Your life needs to be sustainable

Sustainable is a huge buzz word these days, especially in the world of architecture and design where my work is. Frankly, I'm really weary of hearing about it. I'm also really tired of being made to feel guilty for doing something I love to do or want to do because it is somehow deemed by "green" folks as not sustainable.

Let me ask you this: Other than creating a lot of news/press about it, plus creating a lot of new jobs for people to monitor/watch how sustainable we all are (or aren't), what exactly has been accomplished by all the buzz about and money spent on sustainable stuff over the past 10-20 years anyway? Maybe it's hard to measure the effects? Maybe we won't know for quite awhile whether our actions and/or changes to them are really making a difference in this regard? But, I digress...

I did hear a good use of the word sustainable at The 2009 Leadership Summit on August 6th. Bill Hybells said, "Your life needs to be sustainable."

This speaker was referring to leaders and how they need to measure what they are doing at all times to make sure that what they are doing can be maintained and/or if the pace/activities they currently are keeping/doing will eventually cause them to fail.

I'm afraid to admit that there have been several times in the past few weeks where I have had to ask myself if my life was sustainable?

There are a lot of needs out there that need addressing. There are a lot of people out there that are hurting. There are many, many places where each of us should be plugging in to make a difference in people's lives. But, your life also needs to be sustainable.

It is so easy to volunteer to start something and to say, "Yes, count me in. I'll help." But, how many times do we volunteer without counting the costs and then as time goes by, we can't keep our commitments because our life really isn't sustainable at that pace?

If you are a "people-pleaser" like me, this just kills you. You want to jump in and be involved in good activities and be a part of something that is successful and really makes a difference in people's lives. But, the nasty little secret about involvement is that if you start, but don't continue and follow-through completely on your commitment, it is almost worse than if you hadn't signed up to participate in the first place.

Our church is currently looking for 500 mentors to commit to being a part of a Title One school student's life. The commitment is for 30 minutes per week for the whole school year. Part of me really wants to do this. Part of me is somewhat afraid to jump on the bandwagon and commit. Why? Because statistics show that students who have had mentors in the past who started, but failed to fulfill their commitment as mentors, actually suffer greatly from those brief commitments. They actually become a negative in their lives (versus a positive). How terrible to be somewhat responsible for causing a young child to have a worse situation in their life because I failed to follow-through on my small commitment to them.

That is why I am asking myself today, "Is my life sustainable?" With my church, family, job/career and other commitments I've already agreed to and/or are in the middle of and can't remove myself from, have I crossed over into a non-sustainable condition? What impact will my agreeing to do this next thing have on people if for some reason I can't follow through and do it fully and with excellence? What do I need to give up in order to make room for this new commitment? What impact will giving up another commitment have on the people who are counting on me fulfilling that commitment if I take on this new one?

Your life needs to be sustainable. Is it? Think about it...