Unhurried

Welcome to Three-Peat Tuesday! 

Building from my recent book UNBEATABLE! Seven Pillars of Personal Excellence, each blog will contain three P’s: Pillar, Principle, and Practical, all geared towards nourishing you on your personal and spiritual growth journey.

Pillar: Unhurried Thinking

“If the iron is blunt and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed”-Qoheleth, the Wisdom Teacher

Principle: Unhurried Planning

We’re halfway through the first week of 2021 and perhaps the year’s momentum has already kicked in. I hope that you were able to get some form of rest at the end of 2020, even though we often feel like we need a vacation after our vacation!

If you’re anything like me, it is very tempting at the start of a new year to jump straight into productivity and the pursuit of annual goals. The mistake I’ve made in the past, though, was to get active without “sharpening the iron’s edge.”

The Teacher, quoted above from the Old Testament wisdom book of Ecclesiastes, encourages us to be prudent by slowing down to assess the condition of our tools. Without evaluating whether we are truly being effective, we can find ourselves using a lot of time and energy but to no avail.

In my November 2020 blog entitled “Patience is a Virtue” we looked at the snare of hurry. It is often the way of folly because of its inability to slow down, think, assess, consider, weigh, and plan before acting. The hurry trap is conspicuous every new year, which is why I decided to revisit this topic at this time.

Have you taken a day or two late last year or early this year to methodically and prayerfully approach 2021 or have you already jumped back onto life’s never-ending treadmill? I encourage you to sharpen the edge of the iron so that you can save your strength and invest it wisely elsewhere. This is a key building block for success.

Practical: Unhurried Living

Decide to make 2021 a well-paced, thoughtful and unhurried year. Say ‘no’ to a rushed life.   

If you were inspired by this blog, please consider sharing it with one other person today. To learn more about these and other related themes that promote the cultivation of an integrated inner self, read UNBEATABLE! which is now available on Amazon in print and as an e-book.