Go Green
How much of your day is spent doing things that you really love? I mean, things that you could do for hours on end and walk away feeling energized and full of life.
How much of your day is spent doing things that you may be good at, but you really don't enjoy? Instead of giving you life, it sucks life from you, leaving you feeling exhausted and drained.
How much of your time is spent doing things somewhere between those two extremes? You may be good at it, you may even enjoy it, but if you spend more than an hour or two working in that particular task you're finished.
Last week was our annual GEM France Retreat, and our speakers were Dave and Pat from Your One Degree. They had us complete an inventory with the goal of helping us to find our drivers, helping us to determine the life-giving things in our lives. We looked at a list of over 100 words and categorized them into green (life-giving), yellow (neutral), and red (life-sucking) abilities. We then narrowed the list by labeling our green areas as High, Medium, or Low priorities and categorizing them by about how much time we can spend doing that per day.
It was interesting. Confirming. It helped to put words to some of the things we already knew or feelings we've been experiencing lately. There will always be red tasks in our lives (is there anyone truly energized by taking out the trash or cleaning toilets?), but the idea is to learn to spend the majority of our time functioning within the greens and learning to say no, when we can, to yellow and red tasks. When we are in the greens, we are functioning more as the person that God uniquely created us to be - which is better for us, better for those around us, and better for the Kingdom. How refreshing!
We spent 4 full days with nearly 100 other people (including kids) serving in all sorts of capacities across France, worshiping together (Jordan did a great job of leading us, as well as organizing others to lead us), processing our stories (with the help of the One Degree coaches), eating delicious food (thanks to a guest professional chef), and just catching up with our friends. We always enjoy spending time with our GEM France family - after all, the team dynamic on the France field was a large part in us choosing to move to France.
How much of your day is spent doing things that you may be good at, but you really don't enjoy? Instead of giving you life, it sucks life from you, leaving you feeling exhausted and drained.
How much of your time is spent doing things somewhere between those two extremes? You may be good at it, you may even enjoy it, but if you spend more than an hour or two working in that particular task you're finished.
Last week was our annual GEM France Retreat, and our speakers were Dave and Pat from Your One Degree. They had us complete an inventory with the goal of helping us to find our drivers, helping us to determine the life-giving things in our lives. We looked at a list of over 100 words and categorized them into green (life-giving), yellow (neutral), and red (life-sucking) abilities. We then narrowed the list by labeling our green areas as High, Medium, or Low priorities and categorizing them by about how much time we can spend doing that per day.
It was interesting. Confirming. It helped to put words to some of the things we already knew or feelings we've been experiencing lately. There will always be red tasks in our lives (is there anyone truly energized by taking out the trash or cleaning toilets?), but the idea is to learn to spend the majority of our time functioning within the greens and learning to say no, when we can, to yellow and red tasks. When we are in the greens, we are functioning more as the person that God uniquely created us to be - which is better for us, better for those around us, and better for the Kingdom. How refreshing!
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