Motion Sickness: 9 Tell-tale Signs You are Suffering from Hurry

By: Scott Armstrong

A confession: I’m getting worried about hurry.

Many people would describe me as driven, persistent, or even ambitious. In my worst moments, I grow self-satisfied at my work ethic while I look-down on others who seem lazier or lack initiative. I fill every moment of my life with something “useful,” and my wife jokes with me that my personal motto should be: “Just taking advantage of the time.” These characteristics are all greatly admired by a society that praises high productivity and holds up busyness as a virtue.

Yet are these qualities God would extol? It’s pretty clear that Jesus was never rushed. He regularly left large swaths of time in his day or week for silence, contemplation, and prayer. He seemed to always live “in the moment,” appreciating the joy of everyday, mundane life with others. He never suffered from the “motion sickness” which often plagues me: a general malaise that I experience as a result of being consistently hurried and distracted.

In her book Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, Ruth Haley Barton offers us nine indications that we are nearing our limits. Beware! As you read them, you may feel as convicted as I was when I used them as a tool of self-evaluation:

1. Irritability or hypersensitivity. Things that wouldn’t normally bother us (such as a child’s mistake, another driver cutting us off in traffic or a coworker’s irritating habit) really frustrate us.
2. Restlessness. During waking hours we might be aware of a vague sense that something is not quite right. When it is time to rest, we might find ourselves unable to settle down, and eventually our sleep may be broken or marred by too much mental activity.
3. Compulsive overworking. A compulsive leader is one who has no boundaries on work, checks e-mail late into the evening, and is unable to unplug completely to go on vacation, to enter into solitude or to spend uninterrupted time with family.
4. Emotional numbness. When we are “at capacity,” we literally do not have the energy to engage the full range of human experience, including our emotions.
5. Escapist behaviors. Increasingly we succumb to behaviors such as compulsive eating, drinking, spending, television, pornography, or surfing the Internet. We don’t have the energy to choose activities that are life-giving, such as exercising, going for a walk or bike ride, connecting meaningfully with friends and family, enjoying a hobby or interest, playing an instrument, cooking, painting, drawing, writing poetry, playing sports, working with our hands, or reading a good book.
6. Disconnected from our identity and calling. More and more we find ourselves going through the motions, disconnected from a true sense of who we are and what God is calling us to do. We find ourselves at the mercy of other people’s expectations because we lack an internal plumb line against which to measure these demands.
7. Not able to attend to human needs. We don’t have time to take care of basic human needs such as exercise, eating right, sleeping enough, going to the doctor, or having that minor surgery we need. Even simple errands can seem impossible to accomplish, indicating that we’re pushing the limits of being human.
8. Hoarding energy. When we are running on empty, exposing ourselves to additional people or situations feel as though they will drain the last of our reserves.
9. Slippage in our spiritual practices. Practices that are normally life-giving (solitude and silence, prayer, personal reflection on Scripture, journaling, self-examination, caring for the body) become burdensome, and we don’t have energy for them even though we know they are good for us. For ministers, we might find we are so accustomed to using God and Scripture for ministry purposes that we no longer know how to be with God for ourselves personally.

Does this resonate in any way? Is it time, as it is for me, for you to make a change or two? What’s one thing you can do in the coming month to move closer to an unhurried life?