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92: What is “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” (Part 2)?
200 Plays2 years ago
It’s been a bit since Laura Fleetwood has been on the podcast, but for good reason. She’s been on a 3-year journey going through a doctoral program through Portland Seminary. She will be graduating in May 2024 and will soon be known as Dr. Fleetwood! You can learn more about her journey in Episode 12: Unwrapping The Bible With Dr. Meghan Larissa Good.
Laura sat down with Jill Devine to talk about a recent sermon series Messiah did, called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. It was inspired by the book of the same title by John Mark Comer.
The conversation centered around some of the items not discussed in the sermon series. Here are all the messages from The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry series:
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: The Magi | Week 1
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: The Sabbath | Week 2
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: Prayer | Week 3
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: Simplicity | Week 4
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: Generosity | Week 5
Normal Goes A Long Way Website: https://www.normalgoesalongway.com/
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Normal Goes A Long Way is brought to you by Messiah St. Charles: https://messiahstcharles.org/
Two Kids and A Career: https://www.jilldevine.com/podcast
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast: From Skepticism to Faith
00:00:00
Speaker
The following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production. Christianity has become known for judgy people, strange words, ancient stories, confusing rules, and a members-only mindset. This is why I stayed away from the church for so long, but it's not supposed to be that way. I'm Jill Devine, a former radio personality with three tattoos, a love for a good tequila, and who's never read the entire Bible.
00:00:24
Speaker
Yet here I am hosting a podcast about faith.
Real Conversations on Faith and Life
00:00:28
Speaker
The normal goes a long way podcast is your home for real conversations with real people using real language about how faith and real life intersect. Welcome to the conversation.
Exploring 'The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry'
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome back to our part two conversation with Laura Fleetwood. We discussed in the previous episode the ruthless elimination of hurry. This is a book that our church messiah did a big sermon series on. All of those messages can be found at normalgoasalongway.com. But it is one of those things that you keep hearing over and over.
00:01:03
Speaker
Like, hey, we are stressed out, we are doing this, that's causing this, that's causing the illness, that's causing this.
Understanding Stress and Its Effects
00:01:11
Speaker
And I think people are starting to really realize
00:01:15
Speaker
we are damaging ourselves. We are damaging ourselves on the inside, on the outside, and we really need to start looking at what's happening. And so we just kind of like set all of that up in the previous episode. What is happening to ourselves, to our bodies, to our world, to our country? And I thought this would be a good time to talk about some practical tips, maybe some tools that
00:01:43
Speaker
we haven't been able to share and that you were able to learn through the book. So give me all the things. I know this is actually kind of bad for me because I like to implement all the things, but I will try to do one step at a time. Yes.
Resilience: Innate or Learned?
00:02:02
Speaker
So let's start at the beginning when the researchers first started figuring out that there was this thing called resilience.
00:02:13
Speaker
Okay. So in the 1970s, they started recognizing that and wondering why certain people were able to go through really hard circumstances and come out the other side. Okay. And others weren't. And at first they thought that some people were just immune to struggle. They called them the invulnerability.
00:02:43
Speaker
like that these people just somehow were innately able to not have stress negatively impact them. So then they started researching more and looking at more people and they discovered, no, that's not the case. It's just that some people have more skills to be able to bounce back from stress in a healthy way. And they called that resilience, okay?
00:03:12
Speaker
Then the question became, okay, what are these protective factors that allow somebody to bounce back? So let's, let's do a little, a little assessment of how our bodies work when it encounters
Stress Reactions: Real vs. Perceived Threats
00:03:24
Speaker
stress. So our bodies were wired to, when we encounter something stressful, let's say a grizzly bear, okay, encounter a grizzly bear to go into fight or flight.
00:03:39
Speaker
So our bodies pump up with adrenaline and they go straight to our brain to be able to figure out and they go to our limbs to be able to figure out how to get away, like how to just escape the danger. And what has happened over time is that because our lives just in general are so stressful, our body responds to things that aren't a life or death situation.
00:04:08
Speaker
in the same way as if it was. So I wake up and my alarm didn't go off and I'm late for work. The same thing happens. The adrenaline pumps, cortisol is going through your system, your digestive system is shutting down because all of the blood is flowing for you to be on high alert. And so when a bear is coming at you and you get away or you realize that there's no more danger,
00:04:38
Speaker
those chemicals in your body subside and you're slowing down part of your system takes over and you relax. But when you are in a constantly stressed out life, you don't get that down part and your body is reacting to things that are happening all day as though it's life or death situations and your brain can't distinguish the difference. The, the,
00:05:05
Speaker
remote reptilian part of your brain that is triggered by stress does not know the difference. Okay. So you're automatically, your body is being triggered. And I think this is where like a lot of people think, Oh, it's just a mental thing. It's not, it's, it's how your body responds. So we have to address this with our body, with our mind
Building Resilience: Relationships and Health
00:05:28
Speaker
and with our spirit. So that's what's happening in our bodies. So like our baseline level of stress is getting higher.
00:05:35
Speaker
higher and higher and higher until the point where when we're encountering stress, our bodies are so heightened already that our our system can't calm down and it goes over the top and we have a panic attack or we you know, we just we can't recover. We burn out because our bodies are so tired because they've been operating at this high wire pace.
00:06:02
Speaker
we have to look at resilience in a holistic way. So the first thing is to look at relationships, how we spend our time, and what our priorities are.
Community Support and the Role of Faith
00:06:18
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So we're thinking about the high level things. People who have good resilience have a strong network of people that they can rely on.
00:06:30
Speaker
Think back to before the modern age and multiple generations of families lived together, right? Have grandparents living with the parents, living with the kids. And so there was like this network, this team of people to help share the stress of daily life, right? So you think about, do you have anyone in your life that shares the load with you?
00:07:00
Speaker
I call that your team. So who's on your team? And if you do, are you letting them share the load? Are you asking for help? Are you trying to carry it all on your own? And by the way, God is on your team. Are you letting him carry your load? Cause he says, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. He's telling us.
00:07:26
Speaker
to give our stress and our worries to him instead of carrying them on ourselves. So looking at the relationship, so there are relational protective factors when it comes to stress resilience. Who's on your team? If you don't have a team, you've got to start building one. And that is you doing work. Yes. You have to get the team. You've got to be in a community group.
00:07:55
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find friends to be on someone else's team, right? And I know you're like, oh, well, that's just more work. But it's the good kind of work because we're building, essentially what we're doing is we're building ourselves a safety net of people so that when the hard, stressful things come, we not only have help, but we have people to talk to because
00:08:24
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Stress builds and those adrenaline and cortisol chemicals build when we're not sharing our stress. I mean, have you ever noticed that sometimes just when you say it out loud? I was just going to say, even if you just like send a text or say it out loud and you don't... It's like this burden list. You're like, okay, someone else knows that I'm struggling, but we're not taught how to do that. So relationally, you have to build a team.
00:08:54
Speaker
And then individually, there are protective factors that we can learn about how to calm our body.
Physical Activity as Stress Relief
00:09:04
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God designed our bodies in this magnificent way to be able to calm down, but we have to practice that. So simple things like being, you know, exhaling longer than you inhale, taking time to breathe,
00:09:22
Speaker
you know, practicing the whatever method you were telling me about yesterday where you work 25 minutes, you take a five minute break. The Pomodoro method. So you're not sitting in front of a screen for three hours, but you're making yourself get up and take breaks. That's not just to like relieve the mental drainage, it's to let your body calm down, you know, you know, getting up and walking around the house five times and
00:09:50
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Walking in general has been proven to be one of the most beneficial things for stress relief. Because the only way you can release those chemicals, those stress hormones in your body, is to burn them. So if you're not physically active, they're just sitting in your body. It's so- Building up and building up and building up. Okay, so this is funny.
00:10:19
Speaker
I'm going to try to do this if you're not familiar with Messiah's campus. I have been noticing, and I think, too, this happens after the new year, and people are still doing it well into March, but there is
00:10:35
Speaker
an extended parking lot so we have a school here as well and it gets really busy where the parking spaces are right in front of the church and so then sometimes we have to park really far away which isn't really that far away but it's far away and so
00:10:54
Speaker
When I see him like, Oh, there's cars in the faraway spot, man, we're out of spots. And then I started noticing like, there's plenty of spots. Why are these people parking all the way down there? They are deliberately parking there. So they walk. Oh, I should probably start doing that. So I think I need to add that it's never too late.
00:11:16
Speaker
Never too late to add that. I mean, activity is an antidote to stress building in your body. So we've got relationally protective factors. We've got physical protective factors of training our body to calm down by deep breathing. And there's all kinds of somatic practices that I could share, but that would take too long. So you can just
00:11:42
Speaker
Google. Email Laura. Email me. Maybe I'll put together a resource or something. But somatic just means bodily. So things that you can do to your body that help calm it down and help it. Tapping is one too, right? I've just recently learned about that. EFT, for sure. So you can Google that. All kinds of ways. And that's where the research is being focused right now.
00:12:05
Speaker
is all of these ways. And God designed it. I mean, it's so incredible. We have this vagus nerve that runs from our brain all the way down to our body. And there are ways you can strengthen that vagus nerve. It is what carries that stress response to your heart, to your digestive system, to your brain. And so strengthening that helps you achieve better resilience to stress. So there's all kinds of new, exciting things that are coming out.
00:12:34
Speaker
Okay, so relationally, somatically with our body, learning how to calm and relax. And then mentally, a busy mind can create as much stress in the body as a busy schedule or a busy life.
Managing Negative Thought Patterns
00:12:53
Speaker
So our thoughts are very powerful.
00:12:56
Speaker
and our thoughts can trigger that stress response when there's not even an issue. Like we can go, what if? And boom, our body goes into fight or flight mode. So there's all kinds of ways that you can train your mind. What's been most effective for me is meditation and realizing that my thoughts are just thoughts.
00:13:24
Speaker
just because I think something scary doesn't mean that it's going to happen. Or, you know, that I do a what if scenario, you know, Oh my gosh, now I'm going to be an anxious mess. No, I can, you know, I can calm myself down. So we have to, the Bible says, take our thoughts captive, right to him and trust him. So something that has helped me in this regard as my therapist, um,
00:13:53
Speaker
told me something. She's like, okay, you like to be in control and you like to figure out why things are happening and what you can do to prevent bad things from happening. Okay. So I'm, I'm trying to like protect myself. I'm trying to protect the little Laura that my brain still thinks that I am. So she said, think of it like this. Think of it like the wizard of Oz.
00:14:19
Speaker
You know, the grand wizard who was like in charge of all of Oz and he's giving all these commands and telling everyone what to do in an utter control. But then at the end of the movie, you realize he's just this little man.
00:14:33
Speaker
hiding behind a curtain. And he's really not powerful. And he's really not in control. And he hasn't been living his life. He's been behind this curtain, stuck pretending to be this powerful Oz. She's like, that's what you're doing.
00:14:51
Speaker
You are not living your life because you're trying to control it behind this little curtain and you cannot control it. So stop trying. And so now every time, and I'm not, I haven't, my brain has not woven those new pathways yet. Like it will. But when I noticed myself trying to figure it out or trying to
00:15:15
Speaker
manipulate a situation or figure out why did my body respond like that and how can I keep it from doing it again. I just imagine that little man behind the curtain and I go, I don't want to live behind the curtain. I'm not in control. God, you're in control. I surrender this to you. Open my hands and try to move on.
00:15:40
Speaker
we fool ourselves into thinking we can control a lot of things that we cannot control. We can actually control very little in our lives. So part of it is, and for some of us, that takes a lot of therapy to work through. And therapy is the best investment you can make. Like I think everybody should see a therapist to work through some of these things, but we've got to recognize what our thoughts are doing to us.
00:16:09
Speaker
our negative thinking, our what-if thinking, our catastrophizing thinking. And there are strategies to deal with that. And I recommend working with a coach or a therapist on that. And then there's this whole idea of delight and joy.
Joy, Gratitude, and Stress Reduction
00:16:28
Speaker
So God designed us to experience delight and joy. And He designed each and every one of us to experience that.
00:16:37
Speaker
in a different way. And when we do the things that bring us joy, it engages that relaxation response in our body. It builds serotonin in our brain, which is the natural calming chemical in our brain. And it does so much to help us bounce back from stress. So I would say you've got to be practicing daily or weekly joy. You've got to set time aside for it.
00:17:08
Speaker
whether joy for you is reading a book or whether it's working in your garden or going for a walk or playing music or whatever, like gives you that sense of peace and calm. You've got to make time for it in your life because if you're not, you're not helping yourself come down from, from the stress. And, um, watching Netflix is not,
00:17:35
Speaker
a way of bringing joy. It's not. Trash TV is not my answer. Dang it. It's actually, there's fight, flight, or freeze. And TV binging, and shopping, and things like that are a way of us kind of numbing. It's numbing. It's not engaging in joy. Interesting. So you got to find some other ways.
00:18:04
Speaker
to experience joy. Would you consider with the joy that gratitude goes hand in hand with the joy or is that separate? No, for sure it does. And it also goes hand in hand with the thinking. OK. Because if you are focused on the negatives, that's going to trigger your stress response. If you're focused on the gratitude, you know,
00:18:33
Speaker
The Bible says to think about things that are pure and lovely and beautiful and that is engaging the relaxation response in your body. So yeah, it's both. I joked about how you're going to give all the tips and I try to do all the things and that's me. That's like, okay, I'm going to try all this and I have to recognize that little steps
00:19:01
Speaker
Yes, equal big steps, one percent more, one percent better. And I try to go all in, as I always do. And then my mindset is if I fail in one thing, then I've failed. I have to start over or I won't do it again.
00:19:21
Speaker
I bring it up because with the gratitude, I don't practice it enough, but now I'm really, I really am trying to focus on that because of the thoughts and the feelings. And so one of the things that, um, I have journals everywhere. I mean, it's crazy. And I actually bought this brand new, it's called a prayer journal.
00:19:47
Speaker
And I love, we were introduced to this woman by a staff member. He did a devotion one time and I was like, who is this lady? I really love her. And he sent us all the link and I went down the rabbit hole and I bought this prayer journal that I think is like, I don't think I would have been able to do this three years ago.
00:20:11
Speaker
And when I started getting a little confused and frustrated as I was filling it out, I thought to myself, Jill, three years ago, you probably wouldn't have been able to do this at all. Now you're doing it. And she's very deliberate in her instructions, like, Hey, if anything is a barrier, you need to stop and move on. But I love to read and I'm reading this book.
00:20:37
Speaker
It's not new, it's the Nightingale, I don't know. It's about World War II. Yes, I have read that. Holy cow. I am just like, my mind is going all over the place with this and no joke the other night I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it.
00:21:00
Speaker
And I pulled up my gratitude journal and wrote down, I am so thankful that I am not living in a time of war. There is war, but my gosh, those things. And so when those thoughts come to mind, and that's why I'm saying this is write them down.
00:21:21
Speaker
Um, recently you and I, we have a friend, she's, she's been on the podcast before Hannah handling, she has had some issues with her son and assist in his neck and he's had like seven surgeries and he's only two. And I can't even begin to understand, but I go to that gratitude journal the minute I think of it. And I wrote down healthy children.
00:21:50
Speaker
I just want these small action steps to feel obtainable to people and to know you don't have to go all in.
Creating Healthy Brain Pathways
00:22:01
Speaker
No, and the thing is our brains have neuroplasticity, which means that they're able to groove new pathways, healthy pathways to replace unhealthy ones. So it's all about habit.
00:22:20
Speaker
All of these things are about habits, and the best way to have new habits is to start very small, called micro-habits. Resilient skills, the more you have, the more you build, the more protected you are. You can start really small and know that you're building a layer, and then you're going to build another layer, and you're going to build another layer.
00:22:48
Speaker
That's the beauty of how God designed us is that if you have a negative thinking pattern that can change, it will take time and it will take work. Work, but it's worth it. Yes. You can change. So it's all, it's good news. Like we're not stuck no matter how unhealthy we feel or how stressed out we are, how anxious we are. We're not stuck there. We don't have to be stuck there.
00:23:16
Speaker
So it's taking little steps like this. And my challenge right now is for you listening that think back 10 years, five years, three years, even a year ago.
00:23:31
Speaker
I would love to have something happen overnight. I would. I mean, I feel like I think sometimes you do that when you start exercising. You're like, dang it. And you're like, wait, it's not about that. It's about mental health. And I just challenge you to look at at least one positive change that you've been able to do that you probably didn't recognize that you've been able to do.
00:23:56
Speaker
because it does. It takes time and it, and it's hard to hear that, but my gosh, we didn't get to the way we are overnight. No. And so we're not going to heal from it overnight, but we can make choices that will put head us in that right direction,
The Importance of Rest and Sabbath
00:24:13
Speaker
right? That will pivot us to head in a new direction. What else would you offer up as
00:24:19
Speaker
So the next thing would be looking at rest and how, how much rest do you have in your life? And I, and sleep is a big part of it. Like we need to be getting seven to eight hours of sleep every night. Um, but not just that, but just in your day, like in your work day, are you scheduling time to rest, to do a little five minute meditation?
00:24:46
Speaker
to do some breathing exercises, to take a walk around the building, even if it's inside. You know, we've got to build in these little chunks of rest into our day so that our body has a chance to come down, right, to engage that relaxation response. And so rest can look
00:25:10
Speaker
a variety of ways, but it's just thinking about it. And then like John Comer said in his book, practicing the Sabbath. Is there a day of the week? God designed us this way and he commanded it. Is there a day of the week when you do not work and when you just engage relationally and spiritually and give yourself a whole day?
00:25:38
Speaker
Mm hmm. To not work. Yeah, that's hard. But we do. Yes. We choose to design our lives. We design our lives by our choices. And those of us that have kids, as we're designing our lives and making our choices, we are setting an example for them that they will use as a gauge. So how do we want our kids to design their lives? We have to model that for them.
00:26:07
Speaker
And then the last thing would be letting go of the outcome.
Surrendering Outcomes to God
00:26:13
Speaker
So recognizing that we are called to do our best in our jobs, in our school, in our education, our lives, in our relationships, but we can just do our best and then we have to let go of the outcome. We have to give that to God. We have to practice prayer and surrendering to Him and recognizing our
00:26:37
Speaker
place in the grand scheme of things. You know, the world doesn't revolve around us, even though we think it does. So giving back to the community, people who do acts of service are shown to be much healthier and happier to do things that aren't about you. Yeah. Take that focus off yourself and do something positive. Not tall.
00:27:07
Speaker
But I would say to the majority, I think the biggest challenge in everything that you talked about is giving it to God. That's a huge, huge step. And we can do it though. We can do it just the way we develop all the other habits. Think of it like starting really small and saying, okay, God, I'm struggling with this thing. I'm going to give it to you. I'm going to trust you.
00:27:35
Speaker
and then seeing what happens. And when you see how he works through it, you've built a layer of trust. And so then you trust him with something maybe a little bit bigger, and you see how he works, and then you build another layer of trust. And it's like these little layers of trust. It's just like building a muscle. You have to work out the muscle for it to grow, right? All of these resilience skills are not done in your head. They're done through doing.
00:28:03
Speaker
You have to do them. You can't just learn them. You have to do them to practice. And so this is the same thing with trusting God. We have to actually do it for that trust to build. And it may not be what you want. Right. I was going to say everything is not amazing.
00:28:26
Speaker
But that goes back to the control. We don't know. And we have to trust God. There are bad things that happen and will happen. And we do not know why. Right. We will not know why on this side of heaven. But he promises that he works the good in everything. That's it. So even in the hard things, even when the outcome isn't what we wanted, we have to trust him that he's working good and learn to listen
00:28:55
Speaker
so that we can obey and see how he's working. I just feel like that's a huge caveat that we have to talk about because so many times there will be pushback. Even myself, I'm like, how could this be happening to me or to so-and-so? Like, I don't understand. Why is this happening? And it just goes back to the trust and it also goes back to the, you know what you're doing and
00:29:22
Speaker
Maybe I'll never understand why and maybe one day I will. But gosh, I know it's hard and I know that there are circumstances where someone may not like that answer, want that answer. I get it. Totally get it. But we just have to learn to trust.
Jesus' Lifestyle as a Resilience Template
00:29:43
Speaker
Yep. And then I would say, look at the life of Jesus. He was fully human and fully divine.
00:29:50
Speaker
And so he had a human body that responded to stress the same way we do. Look how he lived. What did he do? He walked everywhere. He prayed daily. He went and found quiet places alone to get away from the crowds. He surrounded himself with 12 people on his team. He valued relationships. He valued
00:30:16
Speaker
talking to God. All of these things that we just talked about are what he did. He modeled this for us. He is the true example of stress resilience. And so if the God of the universe in human form had to practice these ways of living in order to deal with the enormous stress that he was under, then we, of course we do too.
00:30:46
Speaker
Of course, his body responded the same way ours do. And so we just, we looked to what he did.
00:30:53
Speaker
Well, thank you for your insight and not much longer. We're rooting for you. Get that degree and we'll be talking about all the programs that you're putting together and how people can get involved with those. Like I said, in the previous episode and at the beginning of this, we will have all the resources and the links at normalgoesalongway.com and thank you.
00:31:19
Speaker
I appreciate your knowledge. I appreciate your insight. And I'm just ready to make a difference. You can do it. We can all do it.