Jon Swanson

No intent to convert here but just a warning – if you’re offended by the mention of Jesus (oops, that means we just offended you), you’re going to be offended (more)! Otherwise, continue reading.

Jon tells about a time when Jesus had been up all night healing people.

As dawn arrived, he walked away. He went to a secluded place.

But people came looking for him. They pressed him to continue his good work.

But Jesus said no. As Jon points out between the two posts, Jesus said no for three reasons:

1) Purpose

You have a reason for being. It’s your purpose.

You are meant to do something BIGG. It’s your destiny.

But there’s a magical word for keeping your life in balance – No! You must learn to use regularly if you’re going to fulfill your purpose.

It’s what Jesus did in this case. You will be well served to follow his example.

2) Decompress

You’re human. You need to rest. Even Jesus needed to rest.

Sleep – it’s what we sacrifice to maintain work-life balance. Or at least some semblance of it.

If you’re like us, you work and work and work. And you can’t shut it off like a light.

You quit for the day physically before you quit mentally. So in order to get a good night’s sleep, you need to spend some time decompressing.

3) Seclusion

Most of us work hard and long these days. You need to rest now and then. You have to know when to say when.

Jesus demonstrated this in this example. Sometimes you just have to stop and rest.

Just make sure you don’t fall into the trap with your free time. We often think craving seclusion is bad.

Being reclusive is a negative. It’s a sign of deep problems.

Spending time alone now and then is a plus. It will help you refuel and stay on course to your destiny.

Sometimes you just have to get away to be a BIGG success.

How do you know when it’s time to get away?

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We caught the Sergeant Bilko movie recently. There was a quote we loved.

Rita Robbins (played by Glenne Headley) thinks her relationship with Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko (Steve Martin) is over.

Bilko’s archnemesis, Major Colin Thorn (Phil Hartman) is wooing her.

But she still has feelings for Bilko. She is reminiscing when she says something like this:

“It was always so exciting with Ernie. Every day was ‘Anything Can Happen Day.”

Every day. Not just Wednesdays, like on The Mickey Mouse Club Show.

It got us thinking. Not about having an Anything Can Happen Day every day.

Structure helps you reach BIGG success. Routines are important.

But a routine can easily turn into a rut. And there’s a fine line between truly living and living dead.

So we vow to start having an Anything Can Happen Day now and then. Maybe once a quarter. We’re going to plan for it next year.

And that’s as far as the planning will go. Because anything more would lead to less.

We want to start the day with a blank page. Absolutely nothing on the agenda. A day to do whatever we want.

A day to be spontaneous. When’s the last time you were spontaneous?

You know you’re too busy if you don’t ever have time to be spontaneous. And we’ve been too busy.

So we’re going to do it. We’re going to schedule four Anything Can Happen Days into next year.

That’s less than 1% of the days next year. Surely, we can let life flow that much of the time.

Anything Can Happen Day. It’s a great way to get out of a rut. Or just shake things up a bit.

You can’t afford to miss it. But you can be late for it!

When’s the last time you had an Anything Can Happen Day?

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BIGG success is life on your own terms. One of the five elements of BIGG success is play.

Leisure. Rest and relaxation. Recreation. Down time.

We often make a mistake when we think of play: When we envision play, we picture others.

Do you do so too?

It’s a trap. You’ll be much happier if you reserve a portion of your play time just for you.

Time to converse

You need some time to yourself. Just like any other relationship, you have to invest in your relationship with yourself.

You need to listen to yourself. You need to learn from yourself. You need to talk to yourself.

Not out loud. Unless you’re alone!

Time to refresh

You need time to refresh. Physically, of course. But you probably do okay with that one.

You need to make time to refresh your spirit. To feed your soul. And one way to do that is to spend some time alone.

Quietly. With just your thoughts.

Time to dream

To refect. And to dream. To envision BIGG success.

To live out in your mind what you will live out in real life. Because every victory is first won in the recesses of your mind.

And so, you need to make time for yourself. So you can tend to yourself. So you can refuel. So you can keep the flame burning.

Now, we know that this is a scary proposition to some people. But give it try.

It may seem strange at first. You may be uncomfortable. But most growth is uncomfortable.

In time, you will grow to appreciate this time. To treasure it, even.

Go someplace that inspires you. Get out in nature, if that’s your thing. We like to be near water.

It’s okay to be around other people. Just try to find a place where they’re not likely to be people you know.

Make time for you. Time to converse, to refresh, to dream. It leads to BIGG success!

Do you make time for yourself?

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We’re testing a concept and thought we’d share it with you. If you’re a regular here, you know we think that work-life balance doesn’t work.

Our thinking has evolved over time. We believe life is a system. BIGG success is life on your own terms.

Work and play are two of the five elements of BIGG success. The BIGG idea behind BIGG success is synergy. Synergy begins with syncing work and play.

Just-in-time play

You may be familiar with just-in-time inventory management developed as part of the Toyota Production System.

The goal is to increase the return on investment by bringing inventory into the production process at the precise moment it’s needed.

So we’ve been testing what we call just-in-time (JIT) play. The goal is to increase our sense of fulfillment (i.e. our returns) by making time for play right when we need it.

Avoiding the crash

This is a response to what we’ve typically done. We love our work. But sometimes we push too hard.

We work and work and work. Followed by a crash.

We didn’t choose downtime. It chose us.

And it wasn’t very productive.

Your inventory of time

We all have a fixed amount of time. Unfortunately, we never know when we will be “out of stock.”

In the meantime, we all want to make the most of our time. In order to do that, play is essential.

Play is as much a part of BIGG success as work. The two go hand-in-hand. In fact, play makes you more productive at work.

Signals

With JIT inventory management, signals are sent to tell workers when to order parts. With JIT play, we look and listen for signals that it’s time to bring in some units of play.

For example, when we get stuck writing, we’ll take five minutes to rejuvenate. When we start having trouble getting started in the morning, we know a day off is the ticket.

By getting essential play on our schedule when we need it most, JIT play is helping us maximize our productivity and get away more often.

Our business permits a great deal of flexibility on when we work. If your schedule allows you to adapt, give JIT play a try. Now that’s win-win.

And it may be your ticket to BIGG success!

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A man died in our next-door neighbor’s front yard a while back. He was forty-two years old.

Another neighbor, who happened to be driving by, saw the man lying on the ground. He approached him and saw that he wasn’t breathing. He called 911.

Firefighters responded first and began to perform CPR. Before long, an ambulance arrived. They tried and tried to get him to respond, but to no avail.

He was riding his bike and apparently had a heart attack. A different neighbor had seen him wandering around but thought he was waiting for the bus. That’s about all we know.

Life is precious. It is a gift.

The Lesson of the Five Balls

So we want to share a life-giving story that we love. It’s a story that’s been told for years. But Bryan Dyson popularized it in his commencement address to the graduating class at Georgia Tech University in 1991. He was the CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises at that time.

(A similar version of this story was published in Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas by James Patterson about ten years later. In that version, “integrity” was used instead of “spirit”.)

“Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls: Work, family, health, friends and spirit. You’re keeping all of these in the air and you will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it’ll bounce back; but the other four balls are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, damaged, or even shattered. They’ll never be the same. You must understand that and strive for the balance in your life.”

Dyson goes on with some suggestions on how to do this:

“Don’t take for granted the things that are closest to your heart, because without them life is meaningless.

Don’t let your life slip through your fingers by living in the past or for the future.

Don’t give up when you still have something to give.

Don’t be afraid to admit that you are less than perfect.

Don’t be afraid to encounter risk.

Don’t run through life so fast that you forget not only where you’ve been but also where you’re going.

Don’t be afraid to learn.

Don’t use time or words carelessly; neither can be retrieved.”

We’ll close with a quote, part of which we’ve seen attributed to Bryan Dyson:

“Life is not a race, but a journey to be savored each step of the way. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift; that is why we call it the present.”

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