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Beyond Halftime
Bob P. Buford
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eBook - ePub
Beyond Halftime
Bob P. Buford
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About This Book
Wisdom and Support for Your Halftime Journey
Since the publication fifteen years ago of Bob Buford's award-winning and newly updated and expanded bestseller, Halftime, more than half a million men and women have made the halftime journey from success to significance. If you are contemplating that journey yourself or have already started, Beyond Halftime is for you.
"This book is the result of fifteen years of answering questions about halftime, " writes Buford. "I've focused on the areas that seem to come up most from those who contact me, and I've answered them in much the same way I would answer you if we sat down together over coffee. So in a very real sense, this book allows me to be your companion as you negotiate the ups and downs of the whole halftime experience."
Beyond Halftime invites you to slow down and take time to listen--really listen--to the voice of your heart and the rhythms of your life. The discoveries you're about to make during this vital phase of your life can't be rushed. Enjoy this wise guidance on the things that matter most in moving from gaining success to leaving a legacy. Your most rewarding years lie ahead of you. Welcome to the journey.
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Subtopic
Réussite personnelleCHAPTER 1
Life as a State of
Perpetual Disorder
Perpetual Disorder
Does it ever seem that life just won’t fall into place the way you planned? I keep calendars, I make appointments, I have daily plans, weekly plans, plans for my whole life. I want to take charge of life — to be proactive. But much of the time, perhaps most of the time, my life and the lives of most of the people I know are much more spontaneous than our linear plans would describe.
Take this book, for instance. I have been trying to take my thoughts and musings about halftime and arrange them in an orderly, linear fashion, and it has been extremely frustrating. I’m not even sure it can be done. Management guru Peter Drucker once shocked me by saying, “People who plan are the unhappiest people in the world. Opportunity is unpredictable. Most of the time, opportunity comes in over the transom. And opportunity doesn’t stay long. If you don’t respond to an opportunity, it moves on.” The same is true for problems. If you don’t change plans and react, your problems just get worse. As Shakespeare said, “Readiness is all.” Readiness and reaction are key.
So the nature of this book is spontaneous and reactive. Its content cannot really be put into a linear, step-by-step order. I tried it, and it didn’t work, because my life — like yours I expect — just won’t conform to my plans. It is messy, disorderly, one surprise after another.
My beautiful wife, Linda, has watched with bemused sympathy as I have twisted and turned in the breeze trying to solve this making-order-out-of-chaos issue. She came into my study at our farm one day to tell me that she was taking a course on the Psalms. She said, “Your musings don’t have any order. They are more like psalms. They are reactions along the road of life. The Psalms are not theology. They are more how people relate to change.” Then she read me the following poem from her friend Verdell Krisher:
Psalms
Are they poems Are they conflicting
Are they prayers Are they experiential
Are they praises Are they majestic
Are they songs Are they dark
Are they laments Are they intense
Are they personal Are they accusing
Are they communal Are they comforting
Yes.
Are they prayers Are they experiential
Are they praises Are they majestic
Are they songs Are they dark
Are they laments Are they intense
Are they personal Are they accusing
Are they communal Are they comforting
Yes.
The 150 psalms in the Bible are collected into five books with no seeming attempt given to order them by genre or history or author or anything else. Philip Yancey wrote, “The 150 psalms are as difficult, disordered, and messy as life itself.”
If you are looking for chronological order in this book — or in your second-half journey — you will be disappointed with both. Life in the second half is disordered, surprising, and only occasionally as you plan it. And all of that contradiction is what makes it wonderful. I suspect when we are in our thirties, we just can’t live with such disorderliness, which makes the transition feel so uncomfortable at times.
I have learned to embrace discomfort and to celebrate disorderliness. I have learned to trust the unknown that comes with abandoning the drive to succeed.
The psalmist understands our trepidation in leaving the known, the comfortable. When he entered a cave to flee King Saul he wrote:
Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me,
for in you I take refuge.
for in you I take refuge.
I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings
until the disaster has passed.
until the disaster has passed.
I cry out to God Most High, to God,
who vindicates me.
who vindicates me.
He sends from heaven and saves me,
rebuking those who hotly pursue me —
God sends forth his love and his faithfulness.
rebuking those who hotly pursue me —
God sends forth his love and his faithfulness.
I am in the midst of lions;
I am forced to dwell among man-eating beasts,
I am forced to dwell among man-eating beasts,
whose teeth are spears and arrows,
whose tongues are sharp swords.
whose tongues are sharp swords.
Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.
let your glory be over all the earth.
Psalm 57:1 – 5 (TNIV)
My life was well-ordered pre-halftime. It had to be, for that is how we succeed. The inertia of orderliness still pulls heavily, but the unexpected interruptions soon become a refuge, allowing you to be who you were created to be. If you are feeling pressure right now to finish this chapter, write down your thoughts, set the book down, take a deep breath, and close your eyes. Then get back to the real work of your life.
This is the real world.
Reflection
Questions have always played a big role in my halftime journey, so I will be posing a few at the end of each chapter. My recommendation is that you read through them and select two or three that best fit your situation and write out your thoughts about them in a journal.
1. What movie, novel, song, poem, or quote would you pick to say, “That’s just my situation now”? Or if you were to write a psalm expressing your current state of mind, what would it say?
2. Look over your calendar of the past two weeks. Describe an unpredicted event or conversation — something that was not according to plan. Were you upset when it happened? Were you still upset after it happened?
3. What have all the time-saving and time-management devices and techniques added to your life? What have they taken from your life? Which do you want more — what these devices have added to your life or what they have taken from your life?
4. Management expert Peter Drucker said that people who plan are the unhappiest people in the world. Think of someone you know who is a planner and someone else you know who is more spontaneous. Which person seems happiest to you? What qualities do you admire in each person?
5. If you were given a “free day” tomorrow, what would you do?
Wise Companions
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
JEREMIAH 29:11
“Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
MATTHEW 6:34
Humans have a thousand plans; Heaven has but one.
CHINESE PROVERB
CHAPTER 2
How to Know
When You’re in Halftime
When You’re in Halftime
At least once a week, someone asks me, “How do I know I’m in halftime? How do I know when it’s time to move on?” As the Kenny Rogers tune advises, “You gotta know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em.” My response is always something like “You know when you know. Tell me your story.”
The answer is always personal (it’s the individual’s answer, not mine); it’s intuitive; and it’s human. The answer comes from insight, not from analysis. You contemplate for a long while, and then all of a sudden you see “it.” You see what the next move is! But it’s been in your history a long, long time. Once you see a new future, the question shifts to “Will I do it?” or even more precisely, “Do I have the will to pull the trigger?”
One caution. Halftime is not a crisis. It is not a retreat from a high-stress job that is getting the best of you or an antidote for a difficult marriage. Halftime usually comes when you are at or near the top of your game but you just don’t get the rush from success that you used to. You don’t view your success negatively but have become indifferent to it.
A dramatic example of someone who stepped out of a hugely successful career to act on a more meaning-filled future is international chess champion Gary Kasparov. His story was recounted in the Wall Street Journal:
Thirty years ago at the Soviet Junior Championship I played my first major chess event at the national level. Twenty years ago in Moscow I became the youngest World Champion in history. Last week in Spain I played my final serious games of chess, winning the Linares super-tournament for the ninth time. After three decades as a professional chess player, the last two ranked No. 1, I have decided to retire from professional chess.
. . . I’m a man who needs a goal, and who wants to make a difference. . . .
I have always set ambitious goals, and I have been lucky enough to attain most of them. I have achieved everything there is to achieve in the chess arena. It had become unfulfilling repetition. . . . Meanwhile, there are other areas where I can still make a difference, where I can set new goals and find new channels for my energy. At the age of 41, I believe there is still much I can accomplish. My experiences in the chess world have provided me with an excellent foundation for these new challenges.
. . . Ultimately it is my interest in politics that has played the principal role in my decision to reallocate my resources away from chess. For many years, I have been an ardent supporter of democracy in Russia, and at certain times I have participated in political activities. Now I will be able to do this with the same determination and passion I brought to the chessboard.
I believe my talents and experience can be useful in the political realm. There is something to be said for a chess player’s ability to see the whole board. Many politicians are so focused on one problem, or a single aspect of a problem, that they remain unaware that solving it may require action on something that appears unrelated. It is natural for a chess player, by contrast, to look at the big picture.
So now Kasparov is using his lifelong knowledge and passion to play chess on a larger board. He has had enough of success in one realm and seeks to find significance by entering politics. Talk about a big, hairy, audacious goal (B-HAG)! He didn’t need anyone to tell him it was time to move on. He reached a point when what he had to do became quite clear — all that was left was the will to do it.
You probably already know what you need to do. Or at least that you have had your fill of success. If you listen, explore, pay attention to your passion, and dare to dream big, you will know what you have to do, and all that will be left is the will to do it.
Reflection
1. What has become “unfulfilling repetition” for you (even though you may have become very accomplished at it)?
2. What is your passion, something that causes you to lose all sense of time thinking about it, something you wish you could spend more time doing?
3. Where have your skills already been useful in a related field?
4. If money and time were not an issue, what’s the biggest dream you have for doing something sig...