Your Invitation to Rest & Reflect

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Pursue whole podcast. Today's gonna be a little bit different. It's not gonna be one of our traditional episodes. Today we're actually gonna make an intentional effort to talk about what it means to rest and reflect around the holidays. And with everything going so fast and being so busy in the lives of leaders, we didn't want to create another opportunity for just consuming more throughout the holidays. We wanted as a team to take time off and feel refreshed and actually have time to reflect, but also give you an opportun, not digest content. Think about how to apply that to your life. So when we talk about rest, our bodies and our minds and our hearts are going at such a fast speed. Throughout the year you've been going, going, going, going, going. And sometimes we need to take that very high revved engine and we need to just pause and let it idle for a little bit. And that's how I would kind of define this idea of rest. It doesn't mean that you have to do nothing, your engine is still moving, but it just means maybe not at the speed that it's traditionally known for or the speed at which you, you move at. And I think it's really helpful to take a pause and actually allow your body to take a nap, if it needs a nap, to be able to allow your mind to rest and calm down, to be able to have those opportunities with family and kids where you just sit there and you don't have this idea of accomplishing something out of that time. So really, rest is creating space for opportunity instead of creating space always for action and accomplishment. And I want to create space for you. And we want to create space as a team to really not add more, but actually create space to allow there to be a void where creative ideas can come up, where new concepts can emerge, where opportunities and relationships can come about. And when we talk about this idea of reflection, we need to look back on this last year, on how we spent our resources, rhythms and our time and our money, and how we have created rhythms and patterns in our life that maybe we created out of habit, but maybe we actually don't want those in our life. Sometimes we get in these cycles and these rhythms where we just do, do, do, do, do, and we don't slow down and ask questions like, is that really how I want to live my life? Are those the things I want to prioritize? So as you take a step away over these next two weeks, I really want you to think through how have I lived my life over this last year and how have I invested in my relationships? And is that actually what I want to do? Is that who I want to be? Is that who I want to be with? And to take a step back and ask, what do you need? What do you want out of life? And set new intentions for the new year heading forward. The holidays are often a really amazing time to spend time with family and friends and community. But they're also an extremely stressful time because during that time around the holidays, I remember for me and my wife, we were often so busy with friends and events and parties and family that oftentimes I walk away from the holidays feeling exhausted, like I didn't get time for myself and I didn't get time for our immediate family. And I want to encourage you as a listener, make sure that you prioritize time with yourself and prioritize time with those who are most important to you and don't get trapped in the process of staying busy in life. So my one encouragement for you in this holiday season, instead of creating more, instead of creating more action and doing more, take a step back and create space for the spontaneous those moments and those windows with family, with friends, where you don't have a plan, where you simply are enjoying the moment that's in front of you and curious about what's going to emerge in those relationships or moments. Be present so that you can capture those and delight in those. And sometimes when we're so focused on action, we have intentions and we have desires, which is all great, but sometimes we need to just be take a more passive stance and really soak in life and enjoy our children and enjoy our spouse and enjoy the people that we are with by not having those intentions set. So we're going to try to do that as a team here at Pursue Whole. We're going to take an intentional step back over the next two weeks and try to create that in our own lives so that we can really create really great content for you in 2022. Our next episode is going to launch on January 4th, and we're extremely excited for what's ahead. But in order for us to bring our full selves to you as a community and as leaders, we as team, we have to take a step back and make sure that we're caring for ourselves emotionally and relationally and spiritually and physically. And that's going to be some intentional choices that we make. And that's why we're not going to be producing any recordings over the next two weeks. So I hope you can have an enjoyable holiday season, remember to take a step back and create space for the spontaneous.