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More and more, Americans are stating that they feel burned out. With the holiday season in full swing, and Christmas right around the corner, those feelings of burnout are even more prevalent. There's traveling, gift purchasing and wrapping, parties, school concerts, and any number of other commitments in each week. But that burnout can negatively impact your relationship with your mentee. After all, if you're exhausted all the time, you're less likely to be attentive to the needs of your mentee. Our newest host, John Barnard, is flying solo this week to bring you an encouraging word on how you can navigate the holiday season without burning out.
Show Notes
More and more, Americans are stating that they feel burned out. With the holiday season in full swing, and Christmas right around the corner, those feelings of burnout are even more prevalent. There's traveling, gift purchasing and wrapping, parties, school concerts, and any number of other commitments in each week. But that burnout can negatively impact your relationship with your mentee. After all, if you're exhausted all the time, you're less likely to be attentive to the needs of your mentee. Our newest host, John Barnard, is flying solo this week to bring you an encouraging word on how you can navigate the holiday season without burning out.
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Creators and Guests
What is You Can Mentor: A Christian Youth Mentoring Podcast?
You Can Mentor is a network that equips and encourages mentors and mentoring leaders through resources and relationships to love God, love others, and make disciples in their own community. We want to see Christian mentors thrive.
We want to hear from you! Send any mentoring questions to hello@youcanmentor.com, and we'll answer them on our podcast. We want to help you become the best possible mentor you can be. Also, if you are a mentoring organization, church, or non-profit, connect with us to join our mentoring network or to be spotlighted on our show.
Please find out more at www.youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You will find more resources on our website to help equip and encourage mentors. We have downloadable resources, cohort opportunities, and an opportunity to build relationships with other Christian mentoring leaders.
You can mentor is a podcast about the power of building relationships with kids from hard places in the name of Jesus. Every episode will help you overcome common mentoring obstacles and give you the confidence you need to invest in the lives of others. You can mentor.
Speaker 2:Hey, friends. It's John here. It's the holiday season. It's getting to be Christmas here pretty soon, and today I'm sitting by my lonesome in the middleman shop recording this and wanting to share something with you just to kind of think about and contemplate during this holiday season as we kind of get ready for a new year coming up. So if you're like me, right now is this time of year just seems like it's as busy as any other time of year with family schedules.
Speaker 2:You know, right now, lately, we've been trying to get everybody together with traveling and trying to find out when and where cousins are going to be and all that good stuff. Of course, we're having to buy all the things right, make sure we're getting presents for everybody. We're dealing with UPS and mail and shipping, and we're dealing with, you know, the potential for what? Porch pirates. Right?
Speaker 2:My goodness. And all the things, maybe talking to customer service and trying to change sizes or whatever else that you're doing during this time. So it's nothing new. Right? The holiday season is a busy one.
Speaker 2:It is a stressful one. But if you're like me, you're also trying to be very mindful of the the fact that it's advent season, and so for these few weeks, we think about the love of Christ, we think about the peace of God, we think about these components of our faith, which allow us to stop and really just kind of enjoy this time of year, this season that we can remember that Christ is coming. Okay. So with that being said, what I wanna share with you guys today is the 4 r's of Christmas break and the New Year. These are 4 r's that I want you guys to consider, think about, and then also possibly put into practice if you get that opportunity, that margin of time over these next few days.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's that time between Christmas and New Year. Maybe it's just the days leading up to Christmas, but these are things to really consider and to really practice in order for us to get the most out of our mentor, mentee relationships, and ministries that we're a part of. And this is not only for the mentor on the ground, right, doing the work. Maybe you're meeting with 1 child or 1 teenager, but this is also something to to consider if you're a mentoring organization, something that you might wanna think about sharing with your employees or your associates as a way just to get a little bit more out of this time so we can be ready for that new year to happen. Alright.
Speaker 2:So what's the first r that we wanna think about and consider? It's retreat. Alright. We wanna take a break. We really do.
Speaker 2:With all of the things that we have to think about and consider during this time of year, we truly want to be able to spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally take a break. We know throughout scripture that Jesus began the day by going off from the disciples by spending that time in prayer. We know that as he modeled the Lord's Prayer, that was a way to focus ourselves on who God is and who we are, that we know that he provides for us on a daily basis. And one of the ways that he provides is to give that that rest and that peace, that retreat, and that he wants us to be operating out of that on a daily basis. So how can we begin to think about taking a retreat?
Speaker 2:Maybe you guys don't even get a day off this holiday season. Well, number of ways to do that, and what it really will require is probably having a conversation with someone and and really making that happen, you know. We don't stumble into holiness. Right? We have to be pretty intentional about our faith.
Speaker 2:Well, the same goes for rest. There will be many, many people people in your life who are going to be making sure that you are working hard and getting all of your things done all the time, but very few people in your life that will make it a point to come along and say, hey, are you resting? Are you practicing the Sabbath? Are you taking the time to be optimal in your energy by taking some time each week to rest? So it's really something that we have to make a conscious effort to do retreat.
Speaker 2:So that can look a lot of different ways, you guys, but just be thinking about ways that you might want to maybe read something that you actually like. Right? If you're like me, you may have to sit down with a title that is gonna be about good spiritual growth or professional development. Well, what about just investing in something each day that you can sit down quietly and you can actually enjoy what you read, where it's a real page turner that you can come back to and and you look forward to that time. Maybe it's first thing in the morning or maybe it's the last thing at night, but really finding something that would allow you to have retreat would be a great idea.
Speaker 2:Also, during this time and listen, this is gonna be an easy one. Right? Maybe just eating well, eating what you enjoy, not overdoing it in any way, but but really just understanding that, man, this is a time when we get to enjoy good family cooking, and we want to to really take that time to to do that. So we want to retreat during our time. Alright?
Speaker 2:And during our time of retreat, what do we want to do? We want to review. Alright? We want to look back on the year. So if you're if you're like me, your phone probably pops up with some notifications that come from Spotify or maybe your photo album there telling you that they've made a slideshow for you to kind of look back and see the music that you've listened to over the year or pictures that you've taken.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a really great idea. Think about kind of applying that practice of reviewing and really looking back on the year to just maybe going back through your Instagram photos throughout the year, beginning last January, and really look through and just see where you've been and see what you've been doing. Maybe it'll show you time with your your mentee that you kinda forgot about. Maybe you went somewhere that you forgot about going to. Maybe it was something that you just got to share with someone that's a real encouragement.
Speaker 2:That's how we look back and see what God has done over the year because, you know, the funny thing about us is that I think that we are so often plagued with our mistakes and regrets. Right? We can easily think about the things that we did or said that we wish we wouldn't have because we're kinda constantly aware of those things. Sometimes even people just kinda remind us of things that we've done or said that we're not proud of. Well, how quickly we forget our wins, though, you know, and our victories.
Speaker 2:And so make it a point to to try to find something outside yourselves, not just kind of sitting, you know, in the dark room trying to remember things to be thankful about, but really instead understanding that we have people in our lives and we have these things in our lives that we can sit down with and say, hey, You know, maybe as a as your crew of fellow mentors to say, let's let's talk about what this year really looked like. You know? What where do we see God work? Maybe with your spouse to be able to say, hey. I'm just trying to go through this season right now of of really looking back, and I really wanna see God's hand in this and find some encouragement.
Speaker 2:Well, our spouses are usually really good at reminding us of things that we just kinda forgot. Right? Looking at our blind spots, but also just being able to to remind us how God has been doing such good things and that we've been accomplishing things as well. So what a good remember remembrance of that with that review time. And you might also wanna just consider how far you've come with your mentee and maybe even let that be something that you think about.
Speaker 2:Maybe during that last time before school's out is to be thinking about sitting down with your mentee and just saying, hey, let's look back on the year together. You know, what did you enjoy about this year? And some of that might include experiences that you had together, and I know that would be a real encouragement. So again, we want to retreat, we want to review, and also we want to get restored. Right?
Speaker 2:Now listen, restoration is not just about taking a break. Right? Being able to spend the day watching TV or playing a video game, while that might feel good in the moment to have less responsibility, that's not really about restoration as much because a lot of times we come out of that with our batteries not really charged, but instead we just kinda gave ourselves, you know, again, that that break from thinking about things. But what does what does real restoration look like? Well, that's gonna be more like really investing in yourself in order to maybe get inspired or maybe to get excited about something that maybe you've kinda gotten a little bit rote on in terms of, you know what, the day to day I mean, I'm getting my job done, but I'm just not excited, you know, that fire is not blazing like it usually is.
Speaker 2:So for me, I'm I'm what you'd call an inspired builder. Okay? I I like building things. I like physically building buildings just as much as I like building programs, and and I love the idea of being able to to help build up each other, right, to build relationship. That's something I'm really about, but also I really find that I need to be inspired in order to do that.
Speaker 2:Okay? So that means that I I really kinda let my emotions be a part of that as well. I have to get fired up about something. And so what that means also is that I'm often kinda require, like, a catalyst to be there. Okay?
Speaker 2:So this isn't out of just kind of this intrinsic need to stay consistent or to build a thing because I'm, again, I'm not really about kind of finding it within my myself to do a lot of these things. What I do is I feel like I'm kinda confessing to you guys, but what I actually do is, man, I love to, like, watch movies that are inspirational. Right? I love to read books that inspire me. I like spending time with certain people who inspire me as well.
Speaker 2:So I get to spend time with with people that are on my board and friends and other people from time to time, and I just find that I've got I've got this handful of people that when I spend time with them, man, I'm always coming away from a conversation, whether it be maybe a phone conversation or a day that I was able to spend with them or a meal that I was able to have, and I just come away feeling like my batteries are charged and, like I said, inspired in that way and kinda ready to do the next thing even if it's gonna be the mundane work of the usual daily thing that I do. I feel so much more inspired having spent time with them. So my hope is that you have people in your life that do that as well. And again, that might be something that you intentionally have to go to them about and say, hey, can I take you to lunch or can we meet for coffee? I just wanted to spend some time as I'm in this season right now of just wanting to be restored as we get ready for another year of programming perhaps or another year of of mentoring that you do that and that you take that.
Speaker 2:So again, understanding that that restoration, sometimes it does take some work and it does take some energy spent, but the end result is that you're ready to go and that you're really excited about the next season of what you have. Could be the spring semester or the next year. So, the last thing that we want to consider of these 4 r's as we kind of go into the Christmas and New Year break is that we want to reset. Alright? We wanna actually reset to reengage.
Speaker 2:So I know that's 5 hours, but I think you get the point. We wanna reset because we realize that, listen, yesterday is gone. Whatever we were going to do, whatever accomplishments that we we were able to be a part of, whichever defeats that we still kind of think about and still maybe maybe plague us, guys, if we can remember that that that is gone and that tomorrow is a new day, then we really do get to begin with a clean slate, and we get to imagine something great being built, something getting started or something getting continued in that way. So this year, what we want to do to reset and to reengage, we want to stress the important and we want to downplay the fruitless. Alright?
Speaker 2:We want to remember what's really vital, what's really essential to our spiritual growth, to the relationships that we have with our mentees, just to what we want to be able to spend our energies on. We want those things to be fruitful. And then we wanna kinda think about the things that maybe we invested in that didn't really take off, or maybe the attempts that we made at something that just weren't what we might say are successful. Well, that's when we make a decision to say, well, do we need to put more time into this thing, or is it best that we go ahead and just say, you know what? I'm not going to any longer worry about spending energy on that.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to move on to what I really wanna focus on with the relationships that we're building and what we have going on with our mentees. You know, for years, I would have this practice when it comes to this idea of really stressing what's important, and I always found that this this was a funny thing that would happen. I would get to write sermons every now and then as I was on a church staff, and so I got to I got to preach probably 6 to 8 times per year. And sometimes during that season of kinda preparing for a sermon, I would just have this this really kinda neat creative idea, or it would maybe be like a piece of media that I was going to to be able to share about because I thought that it was maybe a great a great metaphor for the thing that I wanted to discuss. And I don't know don't know if you've ever had this experience, but it's as if I started with this thing and then I wanted to start kinda building a sermon or a message around it, and then a funny thing happened through the course of doing that is that I realized that the very thing that I started with kinda no longer fit the direction that the message was going.
Speaker 2:And so within that process of getting ready for this message and to be able to share out of God's word, well, the the really creative, cool, fun thing that that really started the whole process was really no longer relevant to it. Okay. That gold nugget, right, of an idea really kinda didn't didn't belong any longer, and that's always a funny thing to think about as you do go through this time of of really kinda resetting and and reengaging. It really does make you kind of think, you know what, I was really kind of holding on because I thought that this was so important, but now, after some time and kind of development as God has kind of been working through this, I'm really kind of finding that it's no longer that important after all. So, again, just something to be mindful of as we think about what it means to to really kind of reset and reprioritize what's valuable in our mentee relationships and in our ministry in general.
Speaker 2:So lastly, guys, just to consider maybe communicating some of these things with our mentees as well. If we're going to spend the time to retreat, to review, to restore, and then to reset, I wonder if it could be something that we kind of invite our mentees to do as well as the new year begins, something for them to be thinking about what God really has for them over this next year. You know, what will change? They're about to have another semester of school, and then they will go into the summer, and then they may be graduating. They may be obviously going into a next school year as an upperclassman from them.
Speaker 2:So as God kind of is overseeing and in charge of their schedules, we would want to just be so mindful that this is an important time for them as well, to take a little bit of a break. Right? Hey, the word says that God's mercies are new with each morning, and so how great it is to remember that that each and every day we get to hit that reset button, forgetting what was in the past, but also maybe building on what's in the past and being able to continue to cultivate something really healthy in the lives of our mentees. Mentors and mentor organizations, as we go to the end of the year here, we just wanna say thank you for your work. Thank you for the relationships that you build.
Speaker 2:Thank you for the investment that you so lovingly give to your mentees and to your communities. We are praying for you, and we hope that we will just continue to be able to offer good things and to equip and encourage you as you are doing the work of investing in the lives of children and of teenagers from difficult places. We wanna remind you that you can mentor.