S-p-e-e-d of Heart Living

Living at the Speed 

of your Heart

We have always raced our technology.  We run to keep up with it.  Once we obtain it, then it runs our lives.  Anyone want to take a guess at how many hours we burn each day plugged into our I-somethings.  The problem is more than the reality of becoming an extension of the technology.  Mere automatons….  That’s bad enough. 

However, the deeper problem is that we are made to live at the speed of our hearts. Say that again because it is too easy to believe—the speed of our hearts. (I am drawing this idea from Wayne Meuller who got it from Mark Nepo, but God holds the copyright.)  The heart has one function—to pump life-giving blood through the body.  It has two movements: (1) engagement and (2) recovery—lub/dub.  Jim Loehr, in The Power of Engagement, tells us that our lives should have one function—to give life—and two movements: engagement and recovery.  Do we have times of powerful, creative engagement?  How about intentional times for recovery?  

The point is that we have to be intentional about how we live.  Go ahead and use the technology.  But know when to shut it off.  Have set times to respond to emails, answer the cell phones, turn on the I-Pads. We don’t need “smart Phones.”  We need to be smart by living intentionally.  

The symptoms of people who do not shape their lives to the rhythm of their hearts.  You’ll recognize them as over-functioning people, or to follow the analogy, who have “racing hearts.” Those who burn-out have “congestive heart failure.”  Then there are those with so much tech stuff that they need some form of “bypass” to simplify it—which is usually another tech device.   

The point is not to go back to the Little House on the Prairie. It is to use our technology to support lives with a heart-healthy rhythm. Here’s the Loehr guidance:

• 90 minutes maximum of serious engagement—and stop!  Don’t roll over into the next task.  Break! 
• 10-15 mins recovery.  (Walk the hall, go up and down a flight of stairs, go to the restroom and rest!, or, learn to be still, center and take deep breaths for several minutes.)