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Jail inmates have an advantage that we can learn from.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been sharing various experiences I had as a jail chaplain.

One of the comments I heard often, that you’d probably be surprised to hear, was inmates saying that this was the first opportunity they’d had to be amongst peace and quiet, and they relished that.

They often told me how they never got a chance to think clearly. They were always surrounded by noise, whether it had been coming from gang members that they were running with or whether it had been coming from abusive family members that they were constantly hearing from. This was the first real time that many of them had actually had some peace and quiet. They would tell me, “For the first time, I’ve had a chance to think.” And they welcomed that.

I learned from that that we often don’t take opportunities to think clearly. We seldom make room on our calendar to intentionally be quiet – to deliberately have those quiet moments where we get some downtime to catch our breath and really think.

We not only owe it to ourselves and families, we owe it to our clients. In the pace of life today, within our industry especially, we’re constantly bombarded by sound bytes, and political issues, and headlines that really can frazzle us.

So,

1. Have you scheduled on your calendar some downtime to just refresh?
2. Are you holding to that and using that tactically to refresh and then start thinking effectively about what you can do for yourself and your business?
3. If you haven’t, make those times. Rule them out on your calendar: they’re specific appointments. They’re not just empty time to fill up if something else important comes along. They’re scheduled appointments to do nothing but think and refresh.

I look forward to bringing you another Distraction-Proof Advisor Idea next week.