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?

Image in this post from stock.xchng

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?

Image in this post from stock.xchng

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!

Image in this post from stock.xchng

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.”

Image in this post from stock.xchng

A new study on the work-life conflict
by the Families and Work Institute shows that 60% of men are feeling extreme stress from trying to balance their personal and professional lives.

In fact, more men now experience work-life conflict than women!

Isn’t that a startling revelation?

The blurry worry

They’re feeling what we call “the blurry worry.” Our roles and our worlds have both been blurred.

In ancient times, men hunted while women gathered. In more modern times, men provided; women cared.

Now, both sexes do all of the above. The roles have been blurred.

And our personal and professional worlds are blurry as well. Technology is making us accessible at all times to everyone on either side of our lives.

Real men

So what is a man to do?

BIGG success is life on your own terms. Real men today want BIGG success throughout their life – in their careers and as a breadwinner, husband, father, son, friend, etc.

But they are increasingly frustrated because society crams an old paradigm down their throats: work-life balance.

So real men view their life as a system. Sure, the system has its components, but they are all part of one life.

Real men don’t buy in to work-life balance. It doesn’t work in an age of dual income couples, raising kids while caring for parents, increasing demands at work and home, and technology that puts us in touch 24/7.

Instead, they seek life sync. Sync means harmony, “a pleasing combination of elements in a whole” according to The Free Dictionary. Real men create life sync through discovery, design, and development.

• Discovery
  

  Discovery starts with you. It begins internally before reaching out to other people. What do you want your life to look like? What’s your vision? What’s most important to you?
  

  Once you determine what you want, it’s time for conversations. But not just conversations – conversations with a purpose.
  

  Find what is expected of you at home and work. Go beyond expected to what is hoped for.
  

  Share your vision and values with the people closest to you. Find common ground.
  

• Design
  

  Now you know what you want and what the most important people in your life want. It’s time for design.
  

  You want to design the life that fits you perfectly. It meets the needs and wants of the people who matter at work and at home.
  

  Once you think you have the right design, you’re ready for more conversations with a purpose. Get feedback from the people who will be affected by your design.
  

• Development
  

  You think you have the ideal design. The key term in that last sentence is “think”.
  

  It’s time to build your life. This isn’t like building a building. It’s like building a business.
  

  That’s the reason we don’t say you’re the architect of your life. We believe you’re the entrepreneur of your life; building a life is more like building a business.
  

  So you start by testing. Test an idea. See if it brings you more harmony throughout your whole life.
  

  If it does, keep doing it. If it doesn’t, try something else.
  

  Keep testing to build the life that fits you perfectly. That’s BIGG success for real men (and women)!
  

Image in this post from ba1969