Brad Miller 0:00
We have garland Vance with scars advances and author of the newly released book, getting on busy. And you can find that at getting on busy books. com that's gigttinunbusybwok.com. So you make sure you get the spelling right there and we'll talk about that. Garland has been helping people and teams get clarity on their about their lives and their leadership. He's been doing that for over 20 years. He is an author and a speaker and a consultant. He is a has a great wife named Dorothy and he is in fact he co founded a organization advance leadership. And he has a is all about helping people overwhelm, who are overwhelmed to become influencers and live their life with purpose and productivity and with peace, and he is a senior consultant was Suarez. Leadership is a doctorate in leadership and spiritual formation for Denver, Denver.

seminary. And he's especially in his research and his doctoral degree was the study of dizziness. apropos topic, welcome to pathway to promise, Dr. Garland Vance.

Garland Vance 1:14
Hey, thanks so much Dr. Brad Miller. It is great to be here. Thanks for for having me. And I'm excited to talk with you and to share with your listeners about business and purpose, productivity and peace. It is such an appropriate thing to talk about here garlin I literally just just a little while before we got together to have a conversation here. My have a 21 year old son who's starting his senior year of college and he left the house here.

Brad Miller 1:46
Not too long before we chatted, and the topic of our conversation was how busy he is. Busy his life is with he's getting ready to start classes and moved into a new place and

As a part time job at the university, bookstore and social life and all kinds of other things that he's in. And he just felt he was talking about how overwhelmed that he felt in his life and how busy and he is common refrain. I think a lot of folks business, what's business to find it for us? carlon? What is that? Sure. So I defined business as an over commitment to too many good commitments. So let me unpack that just a little bit. All of us who are over committed, whether that's your son, whether that's a CEO or a stay at home parent, everybody I know who's over committed, they're over committed because they have so many good commitments, school is good church activities are good work is good, family is good. You know, everything we're doing is good. But when you put it all together, it becomes too much. It's kind of like when I was in middle school and I would go to an all you can eat by

Garland Vance 3:00
Faye, and all of the food on the buffet was good, but by the end of the meal, I would feel sick because too many good things put together become bad and that's what business is.

How's that impacted your life? My man? How is that? You said that impact you that episode of the buffet, you're talking about there. But I got a feeling that maybe been some larger life events that have happened here in life that you've had to deal with to overcome in some form or another how has been too busy, put some blocks or some HAMP hampered your life in some way. Sure. So it was about five years ago that I went to a doctor's visit with some pretty serious physical problems. I've always been in good health, but I was having four chronic problems that I wanted to talk to my doctor about. The first was I was having chronic migraine headaches, three or so migraine headaches.

per week, and it would be where I would come home and have to go to bed and sleep, you know through the night because I was in so much pain. So I was having those these migraine headaches. I was having severe forgetfulness where I would have conversations with people walk away from those conversations and the next day they would reference them and I would have no idea what they were talking about. Third problem I was having is I was having heart palpitations, I would be sitting at my desk, checking email, and all of a sudden my heart would start racing, I would start pouring sweat. And then finally, I was having

just extreme exhaustion where I would wake up exhausted, go to bed exhausted, and I've always been a very energetic person, and I just didn't have anything left in me. And so I went to the doctor and I was really concerned about what was going on. I wasn't sure if they're, you know, is there some kind of tumor that's affecting me is, you know,

Is there the forgetfulness is this early onset Alzheimer's, I was really concerned. And the doctor asked me to describe my life. And as I described my life, I told him about the 60 hour work weeks that I was doing. I was working 60 hours with a chick fil a nonprofit, one of chick fil A's nonprofits. I was leading it. So I was doing that I just started working my doctoral program. I had three young kids at home, I was helping create some discipleship training for or our church. And a year earlier, my mom had had passed away. And so all of these, you know, these commitments that I was involved in, and they were all really good commitments, and my doctor looked me in the eye, he put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, Garland. I'm concerned for your life, because stress is killing you. Hmm, wow. And I

So yes, yes, a really, these the physical health manifestations of your stress and your business was impacting you on a much deeper level than you really appreciate it. He went to the doctor was Yeah, absolutely. And when he told me that I, you know, he said your stress is killing you I I actually got very frustrated with him, because I didn't consider myself a stressed out person. And so I said to him, I said, I don't feel stressed out. And he said, Well, your head does three times a week. And, and that big wake up call for me. And so I said to the doctor at that time, why, why do you think I'm stressed out? And he said, because you're so busy. And my response, Brad was, Well, yeah, I'm busy, but everybody's busy. In fact, ask anybody on the street, how they're doing, and they're going to tell you that they're busy. I'm know you know, I know that I'm busy but so as everybody else, and he again looked me in the eye and he said,

know everybody's busy, and it's killing us all. And it was a wake up call for me and and I didn't believe him at first I really said no, I gotta do some research around this to make sure my doctor is not crazy You sound like you might have thought he was maybe even speaking some sort of a metaphysical terminology or you know, just an example, you know, like

Brad Miller 7:23
extreme example, you're killing yourself. It can be thought of it, but in a way that you were just an example of that, but he was really talking about physically healthy was killing you. Right? You were going to die,

Garland Vance 7:35
you know, right. Yeah. He's He's looking at me and saying if if your way of life doesn't change, physical death is not like he wasn't exaggerating, physical death will be the result.

Brad Miller 7:46
You think that's the case for a lot of folks early?

Garland Vance 7:49
Yeah. If you know, so it's, it's interesting. Brad, what I ended up doing is I started researching it. And I was working on a doctorate at the time. And so I started researching the effects of business and what business does two leaders and, and I can tell you that the effects of business are profound. It's it has been linked to colitis, diverticulitis, two diabetes, two major stress, migraine headaches, or, or shoulder tension. It's even been linked to karoshi, which is death by overwork. And in Japan, there are people who are over committed so much that they've created a term for these people who drop dead at their desk, and its death by overwork. And, and it's a result of an over commitment to too many good commitments. And, and, and what's crazy is, is it's not just physical problems. In my research, I found there's emotional problems, relational problems that result from it, there are spiritual problems that come about, there's a diminishment of our productivity. And there's even whole organizations who are so over committed and busy, that it's actually hurting the bottom line for them, and it's hurting their customer service. So it's really kind of an epidemic. In fact, some people call it some people have said that business is the new smoking.

Brad Miller 9:20
Wow. Yeah. So culture as it at our culture has a lot to do with the expectations of being busy. And course with social media and, and pressures of our workplaces and so on, there's always an expectation to produce produce produce. Yeah, it just continues to put stress on us. And, and we, we have to take, what I'm hearing you say is that we this could either happen to us let it happen to us, or we can take some control of this. And it sounded like you chose to take some control and your circumstances. Yeah, so I'd like to be I'm interested in hearing you. I know, you've done a lot of research on this. But I find a lot of research online stems from our own personal experiences. And tell me little bit about your personal experience, what sort of things you did then share in reaction to that doctor's visit? What did you do then to counteract? You said you did some studies about it. So interested in how you implemented what you learned what you chose to do that? Right?

Garland Vance 10:19
Yeah, so I had to go through some, some steps. And it wasn't until after taking them that you really begin to to realize what you did. But the first step that I had to take is I had to decide that business was not worth it, that it wasn't worth the toll it was taking on my body, it wasn't worth the effect that it was going to have on my friends on the work that it was doing on my family. So I had to decide and really put a stake in the ground and say, That's it, whatever it takes, I'm going to learn to beat this. And then the second step that I had to do is I had to begin deconstructing some of the the beliefs I had and the inhibiting beliefs in particular that were keeping stuck in business. And what I found is I had three inhibiting beliefs, and that was, I need to be more, and therefore I need to do more. And as a result of that, I need to get more. And and that getting more wasn't for me, physical things, it was experiential opportunities. And so I had to deconstruct some of these false beliefs that, you know, I'm not enough, I'm not good enough. My value is found in what I accomplish. And even though I had taught people for years, through my my ministries, that that that was not true, you know that our value is found in the fact that we are children of God, even though I taught that I didn't practice that in the way that I I acted. And so once I began to deconstruct some of those, inhibiting beliefs, then I had to deconstruct some over commitments and some unwanted commitments that I had. And really began to strip away commitments that were not life giving to me, things that I had said yes to that I shouldn't have said yes to or that I didn't need to say yes to and really had to go through a lot of soul searching of, I've only got limited time and limited energy, and how much am I going to get? You know, what, am I going to get bad time and energy

Brad Miller 12:22
grows? Was this simply a matter of setting priorities? Or there? Was there something deeper here than that? Tell me about you kind of how you did is how you sorted out these things. So as he, as you said, you had a lot of good stuff going on. But how did you actually do it? How did you use writing zone?

Garland Vance 12:39
Right? Yeah, so for me, it wasn't so much about priorities as it was about boundaries. You know, I had taught lots about time management and read a lot about time management. And so I knew how to create priorities. But what I think most people do is, is we create not one or two priorities, but we identify our top 10 priorities, or 15. And so part of it was having to minimize the number of priorities that I had. But the other part of it was really about building some boundaries into my life, where I would say, you know, at this time, every day, my work ends, I'm done, I'm not going to pick up the phone, I'm not going to look at the computer, I'm not going to respond to email, my work ends at this time. And then having three young kids at home, having to do the same thing at home. And so our family decided at 9pm. Every night, we're done. Even if we're not finished with everything we're done. And you know, the dishes will still be there, things will still be dirty, but we've got to care for ourself. And so setting boundaries was a huge part, and then implementing some some very intentional rest and sleep slowing down practices were also a huge part of that learning to walk more slowly, talk more slowly, which I still struggle with that right, I still talk pretty fast. But But all of that became just a very intentional slowing down of life. And what was crazy is how much more I actually started accomplishing. Because my mind and my body were slowing down enough to pay attention.

Brad Miller 14:29
That's awesome. It's that. So those are some intentional actions that you took to slowing down the quitting things, even when they were done at nine o'clock, for instance, and stopping work. Those are some intentional things. But you mentioned an aspect here that I'm interested in, that you just touched on there briefly there girl. And you mentioned about some kind of a spiritual element of this. I mean, I'm interested in how that comes into play here. What kind of a higher power what kind of a resource beyond your own wherewithal did you draw upon to help you enact this new lifestyle?

Garland Vance 15:05
Right? Yes, so so I am a follower of Jesus Christ. And and so part of that was I started going to the Bible to understand, you know, what does the Bible say about speeding up and slowing down. And what I realized is, there aren't a whole lot of times in the Bible, when God tells people to go faster. But he really tells people to slow down whether it's taking a Sabbath, or whether it was, you know, taking an entire year off with the year of jubilee. And, and so I knew that I needed him and really needed to lean on him, him very strong. Now, what I discovered in, in getting on busy is getting on busy is not the process of it is not even written, I didn't even write it as if it's a religious book, it's really written for, for anyone, but I but there is a critical element in which you've got to realize that any addiction, and in my case, it was an addiction to commitment. And any addiction necessitates a higher power in order for you to deal with it, and and struggle through it. And so I leaned on his energy a whole lot to help me slow down.

Brad Miller 16:27
Interesting that you term a few terms, something that so many people considered such a just kind of a given in life, the busy nose and the pressures, your terminal and addiction, which indicates that is something that is has a physiological aspect that you have to part. And most of us know whether it's 12 step programs, or whatever, an aspect of dealing with this physiological addiction is drawing on some higher power.

Garland Vance 16:52
Yeah. And there is a physiological element to it, Brad, whenever we encounter stress, our body releases adrenaline and cortisol because of the sympathetic nervous system. And adrenaline and cortisol make us feel good. They give us energy they, they help us to focus on you know, what's right in front of us, adrenaline and cortisol feel really good. The problem is that our bodies are designed once we've dealt with the stress to, to wash that adrenaline and cortisol out using the parasympathetic nervous system. Well, what business does is it it it creates stress, which releases adrenaline and cortisol, which gives us the energy that we need. But then it introduces almost immediately another stressor into our lives, which releases the adrenaline and cortisol again. And so we when I say business addicts, we really are a society of adrenaline and cortisol addicts, and all the physical symptoms that I listed earlier, are, are the result of adrenaline and cortisol overload in our bodies. And so we are we are physically addicted to it, and it is tearing us apart. Sure.

Brad Miller 18:10
Well, part of addiction, of course, is that constant need for stimulation, you know, and then yes, you don't get the stimulation, then you have the crash, and you have the other aspects of of the depression and all the things that go along with that. And if people didn't seek out that stimulation again, and so what you're describing really is the classic cycle of, you know, of an addiction. So part of the part of this process of you have to identify the problem, which you did, by going to your doctor and, and you're you're sharing with, with your readers as your book, how to do some of that. And you shared here now about having calling upon a spiritual force, spiritual power is a part of this process. Let's talk now about your emotions and about people in your life. Who you impacted impacted by your addiction to business you had you shared about your, your children, for instance, let's talk about the importance of loving relationships to fuel this change, you know, to help setting those priorities, what is the role of relationships, and helping you get a handle on this addiction to business?

Garland Vance 19:24
Yeah, I think that, for me, a big part of relationships was beginning to value relationships, even if I couldn't see an immediate payoff to it, and beginning to spend time with people that I loved, but also people who energized me. And so so I loved my kids. And I wanted very much to be around for their lives for much longer. But But my youngest, my young kids at that time, were were also tiring. And you know, there were there were days of where they were part of the reason for exhaustion, because little kids require so much care. And what I started doing is I would, I wanted to care about them. And I wanted to beat business for them. But I also needed to begin investing in relationships with people that I loved, and who energized me. And so I would begin, I started meeting with a group of guys who, once a...