so hard when you're so miserable and you have lost sight of the "point" of it all.
• You obsess about how you look and/or appear to others.
• You are openly or secretly jealous of "more successful" coworkers, friends, or family members.
• You can't remember the last time you felt creative or excited about learning something new.

In a consumable approach to life, you are always trying to measure up to what somebody else thinks is important. You scramble to have enough, earn enough, buy enough fill-in-the-blank  to feel good about yourself. In fact, you'll do anything to fill-in-that-blank, even if it kills you. And so what's "in the blank" has become the bottom line for your life. 

This is no way to run an organization. And it's no way to live a life.

Here at A Renewal Enterprise, our coaches are working to help people apply the same principles of a Renewable Organization(TM) to their own, everyday lives:

• Be who you are;
• See what you have;
• Do what matters. 

Over the next year we'll also be developing a series of resources to help people live a Renewable Life(TM). In the meantime, especially if you're a person of faith, you may want to pick up the brand new book by two of our teammates called "Reclaiming the V Word: Renewing Life From Its Vocational Core" (Augsburg Fortress, 2009). It'll help you think more clearly about the purpose of your life and introduce you to a process that can help you do what matters at work, at home, at school, and everywhere you go, every single day. You can pick up a copy at the online ARE bookstore.

But the only person who can stop the madness in your life is you.

Comments

[Steve Fiechter]

Thanks for this article...living in the "now" (to quote Tolle...and maybe even Jesus and the Buddha :) is a very difficult thing to do when we are trained up in a culture and society that is based on relative value. But, spiritually speaking, the good news is that our real, truthfilled, authentic VALUE has nothing to do with comparisons. We have value because we are, as some religious expressions put it, "made in the image of God."