The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful, if there were no dark valleys to traverse.
When I work with clients on their life stories, I advise them to think of their time as being similar to a closet with a finite capacity. I find it helps people view time – an abstract concept – to a more realistic and tangible perspective. Clients often recognize their time closet, like a physical closet reaching its capacity, must be whittled down. What does not belong, must go. I bring this topic to discussion because effective time management is so often an issue in my life and of the lives of clients I assist. Recently, I found myself trying to cram too much into my time closet. Perhaps you, too, find your time closet stuffed to overflowing with projects, volunteer obligations, unread email and so on. I encourage you to begin eliminating what is not serving you, so you have more time and energy to focus on your goals. Are there commitments you have made sounding good at the time but which now seem like one more obligation or stressor? Then bite the bullet and uncommit. Make the phone call or do whatever you must to, as graciously as possible, remove the obligation from your to do list. Ask yourself what you need to remember the next time you are tempted to over commit. For me, I will invoke the 48-hour rule: that is, if the request still sounds inviting and fits into my overall plan in 48 hours, then the answer is yes. If there is doubt or hesitation about its value, timing or do-ability, then the answer is an unapologetic no thanks. Review your annual goal list and determine what to focus on a quarter of the time. I have found on my list of 10 goals for the year, I can only reasonably focus on 2 to 3 per quarter. Otherwise, my tendency is to get lots of activities started and not much finished. What are the 2 to 3 priorities you will focus on during the next couple of months? Everything else in your time closet can wait; the equivalent of putting your winter wardrobe away until the weather turns cold. Remember, To everything there is a time and a purpose… Finally, make sure you have some fun and relaxation time planned into every day, week and month. The greatest stressor for me – and if the clients I serve are any indication, of the general population as well – is not taking time to play, laugh and create. Without play-time we become like rubber bands, stretched so tight even the slightest increase in stretch causes the band to break. Play rejuvenates the spirit, gives us fresh perspective and brings new energy to our lives. Without it, well you have heard the saying, “All work and no play makes you a dull person!” And this is true. Take some time to look in your time closet. Clear out that which does not fit, for whatever reason? Create some space for play and relaxation so when the next great opportunity comes along, you are ready to make the most of your time!
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Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one’s courage.
One of the most difficult activities for any of us is to ask another for assistance. In our “John Wayne- Lone Ranger-I’s Rather-Do-It-Myself” world, we have somehow come to associate asking for help as weakness. Nothing could be further from the truth. It takes tremendous courage to admit we need other people. A recent experience has been a powerful reminder of the benefits of being humble enough to ask for support. I had been working on a training project that, for whatever reason, had me stumped. I knew what I needed to do but had difficulty putting the pieces together. I was going in circles. Finally, after another dissatisfying round of trying to pull it together, I called a friend, whose training resume and experience are extraordinary. I told them what I was up to and asked if they would mentor me on the project. My friend was immensely flattered I had asked and immediately began assisting me to clarify where I wanted assistance. Within hours of sending my tentative outline, I received several excellent suggestions on how to bring the project to life. I heaved a gigantic sigh of relief and knew asking for support was the smartest act I could have done. After one of our telephone mentoring sessions, my friend emailed me the following, “Just a note to tell you how much I enjoyed assisting you with your project. I get great satisfaction out of sharing what I know and our discussion was interesting and stimulating.” Interesting lesson: sometimes asking for assistance benefits the other person as much, or more, than it benefits the one asking. The words reminded me asking for support is a great way to shorten the learning curve, a great way to deepen a friendship and in fact may benefit the person being asked more than the one doing the asking. Do not allow pride or fear to prevent you from asking for support. Where could you use some support? Are you working on a project that would benefit from a mentor pair of eyes? Perhaps you need a resource only a friend, co-worker or associate would be willing to share… or maybe you are preparing a speech and need an audience to practice. A wise friend once commented, “We do no G-E-T because we do not A-S-K.” So go ahead, ask and prepare yourself to receive. Not only will you benefit by having the assistance of someone whose expertise and experience you value, you may make someone else’s day in the process! Whether it is a mood, an attitude, a behavior, a closet full of clothes you do not wear, whatever you are holding onto, make no mistake, it is holding on to you! And the more stuff – emotional, physical, mental or spiritual – weighing you down, the less progress you are making toward goals important to you. Take a huge leap forward by looking behind and inside you to see what is dragging you down. You might be surprised at what you find.
Holding onto resentment, grudges or hurt feelings is the equivalent of dragging a ball and chain around your ankle. You would not be willing to spend one hour dragging a real ball and chain around with you, so why are you willing to drag its weighty emotional equivalent by holding onto old negative garbage from the past? Do what you need to do to get over it and get on with life! Holding onto unread magazines, ill-fitting clothing or half-finished projects creates a climate of guilt over the past. Declare the past over, get rid of the clutter and move on. A client once confessed to me how guilty they felt over the money spent on projects remaining unfinished; so guilty they could not bear to part with all of the stuff. My response was, “You cannot change the past and no amount of guilt can bring a nickel of the money back into your bank account but by deciding to rid yourself of the years of old, unfinished stuff you have collected you will go a long way toward changing your present and your future.” Far better to feel a little guilt over letting go of what no longer serves you than to waste a lifetime holding onto items preventing you from being who you are and what you are meant to be. Some issues are so big only a divine dose of forgiveness will suffice to release them. I saw a story on a news program as an inspiring example of the importance of letting go and forgiveness. A young woman, paralyzed by a stray bullet penetrating her bedroom wall and lodging in her spine as she slept, actually tracked down the young man whose careless act had led to her condition. Instead of condemning him and pointing out how his stupidity ruined her life forever, she chose to forgive him. The gentleman now operates a non-profit organization to assist paraplegic and quadriplegic individuals. They are close friends and both inspire thousands with their optimistic, resilient attitudes. Both have been freed from a lifetime of guilt and self-hatred by her generous act. Both are now able to move ahead and make a positive difference with their lives rather than live in a past neither one can change. Maybe your situation is smaller… just a little grudge or a few too many clothes, magazines or unfinished projects. Regardless of the size or the issue, there is a cumulative effect to holding on to items. It is like barnacles clinging to the hull of a ship, eventually slowing it down. A ship covered with barnacles is eventually placed in dry dock, scraped, cleaned, painted and returned to service. Put yourself in dry dock. Make a list of items you are ready to scrape off. Do what is necessary to make peace with the past and move on. In some cases it may be easy, like ridding yourself of accumulated clutter. In other cases it may be difficult, enough to require professional help. I will do whatever I can to let go of the past so I can experience the present and plan for the future. How about you… what are you ready, willing and able to let go? Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.
For the first time in a dozen years, I spent the weekend on our home by myself… no dogs, no children, no wife. They were off communing with nature while I attended some business for part of the weekend. What struck me most during this time of semi-solitude is the truth in the old saying, silence is golden. While I did not spend the entire weekend in silence, I had enough to remind me how vital it is to restoring and maintaining a sense of calm and peace. Think about it… in our cars we listen to music, or talk, not to mention the sound of blaring horns, construction noise and the collective den of thousands of other vehicles on the road. At home were are bombarded by sounds of every kind… computer noise, televisions, radios and stereos, telephones, appliances, talking, barking and who knows what else! At work we are in meetings or talking with clients or customers, often to the tune of piped in music or the sound of someone else’s radio in the next cubicle. No wonder how in Dr. Seuss’ classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas the thing the Grinch dreaded most about Christmas was the “noise, noise, noise, noise!” We cannot hope to process it all, and so we have to shut some of it out to save our sanity. The great political and spiritual leader Gandhi used to spend an entire day every week on complete silence. He spoke to no one… even if they tried to speak to him. One story has it on his self-imposed day of silence, as he boarded a train, a reporter rushed up to him and asked if there was a message he wanted to send to the people of India. Without speaking a word, he took the reporter’s notebook and wrote, “My life is my message.” And his example in this moment was proof. Unless we take time on a regular basis to impose some silence, we find ourselves sadly marching to the beat of our culture’s manic drum. Hurry, hurry, hurry… rush, rush, rush. And the result is stress, lower productivity, lost creativity and even physical illness. Start to incorporate islands of serenity in your sea of sanity with some self-imposed periods of silence. I admit this sounds simple but it is not necessarily easy. Most of us are so conditioned to the noise around us that silence is considered the enemy. We are afraid of silence. So go into it easy. Do not try and go Gandhi cold turkey! Here are some simple ideas for weaving more silence into your day: Spend 15 minutes in the morning in silence before turning on the television or radio. You will find just a few minutes of quiet in the morning has a tranquilizing effect on the rest of your day. Try turning off the radio or CD player in your car. Spend the time concentrating instead on your breathing or simply enjoying the scenery as you drive. When I do this, even as I drive around town, I find I arrive in a calmer, more relaxed state of mind. If you walk or exercise try periods without being hooked up to a headset. I enjoy morning walks when the world is just waking up. Somehow the sound of birds singing, the occasional dog barking, even roosters crowing are very soothing. Get used to being at peace with silence during you exercise. End each day in silence. No 10 o’clock news as you drift off to sleep. Trust me, if you miss something you will catch it the next morning… after your 15 minutes of morning silence! If our lives are our messages to the world, then make your message one coming from the center of calm and quiet. Start by observing periods of silence. Even a few minutes tucked into an otherwise crazy schedule can serve to re-center and focus you. I encourage you to give silence a try… all you stand to lose is some noise! The quieter you become the more you hear. There have been many mornings where I simply draw a blank when I think about what I might write about come Monday morning. And then it strikes me: write about embracing the empty places, the blank spaces where and when nothing seems to happen. More than just a way for me to get words on a screen or into a book, as I write about embracing the empty places, I am really writing about nurturing the creative process.
Years ago, a wonderful mentor of mine shared his wisdom on this subject. I was going through a period when my creative spark seemed to be completely extinguished. He taught me it is out of the emptiness that true creativity is born. Similarly, well-known speaker and philosopher Wayne Dyer cites Eastern sages as saying, "It is the space between the bars holding the tiger;” “It is the pause between the notes making the music.” Bestselling author Sarah Ban Breathnach writes in Simple Abundance of a time when her creative juices had all but dried up. When she sat down with her agent to talk about how to fix the situation, the agent wisely counseled her to wait, do nothing and let her creative powers be restored in their own time. And, they were. Maybe you are experiencing a similar dry spell. If you wrote, the words were not flowing. If you sold, your costumers were not buying. If you manageed, your work seemed dry and unrewarding. Whatever version of blank you may be experiencing now or in the future, be patient with yourself. Although we live in a culture living for a fix quick, I encourage you to rest with the pause in your creative energies. What can you do in the meantime? Give your brain time to re-energize by doing tasks requiring little or no creative energy. Clean your closets, take a walk, listen to soothing music, meditate or look at a beautiful picture. And then wait. Wait until your creative mind has finished its hiatus. Wait until the spark returns. Wait until the juices once again begin to flow. Soon enough the season for action will return, and like the return of spring, it will bring with it a profusion of new growth and possibilities. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Slow down and enjoy life! It is not the scenery you miss by going too fast – you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.
Have you ever gone through a period where you have felt about as sharp as an overused knife? As I journaled not long ago about such a phase in my life, it occurred to me a major missing ingredient in my life was creativity. The creative spark burning so brightly at times had dwindled and I had been too busy to notice. Sound familiar? The irony is when the doldrums set in – the sort of mental dullness striking when you can least afford it – the remedy is not working harder or smarter, but redirecting your attention to more creative pursuits. Now before you protest and say, “Who has time to be creative when I am running as fast as I can?” or, “I am not creative, so this cannot be the solution to what is missing,” realize this: We are all creative. Very often It is taking time out from your regular routine giving you the spark you need to start producing again. I know it sounds counter-intuitive but trust me on this one! To bring more creative zest to your life, start by recognizing creativity is not something you simply do, like taking a ceramics class, it is a way of being. Approach life so everything is flavored with creativity, like a great spice in a recipe. Several years ago I read Julia Cameron’s classic work, The Artist’s Way. If you have not read it and want a powerful self-directed way to reconnect with your lost creativity, this is the book to read. One of the fundamentals of Cameron’s approach is writing three pages a day in a journal or notebook. She calls it The Morning Pages. The point of the exercise is not to pen the great American novel but to dump the mental garbage tending to pollute so much of our minds without even being aware. It takes about ten minutes and if you are wondering what to write about, write about anything that comes to mind. This is the problem, you say, nothing comes to mind. So write about three pages of nothing-comes-to-mind- this-is-the-stupidest-thing-I-have-ever-done stream of consciousness until you have filled three pages. Eventually, you will get beneath the garbage to the gold. Even if you do not, the worst that can happen is you dump a ton of mental pollution, which in itself is likely to produce a creative breakthrough. Whatever the time or season, there are ample ways to refine your creative sparkplugs. During the spring or fall, get in touch with the earth by planting flowers, tending a garden or visiting a park near your city. During the holidays, consciously choose to enjoy the season by being mindful as you go through the rituals of decorating your home or putting up the Christmas tree. Really experience the joy of baking, listening to special seasonal music or wrapping gifts, rather than rushing through them. The holidays can be a time of tremendous creativity, if you will shift your perspective away from the to do list to focus instead on the to enjoy process. Add creativity to everyday routines. Who says paying your bills cannot be a creative endeavor when you light a candle, brew a favorite beverage or add favorite background music to the mix? Bored with the same old food? Pick a night of the week to break out of the rut and find a new recipe or meal to try. Even if you are not Emeril, there are as many simple and creative resources for meal-planning as there are different tastes out there. I hope these idea rekindle your creativity. Just writing about them has re-energized me! A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single person contemplates the image of a cathedral. If you observe a really happy person, you will find them building a boat, writing a symphony, educating youth, growing flowers in a garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert. They will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. They will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. They will have become happy in the course of living ife twenty-four crowded hours of the day.
We spend and awful lot of time waiting. We wait for traffic lights, returning telephone calls, waiting for the right opportunity or a better time. We wait until we have the time, energy or focus to do what we claim to want. We wait until the kids are grown, the seasons change, for the other person to make the first move, and sometimes we wait until it is too late. Today, this moment is really the only time we have. We can plan for tomorrow but we must act in the present. What is the difference between the person who intends to make a plan for the next year and the one who actually does? What distinguishes the person who simply makes the plan from the one who begins the implementation? The only answer I can come up with is this: the distinguishing characteristic is action, one person acts now, the other chooses to wait. There will never be a better moment than the one you have right now. What are you waiting for? Do you want to get healthier? Do not wait until you get sick to do something. Writing a book? Do not wait until you have thought through every page to put the first word down. Planning a vacation? Do not wait until every penny is in the bank to decide where and when you want to go. Recently, I was giving a workshop and I will never forget the story one woman told me during a segment on setting goals and taking action. She described how she had wanted to go to the Philippines. She had set the goal, but had no resources to actually go. Nonetheless, she decided one of the first actions she would do was check with the health department and get the necessary immunization. She discovered they were free. After this, she researched exactly how much it would cost and began planning her trip. Amazingly, as she took each step, a door opened allowing her to take another step, then another until finally she ended up taking her trip. Her story reminds me each of us can do something right now, today, to further our dreams, goals and aspirations. The key is to do what you can with what you have, where you are. Do not wait for a better time, act now. Do not wait for nicer weather, a better mood or for someone else to take the lead. If you want to make something happen, now is the time to begin. The question you need to ask yourself is: If not now, when? We are not here to merely make a living. We are here to enrich the world, and we impoverish ourselves if we forget the errand
Often I write about taking care of business – eliminating or handling those sometimes unpleasant but all-to-necessary tasks we love to hate: the date with the tax man, accountant, attorney or doctor. Make no mistake; I do not believe these are the primary aims of life. But if these so-called little things are not handled, we are surrounded by a nagging sense of unease. When these necessary inconveniences are handled, our energies are freed to pursue the big stuff. For many people, life is always about taking care of business and they find an uncanny way of expanding the little things to fill up their entire lives. But for those of you who are up for a bigger game, what would this look like? Have you dreamed of a special vacation? Get busy planning. Have a book writing itself in your head, just waiting for you to unleash your pent up muse? Start now. Maybe your big dream is finishing a degree your sidelined, starting a non-profit organization or launching a business. The big things list is endless, remember they only have to be big to you, and may be begging for some attention in your life. We have all known someone who died unexpectedly at an early age. We are never promised a long life, we really have no time to dismiss our passions with an I will get to it later attitude. I am sure if those who left this world unexpectedly early were to come back and visit us, they would challenge us to embrace life in a grand way, to release the magic within us. Granted, it is much easier to live life by filling our days with the little things, expanding them to fit the time so it seems as if we are just too busy. They require less energy and a lot less courage than advancing confidently in the direction of our dreams. Now is the time… the only time you have. Stop majoring in the minors and get busy pursuing the big stuff. Decide what one big dream you want to accomplish this year and create a plan to accomplish this dream. Then set the wheels in motion. You will not only start playing a bigger game, you will become a bigger person in the process. The world is waiting... do not let us or yourself down! The only notions standing between a person and what they want in life are the will to try and faith to believe. Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes but they do not quit.
Think small. At the risk of heresy, I suggest one key to success that may well have eluded us is the power of thinking small. It is pretty easy to get overwhelmed these day, assuming we are not solving some major problem or taking some giant leap for mankind that we might as well not bother. Or, we map out some grandiose plan, tell ourselves what grandiose actions we will take to accomplish the plan and then watch as nothing happens. As a writer, I am in the business of getting clients to think big; to view their lives and businesses from a grand new perspective. So it seems a complete contradiction to talk or write about something small. Nonetheless, there is tremendous wisdom in taking small consistent steps toward your larger goal or intention. Sayings such as: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step,” or “From a tiny acorn grows the mighty oak,” have been around for eons. And for good reason, because for all of our mighty plans and aspirations, the victor’s cup goes to the person who persistently and consistently moves ahead one step at a time. Even Subway Sandwich Shop latched onto this theme in one of its ad campaigns, reminding us, “It is not the one big choice, but the hundreds of small ones making the difference.” I read the story about the woman who invented the product we now know as Liquid Paper. She was a single mom who had gone back to work as a secretary to support herself and her family. Not being an ace typist, and long before computers were standard equipment in every office, she found herself making numerous mistakes. Wondering if she could develop some kind of mistake fixer, she began experimenting with different ingredients to create the crude correcting fluid. Before long, the other secretaries in the office were asking to borrow he little bottle of white paint. Eventually she decided there was a market for this product in offices everywhere. So one step at a time she advanced forward, making product improvements as she went. When office supply stores refused to stock her product, telling her no one would buy it, she took to the streets and sold boxes of her magic white paint from the trunk of her car. She eventually sold her product, quickly becoming a household and office staple, to a major corporation worth nearly $50 million! This is the power of thinking and acting small but consistently. She did not set out to create a multi-million dollar product. She set out to develop something for her own use. She began small, and one step after another she eventually began to see the larger possibility. Think about the grand plan you have for your life or business. Now ask yourself what one, two or three steps you can take today to advance this plan. If you have no grand plan, ask yourself what small steps you might take to improve the quality of your or someone else’s life. Then get busy taking these steps. There is power in thinking small, and you can use it starting now. What lies behind us and what lies before us is a small matter compared to what lies within us.
If there is a universal negative habit, it is procrastination. There is no one I have met who at some point does not succumb to its deadening power. Recently, I realized just how costly a habit procrastination can be. No, I did not suffer some illness as a result of putting off a medical exam, or lose a big client for failure to follow through. My lesson was smaller and yet still powerful. I hired an organizer to assist me in cleaning up and clearing out my office. She spent about three hours with me, helping me make lists, eliminate mountains of paper and generally reorganize my surroundings. Now when I walk into my office, instead of feeling overwhelmed, I feel empowered. Did she have a magic wand? No, she used the power of the question “What is this? to make me realize how much stuff I was holding on to and holding on to me. What I discovered, or perhaps re-discovered, is procrastination at its core is simply a failure to decide. We delay making a decision about whether to attend a business networking event, so we hold onto the invitation in the hope somewhere between receipt and deadline we will have a lightning bolt moment of clarity about whether or not to attend. The lightning bolt never arrives. The same scenario is repeated day after day, decision after decision, until we are buried in the deadening pile of indecision. Delay I have found, is deadening. As I have enjoyed the burst of creative energy resulting from breaking the procrastination deadlock, I realize I cannot afford to allow it in my life. Yes, I am human and will likely continue to have periods where I forget my lesson and fall back into old patterns. When I look at what procrastination costs me in terms of energy, focus, clarity and momentum, I am confident the turnaround time will be much shorter. So what is it you have delayed deciding? How is procrastination robbing you in your life and business? How long will you continue to allow it to keep you from progressing toward your dreams and goals? Now is a great time to break the stranglehold of procrastination in whatever form it takes in your life. Make this week the week you decide and go into action. Get ready to enjoy feeling light, alive and ready to charge ahead in the direction of your dreams. Take the first step in faith. You do not need to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. |
AuthorMusings from Gammon Irons. To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind - this is a choice which is possible for us all; and surely a good haven to sail. Archives
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