The Bregman Leadership Podcast
Episode 209

Garland Vance

Gettin' (un)Busy

Why are you stuck being busy? Busyness is an overcommitment to too many good commitments, says Garland Vance, leadership development pastor and author of Gettin’ (un)Busy: 5 Steps to Live Your Life with Purpose, Productivity, and Peace. Discover the disadvantages of trying too many strategies at once, why you need to deconstruct first, and why “it’s just a feeling.”

About

Get the book, Gettin’ (un)Busy, from Amazon here:

Learn more

Website: Garlandvance.com
Bio:  Garland has been helping people and teams get clarity about their life and leadership for over twenty years. He is an author, speaker, and consultant. Along with his wife, Dorothy, he cofounded AdVance Leadership, which helps overwhelmed influencers and organizations live with Purpose, Productivity, and Peace. Garland also serves as a Senior Consultant with Swoz Leadership, a consulting firm that helps maximize organizations through executive development and creating raving fans. As a former Leadership Development Pastor and Director of one of Chick-fil-A’s nonprofits, Garland has poured into influencers at all levels. He’s helped thousands of people discover and live out their life purpose, enhance their clarity and productivity, and impact the world around them. Garland earned a Doctorate in Leadership and Spiritual Formation from Denver Seminary. There, he researched the effects of busyness on leaders and how to overcome both individual and organizational overcommitment. As much as he loves to work, it’s not his highest priority. Garland enjoys reading, watching movies, drinking coffee, trying new food, engaging in deep conversations, running, and East Tennessee hiking. But most of all, he loves spending time with his wife, Dorothy, and their three children.

Video

Transcript

This transcript is unedited.

Peter:

With us today is Garland Vance. He is a former leadership development pastor. He worked in a 9,000 person church doing leadership development and, and as a pastor and was director of one of Chick-fil-A’s nonprofits. And he’s written most recently the book getting unbusy five steps to kill busy-ness and live with purpose, productivity and peace. And actually one of the reasons he left the church was because it wasn’t moving fast enough. So it’s going to be a very interesting conversation to talk about, like, how do we get unbusy, but also the reality that we want to be moving and we want to be achieving things and, and, and that dynamic, which I think he’s, he’s very intimate with. So Garland welcome to the Bregman leadership podcast.

 

Garland:

Thanks, Peter. It’s great to be here. Glad to have this conversation with you.

 

Peter:

So you wrote in the book early on, and this was a quote from someone else. Like, I know I’m busy, but it’s a good busy because everybody’s busy and I kind of feel that way too. And I understand how my business can be getting in my way, but I also have the sense of, of the usefulness of being busy. And there’s this quote. I remember that, you know, if, if you want something done, ask a busy person to do it because someone who’s really busy, like is prepared and they do things and they’re on top of things and they get stuff done. So if you really want something done, ask a busy person to do this. So, but you’re starting from a different premise, which is we have to get unbusy. So resolve those two things for me. Sure. So first let’s define what busy-ness is.

 

Garland:

Busy-Ness is an overcommitment to too many good commitment. And that’s really, really epidemic in our society where we have so many good commitments from work and home and kids, activities, and projects that we’re doing around the house and, you know, civic or community or church things that we’re doing. And we’re so wrapped up in so many good things that we wake up exhausted and we go to bed exhausted. And so for me, I think there, there was this old mentality of if you’re going to get something done, ask a busy person. And, and really that mentality comes from this idea of, of, of old that the busy people were the competent people. They were the ones who knew what they were doing. And like you said, they were, they were well-resourced, you know, they, they got things done, but now we live in a world where everybody is busy. And if you don’t believe me, the next time you see a friend at us, you know, a coffee shop or in the grocery store, and you haven’t seen them for awhile, even in this COVID world, say to them, how are you doing? And they’re probably going to respond by saying, Oh, I’m good. I’m just really busy. So if everybody’s busy, then we just need to ask everybody to do everything. And it just is not going to work that way.

 

Peter:

And it’s interesting because we are, what you’re saying is we are living in this culture of, of Buisiness. And I don’t know if it’s just in the U S or in other parts of the world as well. Because I see some of it, but I also see some differences in other parts of the world, but it’s this culture of, of busy-ness. And why, why, why are we so busy right now?

 

Garland:

Right. I think that we are busy for a few reasons. And I call these in, in the book, the inhibiting beliefs that keep us stuck in busy-ness and there’s primarily three of them. The first is this belief that I need to be more we look around and, you know, we see people who are more successful than us. We go into a bookstore and see all the books that tell us all the ways that we’re not the best leader. We should be. That we’re not the best person, the best father, the best, you know, fill in the blank. And, and there’s this ache in us that says, I want to eat more. And in order to be more than I feel like I need to do more. And so we’ve been filters to make ourselves feel more important to make us feel like we’re achieving something and, and that our lives have significance.

 

Garland:

And then we have one more inhibiting belief. So there’s, I need to be more, I need to do more, but the final one is I need to get more. And it used to be that that mentality was, I need to get more stuff, right? I need to buy a bigger house, a better boat. I, you know, nicer cars, but more and more, what we’re seeing and hearing from people is that they want to get more experiences. So they’re taking more vacations and doing more classes online and just beginning to fill their lives with all of these good experiences. But when you add all of those together, they become overwhelming.

 

Peter:

Okay. So I completely fit into this category. Like, I don’t want to miss out on stuff. I hear about something it’s it sounds really great. I go to a restaurant and I want to eat everything because it all sounds really great. And, and, you know, there is a sense of too much of a good thing is no longer good. And, you know, you you know, you, you have lots of great stories and I, and I liked the, one of your son eating sushi, and his sister was not there to eat it with him. So he ate the whole plate where normally he shares with his sister and then, you know, he felt sick and never wanted sushi. Right. And so we do that with our also, right, right. And, and so I get that. And yet there’s a truth to the reality that, like, what do you say no to, I remember in the movie years and years ago, I’m a day Mozart where he played a, you know, one of his composed pieces and the King, he was playing for the King.

 

Peter:

And the King says that was really great, but it was a bit long. And, and Mozart said, okay, so which one of the notes would you have me take out? Like, which note would you have me removed? Right. Because, because, you know, the piece itself holds together in a certain way. And so I just wonder, like, it’s, it’s almost a truism to say, be a human being, don’t be a human doing, it’s a truism to say, you are enough just as you are. Right. You don’t have to be anything more. Right. And you come from a Christian spiritual background in which, you know, that’s a premise and yet, and yet it’s we’re all striving. And, and it’s not a feeling that, that most of us have, like most of us want to be something a little different than what we are right now. Like we, you know, there’s this also in the new age world, there’s this term of like, you’re perfect. Just the way you are. Everything is perfect. And yet we’re trying to change things. So it’s like, we’re perfect and we’re trying to change. And so there’s a tension and there’s a dynamic to that. If I’m really enough, why would I do anything if I really have accomplished enough? Why would I do anything? So help me untangle the tension between these two things. Yeah. I think

 

Garland:

For me, one of the best ways that I have heard this expressed is actually by Brendon Burchard, who talks about the idea of content striving and this didn’t make it into the book, but it’s, it’s been one that has really influenced me over the last year. So the idea of content striving is I can simultaneously with who I am and with what I have and still say, I’d like to be more. And I’d like to do more. The challenge with busy-ness is when we don’t have when we don’t first begin to deconstruct what we’re currently doing. So there’s this exercises that I take people through called the commit to uncommit worksheet in which you literally go through and identify all of the commitment you have and how much time they take, and then how you feel about those. And, and I just do three really simple categories of, I feel like it’s a, yeah, like I really love doing this.

 

Garland:

I feel like it’s a, nah, I really don’t enjoy doing this. I really hate it sucks the life out of me. And then there’s this middle category that I call the ma you know, I don’t feel good. I don’t feel bad. It just exists. I think for most of us, what and, and what incredibly busy people do is we more, and we add more to our plates without looking at what we’re currently doing and asking the question, what can I take off of my plate to make room for this? So I give an example in the book that that’s really near and dear to my heart, as I was writing, getting unbusy my wife and I started our own business. And we decided to move from the Houston, Texas area to Knoxville, Tennessee. That was one of our kind of a longterm dream of ours.

 

Garland:

We love this area of the country. We wanted to move there. Well, I’m writing, getting unbusy as we’re packing up our house, selling our house, looking for new houses. And I realized that I had to stop writing the book for a period of time to make space for this new goal that I was going to go after. And I put it on hold for nine months, which is not easy to do. You’ve written books, you know, putting something on hold for nine months is not an easy task in and of itself. But, but by deconstructing that one commitment for a period of time, I was able to focus on moving our family, starting our new business, you know, acquiring clients, all of the things that we needed to do, and then picked up the book with this fresh energy. So I think that’s, it’s not that we won’t want to tell people don’t go after your big dreams and your high priorities. That’s actually, one of the major focuses is a bit busy, but what we do want to do is say, you don’t always have to add, add, add, add, add a lot of times you need to deconstruct, you need to subtract

 

Peter:

First. So, as I was thinking about this, and I was thinking about this very point that you make and you making the book, I was thinking about my investment philosophy, and there’s a lot of research around, you know, investment philosophies. And what Warren Buffett will say is, you know, if you’re not basically what they’ll say is if you’re not investing in me, invest in an index fund, right. And the idea behind an index fund is, I don’t know which stocks are going to perform. So I’m going to buy an entire index. And however smart, I think I am however, good a stock picker. I think I am the I’m going to make mistakes. And when I narrow my choices and I do fewer, and I invest in fewer stocks, the chance yes. Of one stock being amazing and outperforming everything else is exists. So does one stock doing incredibly poorly and destroying my entire investment strategy.

 

Peter:

So a safer investment strategy is invest in everything and ride the tide of the growth of business. And I was thinking about this in terms of time, because I think one of the challenges is we don’t know which stocks are going to perform. We don’t know what we’re working on. And what if we knew that this 20%, right? It’s this 80 20 principle, right. If we knew that this 20% was the one that was going to like, really bring us to our dreams and really achieve everything we wanted to achieve, then we could give up the 80%. But, you know, if I wasn’t scanning my email, I wouldn’t have seen your email to me and then have you on the podcast and read your book. And so like, I could cut those things out, but I don’t know what I’m missing. And, and I, and I think that’s an underlying challenge to people who are busy is that it’s not that we don’t know what it is that we want to achieve, but we just don’t necessarily know which of the actions and which of the books in which of the reading, et cetera, is going to get us there.

 

Peter:

How do you help us resolve, right.

 

Garland:

Yeah. So I would say you are 100% correct. In, in the sense of there is this, this fear of missing out that drives us. I may be very clear on what my goals are, but what, which is the path that’s going to get me there. So I’m going to go down five different paths at the same time and see which one ends up correct. What ends up happening though, is I have less time, less energy, less attention to give, to, to actually evaluate how things are are going. And so I would say to a person who’s, who’s coming with that is, would it work better? And I’m not saying it 100% would, but I would bet on it. Would it work better if you gave all of your attention to one of those paths for a brief period of time and evaluate the results of that.

 

Garland:

And if it works, you press into it harder. And if it doesn’t, you begin to switch gears and focus your attention on another gear. The challenge that we’re having at this time with busy-ness is we have exponential commitments and very limited capacity. Our time is limited. Our energy is limited. Our attention is limited. And so we end up scattering all of our time, energy and attention among these different areas, which ends up paying lower dividends. So it’s a great investment strategy when it comes to money, it’s actually a pretty terrible investment strategy when it comes to time, because you’re not only losing your time. You’re also losing your energy every time.

 

Peter:

One of the things that you’re not saying that I think is true, that you’re insane saying implicitly, but I want to say explicitly is when we stop being so busy and we give up the pursuit of some of these things. Not only is there a fear of missing out, but there’s a reality of missing out that we may miss opportunities. We may pursue the wrong thing. And what you’re saying is if you’re finding that you’re pursuing the wrong thing, you can pivot. It’s not a decision set in stone. You haven’t recovered that time, but you have your future time and you can make those decisions. But the truth is that if we get unbusy, we’re not just afraid of missing out, we’re facing a reality of missing out. And, and that brings me to my next question, which is in your view, what do we have to feel? What do we have to be willing to feel in order to get unbusy? Yeah, I think that’s a,

 

Garland:

That that’s a really poignant question in order to get unbusy. I think you, you first have to feel the pain of busy-ness. So I, I talk about the research around physical, mental, emotional, and relational damage that’s being done to us because of our over commitment to too many good commitments it’s affecting our productivity, it’s affecting entire company. So the first thing that you have to feel is the pain of Buisiness. The second I think that you have to feel feeling you have to have to get unbusy is hope because the truth about busy-ness is busy-ness is an attempt to get more out of life by squeezing more into our lives. But the more and more and more we squeeze into our lives, the more exhausted we get, the more we really squeeze out of our lives. So there has to be a sense of hope that you have that by getting unbusy, by getting rid of some of our overcommitment, we’re actually going to feel more alive than ever before. Why? one of the reasons is because you actually have the time to, as the old saying, goes to stop and smell the roses, our lives are so filled with good commitments that we just rush from one to the next, to the next, to the next. And we don’t have any time to appreciate what we’re actually experiencing. So you do need to feel the pain of, of what Buisiness is doing to you, but also the hope of experiencing life, where you actually get to experience life.

 

Peter:

Don’t. We also have to feel the vulnerability of potentially missing these opportunities, meaning the risk field, the risk of saying, I’m actually not going to follow through on that experience. I’m actually not going to keep up with my neighbors. I’m actually, you know, not going to you know, pursue that opportunity, that, and that, and that might have been an important opportunity and I might make less money, or I might not be recognized, or I might just miss some really fun and interesting work that I could do, because I’m not going to go to that meeting, or I’m not going to, you know, pay attention to those emails. Yeah. That’s,

 

Garland:

That’s really great insight, Peter, of, yes, we do. You, it is a risk to say no to things and, and you could get on the other side of that and go, Oh, that could have been my opportunity. That could have been the, the chance that I’ve had, but,

 

Peter:

But all of us

 

Garland:

Are limited in the amount of things that we can say yes to. So every decision that we make is a risk of something that we might miss out on. But, but absolutely there is a sense of, I’ve got to accept that I may miss out on some things that I regret in the, in the law that I’m so glad that I didn’t do it. Right.

 

Peter:

I might have to regret something. I’m going to repeat it. Cause you went out there on the, on the recording, but I mean, it might have to regret some things that I’m going to end up not doing, but in the long run, it’s going to be better off for me. That’s what you’re saying. Yeah.

 

Garland:

And you’re going to, there are going to be some things that you would have said yes to that you say no to, and then end up being so thankful. You’re not regretting that, you know, you’re going, wow, I’m really glad I said no to that opportunity because it turned South real fast.

 

Peter:

Right. Right. And, and you’re also, I mean, what’s hard is you’re not always saying no to one opportunity in order to pursue another opportunity. If you’re truly gonna get unbusy, you’re, you’re taking some opportunities and saying no to them in order to do nothing in order to not pursue an opportunity. That’s what unbusy really means. When you talk about, you know, creating 15 minutes between each appointment, it means you’re going to have less appointments and it’s not just replacing, it’s not making choices because your time is limited. It’s making choices because your time is limited and you don’t want to fill all of that time. So what are we avoiding by being so busy? What are the feelings that come up when we reduce our busy-ness that we may not want to feel? So

 

Garland:

I think a lot of people feel there there’s some interrelations of, of what we’re feeling, but, you know, if you think about what happens when I have 15 minutes between meetings or, you know, so one thing that I’m feeling or that’s easy to feel is I’m wasting my time. And when we say that, what we’re really saying is I’m wasting my life. I have this moment is never going to be here again. I’m missing out on something or I’m not doing something. I must not be a productive member of society. So there’s this feeling that I’m wasting my time. I must not, my life must not be important or significant. We’ve convinced ourselves that important and significant people have every moment of their calendar filled up. And so if I have a free moment, I must not be significant. And the other feeling that we’re going to have is that that is, is hard when you have free moments, is, is this what I really want to be doing?

 

Garland:

Is this, the life that I want to be living is are these the dreams that I had that I dream of this, you know, 60 hour, a week drudgery in a company that I, you know, that I don’t really care about. And if, if, if gallops reports are right and 53% of people are disengaged at work or however much it is, I mean, a huge number of people who are disengaged at work, when we slowed down, we have to deal with the fact of is this the life that I want to live and how would I actually change it?

 

Peter:

Right. It sort of brings me to this question because we do have to feel all those things. And one of the things I’m going to suggest I’ll suggest it now, in case I forget is in the time that you have between meetings, for example, or the time that you open up by becoming less busy. One of the things that I would suggest is actually spend some of that time feeling what you’re feeling, because it’s avoiding feeling that keeps us busy. What you’re saying is here are a number of things that we don’t want to feel. And so we stay busy. I don’t want to feel like how I feel in my current job. I don’t want to feel like any number of things. And for each person it’s going to be unique. So spend some of that time feeling what you don’t want to feel.

 

Peter:

And when you’re willing to feel those things, you may feel less compelled to get busy in order not to feel them because you realize you could feel them. And it’s fine. It’s just a feeling, just a feeling that’s right. So here’s a question that really came up for me and it always comes up for me. As I think about this stuff. You talked earlier about our inhibiting beliefs and my question is, are our inhibiting beliefs really false? Like, it’s fine to say my identity is not rooted in my achievements or accomplishments, but we live in a culture that really values our accomplishments. You want to be on this podcast because I’ve got a PO, you know, hopefully because you’ve listened to it and you think, wow, this is a really interesting guy, but also because like, I’ve got a following, I’ve got tens of thousands of people who are listening to this.

 

Peter:

And so it gives me, it creates opportunity by coupling certain things creates opportunities. We could say that people don’t love us for what we accomplished, but they sure do, like when we accomplish it and, and maybe even a little more than they would have when we haven’t. So I want to be real honest about like, like it’s, it’s it’s, it’s nice. And it’s hopeful in a sense to say these are limiting beliefs and they’re not real, but my question to you, and I guess both as someone who’s thought a lot about this and, you know, on, on the spiritual side, as well as you know, on the material side, on the time side, as well as, you know, you were a pastor is it really true that those limiting beliefs are not true? So

 

Garland:

That’s one of the reasons I didn’t call those false beliefs because they’re not necessarily false, but they are keeping me trapped in busy-ness they’re inhibiting beliefs. And sometimes it’s those inhibiting beliefs that have some validity to them. But my over emphasis of the, my, my overall belief in them keeps me trapped in over commitment. So is it true that people will probably like me more if I if I accomplish things that, that help them. Yes. It, but it’s, it’s, it’s when I am so trapped by that belief that people only care about me because of the things that I accomplish that I keep saying yes, to commitment after commitment, after commitment, because they’re asking me to do it. So we don’t want to identify them as false beliefs. They’re inhibiting beliefs that we need to replace with what I call empowering truths. And these are truths that actually help me say no to the busy-ness.

 

Peter:

And what are some of the empowering truths? Well, I take people through an exercise where

 

Garland:

They identify their own empowering truth. What I’ll tell you for me is Pat an inhibiting belief that my life, my significance was determined by the number of tasks that I accomplished and what I had to come to the, my empowering truth that I replaced that in is my significance is determined first by God. And second, by the depth of my relation that I have. And so there came a shift in my mind of, it’s not about checking 58 things off a task list. It’s about giving my full attention to the people who I care about the most when I am with them and when I can be with them.

 

Peter:

Got it. So I want to go through a couple of quick tips now. Some things that I really liked, so one of the things you said is defaults to know and defend your yes. And I really liked that as a mind shift. Can you share it with us?

 

Garland:

Sure. So one of the bad habits that keeps us trapped in busy-ness is we default to yes. And defend to know. And what that means is when somebody asks us to do something, our default answer is yes. But if we have to say, no, we start defending it. Oh, I can’t do that. My daughter has a soccer game that day, or I’m already on a, you know, I have a meeting during that time. And as soon as we start defending that note, then people can come back to us and overcome those nos. I can say, well, we’ll rearrange the time. Or, you know, you really should be there. It’s important to your career advancement for highly productive, but unbusy people they switch that they default to no and defend their yes. So they default to no, when somebody asks them to do something, they’re almost automatic response.

 

Garland:

Even if they’re not saying it, but mentally is no, I’m probably not going to do that. And then they defend their, yes, they take time. Can I have 24, 48 hours to think about this? They’re, they’re careful with it. They think in terms of, if I say yes to this, what are the what are the, the ripple effects? How much more of a commute am I going to have? How much more of my time is this going to take? So they default to no. And then they defend their yes, by moving slowly, by moving carefully. And then by replacing some old commitment that they’re no longer interested in with this new commitment that they’re saying yes to,

 

Peter:

In order to do that. And I’m going to keep coming back to this emotional courage piece, because I think this is a topic that’s so central to emotional courage. So the willingness to feel, if you say, Hey, do you want to help me with this puppy that needs a home? And I immediately go, no, well, that might be easy. Cause I don’t really want a puppy in my home, but I also have to feel if I, if my default is always, no, I’m going to have to feel some things I might have to feel like I’m not very helpful. I might have to feel like I’m not a very good friend. I might have to feel like, you know, I don’t support causes that I actually support, but I’m not willing to put time and energy into it.

 

Garland:

Right. Or I may feel that I’m replaceable that somebody can do something better than me. And I’m not that important to this project, this team, this family.

 

Peter:

Great. So I might have to feel that too. I might have to feel my own insignificance in that particular moment. Here’s another thing which is there where you have tons of really great strategies and you have worksheets and things to look through. And I started looking through it and I’m like, Oh my God, I’m going to be so busy getting unbusy. And you use, you use that as a title, it get busy getting on busy and it, and it felt right to me, it felt like, like I might and, and, and am I better off reading the book and thinking it through and then just being like, okay, so I’m going to just start by not necessarily being super strategic about this, but to be a little opportunistic and be a little gut, like there’s a whole bunch of things I could probably stop spending time on and just stop spending time on it. Or do you feel like it’s really important to go through the decide, deconstruct, develop, design, draw others in, and, and that it’s really important to kind of identify that purpose and then let everything else flow from that purpose. Like helped me find the medium between those two things. If there is a medium or maybe you say, you know, what put the time in.

 

Garland:

Yeah. Well, I think your best bet is certainly going to be, to put the time in, but, but there are. And I actually addressed this in the decide, which is, which is step one. You know, you have a couple of possibilities option. Number one is to put it aside and be like, I’m busy. Oh, well, I’m just gonna continue in this way. A second strategy is to take some of these tools and tactics and strategies and just begin to, to implement them. If nothing else, what I have found is busy will become a bad word to you when your friends say how you doing, you’re not going to say, Oh, I’m really busy. You may say, I’m, I’m super intentional with my time. I’m a little stretch, you know, but you’re not going to say the word busy. It’s a bad word. In fact, my, my youngest son a few months ago said to my wife, mom, are you okay? You’re kind of seeming like the B word. And all of us got really big eyes and said, what are you, what B word? And he said busy. And we were like, Oh, okay. Woo. That was a scary, scary moment. But it is,

 

Peter:

I actually paused there because I think it’s actually, I think you’re making a really important point. I want to underscore, which is just note, like just changing our language around this is in and of itself a technique, just not set, like recognizing that I don’t have to do things, but I choose to do things. And, and you talk about this a little bit in the book, but, but there’s some things that you have to do. There’s just some things you have to do. And, and, and yet there’s a tremendous amount that’s in our power in terms of what we choose to do. And I think we think we, we build lives that feel to us like they are filled with he’s are all the things that I have to do versus these are the things that I choose to do. And that, that goes from, you know, when you change that, it goes from sort of oppression to opportunity or possibility. And I think just that language itself feels really important.

 

Garland:

Yeah. So ultimately though, I would say you do have the ability to say I’m going to take one or two of these strategies. But if nothing else, what I would say to people is certainly go through step one and step two, decide that busy-ness, isn’t worth it and then begin to deconstruct. If you simply do those two steps, by the end of it, you’re going to get back five to 10 hours per week into your life.

 

Peter:

Okay. Help me with one final thing, which is I should never promise one final thing because all of these questions, one of the first things, when you’re like, you know, moving out of deconstructing and starting to, in a sense, reconstruct is, is identifying your purpose. And I find that this is a place that a lot of people really can get stuck in paralyzed. Like, like how do you decide your PR? Like what’s, what’s the so help us Garland with the purpose of life and then I’ll figure out like my purpose and then we’ll be able to manage my time. So like, how do we get beyond that? Or how do we move through that?

 

Garland:

Yeah. Well, I think that ultimately discovering your purpose, which is, is probably going to be the next book that, that my wife and I co-write together. Cause when we were with Chick-fil-A, this is actually what we did for we worked with college students to help them discover and articulate their purpose in a single sentence. So this is probably gonna be our, our next book. But I would say at least in the beginning, there’s three areas you want to look at when you’re thinking about your purpose. One is what are the things that I’m great at? And so, you know, whether that’s your, your gifts or, you know, a StrengthsFinder or your personality type things along those lines, what are the things that I’m really great at? What are the things that really bother me that drive me crazy and in the world where I wake up and I’m angry at them, or I’m frustrated, is it injustice?

 

Garland:

Is it a failure to have racial reconciliation? Is it, I mean, for me it’s bad leadership. I just wake up angry when I see bad leaders who, or, or, or people who lead poorly and the wake of destruction that they leave behind them. So what are the things that drive you crazy? And then third area to look at would be, how can I use my gifts to address those problems? That’s not going to give you up perfect rendition of your purpose, but it’s at least going to give you some understanding of here’s how I’m gifted. Here’s what drives me crazy. And this is how I can use my gifts to address those.

 

Peter:

Right, right. It’s great. It’s that quote, you’re, you know, God’s calling is your greatest joy intersecting with the world’s greatest need. And when you’re saying really personalize that like the world’s greatest need is what ignites you in terms of, in terms of the greatest need, right? Yeah.

 

Garland:

So often we complain about the problem without actually personalizing it to say, what can I do about it and what once we get there, then we can begin to actually build our lives around how we get, how to, how to do that big patch.

 

Peter:

We have been speaking with Garland Vance. He has written most recently the book getting unbusy five steps to kill busy-ness and live with purpose, productivity and peace. I hope you enjoyed it. And Garland, thank you so much for being on the Bregman leadership podcast.

 

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