Eliminating Hurry From My Life

I don't talk about books a lot on here but sometimes I read a book that is so good I just HAVE to share it with others! And I would definitely recommend this to other small business owners because we can all too easily fall into hurry with all that we have on our plates.

This is a book I had heard about for years and is one of a handful of books I've read in my life that I read at just the right time, even if it was long after I "should" have read it.

I started on the journey to ruthlessly eliminate hurry from my life many years ago, but sort of unintentionally. It started with learning how to Sabbath. (Go read Jefferson Bethke's book "It's Not What You Think". The chapter on Sabbath is worth the whole book). After reading that book/chapter, I started being intentional with making Sundays different from the rest of my week. Part of that was staying off email and trying to limit my phone usage.

A few years later, I got Instagram. I was super strict with myself and my usage because I knew I did not want to be addicted to the app or let it control me. I would just go on once a day and that was it.

When I started my business, I made the conscious decision to not work on Sundays as a form of surrender and trust. I also got great advice from Amy & Jordan Demos to turn off as many notifications as I could. My phone makes sounds for alarms/reminders, phone calls, and to let me know when the baseball game is starting :) That's it!

In the past few years, I have been trying to learn how to be still and just *be*. I will spare you all the different forms and paths that I've taken to get where I am but from a mixture of my personality and seeing what I needed, I ended up doing a lot of things that John Mark Comer talks about in his book "The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry".

I am someone who needs margin in her life. I am someone who struggles with people pleasing and anxiety. So setting limits on email and social media and turning off notifications are something of a necessity for me to be healthy mentally and emotionally. But while I was doing a lot of things well, there were things I could do better or do more deliberately.

I had already decided to keep the radio off on short drives this year as part of my "resolutions". But I'm also trying to not reach for my book all the time when I have down time. (I'm a big reader so that is hard). When I went to the dentist, I just sat in the waiting room. When I drove my dad to pick up his car, I just sat in the car. I'm trying to get better at silence and stillness. This is a process I started on a few years ago but I am being more deliberate now as a result of reading this book.

One of the biggest changes was unsubscribing from emails. It's faster and easier to just delete unwanted emails but staying on the lists means I have so many emails to go through every time I open my inbox. It is better to take the extra time to unsubscribe clear some things out of my life.

I would say that the biggest takeaway from this book, for me, is changing my perspective on things in life. I'm trying to not get annoyed at interruptions or delays. I'm trying to build my life in such a way that a long line or a slow car is not a big deal. I'm trying to slow down and not rush through my life.

What I love about this book and idea is how freeing it is. There is no "right way" to eliminate hurry. You look at your life and examine what it would look like for you.

This has been a journey I've "accidentally" been on for years, but now it's become a conscious thing that I do deliberately and I'm really excited to see how that changes things!


What are your thoughts about this idea? Do you have a desire to slow down and stop hurrying? In what ways do you unintentionally practice the ruthless elimination of hurry?