I received a compliment this week. It wasn’t necessarily meant as one. It was just an observation, but it complimented me. A fellow said to me “I sense a calmness in you.”

Indeed. I feel more calm today than perhaps ever in my 48 years.

In Ecclesiastes this morning I read about “The quiet words of the wise…” (v 9:17) and that “calmness can lay great errors to rest.” (v 10:4)

There’s a thought: How many raging fires exist in your life because there was a little spark caused by friction—-and there is friction everywhere, everyday—and in frustration and anger you threw gasoline on the spark? I’d hate to think about how many heart-acres I have scorched because I didn’t exhibit calmness. I’m reminded that Proverbs 15:1 says “A gentle answer turns away wrath.”

Where does calm come from? Is it just an age thing? Only to the extent that time allows you to dig your well deeper.

I think calmness comes from depth. Shallow water has turbulent ripples but deep water is calm. Calmness comes from depth. Where does depth come from?

Depth—deep—-dig, Ah Ha! You gotta dig to get to depth. Dig what? I think your own heart.

My pastor friend, Hosea Bilyeu, has repeatedly encouraged me to listen slowly, think deeply, pray fervently, and obey faithfully. Pause to consider the first two thoughts. Listen slowly implies carefully considering what you hear. Don’t be rushing to formulate your answer. Think deeply. Shallow thinking produces shallow answers that hit us like cotton candy. They may sound good, but they quickly melt to nothing. Deep thinking sometimes—not always—produces profound thoughts and solutions that change the course of our life.

You can’t dig to depth, or think deeply in the midst of noise, and it’s a noisy world. Phones ring. Kids scurry through. Spouses need things. Text messages ding. The computer shouts “You’ve got mail!” All the while the TV or radio blares in the background and we have the temerity to say “I’m thinking.” Not so much.

Learning and growing can’t take place in a life that is noisy. It requires ingestion of ideas through great books, podcasts, conversations & travel. Then it requires digestion of what you’ve ingested. Some of it will help you learn and grow while some just produces waste. You separate the good from the bad as you dig deep into the ideas, and into your heart, and evaluate what you find in comparison to what you know is truth. Thus, you grow. And, somewhere on the other side of that growth, comes calm.

It’s a chaotic world out there. Politically. Economically. Socially. Your internal world is chaotic, too. Relationships. Finances. Fears. All of these things produce friction that is sometimes too much to bear, and when we can’t stand it anymore we spew gasoline on the sparks all the while wondering why we are having to continually fight fires.

You, your family, the people you work with, even the world needs your calm.

Get a shovel, and start digging.

Is there any chance you are trying too hard?

I’ve been feeling really exhausted; sorta the “I’m kinda worried about me” kind of exhausted. But suddenly things have changed:

#1. I cut back on my workouts. I’m doing three days a week, maybe four on a good week, but not trying to hit five days.

#2. I ate some of what I wanted. I actually had a big slab of lasagna on Tuesday evening, and a piece of cake last night. Meanwhile I’ve also focused a bit more on water intake, replacing a little carb with protein and adding some fruit.

#3. I awakened to the truth that the battles I’ve been fighting are not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual enemies (as Ephesians 6:12 says—that’s a series of blog posts in itself) and must be fought with spiritual weaponry, so I/we changed our approach to dealing with our problems.

The result? Well, I am sleeping better. When I got on the scale today I was down three pounds. I horsed a good workout this morning, and feel invigorated. My attitude at work has been superb.

My conclusion: I’d been trying too hard. Trying to push and exercise more. Trying to eat “by the law of the diet” instead of giving myself some grace but continuing to be wise. Trying to muscle-up against my problems. I just think I’ve been trying too hard.

How about you?

In baseball we teach a kid to “loosen his grip on the bat.” When he misses a pitch and hears the ump yell “Strike 1!” it creates tension, and the natural result of tension is for the hitter to tighten his grip on the bad—it’s the physical aspect of his mental resolve to hit the ball. And the result is—all too often—that the hitter becomes just a batter who got to hear “Strike 2!” and “Strike 3, yer out!”

The lessons are: Loose grip, gentle swing, just make contact with the ball, drink your water, eat your fruits and vegetables, reduce but don’t eliminate those starches you crave, and get your butt off the couch but don’t train like you’re going to be in the next Olympics (it’s the little 5K Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning, silly boy).

Is there any chance you are trying too hard?

The past three or four mornings I’ve been up shortly after daylight working in my garden. It’s tiresome, and that’s a weary hour for me, but in 95 degree weather it’s early morning or not at all.

As I work in the garden or on the farm I think about alot of things and appreciate being rooted in the basics of life: sweat, manure, death, life, abscesses, foot rot, retained placenta, and the joy of a harvested crop in the barn. As I thought about recent news events I found myself wondering if Michael Jackson had ever grown a tomato.

As you know, Jackson died a couple of days ago. What a weird, miserable, confused individual. It didn’t have to be that way. Somewhere along the way he lost his rootedness and foundation. Maybe he never had it. But more likely the entertainment industry machine ate away his soul.

I think keeping a finger in the dirt is an important strategy for staying in touch with the basics. Growing tomatoes is a good balance to staying at those high-end, expensive resorts where they spritz your face with chilled Evian.

Today I went fishing with my girls. Rule #1: Bait your own hook. Those pretty manicured fingernails need some worm guts under them. It’ll help the girls to remember how the other half lives, and hopefully keep them rooted while they are being spoiled with manicures, tennis lessons, and trips to American Girl.  

It’s 10:30 p.m. and I’m off to bed. It’s Summer vacation for the girls, so before they turn in tonight they’ve got to go back to the barn to bottle feed a couple of baby goats. That keeps ’em rooted too, I hope.

I don’t know if my kids will grow up well-balanced, but I’m going to be sure they know how to shovel manure and grow their own tomatoes.

I was sitting on the porch (my specialty) drinking a Diet Coke and resting a bit from an intense few hours getting my garden in shape for Spring, when my friend Brett Godfrey gestures broadly and says “not everybody would ‘get’ this.”

It was a beautiful Spring day; the horses were grazing in the South pasture and the goats were frolicking in the front paddock. This is life as it was meant to be. (Deep good sigh!) 

But Brett is right, most people can’t conceive of why I’d be sitting here in muddy boots and Big Smith overalls with an aching back when an hour in my office working in the area of my unique ability would generate more revenue than my family will spend on vegetables in an entire year. Maybe I don’t get this either. Why do I do it?

Balancing work and leisure (yes, the garden is a leisure activity—-some people play golf, some people move rocks and dig in dirt—–both cause sweat) is an ongoing struggle for entrepreneurs. Nearly every day that I pause to play I find my mind drifting to “how much I’m worth an hour if I were doing something productive.” But the truth is: that’s weak thinking. Strong thinking realizes that life is about life, and work is just a tool to support life, and most importantly—leisure is productive.

Life is found in the simple pleasure of eating bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches when the pork came from your farm, and the lettuce and tomato grew in your garden. (In trying economic times there’s a certain confidence that comes from experiencing a meal that you grew totally on your place—slow food instead of fast food.) Life is in sitting on the porch in a rocking chair (yeah, we’ve got about ten big ones across the porch) visiting with your friends. In fact, that’s one of the best places to sit and talk with God. It’s also a good place to think.

Have you just sat quietly and done any thinking lately? What about talking to God? What about visiting with a friend? I won’t even ask where your bacon came from.

Dan Sullivan Founder of Strategic Coach (if you’ll contact them they’ll send you a free CD on the entrepreneurial time system) has taught me that in order to be most productive on what he calls Focus Days, I need to have a commensurate amount of Free Days in my schedule. A Free Day is a 24 hour time period where you do nothing related to work. Many of my friends in Strategic Coach have over 100 Free Days a year. That’s a nice balance of life and work.

I don’t have this subject all figured out yet, so I’m mostly just musing aloud. Though I am discovering that the more time I take off, and the more relaxed I am, the more productive I am on my Focus Days, and the more money I make. When Brett commented about people “not getting it” I promptly replied, “Yeah, I like money. But I like homegrown tomatoes, too.”

Take the day off. Go stick a shovel in the dirt.