Dear Spiritual Family,
In his classic work, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Stephen Covey offered a “highly effective” time management tool called The Four Quadrants. Essentially, he encouraged his readers and workshop participants to categorize their activities as: “Important and Urgent, Important but Not Urgent, Not Important and Urgent and Not Important and Not Urgent.” An example in our everyday lives would be preparing and filing our taxes – important but not urgent on January 15 (Quadrant Two) but moved to Quadrant One on April 15 – both urgent and important (Quadrant One.)
This method has helpful applications in many areas, both business and personal. However, in this message, we want to focus on how it can be helpful to us in our spiritual life. We know from our experience that when we focus on what matters most, the rest of our lives take on the qualities of that focus.
As we do our spiritual work as diligently as possible and as effectively as possible, withholding judgment when we “stray” into worry, anger, upset, etc. (all in the “Unimportant” quadrants of III and IV), we catch ourselves more readily. We become mindful again of what matters most on our spiritual path and we move back into quadrants I and II. 😊
This message involves a bit of homework. Take a piece of paper and draw a sizeable rectangle with both a horizontal and vertical line in the middle – thus the Four Quadrants. Across the top write “Urgent” over the top left, marked I, and “Not Urgent” marked II. Down the side, write “Important” next to Quadrant I and “Not Important” next to Quadrant III, which of course applies to Quadrant IV (bottom right) as well.
Now, with the goal of helpful introspection, as you go through this next week, log your “spiritual time” in each category. Ideally, Quadrant I might look like: Responding with softness to a hurtful comment, earnestly praying with a friend who has called for support. Quadrant II may be focused time spent in inspiring reading or conversation, heartfelt prayer and meditation, or writing a letter of forgiveness. Quadrants III and IV may look a bit more like the opposite of “spiritual” – worry, some “righteous indignation,” negative self-talk, judgments, etc. Some things we are all familiar with.
What we will find, if we are in earnest with this or a similar process, is that the more focused we are in Quadrants I and II and the less time we are spending on the “unimportant,” the greater the quality of our lives will be. Jesus summed it up best, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you.” Thank you, Jesus and Dr. Covey.
Have a beautiful week and a Happy Autumn living YOUR Greater Life!
We love you,
Rev. Steve and Mary
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