The Assassin of the Headless Sprinting Chicken

By Jud Wilhite

My friend, we”ll call him Matt, sits today in the coffee shop looking like he”s slept on the street for a few days. Maybe he has.

No one around us has a clue that six months ago, Matt appeared to be a very with-it leader. Six months ago, he was a recognized for his accomplishments with magazine and cable news interviews. That was then; this is now.

Today, he has bags under his brown eyes. His hair is ruffled by more than the wind from a weekend cruise. His clothes look like they”re circa 1990 Seattle warehouse grunge. Right now they smell like they haven”t been laundered since then, either.

Yeah, this brother has really let himself go. But why? Matt tells me about 80-hour work weeks. He talks about the constant pressure to perform and the relentless and unbearable schedule he keeps. (He”s beginning to make me feel mega-anxious, like a very large shoe is about to drop). Then, like he”s confessing a crime, he shares how he devised his own ruin.

After seven years of pushing hard, he began to fantasize about getting out. He tried to resign. The organization pressured him to stay. They upped his pay. They did the Godfather bit and “made him an offer he couldn”t refuse.”

The pay made up for the craziness for a little while, but eventually he decided to execute the “final solution.” He”d lie to his organization. He”d have an affair on his wife. No real reason for either one, except to get out. Those two acts would end every relationship that demanded anything from him. The organization would terminate him. No more offers to stay on and, for sure, no more expectations. His wife would despise him””but not just for the affair. That would simply give her the excuse she needed to end the pain she”d been living with because of him.

I walked away from that meeting amazed at how fatigue and exhaustion can cloud a very smart person”s judgment. Let”s just say Matt succeeded on all fronts. Today, he lives with immeasurable regret and heartache. He”d do anything to go back and do things differently, but he feels it”s too late. His voice exudes a sense of impending doom. He”s too tired for it to sound like anything else.

Matt is fried. Exhausted. He is emotionally and physically burnt out, with his spiritual and mental parts soon to follow.

RUN, BABY, RUN

Ever felt like you”re sliding into a meltdown? On a bad roller-coaster ride headed for the crazy farm? Ever felt like the demands on your life are simply unsustainable? Just to get a break from the madness that is your life, do you find yourself caught up in some destructive patterns of escapism and fantasy?

If so, you just might have booked yourself an appointment with the Assassin of the Headless Sprinting Chicken. He”ll destroy your life all the while you run around from one manic appointment to another, like a chicken with its head cut off. Fatigue and exhaustion in ministry and leadership is destroying people everywhere you look. And if we”re not careful, we could be next.

MORE THAN BALANCE

This is probably the point where you”d predict I”d start talking about finding blissful balance in your life. Just ease up on the accelerator. Find the peaceful state waiting to emerge in your schedule. Exercise twice a week, and cleanse your colon quarterly. Then you”ll be one swell leader destined for greatness.

Think again.

I believe there is a better way to think of life than a quest for consistent balance. I mean, was the apostle Paul balanced? He was often in life-threatening situations, was beaten more than once, and traveled around the world with restless energy.

Was Van Gogh balanced? The guy cut off his ear, for crying out loud.

Or how about my childhood hero Evel Knievel? Come on, what could be more unbalanced than breaking every bone in your body?

It”s just a fact that successful and significant people simply aren”t the picture of sanitized stability and balance. They are passionate people who have the distinct willingness to do whatever it takes to accomplish a goal.

For years I tried to live with daily balance. I endeavored to achieve all my goals at once: career goals, family goals, fitness goals, spiritual goals. I could keep all the plates spinning for a while, but eventually they”d come crashing down.

It was an incredibly exhausting experience to try and keep every area of my life firing on all cylinders, all the time. I”d have a balanced week, then log two unbalanced weeks gutting it out. Then I”d feel guilty two weeks after that for working so hard and neglecting another area of life. I placed crazy demands on myself that nobody else was really asking of me.

Then one day I read an eye-opening and liberating article by Keith Hammonds in Fast Company magazine. He said:

“The truth is, balance is bunk.”

He had my attention. “For those of us trying desperately to keep up with everything that needs doing,” he wrote, “it poses two mythical ideals. If we work hard enough at it, one goes, we can have everything. Or if we cut back, we can have just enough to be truly content. The first obliges us to accomplish too much, often at too high a price; the second doesn”t let us accomplish enough.”¹

CHAPTERS

Hammonds challenged me to see life as a portfolio of chapters. The goal is not to be perfectly balanced all the time, but to look at one”s entire life portfolio. There will be chapters filled with very intense work. Other chapters will be more consumed with family time, and still other chapters with relaxation. In another way of describing this, Ecclesiastes talks about life”s seasons (Ecclesiastes 3:1ff).

HEALTH PLAN

The truth is I”ve done a poor job of this for much of my life. I remember hearing my wife say to a friend on the phone one night that she felt like a single mom because I was always gone, either physically or emotionally. And then there was the time my then 6-year-old daughter said, “Dad, I wish you weren”t a pastor” as I was heading out the door to help someone else in crisis. My lessons in this area have come through failure and difficulty. I”ve learned that busy is not bad, but we have to be busy about the best things.

To guard against the Assassin of the Headless Sprinting Chicken, I am diligent about taking a day off each week to rest. I guarantee you will be more effective with a full day of rest than working seven days straight. Sometimes it takes a heroic effort to pull off a full day away from work, but I do it anyway. I leave projects unfinished. I leave e-mails that can wait another day unanswered.

I”ve also made it a priority to identify things that fill us up when I feel emotionally, physically, or spiritually tired. For me, some time with a classic Christian book often gives new life and insight. I regularly put one-hour appointments on my calendar with some dead guy or gal from another time. I treat it like an immovable appointment, as concrete as appointments with living people. Maybe you find solace in going to a concert, or on a five-mile run, or a long walk. (One other thing: when engaged in these activities, throw your Crackberry, iPhone, or cell phone in the trunk.)

Perhaps most important in all of this is I”ve become OK with disappointing other people. I can”t be all things to all people. But I have prioritized my family and my friendships and have become more concerned about not disappointing them.

Maybe your own health plan””starting today, for the long haul””is a good idea for you. You could start by asking questions about how much you work and who pays the price for your commitment. Do your friends and family ever see you? Is your pace sustainable for the long haul? Make a list of the top five people in your life. Find out how those individuals feel. People are what matter most in our lives, so prioritize time for them.

Leaders need to push it to the limit, but not beyond the limit. If we are going to be engaged in furious work, then we also need to be engaged in furious rest (as Louie Giglio calls it).

Effective leaders know leadership is about the long haul. It”s not just about a short season of greatness where you burn hot and then burn out. I”m tired of seeing too many leaders being scraped up off the concrete after getting pummeled by this the Assassin of the Headless Sprinting Chicken. Don”t become another victim.

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¹Keith H. Hamonds, “Balance is Bunk” Fast Company (October 2004), 68. Also see www.fastcompany.com/magazine/87/balance-1.html.

Jud Wilhite lives in the Las Vegas area with his family where he serves as senior pastor of Central Christian Church. He”s the author of several books including That Crazy Little Thing Called Love, and Stripped: Uncensored Grace on the Streets of Vegas, and coauthor of Deadly Viper Character Assassins (www.deadlyviper.org).