9.8.2025

Sustainability

Are parts of you being depleted because the path you’re on isn’t sustainable?

What areas of your life are quietly draining your capacity to live as the person you were created to be?

Sustainability simply means maintaining the pace you’re on for an extended period of time. But here’s the problem: we know we aren’t limitless, yet we often live as though we are—making choices that assume our time, energy, and attention have no end.

When did we trade slow and deliberate for hustle and overwhelm?

The Weight of Addition

Our way of life seems built on adding more: more work, more activities, more responsibilities, more hobbies, more commitments.

Is life meant to be one massive exercise in addition—a store full of ever-increasing options—or is there wisdom in subtraction?

Dr. Henry Cloud writes in Necessary Endings:

“Your resources—time, energy, money, talent—are limited. If you don’t end what is draining them, you won’t have the capacity for what gives life.”

So let me ask: where are you pouring out without replenishing?

The Practice of Pruning

In order to steward what we do have and what we care about, we have to be willing to prune. It makes perfect sense in the garden—you should see what pruning can do for a zinnia plant in the peak of summer.

But what about pruning in your life?

Pruning is hard. It feels like loss. Yet in both the garden and in life, pruning makes room for new growth—growth that often far exceeds what was there before.

A Gentle Challenge

Sustainability isn’t about doing everything forever. It’s about carrying what matters most, and cutting back what doesn’t.

This week, try this: make a list of everything that’s draining you. Then circle one thing you could prune—even just for a season.

And remember, making a decision for a season doesn’t mean you are giving up on that thing forever. It just means that right now, I’m taking a step back from something in order to access something greater.

I don’t know what that is for you. For me, it might be giving up a robust fall garden and gaining easier routines as a family. Or it might be giving up more extravagant meals and gaining more connection time with my kids.

Pruning may feel like subtraction, but in reality, it’s what gives you the capacity for new life.

Big Idea

Reframe endings into opportunities.

You can always think of endings as a negative until you realize that there is almost always a gain of something on the other side. It’s up to you to decide what that opportunity is.

Books I’m reading

**Just a heads-up: this post may include some affiliate links, so if you make a purchase, I might earn a tiny commission at no extra cost to you. Rest assured, I only share books & resources that I personally use and love!

Simple Money, Rich Life: A 21-day kick start to stress free money management by Bob Lotich

On the Road With Saint Augustine by James K.A. Smith

Quote for reflection

From Dr. Richard Swenson in Margin:

Margin is the space between our load and our limits. It is the amount allowed beyond that which is needed. It is something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations. Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating. Margin is the opposite of overload.

Take care,

Mark