3 Golden Life Hacks for you this Autumn

Slow down, accept the things you have no control over and prioritise…. three life hacks in a nutshell that will help you make sense of autumn busyness.

As September unfolds, the pace of life is picking up noticeably. This is only compounded by our emerging out of lockdown. You may already be feeling the strain. The batteries recharged sitting in a field reading a book last August may well already be showing an orange light.

A friend was talking about the Autumn busyness a few months ago – a few months ago when all was relatively calm. She said that a lot of it was starting a new school term (how is it that even those of us without children at school still follow the rhythms of the terms?) many felt like with a new start they wanted to try and do everything right this time, and this energy leads to a frenetic over-commitment.

For me it is more like the rhythm of church is we start new stuff in the Autumn, in the Spring we tend to lean in to more relational connections and consolidate the groups and programmes we kicked off the term before, and in summer things quieten down and more time is spent just hanging out, or taking time off. The energy shifts.

Those seasons are good and helpful to recognise, but it doesn’t get us away from the fact that September and October can be quite busy and frenetic. Not always good for your sanity. Not always good for your soul so what life hacks can we put in place to help?

Now I have spent a long time as a life coach, a pastor and an observer of the various self-help and personal management books and courses that pass through. You can’t avoid the stress and pressure of Autumn, so what can you do? Distilling the teachings and the wisdom of decades of self-help gurus I can confidently offer you 3 solid gold life hacks or practices that will help you navigate this season and come through to Christmas slightly more intact, slightly more sane, than you otherwise would.

So here they are…

My solid gold autumn life hacks.

Number 1 came from a wise man called Dallas Willard. It was the pastor and author John Ortberg, who when asked to step in and lead a large church felt a bit out of his depth and phoned his mentor Dallas Willard. There with pen and paper poised he asked for advice and Willard simply said ‘You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.’ Finding this first point a bit lame and obscure he waited with baited breath for the next bit of advice, but no more came. That was all he got. Profound.

Slow down. Disconnect with the frenzied hurry of the rest of the world – a hurry born out of stress, busy-ness, instant solutions, fast food and clickbait. We have to have everything now, do everything now and if we have a spare moment we whip out our phones and check Facebook or play a game. Watch people at the bus stop. We have lost the art of doing nothing, waiting, creating space and just being. And it is killing our souls. Next time if you have to wait thank God for the opportunity to stop, and leave the phone in your pocket. In fact choose the slowest lane on the Tamar Bridge, take the slowest moving line in the post office. Walk somewhere rather than drive. Take time to sit and be. And let your soul catch up with your body.

The next of my solid gold life hacks is called acceptance. We are often railing against situations in our lives we have no control over, and it affects us. In our hearts there is a swirl of frustration, disappointment, dissatisfaction and worry that we aren’t even aware of. I suggest – having slowed down and created space for it to surface – acknowledging what is going on down there, processing and accepting it. There is something called a circle of influence. In the circle is stuff you can do something about – and outside a whole lot of stuff that you may be fretting about but which you have no control over. Our 24/7 news coverage all over the world doesn’t help – we take on board grief and crises from all over the globe and it overwhelms us. But also closer to home – family situations, people’s behaviour or crazy decisions, all sorts of stuff we can do nothing about, but we seem to weigh ourselves down with as if by worrying we can affect it.

And then within our circle of influence we need to make a choice – what are we going to do something about, and what will we put in the pending tray to look at when we can do something about it? Because we can’t do everything. In fact we can only make one or two changes, and then it often takes time, and energy. So the other stuff? We have to accept it – or accept ourselves. Imperfect is OK. We aren’t superhuman, even though the flood of media influences suggest we ought to be. Learn to accept yourself and accept your circumstances, and maybe we can all learn to get through life without feeling like we’re failing. You are not failing.

Lastly we need to learn priorities. Learn from the lecturer who had a pile of stones, gravel, sand and a glass of wine on his desk. And a jar. He put the sand in, then the gravel and he was unable to fit the stones.

He said that the stones were the important things in our life, the gravel the less important and the sand the fill in activities like TV or Facebook.

We need to put the important things – the stones – in first. Then the gravel will go in around them, and the sand fill up the spaces that are left. And with a new jar he did just that, and it all fitted.

So what are your stones? For me and my congregation one of those stones would be our church – living our live of faith in community. Of course family is a big stone – often my family commitments make themselves a priority – it’s a decision made for me rather than one I have to make myself, but also I can prioritise quality time with them as well – set limits on how much a I work so as to become available to them at key times. And my health and wellbeing is a stone as well – as I have already mentioned eliminating hurry and taking time to reflect on what’s going on in my heart – learning to accept some things and change others – all this is a decision I have to make. A stone I have to place before the sand of watching TV or browsing ebay for cricket bats.

A student put his hand up and asked the lecturer a question. He was intrigued by the glass of wine. The lecturer poured the wine into the jar and it disappeared amongst the sand, gravel and stones.

“In life no matter how full your world is there is always room for a glass of wine with friends!” he announced.

Read other articles by Arthur Goode