Mother Teresa, the Nobel Prize-winning nun, marshalled the energy of the Brothers and Sisters of Charity wisely. She realized that as these caregivers ministered compassionately to the sick and dying in Calcutta, India, they could not face that kind of dire need seven days a week. So she set up a schedule:
Work in the wake of need for six days. But you must be away from need on the seventh day. Everyone has a Sabbath-a day to cease every six days.
Work in that rhythm for three weeks. But on the fourth week, you are required to be away from need, helping the dying, and giving comfort to the ill for an entire week.
Work in that rhythm for eleven months and you must be out and away from helping people for an entire month.
Work in that rhythm for several years, then take an extended time-a “sabbatical”-for an entire year.
This sustainable rhythm-this self-control-allowed people to live, serve and work with burnout. They could work hard, because they knew that their week, their month or their entire year’s worth of break was right around the corner.
In my work with hundreds of leaders, i find that this concept is extremely difficult and even offensive to some. One CEO told me, ” Mother Teresa must have had a lazy bone in her. I can’t afford to do that, Steve.” But we discover as we work long and hard that there simply must be a model of living and working that can sustain us.
I believe the Mother Teresa rhythm is one of the great models for leadership today. When we feel indispensable and assume that we cannot back off, take off or embrace a sustainable rhythm, we are taking ourselves far too seriously. Self-control is a virtue because when we live with self-control and practice self-control, we actually practice a great truth. The greatest truth is this. God is in control. I am not. God is big. I am small. God embraces a 24/7 rhythm for us. I am not God. I am not the saviour.
By Stephen W. Smith