I said yes. I love to teach, plus I was curious: Why do people put things off?  Who are they?

Prepared for the 23 adults who had registered, I watched a sea of people (of course they never got around to registering) flow into the small room.  Forty people showed up; handouts were shared; these people were great; we laughed at some of their circumstances; we hung our heads in sadness for lives unfulfilled.

It turned out to be one of the most fascinating classes of my career and the six-week class continued in popularity until I called it quits four years later.  (And always the number of people who showed exceeded those registered by 30-40%!)

If you’ve pictured the down-and-out, loser crowd: don’t. These were successful, smart people:

• An attractive middle-aged woman who spoke of the thrill of seeing how far her car would go on empty. (She got stranded a lot.)
• A salesman who never got around to billing his customers.  (He missed mucho revenue and his boss was unhappy.)
• A young woman (with a stunning resume of accomplishments) who hadn’t cleaned the bathroom in six years. Ick!
• A well-dressed man who hadn’t paid his taxes in about 5 years.  (Turned out he was less a procrastinator then just damn mad at the government.)

What prompts this memory?  A recent segment of CBS Sunday Morning show (February 21, 2010, The Whys and Why-Nows of Procrastination) featured people who have “time issues.”  Now, who doesn’t have time issues?

When it comes to planning a career break or negotiating a sabbatical, I find  many people have high desire, spend a lot of time thinking about the possibilities but don’t attempt even a mini-step.  In other words, theyr’e stuck. “I’m going to do it someday.”  “It’s just not the right time.”  “I’d really like to talk to my boss about it….soon….maybe.”  “As soon as the economy turns around.”

Procrastinators put off pleasurable things as well as the un-pleasurable according to marketing professor Susann Chiu at UCLA Anderson’s School of Management who cites  the outstanding hundreds of millions of frequent flier miles that we let expire or unused vacation time collected each year.

• Why aren’t you preparing for a negotiation with your boss for a sabbatical, while others are?
• While individuals  study up on  how to negotiation a sabbatical as part of that new job they’ll go for  when the talent churn begins, what prevents you from eyeing a possibility in your future?
• Why are others leaving right now on  career breaks (with their bosses blessing) and you’re not?

In the psychology of “why we putting things off,”  there are links to fear of failure, hedonism and lack of self-confidence. No time to consider the source?  Okay, don’t.

The main reason people put things off is because they feel they will have more time in the future. The possible REAL reason you’re not going on a career break – ever – is because of faulty thinking, a haze surrounding reality, or the comfort of an illusion.  Aren’t you smarter than a fifth grader?

Procrastination costs businesses over 3 billion dollars annually in lost productivity. What’s it costing in terms of living your  life and keeping your talent fresh for a long successful career? Here’s an extra minute to think about it.

What if you believed that your primary business is to be your true, authentic self?  And what if you could then express that self by doing things you love to do?  What if you learned more about what makes a business successful and, like a commercial business person does, created a strategic plan for your life, put systems in place to execute that plan, got the help you needed to succeed at it and created a series of outcomes that could be measured and duplicated?

Does that sound sort of cold and too “business-like?”  Then let’s add in the more juicy ingredients:  fulfilling work, artistic or creative expression, time for family, friends, and fun activities.  All those could be integrated into your strategic plan.  What a concept!

Being a Life Entrepreneur starts with a sense of purpose, actually a higher purpose than performing daily activities or tasks, or even meeting short-term goals.  To be a true Life Entrepreneur, you take the time to search your soul, think about why you’re here on the planet, what it is you’re meant to do.  It helps to look back over your life and survey where you have spent your time, energy, money and put your attention on.

I figured out early on that I am an educator, a teacher, but actually a pretty unconventional one.  I taught Montessori for a few years, and when I moved into the business world again, I found that applying the principles I learned from my teaching helped me grow my business.  I continued to teach more formally on the side by studying metaphysics and offering classes, coaching people, then included business consulting by the mid-eighties.  These were all forms of teaching, but very unconventional.  As the owner of a sales agency, I saw my role of educator as a way to help my employees reach their highest potential.  As a coach and consultant, I helped others do that for themselves and their employees.

Now I’m teaching by writing, coaching and consulting, but have the luxury of spending more time thinking about how to share ideas with a broader audience.  When I look back at the last forty or so years, I can see that my time, energy, money and attention have been directed to molding me into the woman I am today, and that I was purposeful about it from the beginning.

The reason I talk about being strategic is that I learned from experience that when I create new strategies, I get closer to creating my chosen outcomes.  When I stay with old patterns and keep using old strategies somewhat unconsciously, I seem to keep repeating them and feel like I’m on a merry-go-round and can’t get off.  We call that “revolving” instead of “evolving.”  Just being purposeful wasn’t enough.  To feel my work and life are truly fulfilling, I found it was necessary to consistently examine and revise my strategies, both personally and professionally.

Some days I feel a little silly being 62 and learning how to Twitter, update my LinkedIn page and see what is up on Facebook.  Other days, I feel like those things are part of what keep me relevant and current and that I have a good thirty or forty years of productive, meaningful, purposeful living ahead of me, so it makes perfect sense to do those things.

What I’m really saying is that this is what makes me feel like a Life Entrepreneur.  I’m carving out my life, and enjoying what I’m learning along the way.  And it sure beats the alternative–waiting around for something to happen until one day I wake up and can’t figure out how to get up!
Not me!

Margery Miller, owner of PeopleBiz Inc. is a coach and business consultant and is currently writing a series of blogs encouraging people to see themselves as Life Entrepreneurs. For more information see margerymiller.com, or write to her at margery@peoplebiz.com.

“It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but those most responsive to change.”  This is a quote from Charles Darwin, and I found it striking because we usually think of him in relation to “survival of the fittest” and this statement puts an interesting slant on what is the fittest.  I also recall John Demartini saying that the amount of stress we experience is a direct correlation to our ability to adapt to change.  The greater the flexibility, the less stress.  The greater the rigidity, the more stress.

Being a Life Entrepreneur requires amazing agility.  As Demartini also points out, we grow on the border of chaos and order.  Balancing that precariousness is vital to being able to withstand and move with, actually appreciate and take advantage of, inevitable change.

So how do you “roll with it” when you feel up against insurmountable difficulties?  First, start with what you know.  I strongly believe in starting each day with a statement at least, preferably a fully expressed vision, of who you are ideally, what you would love to experience and how you would love to show up in the world.  That is about what you aspire to, not a reiteration of what you are currently experiencing.  Think big, think bold, expand your sense of what is possible.

Who would you love to be?  What would you love to do?  What would you love to have?  These are quality questions that help you map out your life in a new and different way.

Waking up each day affirming who you are and what your higher purpose is informs your day and sets the tone for what happens.  Isn’t that a welcome change from wondering if you have the strength to get up and deal with all the demands others place on you?  Or doing the same drudgery day after day?  This actually puts you in the driver’s seat in your mind, which translates to you directing your thoughts, thus how you manage your experiences each day.

Circling back to Darwin, this means you are centered within yourself, ready to respond to what comes at you rather than react, which puts you in the category of most responsive to change.

Isn’t that the person you would love to be?

Margery Miller, owner of PeopleBiz Inc. is a coach and business consultant and is currently writing a series of blogs encouraging people to see themselves as Life Entrepreneurs. For more information see margerymiller.com, or write to her at margery@peoplebiz.com.

I just spent the last couple of days at the annual conference of Social Venture Partners International, held in Dallas.  SVPI is the largest individual donor network in the US, with over 2000 partners committed to capacity building for non-profit organizations in 24 cities in the US, Canada and Japan, and is growing each year, adding more chapter affiliates.  I would call each person I met a Life Entrepreneur, even if he or she isn’t aware of being one.

These amazing people have carved out time in their lives to focus on using a combination of business skills, life skills and money to ensure that organizations in their communities are able to fulfill their missions.  Each year a “grant cycle” is initiated, and local non-profits apply for “investee” status to gain the support of the SVP.  Once that happens, we partners volunteer to work with them to help solve the internal problems that are keeping them from growth.  I love this!  I get to bring my coaching skills, my business acumen, and am welcomed with open arms by people who are prepared to accept the help we offer and actually do something with it!  What a concept!

What inspired me about this conference is the variety of people I met, the wealth of experience they bring, and their willingness to share ideas, listen, and learn from each other.  The value of belonging was clearly expressed:  as individuals, we can do a little; as a group we become a force of nature.  We challenge each other along the way to bring our best to the table, to live up to our principles and continue to learn to work together.

So, after a little more than a year of being a member of the Dallas Social Venture Partners, I see even more reasons to stay involved, and do what it takes to make sure that our chapter fulfills its promise.  As a Life Entrepreneur, I thrive on new opportunities, new challenges and making new friends along the way.

That’s a lot to be grateful for!

Margery Miller, owner of PeopleBiz Inc. is a coach and business consultant and is currently writing a series of blogs encouraging people to see themselves as Life Entrepreneurs. For more information see margerymiller.com, or write to her at margery@peoplebiz.com.

I have often related a theory about the decades in our lives:  In our 20s, we try to figure out who we are; in our thirties, we work really hard to build our careers and fit into society (this is maximum people-pleasing time); we turn 40 and we start to wonder what it is all about, and if we really want to do this for the rest of our lives.  At that point, the questions start to become at least as important as the answers.  This is a decade of re-thinking, re-evaluating, and we start to realize around forty-five that it isn’t so important whether people like us, it is more important that we like ourselves.  At 50, we question whether we even like them (!), and how  they fit into our lives, and start getting much more serious about how we live and with whom.  At 55 and beyond, we care less about what others think at all and set about truly creating the life we would love to live.

These periods are not actually set in stone, just markers, because I have seen people move through them faster, based on the amount of self-work they are willing to do.  I’ve had clients in their thirties who were already well into the re-thinking and re-evaluating period, and some in their fifties who were just discovering that they had choices about how to live.  The point of this is that self-awareness is a process and the more aware we are, the more effectively we can move through the process.

So, being a Life Entrepreneur means consciously creating as we go.  My tag line, Master the Business of Life actually expresses the essence of this:  my primary business is the business of being Margery Miller, and the amount of time, energy, effort and strategic thinking I apply to that endeavor determines my success ratio.  If I walk around waiting for something to happen to me, if I worry about whether people like me, if I focus on what I don’t want instead of what I would love to experience–those are all ways that I could thwart my success as a Life Entrepreneur.

It means that in order to have a fulfilling life, I pay attention to all seven areas, Spiritual, Mental, Vocational, Financial, Familial, Social and Physical, and create my life with a goal of empowering ALL seven areas, not just succeeding at being a consultant, or coach, or making a lot of money, or having certain kinds of relationships.  The Demartini work focuses on breaking down the myths we carry in all aspects of our lives–not just the ones we think are most important at any moment.

I believe that being a Life Entrepreneur opens up myriad possibilities of how to get the most out of what is called the second half of life.  We have a lot of years ahead and “retirement” just isn’t attractive or even now possible for a majority of people.  So what do we do?

We can appreciate the synchronicity of having a global economic collapse occur at the same time a vast number of people on the planet wake up and realize there has to be more to life than getting by or making it through the day, or stepping on and abusing others to fulfill the hubris of greed and power.  We can thank technology and the internet for creating a global consciousness–and connecting people who may never meet but who are starting to think differently by being aware of each others’ existence.

We can start designing our lives and adapting to the constant changing world we live in by understanding that living life fully is an inside job.

Margery Miller, owner of PeopleBiz Inc. is a coach and business consultant and is currently writing a series of blogs encouraging people to see themselves as Life Entrepreneurs. For more information see margerymiller.com, or write to her at margery@peoplebiz.com.

Many things necessary for the faithful practice of ministry are in short supply. Nothing, however, is in shorter supply than time.  Time for prayer, time for family, time for study, time for self.

These opening lines taken from the Sabbatical Grant application for Pastoral Leaders aren’t sentiments of “time shortage” felt only by the ministry.  “Finding more balance in my life” has likely been unleashed into the universe as a 2010 resolution from dog walkers to global division presidents. Perhaps you’ve tried a direct approach, looking upward and saying, “God, I need a break. ”

Time spent not working. Who’s going to give us a break from our careers in this economy? For more than 12 years, The Louisville Institute has awarded up to 40 grants for 8-week ($10,000) and 12-week ($15,000) sabbaticals.  During this time recipients devote themselves to a season of prayer, study, renewal and reflection on their vocations and ministries. They are relieved of all vocational duties and are encouraged make this a time used “personally.”

(You can be relieved of all your vocational duties too, if you work for one of the companies found on our list of “Workplaces for Sabbaticals.” )

This post contnues the new study data released by The Louisville Institute on what they learned about pastoral sabbaticals and their effect on organizations.  See here for the first post of the positive effects on organizations and sabbical takers.

For those considering a career sabbatical or for companies investigating a program, here are six more insights from the study:

1. The core gift of the sabbatical is TIME AWAY not money or task. Underscored by one survey question’s finding that nearly 80 percent of grantees consider the gift of time the single most important feature of their sabbatical – time away from ministerial obligations, time with family, time with a different daily rhythm and time alone. Very few cite study or writing as most important.

WHAT’S TO LEARN? Time holds the value for individuals supporting , as we have previously reported, “time is the new currency.”

2. Resistance to Sabbatical Programs is real, but can be overcome. For many congregations, the notion of granting their pastor a sabbatical is utterly foreign and the researchers were braced for data from congregations expressing dismay over their pastor’s sabbatical. Instead, 75 percent of congregations report that the sabbatical tangibly benefited the life of the church.

This does not change the fact that a number of congregations experience some anxiety in anticipation of the sabbatical, especially if this is their first time through the experience.

But in most such cases, resistance to the sabbatical usually dissolves during the experience or soon after, as the benefits of the sabbatical contributing  to the vitality of the congregation become apparent.

WHAT’S TO LEARN? Organizations will have some individuals, just like churches, who aren’t initially wild about people leaving on sabbaticals. We find this “initial” resistance can be overcome in two ways:  1. Educating individuals of strong compelling business case information; and 2.  Leveraging sabbatical and work coverage stories in the organization.

Sometimes the strongest belief in the value of sabbaticals is attained post-sabbatical – propelling people into action.

Nearly half of the grantees report that their institution had no sabbatical policy when they received their grant. After their pastor received this award, approximately one‐third of the churches that had no such policy adopted one.

3. Individual sabbatical experiences cost money (any help is appreciated). Narrative responses included many expressions of thanks for the financial assistance that made the sabbatical possible – 75 percent of recipients said they would not have been able to take the sabbatical without The Louisville Institute’s grant.

WHAT’S TO LEARN? While “time” is the #1 take away, people do have bills to pay.  And if you feel destined to scuba in Roatan then you need airfare.  While some organizations choose self-funded programs, the majority of sabbaticals in organizations are paid and likely, that’s appreciated. And those organizations offering a sabbatical bonus on top of pay?  That only reinforces the organizational’s commitment in a big way.

4. Co-workers are jealous of sabbatical takers. Am I excited that you are not going to be working for 8 weeks while I am doing my job and part of yours? Yes and No.

Approximately half of Congregational Representatives and grantees indicate that staff relationships were strengthened by the sabbatical, though a few say they were strained by professional jealousy over reception of the grant.

WHAT’S TO LEARN? There’s a reason why we don’t sell a t-shirt that says, “Ha Ha Ha I’m going on sabbatical and you’re not.” Expect those left behind to feel a wee bit envious of sabbatical takers – it’s natural. But in our experience there are two reasons why they will want your sabbatical to go well:

1. They’re excited about the skills they’ll learn, the opportunity to shine or to do something their way instead of yours.
2. They genuinely want your sabbatical to be great so that when their turn comes you can reciprocate.

5. Will my sabbatical translate to greater productivity and engagement? While most grantees already were deeply engaged with academicians as part of their study and ministry development before their sabbaticals, nearly half of the grantees report that after their sabbaticals they became even more deeply engaged.  And that was noticed by fully half of the congreations.

WHAT’S TO LEARN? Sole focus on the obvious benefits of renewal or rejuvenation is to miss those benefits that may hold more value for the individual’s career and the organization including creativity, engagement, loyalty and commitment.

6. Sabbatical time flies; jam-packed sabbaticals don’t work. In their narrative responses, a number of grantees say that (1) the sabbatical was too short, and (2) they tried to do too much.

WHAT’S TO LEARN? While 8 weeks (the shortest time for these sabbaticals) may seem way too long for you to be away, you might have a different point of view after the experience.  Talk to others before you decline the opportunity. Doing too much is remedied with a solid sabbatical plan based on expectations and outcomes, not a list of to do’s.

Several of the grantees have composed extended testimonials about their sabbatical experience and its impact on their lives and ministries– they may be accessed at www.resourcingchristianity.org/clergysabbaticals.aspx.

Armed with the data from this survey disclosing the benefits of pastoral sabbaticals to both grantees and their congregations, be audacious and go forth. If you’re thinking of negotiating a sabbatical into your next career move, asking for a sabbatical now or becoming a champion for a sabbatical program win your organization - the research supports you.

There is no reason to wait.

But these were special rocks: stacked on top of one another, they formed three symbolic cairns. Granted, they were purchased cairns, likely from some pricey boutique in Dallas, but cairns nonetheless.

Like anyone who hikes on occasion, I’ve come across a few cairns in my time. Nothing quite compares, however, to the cairns I saw while hiking the Samaria Gorge on Greece’s island of Crete – said to be Europe’s longest gorge. Mid-way through the day-long hike, I came across a bend in the trail where 100s of cairns had been built by fellow hikers. It was a stunning, Alice In Wonderland-type scene. (For a picture of a cairn, see the rocks stacked on top of one another at the top of your screen in the page banner behind “The Sabbatical Mindset”).

The Samaria Gorge.

Lisa, my Ft. Worth girlfriend, had been diagnosed with stage 3 rectal cancer two months prior to my hiking Samaria. She was 39 years old and had four young boys. Rectal cancer? Really? I was scared for her and her family’s future.

Staring at all those cairns, I thought of Lisa and wondered what she was feeling at that very moment, on the other side of the globe. I had struggled with feeling helpless during her illness – not living in the same state meant I couldn’t be there for her like her Ft. Worth friends. I built a cairn in her honor and snapped a picture with my phone, which I emailed to Lisa later that evening.

She didn’t know what it was. I told her to look “cairn” up, and she did.

Our text messages went like this:

“You built a memorial for my burial site?”

“What?? NO. Why are you saying that?”

“Wikipedia says they’re built to memorialize the dead.”

Shit. Lisa isn’t a hiker. I’m not even sure she likes being outside much. I should have known.

“Cairns are built by hikers to help one another find the way. It is a sign of hope and guidance. It is my way of helping you find the way out of this dark time.”

The year ahead for Lisa would indeed be dark. Her treatment at MD Anderson in Houston included radiation, surgery, and chemotherapy. Friends and family gathered around to offer care for Lisa’s boys, food for the family, errand-running, etc. From afar, I tried to offer strength and hope, while feeling utterly useless and in fear of losing her. Truth is, Lisa had long been the one to show me the way through life.

We’d met in college. She attended Belmont University in Nashville, and I went to Vanderbilt University a few blocks away. Backstage of a Miss Tennessee Pageant, one of us offered help to the other in spraying our rear ends with Firm Grip, the football spray used by pageant contestants to keep their swimsuit firmly planted on their bottoms before traipsing on stage in four-inch heels. At roughly 5′2″, we were the shortest two contestants there. She quickly became my best friend.

The following summer, I was her maid of honor. And then our lives took different turns – she, married to a soon-to-be physician and mother of 1-2-3-4 boys, and me, (still) single and always searching for the next adventure. I watched carefully as her life became increasingly full and took mental notes on how to do what I might someday do, too. Hands down, she’s the best mother I’ve ever witnessed. Her boys are smart, respectful, curious, kind, and disciplined.

Shelves in my office display Lisa's cairns.

There was a note with my box of rocks: I hope every time you look at these you will remember the thoughts you had for me when you stacked some in my honor. They remind me of where I have been and the people like you who marked my path with light and hope. I love you sweet friend.

Lisa is now in remission. She’ll be checked every three months and will likely fight the fear of cancer’s return. Who wouldn’t? Admittedly, she is not the same person she was before cancer. She’s been transformed, although exactly how so will likely be a discovery process for her.

The cairns on my office shelves signify a gift Lisa gave me before the rocks in a box showed up on my doorstep . . . a gift, I suspect, Lisa gave so many people . . . the loving reminder of what’s been given to us all: life.

Is a sabbatical a smart career move?

Can a sabbatical make me more committed to my career? To my company?

Will I be transformed by the experience? Will others (my team, boss, etc.) report a noticeable difference in my productivity, thinking, leadership style, and relationships once I return?

Will the benefits last?

If ever a “Halleluiah” was in order for those of us looking for solid answers to these questions through research and statistics, it’s now.  And if your company leadership is looking for the business case for a sabbatical program, read on with gusto. New evidence has just been released, allowing everyone to proceed with sabbatical programs with confidence, passion and resolve.

A just-published survey commissioned by the Louisville Institute reports significant and astounding results for sabbatical takers as well as for their colleagues and constituents. While this is a study of pastoral leaders, the application for businesses – large and small – is extremely relevant. Let’s not play “but we’re so uniquely different.” The Church, like any organization, depends on its leaders for bottom-line sustainability.

Since a comprehensive sabbatical study of business leaders and outcomes for companies doesn’t yet exist, translate the Louisville Institute’s survey results to your company and yourself. I predict you’ll be surprised by this data. And for those trying to influence executive leadership to support a sabbatical program, stay tuned. Along with the following information, there’s more to this study that I’ll present in the next post.

The Louisville Institute’s report is the result of completed surveys from more than half of nearly 500 grantees (pastoral leaders awarded sabbaticals for personal renewal from the Louisville Institute), and nearly 40% of their congregations. The survey was developed and administered by sociologist of religion Jack Marcum and Sheldon Sorge, Associate Director of The Louisville Institute summarized the findings.

Here are some of the key results organized into four parts:

Part I – A Sabbatical: What’s in it For Me?

• 90 % of the sabbatical takers report either a “moderate” or a “large” effect on their subsequent vocational trajectory.
• 87% of pastors report that their sabbatical significantly renewed their commitment to ministry, something noticed also by 86% of congregational observers.
• 80% report that their sabbatical “refreshed or re‐energized” them to a “great extent,” while another 15% say so to a “moderate extent.”
• A number of pastors report developing new ministry engagements as a result of their sabbatical, such as leading seminars, consulting, writing and teaching that brought an experience of vocational expansion resulting in careers that were richer and more satisfying.

Part II – Does a “Personal Experience” Sabbatical Translate to Business Outcomes?

Individuals and companies sometimes question whether a sabbatical focused on a personal experience will really translate to business growth and development. While yourSABBATICAL.com collects anecdotal evidence that clearly supports this, the Louisville Institute’s study confirms it.

Finding: A solid majority of both the sabbatical takers and their congregations report a significant, enduring post‐sabbatical strengthening of the pastor’s ministries of teaching and preaching.

Part III – Won’t People Just Leave if We Give Them a Sabbatical?

The study dispels one of the most common myths about sabbaticals – the idea that when a company offers sabbaticals, it opens the door wide for people to leave. This survey does not support the notion that sabbaticals lead to pastoral moves. Over the past 15 years, slightly more than half of the pastors are still in the ministry position they held at the time of their sabbatical, and another 14% stayed in place for more than four years before moving to a new place of ministry.

Does everyone stay put? No. Ten percent of congregations do report that the sabbatical was a catalyst for the pastor leaving – in some cases, this was considered a good thing. Still, mass exodus does not happen; and in our experience, this 10% number seems surprisingly high. We rarely hear of departures.

Part IV – What Does the Organization Gain?

The findings disclose a pattern that continues throughout the survey – there is a strong overall congruence between the reports of the sabbatical takers and those of congregational representatives on the sabbatical’s benefits.

• 94% of congregational representatives indicate that they perceived their pastor to have been refreshed or re‐energized after the sabbatical.
• 90% of congregational representatives believe that the sabbatical strengthened the pastor’s commitment to their congregation.

Much to our delight, a strong majority (75%) of congregations report that granting their pastor a sabbatical significantly benefited their churches.

Further, solid majorities reported that the sabbatical had a positive impact on congregational attitudes toward pastoral sabbaticals, mobilized a continuing increase in lay involvement in church leadership, and generated a discernible increase in the overall enthusiasm for ministry among congregation members.

Can sabbaticals change the shape of your business or organization with lasting benefits that count? Based on this new data, a resounding “yes” is the answer. But for an “Amen,” we still need more companies to establish sabbatical programs and build data, benchmarks, and best practices. Pleased to discover such positive results for the sabbaticals they award, the Louisville Institute challenges more organizations to adopt a sabbatical policy.

Stay tuned for what was discovered in the Institute’s report on these sabbatical issues:

Was professional jealousy alive and well as some pastors were granted sabbaticals while others were not?

Did their sermons get better post-sabbatical?

How did some churches deal with resistance to the pastoral sabbatical?

I was visiting a friend in Florida feeling so grateful that I have people all around the world that I love and appreciate who are genuinely glad to see me and share some of their lives with me.  I hadn’t actually seen this friend face to face for four and a half years, but we picked up right where we left off and have spent the last day and a half filling each other in on major events, recounting challenges we’ve faced, how we’ve grown through them, what we’ve learned, where we see ourselves going from here.

In some ways our lives have paralleled, in other ways we are very different.  We do have one common thread–in our early sixties, we are both re-evaluating who we are as women, how we show up in the world, and what we want to do with our time and energy from this point forward.  This is right in line with what I realized when I was in Greece last month.  We are becoming Life Entrepreneurs, which I’m now seeing as the next step from being a business entrepreneur, as I have been for the last 30 years or so.

Life Entrepreneurship doesn’t only apply to women or business entrepreneurs.  I think this is a new wave of thinking that is germane to mid-life and beyond for both men and women, from all walks of life, from a variety of past experiences.  People want their lives to mean something–and if you watch Mad Men on TV, you will realize that having a meaningful life was only a remote possibility in the early 60s.  We’ve come a long way from the stereotypical roles of men and women in the workplace–and thinking that men knew best, that the government was to be obeyed, that working for pay was more important than working for something you believed in.

So I’m really just putting a label on something that I’ve been doing for a while:  being a Life Entrepreneur.  I look around and see I’m in good company.  There are millions around me doing this in one form or another.  I plan to spend some time over the next few months exploring, learning more about what it takes to succeed at this, and sharing my insights.

I’m also going to encourage people to see themselves as Life Entrepreneurs, and tap into the creative energy that can allow them to blossom into more authentic lives.  After all, a lot of us will still be here well into our nineties.  That means we have twenty, thirty, maybe forty years to be productive, engaging contributors to the world we live in.  Let’s make it meaningful!

Margery Miller, owner of PeopleBiz Inc. is a coach and business consultant and is currently writing a series of blogs encouraging people to see themselves as Life Entrepreneurs. For more information see margerymiller.com, or write to her at margery@peoplebiz.com.

Dr. Tim Elmore of Growing Leaders

non-profit organization created to develop emerging leaders. Tim talked about the different markets that have been established by the last five generations:

1. The market for the “Greatest Generation” (1900-1928) was commodities. They grew produce and then sold it at the farmer’s market.
2. The market for the “Silent Generation” (1929-1945) was goods. They processed the commodities and gave us convenience products (i.e. A cake mix in a box).
3. The Boomers introduced the services market into our economy.
4. Gen X took services to a new level and introduced the concept of an “experience”. Starbucks doesn’t just sell coffee, they sell an experience. Nordstrom’s isn’t just a department store; with a piano player, etc., it’s a shopping experience.
5. It is predicted that the market Gen Y will bring to our economy is “transformations”. Services and experiences aren’t good enough for them. They want to be transformed.
   

A sabbatical leave or career break offers opportunities for transformation. Time away from work can be structured to provide powerful leadership, learning, spiritual, physical, etc…..transformations. Businesses that offer sabbaticals for their employees are indeed allowing them an opportunity to be transformed into a better leader, contributor, and person.