How can you keep a “sacred pace”?
Leadership is not a sprint. We’ve got to pace ourselves.
I’ve found both my business and personal life transformed after reading Terry Looper’s book Sacred Pace. After applying his work in my own life, I’ve started sharing concepts with clients who are benefiting as well. Now I want to share this with my readers. If you are serious about improving your energy, relationships, and effectiveness for success at work and home, then you need to take a look at this post.
Terry Looper is the founder and CEO of Texon LP and has served as its senior leader for over 30 years. In Looper’s book, he tells the story of his early business successes that were achieved by pushing himself too hard and too fast - and the burnout that inevitably followed. He shares how he had to learn a “sacred pace” in order to heal and run his business in a way that was true to his core convictions. He then describes a four step process for maintaining a sacred pace (the links connect with short videos where he describes each):
Realizing that not all readers are coming from a Christian perspective, I’m paraphrasing and applying the content into principles which will serve leaders no matter their spiritual perspective (with one exception - if you are the center of the universe, then this won’t work).
In summary:
Stay connected with the transcendent.
Here’s the deal - you’ve got to be connected to something bigger than yourself.
For me, this is about being a Christ-follower. The way of Jesus, modeled by his life in the Gospels and reinforced in the overall message of Christian Scripture, provides a framework from which I operate. As I evaluate my business and personal life (because after all, Influence Coaching is all about success at work and home), that framework is part of the evaluation - which includes prayer and trust.
As part of staying connected to something bigger than myself, I also make a point to take regular hikes or bicycle rides in nature. That experience calms my mind better than sitting on the sofa and watching Netflix. Those walks and rides help me put life’s challenges into perspective. (It’s also why I offer “walk and coach” options - because that process helps calm a client’s stressed-out brain.)
Do your research.
This is not “woo-woo” stuff here. While we start with the transcendent, we also do our due diligence in the material world. Gather the facts for any major decision in business or life. Make the T-square of pros and cons.
Part of that due diligence also includes uncovering your own hidden biases and assumptions about your decision. Confirmation Bias is a real thing, and it will keep you from seeing all the facts. Make sure you have systems in place to guard against this. Don’t simply screen out what doesn’t agree with what you already think. In order to move on to steps three and four, you’ve got to open up your perspectives and filters for information.
Pay attention.
One of my college profs used to say that “coincidence is God’s way of working incognito.” As part of a sacred pace, we slow down and pay attention to our circumstances. We trust that our circumstances are not something we have to constantly fight, but rather something we can work with.
For highly driven personalities who feel the need to be “in control,” this is a real challenge. The key here is to start seeing circumstances as “information” rather than something that must be conformed to our individual will. Paying attention to circumstances is part of doing the research. Getting this attitude right is fundamental before you can go to the next step.
Here’s an illustration: We recently did some significant work on our house, and I thought I would need a $30k loan to cover it. I was anxious about it. Put simply: I don’t like debt - especially now that I’m running my own business. Nonetheless, I contacted a loan officer to arrange everything and asked him to confirm next steps. For two weeks, he didn’t respond, even when I pinged him multiple times.
In the meantime, I read the book Profit First and implemented that system for managing money. After implementing his system, I realized how to get the money to cover the expenses. 24 hours later, I finally received an email from the loan officer saying he was ready to put the paperwork together for our loan.
Coincidence? (I’m choosing to go with my prof’s observations on this one …)
Get ego out of the way.
Before you can “get neutral” as Looper calls it, you’ve got to address all the previous steps. Only once you are connected to something much larger than yourself, you’ve identified your own hidden biases and agendas, and you are willing to work with your circumstances rather than try to rule over them, can you have any hope of getting ego out of the way.
Dealing with the ego is another reason a sacred pace won’t work if you are the biggest, baddest, and most important thing in your universe: you sabotage yourself. As pointed out by Shirzad Chamine, in his book Positive Intelligence, we all have saboteurs that pretend to be our friends (and we did need them earlier in life), but they now get in the way of real success.
As you are continuing to work on those four steps, there will come a point at which you have peace with moving in a certain direction and you are uncomfortable with the other options. Or, perhaps you will find that you are uncomfortable moving forward on something that previously looked like a good idea. Trust that “gut” feeling. Listen to it. Act on it.
For me: when my head is clear, my heart is full, and my gut feels relaxed, I know it is time to move forward.