Every Slow Period is a Time to Refine

by Alex Vann

I remember 20 years ago when I became a business owner. The business started hot, but quickly, my sales disappeared and I was filled with disappointment. The weather was rough. The business was tough. And I didn’t know a soul. There was never any profit for the rest of that time in that business, so I just sunk lower. I started looking at all that I didn’t have and, eventually, all that others had. And, then even worse, all that I left behind. I had left a stable job with stable income in the town I was from. Until, I had a breakthrough mentally: God placed me here, so stop looking around for what I didn’t have and start focusing on what I do have.

God had given me a gift: time. Time is a treasure and you only have so much of it. You can lose it, waste it or you can redeem it. When you see time as a gift, you will be much more intentionally to use, spend and invest your time where it will do the most good for the most people. I had the time to review my soul, my self and my systems. Often, we don’t slow down enough to use our time well enough. When a slow down comes, suddenly, much of your time or your organization’s time becomes more available.

Slow periods can be incredible growth periods. 

Slow periods are times to examine what you actually have, not what you don’t have. When times get slow, use your time to narrow your focus, take away what you’ve allowed that shouldn’t be there and begin to look to add what you want to see in the future. In slow times, you don’t look to the future for comfort, you look to the future for preparation. If you use an axe all day to chop wood, then the next day and the next day for many consecutive days over a long period of time, something subtle happens that you don’t realize until you slow down: the axe became dull. Fast, busy seasons cause organizations and leaders to lose their sharpness. A slow time is a time to sharpen your axe. A clean blade means you expend less energy, so you become more productive. A dull axe means you have to use more energy to get the same result, eventually causing the results to plateau. Slow times are times to sharpen yourself, which leads to greater growth.

Slow Times are Periods of Refinement

Refinement doesn’t mean you relax. Relaxing means you slacken or loosen your grip, energy or effort in favor of a more comfortable position. Rest is different from relaxing. Rest is when you intentionally withdraw your energy in an effort to replenish your energy. Rest is also a time to settle. When you live in anxiety, worry and fear, you are being driven and it will be very difficult to experience true rest. Organizations and leaders are living with perpetual anxiety and constant worry. Rest is part of the rejuvenation that your body, soul and mind need that creates space that pushes those negative aspects away.

Slow Times are a Test

To refine something in the ancient times it was to put in a crucible. The crucible was the refining pot. The purpose of the pot was to draw away the impurities from what was pure—it separated the bad from the good and the weak from the strong.

“Remove the dross from the silver, and a silversmith can produce a vessel” Proverbs 25:4

Be a peoplesmith. Slow times give you times to refine yourself and your craft. There are no craftsmen and craftswomen without producing an actual craft. To be a smithy, you must have material (resources), get rid of the dross (refinement) and produce the craft (results).

The Slow Times Make the Stuff Stick Out

There is no hiding in slow times. When it’s slow, stuff sticks out. Slack people, uncleanliness, bad habits, poor stewardship, unproductive systems, ill-discipline and a sloppy organization really comes to light. Volume covers a multitude of sins. Volume is not an indicator of being a good steward. In fact it is easier to be a poor steward in higher volumes because it’s easier to overlook waste, sloppiness and disorganization.

Slow Times are Times to Show Appreciation

Thank God for the slow period. Slow times give us a chance to take inventory of what we need versus what we accepted. This is a great place to start to show appreciation. Be thankful for what you have and who has helped you. Appreciation has a way of unlocking things in our lives, leadership and organizations. This is the time to get back ahead in your plans, your preparation and your energy. This little lull is a God-given rest for many. Use it wisely. It’s too easy to hit the panic button. Don’t do it. Hit the praise button, slow your thinking down, slow your decisions down and start trimming away the fat.

Use Slow Times to Break Bad Habits

Busy drives you to bad habits. Survival reinforces particular habits. Slow times are times to break bad habits and refine and retrain. Sometimes this is your mind and your body. Sometimes this is your team and your systems. Sometimes, this is simply your mindset. Busy can drive your thought process to be lopsided and tainted. Slowing down mentally can allow you to rediscover healthy thought processes.

In times of refinement first, take a careful inventory. Second, begin to remove what doesn’t belong. And third, replace with what is necessary. Lean muscle is strong muscle. Bad habits make you weak. They weaken you individually and they weaken you organizationally. Use the slow times to eradicate bad habits by starting new, good habits. Make your systems, people and process as lean as possible. Then, press into your people. Get your focus off of what you don’t have or what you project you won’t have. Fixated on unpleasant things produces one thing: a mind fixated on doom. Don’t live in doom. Refine your field and prepare for the next season when it will bloom.

Don’t Watch the Clock During a Slow Season

Before there were GPS’s in cars and mobile phones in cars, to drive on a trip you had to have a map and patience. There was no countdown clock until you next turn or your next arrival. All that existed was the clock in your parent’s head and staring out the window wondering, “Are we there yet?” There is no clock on a season of refinement. It lasts as long as the reset or revival takes. Don’t try to rush your refinement, simply try to squeeze as much juice as you can out of those lemon rinds and organize all that you can. Spending your time wondering and obsessing over “Am I there yet?” is punishment both to you and to those you lead. You will get there when you get there.

Don’t Squeeze Tightly on What you Can’t Control

Life is simple: there are a few things you actually control and many more things you have very little to no control over at all. Slow times remind you that there is much you don’t control. Relax your grip and slow down your grind.  Perhaps you need to rediscover why you started out on your journey in the first place. Perhaps, you need to re-surrender your calling to Almighty God. Perhaps, you simply need to learn that you aren’t in control. God showed me during that really slow season when I started my business that he can grow my field (business, life, relationships) far better than I can on my own. My job is to work the field. The scope of my responsibility is to work the field by enlisting fellow laborers and trusting that God will send the increase. Until such a harvest comes, prepare yourself, prepare others and prepare for all that God might do.

Slow Times Reveal Your Faith

Max Lucado said, “Faith is the conviction that God knows more than we do about life and He will get us through it. God is still in control.” As a Christian, I firmly believe that God is in control. As a human, I often live like that God is not in control. Slow times reveal the measure of faith you are really living with. You need very little faith when you aren’t in a test. Slow times really reveal how much you actually believe what you say you believe. If you have built a good system, with good people and have good processes, then have faith that things will get better. Perhaps, your slow time is really just a test of your faith after all and your faith is really being refined. The Apostle Peter had these words for some tough times of those he was leading nearly 2,000 years ago, “These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1:7).