Exhaustion is as much a state of mind as it is a biological reality.
Burnout, stress, and the resulting cynicism and inefficiency easily can dominate in a high-pressure environment.
Chronic stress, unclear job objectives, brain fog, decreased motivation these are the internal tailspins that can become a death-spiral unless you can pull out of the downward trend.
The degree and longevity of fatigue, anxiety, or even depression can vary.
But where do they come from, and what can you do about them?
AI and robotic developments are experiencing explosive growth, but you are neither a computer nor a robot.
The good thing is you are not susceptible to electrical spikes, power outages, computer viruses, and design flaws. The challenge is you are an emotionally charged being. The spiritual, soulish core within you goes way beyond 1 and 0s or mechanical connections.
As with each of The 10 Commandments, there is a tendency to interact with them at only a cursory, surface level – the do’s and don’ts declarations. But as we’ve alluded to in previous blogs, God made it clear that His motivation in giving these was the farthest thing from a restrict, bureaucratic requirement.
He is for you and is absolutely clear on what makes us effective and what causes us to crash or fall apart.
So how do you counteract exhaustion?
Today, you might be used to hearing, “There’s an app for that!”
Instead, God would challenge, “There’s a commandment, a directive, for the that.”
How God defined this directive in the fourth commandment is “Remember [or guard] the Sabbath day to keep it holy [sacred, set apart].”
If you breeze by this quickly, it may just sound like the traditional blue laws that restricted business on Sunday. In reality, it is a guardrail to keep your life from coming apart at the seams.
Here are seven principles that reinforce the value of this commandment.
- Trust as prescripted in the first two commands is essential.
You cannot live your life panicked or on edge and be effective.
Watch the floor of the stock market, and you will see panic in a business suit and tie.
The stock market is constantly reacting to the ever-changing economic trends: job numbers, quarterly earnings reports, interest rates, tariffs, consumer confidence, political changes.
Trusting a God who is for you and is all-powerful is foundational to everything that follows. As a caveat, there are people who trust deeply in things other than God, and as long as those things remain stable, they are able to benefit from some of the principles of rest defined here.
- You have all the time you need to complete all God intended for you to do.
God does not over promise and under perform. He does not over leverage your life or the abilities He gave you. The purpose He has designed you for and the time He has given you to perform it match perfectly.
Admittedly, your development, discipline, and execution among other things can affect this compatible relationship. But God understands you are imperfect. As King David put it, “he remembers we are dust.” He takes that into consideration.
In fact, learning to rest, to trust, is a key component for God rectifying what we upend.
- What was initially external, God intends to be internal.
Many, if not most, of the external laws of the Sabbath are challenged by Jesus with His disciples. He was the farthest thing from being anti-Sabbath observance. He just understood that what was externally commanded was intended to be internally embraced.
In Hebrews 4, there is this interesting interaction between the writer and the Jewish nation. To be concise, the writer says God is giving a new Sabbath day, and it’s called “today.”
That’s an oddly generic name until you realize he is saying the principles of Sabbath are intended to be a universal and moment-by-moment experience.
What was outwardly commanded was intended to be inwardly experienced.
- The central aspect of the Sabbath is rest.
The word Sabbath literally means rest.
God created you with cycles – seasons, sleep/awake, even work and holidays. He didn’t have to create us to need sleep, but He did. It’s as if He did this purposefully.
As a result of the Fall of Adam and Eve, things tend to fall apart. We have enshrined it in our basic laws of thermodynamics. The second law is that of entropy (disorder). Left alone chaos increases. Things become random.
If you are trying to create order, purpose, or momentum, this is a crazymaking law. It’s the herding-cats principle. Rest feels like the last thing you need to do when the cats are running everywhere.
- If you are principally trusting yourself, it’s all on you.
Do you know the pressure of deadlines, cash flow, boss/board/consumer expectations, quarterly reviews? Those don’t tend to be rest-producing. Like your to-do list, the expectations never seem to be done, and your attempts may be regularly questioned.
Every year the sales projections are for more. If you are a CEO or Sr. executive, you are responsible for market share and market capitalization – as are all of the other CEOs and Sr. executives of your competitors. Everyone is fighting for the top of the heap.
There’s no rest for the weary or is there?
- Rest forces trust
God claims the ability to multiply your impact. It should be noted, He is the creator of the law of the harvest which says one kernel of corn can create one stalk and ear of corn averaging 800 kernels per ear. That’s 80,000% growth in one season.
Would you be good with that for this year’s KPIs?
You can only rest if you trust. Oddly enough, farmers must trust the growing process. They can never force growth – only create circumstances conducive to growth.
Some people attempt Herculean efforts to force success. At times, it appears to work. Overtime it has destructive side effects.
Rest is a soul-level reality that can be enhanced by sleep but is a state of being rather than merely a physical act. Tentative or incomplete trust leads to anxiety. Trusting in a flawed source leads to the same anxiety.
Sarah Carmichael writes in Harvard Business Review,
“Does it work?” Is overwork actually doing what we assume it does — resulting in more and better output? Are we actually getting more done?
… Predictable, required time off (like nights and weekends) actually made teams of consultants more productive.
…In sum, the story of overwork is literally a story of diminishing returns: keep overworking, and you’ll progressively work more stupidly on tasks that are increasingly meaningless.
– Sarah Green Carmichael, “Harvard Business Review”
Rest is a soul-level reality that can be enhanced by sleep but is a state of being rather a merely a physical act. Tentative or incomplete trust leads to anxiety. Trusting in a flawed source equally leads to the same end.
- If you are not at rest, you are a slave to your anxiety and to what you are striving to achieve.
We hate the concept of slavery but often make ourselves slaves to the things we pursue. The concept of selling your soul to the company store is real even if you are the owner of the store.
Soul-level rest breaks the hold and control your pursuits, responsibilities, and problems maintain over you.
Even your computer needs a rest. Under the performance tab in your task manager is a chronological record of your computer’s up time. Unless you change the power options, your computer doesn’t actually fully shutdown when you turn it off.
Rest is one of the most powerful principles of business effectiveness.