Give yourself permission to fill your life with purpose and passion. Find ways to discover and honor your callings in life. Clarify your values and create a rule of life. Seek discomfort in ways that break unhelpful assumptions, attitudes, approaches and actions. Notice what's working and what's not in your life and develop a new road map for your life that's specifically designed for you. Join the conversation, share your wisdom, and learn from others.

A rule of life is a set of intentional guidelines or principles that individuals create to help structure and prioritize their daily lives. It serves as a personal framework to support well-being, personal growth, and the pursuit of meaningful goals. Creating a rule of life involves thoughtful reflection and planning. Here's a general process:

1. Self-Reflection: Begin by assessing your current life situation, values, and priorities. Consider what areas of your life you want to improve or focus on, such as health, relationships, spirituality, work, or personal development.
2. Identify Values: Identify your core values and beliefs. What matters most to you? These values will form the foundation of your rule of life.
3. Set Goals: Define specific, measurable, and achievable goals for each area of your life that you want to address. These goals should align with your values and reflect what you want to accomplish.
4. Prioritize: Determine the relative importance of each goal and area of your life. Not all goals will carry equal weight, so prioritize them based on your values and what's most pressing.
5. Create Guidelines: Develop practical guidelines or habits that will help you work toward your goals and live in alignment with your values. These could be daily, weekly, or monthly practices.
6. Review and Adjust: Periodically review your rule of life to track your progress and make adjustments as needed. Life circumstances change, so your rule of life should be flexible.
7. Seek Accountability: Share your rule of life with a trusted friend, family member, or mentor who can provide support and hold you accountable to your commitments.
8. Practice Self-Compassion: Understand that it's normal to face setbacks and challenges. Be kind to yourself and adapt your rule of life as necessary to meet changing needs.
9. Live with Intention: Embrace your rule of life as a daily guide, striving to live with intention and purpose, working toward your goals, and staying true to your values.

Creating a rule of life is a dynamic process that evolves as your life circumstances change. It helps you remain grounded so that you can do less while doing what truly matters. Your rule of life will most likely include core assumptions about life and yourself, what you hold most dear, and specific practices that help you honor the essence of who you are. 

When people ask me what’s the most valuable resource for a church leader, my answer is always time. Take a long, hard look at your calendar. How much of what's occuping your days and weeks are tasks that don’t bring you closer to joy or your goals.  Your clutter might be a signal that you need to make some changes in your circumstances to bring your work and life back into alignment. Unwanted Clutter usually reflects a glitch in your systems and serves as an indicator that something in your life is not running as smoothly as possible .

Declutter your Calendar
Decluttering your calendar involves reviewing  your tasks , meetings , events , and other commitments that make us feel overscheduled .

• Make a list. Write down your passions, goals, and aspirations. This will guide you as you curate a more intentional schedule that truly honors your time. 
• Look at your calendar. Identify tasks and activities scheduled in your calendar that don’t align with the passions and goals you listed earlier.
• Unsubscribe and delegate. Take a look at the tasks and activities you’ve identified. Is there any way you can unsubscribe from them or delegate them to someone else? How much time does this free up for you? If you’re a leader who spends more time replying to emails and comments than creating what you love, perhaps you can consider delegating some of these tasks to a virtual assistant.
• Redirect your time. Once you free up some time on your calendar, think about how you want to utilize that time. It’s important to be intentional as you curate your schedule. Fill these pockets of time with activities that can uplift your life and move you closer to your personal goals.

Declutter Your Mind
Let go of the tapes you play in your head that sap your energy, steal your joy, increase your anxiety, and diminish who you are. Mental clutter inlcudes the thoughts , worries , concerns , and desires that distract us and distress us .Note what triggers these thoughts, how long you ruminate on them, and what thoughts you might replace them with.

Declutter Your Digital Life
Digital clutter is anything on our devices that overwhelms us. It includes our phones, tablets, laptops, TVs, sound systems. Note how much time you spend on your devices, how energizing these items are, how they might impact your sleep and rest patterns.

Declutter your Physical Space
Note ways that physical clutter impacts your ability to remain centered and focused. Note which items delight you, which items are used often, which items you haven't used for more than six months, and why you've chosen to store items in certain places. Take time to:

• Notice when clutter begins to bother you.
• Notice how clutter makes you feel.
• Notice where clutter piles up and why.
• List what you'd like to see in place of the clutter. 
• List what do you like to have more space for.

Our capacity to reimagine and reinvent our future is constrained by our self-imposed limitations. Limitations include the things we tolerate or accept in life that aren't aligned with our preferred futures. Items people we coach often accept, include:

• Quit prioritizing productivity over well-being. Prioritize your lives as much and you do your job.
• Quit striving to achieve work-live balance.  The idea of work-life balance assumes your work life and personal life are separate . It doesn’t account for the possibility that your work life will encroach upon your personal life or that your personal life will affect your performance at the office . We simply don’t live in these silos anymore. There are aspects of our everyday routines that don’t fit neatly into either of those categories. It also doesn’t account for unforeseen situations, where equal attention to both parts of your life just aren’t possible.
• Quit taking on too many responsibilities. We need to think about how many competing commitments we can realistically manage, and which ones we may need to set aside, at least for a period of time. In music, harmony happens when two or more contrasting melodies are played together. In our everyday life, harmony happens when we integrate our personal life and work life so our days flow smoothly, where the parts of our life complement one another rather than working in opposition.
• Quit putting work first. If you're aiming for work-live harmony You are the nexus around which your life revolves. Work-life harmony helps you evaluate whether the things in your life are in sync with your priorities.  We must choose activities that enhance our lives and eliminate those that don’t.
• Quit discounting what your body and gut are trying to tell you.  Our bodies often tell us what’s working and what’s not working in our life. Consider what you might learn if you listen to your body and the moods you experience.
• Quit deferring  your passions. We often defer the things we’re most passionate about. How might you put them into your NOW list rather than your LATER list?
• Quit ignoring ways you can use small steps and moments in your daily life to propel you toward your preferred future. Find pockets of time when I could begin to experience that harmony - while commuting, waiting for a meeting to begin, or a 10 minute walk.

15-Minute Exercises

• Make a list of things you do every week that are life-draining.
• Make a list of the things you're tolerating, that aren't part of your reimagined life, or aren't in alignment with your callings, convictions, core values, and dreams.
• Make a list of what you’ll stop doing, or do less of, to make space for what matters most to you.