I met with a parishioner one time who was conflicted over her job. She had been offered another position at another company and wasn’t sure what to do. After listening to her for a while it became clear that her conflict was over two very good choices, and because she didn’t want to “give up” either choice was willing to overwhelm herself with a seemingly endless gathering and deciphering of data about both jobs. Paralysis by analysis is what some call it.
My experience with Riders (either as a Rider myself, or working with the Riders in my congregation) is of two general kinds. The first is like the woman conflicted over choosing between two good job offers. The other is equally frustrating—making a Rider decision to move in a particular direction and not really being able to motivate the Elephant. But this second one is for later conversation.
When it comes to dealing with the Riders in our lives, the most helpful language in Switch for me has been that of finding and following the bright spots, and giving clear directions to the Rider both for beginnings and endings.
Here at 1st UMC, El Centro we set a goal of creating a much needed community center in our immediate neighborhood. Once we moved from talking about the problem and started working on a solution, and once we were able to recognize the wonderful asset we had in our fellowship hall, we were able to “see” the destination (“We’re going to use our fellowship hall to create a community center) and provide day-to-day suggestions for behavior (We’ll begin with every Wednesday being a family night offering dinner and program for adults, youth and children) we were able to navigate through the switch. Now we are partners with the Boys and Girls Club, are preparing for the creation of a community garden involving the neighborhood residents and offering outreach ministries such as an Autism support group.
Oh, and when I pointed out what for me was the obvious to my job conflicted parishioner, that she had two good choices and just needed to pick one, she was able to make her choice.
I have made a switch in my life as I think about these first chapters. I am setting the goal to keep well in this year, and we will be studying wellness in Lent, I think our theme will be something like, "Staying well in a chaotic world". In preparing for this I am reading Clinebell's work on Wellness and am starting to chart what I do and how much of this time spent is working on wellness. I notice that all the choices I have in a day does overwhelm me and so now I have set definite clear goals for each day of what I need to do to be more balanced, and healthy. This extends to all areas of my life, so having definite goals for each day, means taking some choices away, but still giving me some choice in how I can achieve the goals. I make these very modest for now, until my lifestyle begins to reflect these choices more easily and I can dig a bit deeper. Reading this book is showing me some great ways of making the switch to a more well lifestyle, and I appreciate your comments Ron, and Nicole!
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome Steve. Ditto on the insight that we cannot very well lead change if we cannot make important "switches" in our own lives! Peace
ReplyDelete