Category: Goals and Aspirations
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No Rush
Sometimes I look at what I’ve done in my life as opposed to all of the things I still want to do. That’s almost always a mistake. It’s really easy for me to think I have accomplished very little. Then I judge myself and tell myself I should have gotten a lot more done by this point.
That’s when I usually panic. Ahhhh!!! Time is slipping away!!! My life is waning!!! The zombie apocalypse is coming!!! I need to get things done NOW!
Now
Now
NOW!!!!!
The problem is when I feel like I have to get things done immediately, I rush around like a deranged chicken clucking at windmills. Seriously. You should see me. I pull things out of my mental (or physical) closet and throw them around the room. I dash from one end of the house to the other. I mutter to myself about my plans. I make lists.
And lists.
AND LISTS.
Then, invariably, I feel overwhelmed and stuck in a prison of my own making. Which is when I curl up on the sofa, sobbing softly while I eat carbohydrates and play solitaire. It ain’t pretty.
So here’s the thing I have to remember.
There’s really no need to rush.
Yes, I have a lot of things I want to accomplish. And yes, I need to move forward. I can’t just sit in my rocking chair and watch the world go by. But just because I recognize there are things I still want to do doesn’t mean I have to get them all done this second. In fact, as in Mario Kart, rushing to get everything done at once only increases the chance I’ll run off the road and crash into a brick wall.
I think the most important thing is to move. If you move, you’ll eventually get things done. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Sitting and staring at the elephant isn’t going to get it eaten. By the same token, trying to stuff an entire elephant into your mouth all at once isn’t exactly productive.
So join me in taking a deep breath. Ready? Okay, INHALE….hold it, hold it, hold it….EXHALE. Good. Let us all be calm. Just because we may not be moving as quickly as someone else we know doesn’t mean we’re failures. We don’t need to judge ourselves.
We need to move, but we don’t need to rush.
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Focus
I’m usually pretty good about coming up with goals. I can shower you with goals. I can smother you with goals. I can write a sonata of goals.
But keeping my focus long enough to actually achieve goals? Well…let’s not get crazy here.
If I’m in the happy and unusual situation where I can maintain a stable environment, I can usually maintain focus too. Unfortunately I live in the real world. And the real world pulls me hither and yon and sometimes rips me asunder. Then I tend to wander from one urgent task to the next until a week later I look back and realize I’ve accomplished nothing as far as my goals are concerned.
On the other hand, even if I’m just lounging about at home, it’s hard to keep my eyes on the prize. There are just so many things to do, so many things demanding my attention, so many things that urgently need to be done. So very many distractions. (HelLO, Mr. Social Media!)
For me, it’s imperative that I have a routine if I’m going to maintain focus. Routine helps me to give my day structure, and structure helps me block out chunks of time to do the things I think are important, but are not necessarily urgent or, well, fun.
On the OTHER other hand, it’s not natural to maintain focus all the time, even with a routine. Heck, even a diamond-sharp mind like mine wears down when it’s constantly scratching on something. Not every moment of every day needs to be (or should be) sharply motivated. It’s okay and it’s important to take breaks and recharge the batteries.
My problem tends to be that when I lose my focus, it takes a long time to get it back.
So I’ve come to the conclusion that’s the lesson I still need to learn. I don’t need to learn that I need focus – I know that. I don’t even need to learn that it’s okay to be unfocused once in a while. That just happens.
Mostly I need to learn how to go back and forth between the two states in a sane and yet productive manner.
Or I could just spend the rest of my life surfing the Internet. Mr. Social Media would like that.
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Clean Out The Closet
If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you may have seen that last night I dreamt I cleaned out my closet and got rid of a lot of stuff.When I woke up this morning and remembered the dream, I was kind of amused. I’ve been determined to get organized this fall, so I’ve purchased a lot of storage boxes (which are now sitting in my kitchen). I figured the boxes were calling to me.
But the more I thought about the dream, the more I realized it went deeper than that.
In the dream, I was in my parents’ house in my old bedroom. The closet had a small section close to the bedroom, but it also had a larger back room (this was some closet!) I knew that I had forgotten about that back room and I hadn’t been in it in thirty years. I knew that it needed to be cleaned out, so I opened it up and went in.
The back room of the closet was very large – larger than the rest of the house (hey, it was the TARDIS of closets). It was filled with row upon row of stuff. Bookshelves and books, clothes and furniture. All of the things I’d purchased over the years was there – books, record albums, clothing, tapes. It was all piled in there, moldy and rotting. Precious little could be saved – it had all sat in this back room forgotten. Now it was all useless.
People I knew were helping me clean up and they were taking boxes and bags away. Everything in that room – wheelbarrows of stuff – was either going to be sold in a yard sale or trashed. Quite a lot of it was trash.
I looked around and started to cry. So much money spent for things I had let molder in the closet. They were locked away, apparently safe, but they had been forgotten and left to rot.
I’ve been thinking about this dream, and it occurred to me how much money and time and effort I spend acquiring things I just stuff in my closet. Not only physical items, but other aspects of my life are acquired, shoved in the closet, and left to mold, forgotten.
I’m still trying to understand everything the dream was trying to tell me. But I guess one lesson is, you can keep something, try to protect it, squirrel it away, and all it will do is clutter up your closet.
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Which Do You Want More?
A lot of times the question I’m asking isn’t “what do you want?” It’s “which one do you want MORE?”
For example:
“Do you want to buy a new car? Or do you want to be out of debt? Which do you want more?”
“Do you want to eat a baked good? Or do you want to be fit? Which do you want more?”
“Do you want to watch the Kitten Cam? Or do you want to push forward on your book? Which do you want more?”
And the problem I run into is I don’t want either of them more. I just want them both.
In other words,
“Do you want to play solitaire or do you want to write?”
“Yes”
“Do you want to shop at the Best Buy or do you want to pay down your credit card?”
“Yes”
“Do you want to have pizza or would you rather have low blood sugar?”
“Yes.”I think you can see where this line of thinking can cause some issues.
The problem is, when I ask the question “which do you want more?” the thing I actually WANT more is the thing that will not take me to a better place. And yet I know I shouldn’t want it, I know I should want the other, better thing, even though I don’t. So asking which I want more just leads me to answer “yes”
I guess the question should be not “which do you WANT more?” but “which do you NEED more?” Much though I might rationalize needing a bagel (hey, I can rationalize any baked good), I know I need to be healthy more.
So, I guess I’ll try to change the question I’m asking, because answering “yes” to “which do you want more”, just leads to inertia. And I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been inert long enough.
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A Few Thoughts On Habits
Habit: an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary. (www.dictionary.com)
Habits. We all have them. Whether we want them or not.
As the definition says, to create a habit you have to do the same thing over and over again, for an extended period of time, until the action or thought pattern becomes almost involuntary.
Awesome. It’s like hardwiring your brain. Talk about a timesaver!
Buuuut….
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
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Goals, Dreams, and Remembering My Father
I was thinking about my father as I drove into work today, and it made me feel kind of melancholy. We’re coming up on the third anniversary of his death, so he’s been in my thoughts more than normal, I guess.
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Shaking the Piggy Bank
Every year I fall into the “goals” trap. I think it’s because the shiny new year stretches before me and makes me think anything is possible. This year I have goals in two primary areas – writing and getting out of debt.
The writing goals are important and I’ve talked about them before. But the “getting out of debt” goals might be even more urgent.
If I could go back to the Betsy of 30 years ago, I would tell her not to get into debt in the first place. I would tell her to do without rather than charging stuff. I would tell her that the stuff she charges isn’t going to be worth a flea’s sigh in a couple of years anyway. I would tell her to save money for things. I would tell her that debt is like a bad marriage that never ends. I would tell her that debt is a way of selling yourself into slavery, that it’s a huge rock you have to carry around, that it just gets heavier and heavier as time goes on.
I know sometimes you have to go into debt – there are all sorts of valid reasons why you would. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about unsecured debt. Credit card debt. I’m talking about “I need it NOW” debt. That’s the debt that’s killing me. I think you sell yourself down the river most of the time, not by having a massive emergency, but because you can’t control yourself when you’re at the Target. Or on Amazon. Or at the grocery store.
So, 2012 is the year I begin getting out of debt. Again. I’ve tried before, but I’m really determined this time. I’m not getting any younger, and I don’t like the fact that the massive amount of debt I’m carrying keeps me from having the freedom to do things I’d like to do. Instead I must slave for the bill payments. And then I get discouraged and go shopping and add to them.
No more.
And thus, my friends, I have developed a strange and frightening thing. It is called a “Bud-get”. Huh. A budget. A plan for my money for the month. Look at that. *pokes budget*
Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of pennies squealing as they are pinched. Feel that moisture? That’s from juice being wringed out of dollar bills. Sense the uncertainty? That’s me saying – “Can I Do It? Well, CAN I?”
Yes, I can.
I just don’t want to.
Because the thing about budgeting is you realize how much money you really have. And it’s not nearly as much as what you THINK you have.
I like it better when I think I have more money, not less.
But I’m going to do it. I won’t be out of debt this year but I’m going to get a good start on it.
You might want to wish me just a wee bit of luck. ‘Cause baby, I’m going to need it.
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Goals
In the last couple of weeks, it’s been driven home to me how little control I have over my own life. Decisions that other people make, lives other people have lived, things other people say – all of them impact my life, and I have no control over it at all. Even if I bear no direct responsibility or have no power in the situation, the waves from the actions and judgments of others ripple out into the pool of life and rock my little canoe. I guess that’s just the way life is. (more…)
