00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 643 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Scott Brookens from Scott Brooklyn's dot com. I encourage you to find the way to be inspired, to start your dream business and find freedom. And one way to do that is to be inspired by this the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader, Because the truth is none of us have the true answers to life,
00:00:35 the universe and everything. And hopefully some of you get the reference, the book that that's from, but in truth, we don't, we don't know the secrets to the life, the universe and everything. Instead, what we have to do is walk together on this journey in community, doing the best we can with the imperfect knowledge that we have. Welcome.
00:00:56 And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world In today's episode about investing in others.
00:01:28 By stewarding your time. I talk with you about the good of spending time alone. I also share some reasons why, even if you're an introvert, this isn't all good. And I share why you need to find a community that you can also invest time in. As we talk about stewarding your time. Wouldn't it be great if you could support this podcast and do it without just taking too long,
00:01:53 it turns out you can't. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon. When you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission will come back to support the show. Just that quick. If you enjoy the show, when you are ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon Alone time. I need some quality time with myself.
00:02:20 I need some me time. You, you hear people say these things all the time about how they, they need some time in their own head. They need some time to spend with themselves. They need some time away from the crowd away from other people away from the hustle and the bustle and the noise that sometimes comes around from being surrounded by people.
00:02:43 You know, maybe if you've got a job where you interact with people all day long, when you get home, you need a little bit of time and space to yourself before you plug in and jump in and begin to spend time with your family. Needing alone. Time is a real thing. Needy. Some quality time with yourself is a real thing.
00:03:05 And by the way, this is true. Whether you're an introvert or an extrovert. Now the difference is extroverts definitely begin to want to spend time with others more rapidly. That happens to recharge their batteries for them and helps them get their energy level back up. If they spend time surrounded by people that that tends to charge them up, as opposed to drain their energy.
00:03:29 We're an introvert spending time with a whole bunch of other people tends to drain them. They begin to get tired and need some time alone to recharge their batteries, but both introverts and extroverts need alone time and need time with others. Those, those needs are the same for all people. We, we just need them in different doses and different amounts, and we need different controls around them.
00:03:59 You know, the extrovert can kind of have, they can have people put upon them suddenly and unexpectedly, and it doesn't bother them with an introvert that can feel like a huge imposition that can feel like something that has drained their energy and wiped them out. It isn't all good to spend time alone because the truth is all of us as human beings, we are social animals.
00:04:27 We, we need to be surrounded by other people. We, we are people that has grown up in community. One of the differences though, that nowadays on the communities that we're surrounded with tend to be a lot larger than they used to be used to. We would be plugged in with a relatively small network of people and we would spend our entire lives with them and we would know them well.
00:04:53 Now we often are plugged into much larger networks that are more distributed and it's hard to get to know everybody and trust everybody. So it's definitely good to spend time alone, but it isn't all good. It can't be all you do. And right now, of course, for a lot of us, we've been isolating ourselves physically from other people for months and months at this point.
00:05:18 And we've discovered that we miss that community. We miss those people. We miss being able to plug in with other people and physically be in the room together and break bread together and do all of the other things that we do together. We miss our communities. And if you're feeling that then right now becomes even more important to avail yourself of the tools that we have to invest time in other communities and not just so that they can lift you up and pour into you,
00:05:52 but so that you can pour into them. You need to find communities that you serve and find communities that serve you both are important to our healthy development as human beings. One of the things that people don't like about social media is the way that, you know, one person hates Facebook because it controls the news and the next person hates Facebook because everything that's on there is fake and they don't do enough to control the news.
00:06:22 Oftentimes we surround ourselves with people that think just like us and we're in this huge echo chamber of information where the only thing that ever comes back to us is things that already reinforce our beliefs and our biases. And that's not good when I'm talking about community recognize I'm not talking about a group that is uniform, but I am talking about a group that has unity.
00:06:48 And these are two different things. If you surround yourself by uniformity, then everyone believes like you, everyone looks like you. Everyone sounds like you, everyone has had the similar experiences as you. And that can be very comforting. It feels comfortable because you recognize everyone's journey. You identify with them, you, you feel like you fit in and they fit with you.
00:07:12 Now I'm actually challenging you to find a community that is diverse, a community where not everyone looks like you. Not everyone sounds like you, not everyone has the same experiences you, that some of the people have a different race or different sex or different creed. Some of them believe politically differently than you do. And then learn to be able to have conversations and listen to other people's experiences that broadens your mind,
00:07:44 that opens your eyes to things that right now I guarantee you are blind to, and you don't even know you're blind. You're the blind man walking along, not able to see and not even aware of our own blindness. Trust me, I do this too. There were things that I believe I know there are things that I believe that aren't true, but I believe them because they're so deeply embedded in who I am,
00:08:08 that I'm blind to the fact that they're false. But what we have to do is challenge each other to reach out across barriers. If you're white, to reach out to blacks that are hurting right now, if you're conservative to reach out to liberals and listen to their viewpoint, if you're liberal to open your mind and your eyes and your hearts to conservatives,
00:08:36 if you believe very strongly that in something, anything, even, even something that's, you know, maybe some people would believe as a conspiracy theory, you still have to reach out and open your eyes to others. And the possibility that you may be wrong because the truth is none of us have the true answers to life, the universe and everything. And hopefully some of you get the reference,
00:09:04 the book that that's from, but in truth, we don't, we don't know the secrets to the life, the universe and everything. Instead, what we have to do is walk together on this journey in community, doing the best we can with the imperfect knowledge that we have, and hopefully getting better each and every day. But the only way to do that is to surround ourself with community.
00:09:29 That is you, that is United in wanting to grow together and to be truly beneficial, it's United, but it can't be a uniform community. It can't all be the same. And trust me, that is challenging. It hurts. There are days where that hurts. It feels painful. It feels like your reality is being confronted and things are uprooting who you really are.
00:09:57 But as you reform in that community, into new people, what you discover is a strength that you never even knew existed. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling.
00:10:33 If you like this episode on the stewardship of time, be sure to sign up for our stewardship of time tips series, by going to inspired stewardship.com/time or texting four, four, two, two, two time tips. And that'll get you our best tips on stewarding your time until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact the world.