Working like a person and not a machine: What it means and why we must

Published: Thu, 03/08/18

Renew Weekly

Thursday Update 03.08.18

Notes, quotes, and links from Mark Brouwer. I help spiritually minded people who want to make a difference with their lives but struggle with overwhelm, stress, addiction, and discouragement. This might help ...

What you'll find in this issue:

1. Personal Update and Teleseminar Invite

2. Sedona Retreat: Finding Peace in the Stress of Change

3. FEATURE ARTICLE -- Working like a person and not a machine: What it means and why we must

4. Quote of the week

1. Personal Update and Teleseminar Invite

Thursday, March 8
8:00pm Central Time

I'm getting ready to launch a program to help people deal with stress-induced challenges. As part of the process of launching this program, I'm hosting retreat in Sedona, AZ with Belle Berg and David Burkhart. Belle is an author, speaker, and life coach, and her husband David is a speaker and corporate trainer. Belle focuses her teaching on helping people navigate through the stress of change, while David focuses on helping people manage workplace stress.

I'm planning to do a teleseminar on Thursday, March 8, where I'll be interviewing Belle and David about their insights on helping people deal with the stress of change. Belle will talk about her experiences and learning, growing up on a Menomonie Indian reservation, and the lessons she's taken from Native American wisdom that can be helpful for living in post-modern society.

If you're interested in being on the list for the free teleseminar, just respond to this email and let me know. Be blessed!

** Click here for the online signup form **

2. Sedona Retreat: Finding Peace in the Stress of Change

Dates: April 27 - 29

I'm very excited to invite you to join me in Sedona, AZ for a three-day retreat on the last weekend of April! I will be teaching on the theme of Finding Peace Amidst the Stress of Change. What better place to help us do that than in the sunny beauty of Sedona, Arizona!

The great challenge that so many of us are wrestling with is toxic stress. Toxic stress erodes our physical health, emotional well-being, and relationships. Given the pace of our lives and challenges of our world today, no one can eliminate stress altogether -- even if we wanted to. The problem is not stress itself, the problem is when that stress becomes toxic. And there are DEFINITELY things we can do to reduce -- and ultimately eliminate -- toxic stress from our lives. At this retreat, I'll share strategies for doing so.

At this retreat, I'll be joined in teaching by Belle Burg and her husband David Burkhart. Belle is a mentor and coach, specializing in helping people navigate through life transitions (such as moving, divorce, job loss, etc.) She's the author of "Best Seven Skills to Live By the Native American Way." David Burkhart has been a career corporate trainer, with an expertise in helping executives and managers manage workplace stress.

The retreat will be held in the beautiful Sedona Creative Life Center. The retreat will include teaching in the mornings, hiking tours and ample free time in the afternoon, and evening fireside chat sessions on Friday and Saturday night.

The cost for the retreat is $400, and early registrations will get a complimentary 20 minute treatment session at Sedona Spa. We are right now securing a special rate at Los Abrigados Resort and Spa for your lodging. Please make plans to join us. Email me with any questions.

For more information, or to sign up ... go here:

http://lastingleaders.com/sedona/

3. FEATURE ARTICLE: Working like a person and not a machine -- what it means and why we must

People need rhythm, machines just need power. People need cycles of engagement and rest, machines just need to be plugged in. You and I are people, not machines; and as such we work with creativity and imagination ... but also with limits. This is important to remember, and easy to forget.

Life has seasons and rhythms. Trying to go through life — through a year, a month, a week, or even a day — in a steady-state of energy expense and activity doesn’t work. There are times we are ON and times we are OFF. Times of expansion, and times of contraction. Times to push, and times to regroup.

In a garden, there are times of planting, growth, harvest … and also time for the ground to lie fallow.

Trying to fight these rhythms is foolish. It is like trying to surf between waves, instead of waiting to ride the waves. By the end of the day you’ve worn yourself out, and you won’t have ridden the board much either.

Ignoring rhythms

Sometimes as leaders we create problems for ourselves, because we ignore rhythms, and try to push at the wrong times. The classic example — ignored by too many pastors — is that of Sabbath. The principle of the Sabbath is that one should work for six days, and devote one to rest and spiritual renewal. Ignoring this rhythm has put many leaders in a bad place.

I recently read an article by Douglas Rushkoff about the tendency today for people to ignore rhythms in fields of work like technology and media, where there is relentless pressure to keep producing and not let up. He points out that, while our bodies are tuned to a natural rhythm, many ignore this today and try to match our human rhythms to machines which have no rhythm. A computer can do any task at any time, and it’s processing ability never changes. But humans aren’t like that, we have cycles and seasons. Listen to several paragraphs drawn from the article:

"While our technologies may be evolving as fast as we can imagine new ones, we humans and our culture evolved over millennia and are slower to adapt. The body is based on hundreds, perhaps thousands, of different clocks, syncing to everything from the sun and moon to levels of violence and available water. We can’t simply declare noon to be midnight and expect our body to conform to the new scheme as if it were a Google Calendar resetting to a new time zone. Neither can we force our businesses to conform to an always-on ethos when the people we work with and for are still obeying a more deeply embedded temporal scheme.

"Instead of offloading time-intensive tasks to our machines, we attempt to match the speed of our network connections. Thanks to the Internet, we travel more on business not less, we work at all hours on demand, and spend our free time answering email or tending to our social networks. Staring into screens, we are less attuned to light of day and the physiological rhythms of our housemates and co-workers. We are more likely to accept the digital clock’s illusion that all time is equivalent and interchangeable. But it isn’t.

“This is the digital trap: Instead of teaching our technologies to conform to our own innate rhythms, we strive to become more compatible with our machines’ timeless nature.

"Imagine, instead of trying to ride roughshod over these cycles, actually using or even exploiting recent discoveries about our common neurochemical responses to [them]."

Good stuff to think about. What do you think?

4. Quote of the week:

"There's a difference between interest and commitment.

When you're interested in doing something,

you do it only when it's convenient.

When you're committed to something,

you accept no excuses, only results."

- Ken Blanchard

Let's keep in touch ...

I write and speak at events as director of Renew Resources. I also am leader and teacher at Loop Church in Chicago. If you're ever in the area, come join us on a Sunday morning! Places to find my writing:

https://medium.com/@markbrouwer/

http://lastingleaders.com

http://sexualsanity.com

Also follow me on Facebook

The Recovery Journey

Check out my 90 Day program for starting (or renewing) your recovery from sexual addiction / compulsion called "The Recovery Journey". There's also a special program for the partners of addicts.

Other Audio Products:

The Spiritual Issues and Challenges of Recovery

Eight Keys That Unlock Lasting Recovery