Have you had one of those days lately? You know one of those days that when it’s done it just feels so good? It feels like you did what you were supposed to do. You didn’t do anything you shouldn’t have done. It’s just completely satisfying and you can lay down on your pillow and just not obsess about anything from the day except just reflecting on what an outstanding day it was.
I had a lot of really good days lately; particularly last week. Last week I had some good days in my transitional role. I came home from the church and just said, “Man, that was an outstanding day.” I had a couple of good days on my online work. I carve out Mondays and Thursdays typically to do online work and they are outstanding. I had an outstanding day off as well.
And I think part of the reason I’m having so many really good days is because I’ve been getting ready to do a little module on how to have a great day. I’m not sure I’m calling it you know maybe my epic day pattern or formula or something like that.
It’s going to be part of that pastor’s productivity pack which includes planning your year and how to plan your week. There’s a little side one in there on deficient sermon preparation and the fourth and final piece is going to be this how to have a great day. So I’ve been I’ve been thinking about that a lot.
And unfortunately by the way that training will be inside the Priority Pastor membership area for those of you who are members and it might be limited access to people on my email list as well.
But I got to thinking about why was my day off especially good. I mean a day off is a good day anyway, right? It’s a day off; it should be a good day.
But this last one was just one of those good, good days off and foryears now my wife and I have been taking Saturdays as our day off. It just works for us as a couple. It makes more sense if you’re a preaching pastor than taking a Monday off and I’ve talked about that I think in other podcasts or certainly inside Priority Pastor.
And here’s how our day is. Friday night is our kind of date night, though it’s nothing fancy. Often we make a nice meal or go out for a nice meal and then watch a movie or something. That’s you know, pretty laid back. It’s just a nice relaxing wind down. It’s kind of like the ribbon at the end of the race, which is that week that we run through, and then break it and begin to relax.
It starts with dinner and then Saturday no alarm, typically. I have no alarm anyway. But Saturday no alarm, get up and we get up, and as we do most days, day off or not, we go for an early morning walk as the sun’s coming up or sometimes a little before, or in the summer here a little bit after, just to get the get the cortizol going and helps perk things up.
And then on Saturday we, on a day off, we go to a brunch dinner schedule. We don’t do breakfast/lunch/dinner. Just brunch/dinner. That’s all we really need. If we’re going out doing something rigorous like hiking or intense canoeing, we’ll bring some snacks with us for that. But the basic meals are just brunch/dinner; simplifies the day.
And then we’ll sometime in that morning, probably after our walk before brunch, I’ll lay down on my end of the couch and she’ll sit on the other end and we’ll pray. We’ll just pray for, you know, whatever we’re praying about. We don’t even really share prayer requests; we just pray our prayer requests. We pray for each other our family and our ministry and whatever else is just in our face and we just take an unrushed time of praying.
We’ll then have brunch. And then, you know if we’re going to do something you know intense like a hike or a canoe we’ll do that, you know after brunch usually when you’ve got some food in their belly,and go and do that.
And we find that you know a workout, again it’s not a workout in the gym sense, but a workout a semi intense bit of exercise of one to two hours on the day off. It’s enough to kind of get the blood flowing, but not exhaust you for Sunday. And I like to maintain a lot of energy for Sunday, but I find there’s a certain level of physical activity on Saturday that actually gives me more energy on Sunday.
And once we’ve done that, pretty much anything we do is bonus because we already feel like we’ve had a good day. We’ve spent some time together, we’ve prayed, we’ve gotten some exercise and then the rest of the day is just like bonus and often what I’ll do is I’ll hit the couch with a podcast or a book.
A lot of times like last Saturday, which was such a good day, I downloaded a book onto my kindle that I was interested in and had been thinking about it for a while and just worked through that book the entire day. I did some exercises arising from it and while it kind of drifted into being work related, it wasn’t work because it was just thoroughly enjoyable.
And then the evening comes we have dinner and then we start preparing for Sunday; make sure we get to bed at a decent time because Sunday starts early. But it was just one of those days that was so satisfying and refreshing in every way. And what we found is that with a day like that. With one day like that every week a day off that is restful and refreshing, you can keep going a long time.
You know that in itself, apart from any holidays or big blocks of time off; if you’re getting that single day off that is refreshing and balanced and healthy and everything else, that can fuel the rest of your week. It gives you something to look forward to. And it gives you something to basically get you ready for what’s coming down the line.
So those are just some thoughts on how to have an outstanding day off, which I will probably in some way inject into the epic day module whatever its title coming up here. I might be recording it this week; not too sure yet. Haven’t decided if it’s going to be a webinar or just a recording that I do and then post. But those are some thoughts that roll around.
So I hope you’re having one of those days. And if you’re not, I hope you can adjust your days so that when it comes to the end it’ll be satisfying.
One of my basic prayers; this is kind of a final note. One of my basic prayers I pray so many days is, “Lord, I pray that this day will be a success in your sight.” Because if I ultimately know that, then even if there has been some bumps in the road, even if there’s been some stresses and difficulties, there is a level of satisfaction to that.
So I have an outstanding day. Thanks for listening. Press on.
