Community Development
Cultivate
What good do you desire to grow in your community? Do you know if it needs to be planted or if it already exists? You COULD create the talk of the...
If you lose yourself saving the world, your community impact will be significantly reduced. Find some time to find yourself as a person and community.
[This article is one in a series designed for our Find the Needle community coaching opportunity, but of benefit to anyone. The 2025 application is now closed.]
Over the years, television shows about survival have thrived and multiplied. From naked to as many layers of clothes as possible, alone or with others, and from deserts, tundra, mountains, and Pacific Islands, people risk their lives to see how much they can endure. The human spirit, when pushed to the limit, is quite expandable.
Survival mode changes our whole personhood. It tends to focus the person on only what is needed to live, which can be limiting, especially the more deeply one enters the need to be in survival mode.
The response is like the body entering hypothermia; it reduces blood flow to the extremities to keep vital organs functioning. This isolative behavior can happen with individuals, families, communities, and organizations.
Within this atmosphere of survival, this deeply confining focus seems life-protecting. But in the scope of it all, it is option-limiting. It is more like you woke up in a cave, and instead of going toward the exit and open world, you go deeper into the cave and its surrounding darkness.
Here are a few examples of how you might find yourself or your team if your being isn’t well:
Anxious
Depressed
Chronically Exhausted
Fearful
Sleepless
Emotionally Unstable
Lonely
Conflicted
Low to No Morale
Confused
Visionless
Lost
Survival Slump
Joyless Work
When you are not well in your being, you also bring that to the world around you. Sometimes, you don’t even know you are in a bad place, empty at your deepest core. What if you ask those closest to you how they believe you are? Be sure you listen and receive it. You may not realize just how lost you are. An open conversation with others could save your life.
If you find yourself thinking, “I don’t have time for this self-care talk,” consider this. If you don’t invest some time in self-care, you will probably have less time than you think. You are not an all-powerful, unshakable, impenetrable being. You are a flesh and blood being that thinks and feels, internally processing the external world.
Close your eyes and think about whom and what you care about. To care is to feel concern or interest in something and attach importance to it. Care may even go so far as to look after and provide for needs. Are you on that list of recipients of care?
From my almost four decades of working with people and communities, I see a pattern: The better a person is at self-care, the more well-being they have, and the more sustainable their work with people. You at least need sustainability or what might be seen as survivability. However, that goal does not even aim at real problem-solving, growth, and development. What if you could experience sustainable growth and development as a person and community?
Think of it this way: You are in a desert and cannot find water. You have heard that there is a well nearby, but it is buried by years of debris and not being cared for. That is your well-of-being, and you need to find it.
To move beyond survival and have a chance to live and serve well, you must find that well and clear it out.
People who work in fields of human services and community development and impact do so because they care. We give a lot to our work. Sometimes, too much. Working from “rested and refreshed” vs. constantly “exhausted and on the edge” sounds much better, doesn’t it?
As you seek answers in your field of focus,[i] are YOU being lost along the way? The search for solutions to our community problems is grueling, but we don’t always pay attention to what it is doing to our own being. It is difficult for a lost you to be a helpful you in community impact. Losing yourself in your work doesn’t improve the work; it makes you a bad search party member.
Consider this. If you work yourself to death trying to get the work done or to save the world, you will be gone, and nothing will be done by you any longer. A little dramatic? Maybe, but maybe not. How are you, the whole you? Is burnout a soft word to describe your reality?
What if you followed the “Extended Stay” plan instead? This plan helps you live aware of self-care and establish some regular rhythms and approaches to which you are faithful. We might need to find you first, but we can do that search, too, using the same plan.
When I searched online for “feeling lost,” all the options I found focused on loneliness and isolation. But when I thought about times when I felt lost in my life, it wasn’t because no one was around or relationships were absent. The cause of my feeling lost was an internal reality: “Who am I, and where am I going?”
An article in Psychology Today breaks well-being into five major types—emotional, physical, social, workplace, and societal.[ii] It’s interesting to me that only two types in this breakdown of well-being are really about the person—emotional and physical. The remainder are about where you are and the people who are there. It’s an insufficient description.
If you are well in your being, you will be well wherever you are.
Well-being is ultimately found in the wellness of your being. Again, go back to that image of a well. Let’s expand the well image to a series of springs that flow into that well—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. How you handle the world around you has enormous implications for and upon you. For instance, chronic stress leads to aches and pains, insomnia, weakness, less socialization, unfocused thinking, and more.[iii] So, how do you cultivate wellness of being?
What I provide here is far from exhaustive on the topic of self-care. If this work of well-being is not new to you, I invite you to continue anyway. You might receive a reminder, a bump into a new insight, or remove some debris from your well-of-being.
Finding, Uncovering, and Maintaining Your Well-of-Being
In the search for and care for you, attitude is the starting point. Even if you have no information other than that you are lost, you can sit there and be available to your lostness. Part of the challenge of sitting in such a space is that knowing you are lost and without needed resources is unnerving and debilitating. But acknowledging reality is the point. Pretending is ended, and the search for where or how you are can begin.
Don’t let crying, deep anger, or discombobulating anxiety make you run away from what can happen here. The presence of those stirrings means something is there.
Your complete availability to cultivate awareness of the real world inside and out allows you to navigate your life and work with…
Wisdom,
Insight,
Intentionality,
Determination, and
Longevity…
…as you journey through life’s realities and toward what matters to you. (This could be a giant dream that reality seems to get in the way of regularly. We can do something about it.)
Since your life is already complex and full, let’s not add an abundance of tasks and issues to address to move toward well-being. What if we simply add one consistent change?
Find a Little Time Daily to Find You. Here’s How…
I invite you to sit with your eyes closed, breathing slowly and deeply, and just be there.
Not hours, just minutes. It could be as simple as starting with five minutes a day. Then, add time over the weeks and months in several ways. One way is to add minutes to a single stillness time. Another addition could be to have minutes of stillness in the morning, noon, and evening.
Play instrumental music of some kind to help you sit in stillness. I recommend no words in the music because words capture your brain. It's okay if the music is emotionally moving. In fact, that is desirable. The aim is to cultivate your ability to sit in stillness and breathe. Be okay with being there.
Over time, you will find that this stillness creates an atmospheric shift. You begin to be convinced that your well-of-being matters enough for investment. This time won’t be seen as just another kind of work to do. It will be a clear need for your being.
A regular practice of personal stillness will help you better manage the chaos and noise that will, without a doubt, come. Your well-of-being will be increasingly cleared of the debris of life, and your spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical streams will have a greater chance of flowing freely and clearly into that well.
Other elements of life can be worked with for your well-being. But I find that this one simple change can make a huge difference for most people, so start here.
Living an intentional life that cultivates well-being can begin to outweigh the impacts of the incidental and accidental parts of life on you. Find the time to find and keep you.
Want more? Here are some additional blogs related to this space of self-care and well-being:
[i] See https://www.charitytracker.com/en/blog/find-the-needle-the-search-party
[ii] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/click-here-for-happiness/201901/what-is-well-being-definition-types-and-well-being-skills
[iii] https://www.yalemedicine.org/conditions/stress-disorder
Do you desire to strengthen your CharityTracker or OasisInsight network and achieve new levels of collaboration and impact? Reach out to Chuck today to schedule your conversation: chuck@simonsolutions.com.
Dr. Chuck Coward serves as Community Impact Specialist for Simon Solutions, Inc. Chuck has invested over 35 years in fostering human and community development from a variety of places and roles, including as a pastor, non-profit Executive Director, Director of Development, businessman, consultant, university professor, The Struggle Coach, and the founder of Entrusted Foundation. Serving to make people and communities stronger is his great passion. Chuck is the proud husband to Anita, dad to four, and granddaddy to eight.
