I’ve been sharing with you some of my Thinking Strategically. We all know we should make time for this on a regular basis, but how does it come to be? How do you unwrap some of your best thinking “on-demand”? How about not thinking about it at all? Let’s see what we can draw from a recent experience. I had the grand privilege to travel with my Mom to Italy for 19 days in September. …
Recent messages have focused on the need to identify our purpose and establish priorities to better manage our time and move toward our objectives and goals. Yet if we haven’t defined our purpose, it is challenging to set priorities! So here’s a peek into how I approach the process. I recently invested about 3 hours to clarify my thoughts, i.e., my purpose, around my business. Below is a photo of the beginnings of the process. …
Last week’s message attempted to make the case that knowing your purpose in life is key to winning the time management battle. Time management is challenging for most of us as we have not identified our purpose and priorities. How can we expect then to make the best use of our time if we don’t know what is most important to us? Step away from your everyday life and invest time in knowing your purpose. …
In my work with clients, one of the most common topics we address is what I will call, for now, time management. This follows on the theme from last week’s message regarding the true definition of work. I closed last week’s message by stating that it is up to each of us to determine our purpose in life and that is not always easy for us to know. Knowing our purpose and our priorities is …
Last week’s message brought forth the topic of being versus doing. While we get a certain level of satisfaction from doing, it will not address the frustration we may feel at the end of a day, week or year (years!) of not truly moving forward. We may not recognize this frustration, this lack of forward movement, for what it really is. We often blame outside forces such as: management and their insatiable need for reports, the …
Last week I wrote about creating opportunity. It is challenging to create or even recognize opportunity when our minds and lives are crowded with so many things. How challenging was it for you to make 20 minutes of “white space”? Our 24/7, always-on world has conditioned us to believe that “always busy”, “crazy busy” and other similar descriptors of our lives, reflect how on-course we are and how needed and important we are. Yet we …
Do you think the outcome described in last week’s newsletter is fiction? Yes, I did make that one up. However, a few weeks back, I mentioned that I was going to track my “white space” and what came out of it. Here is a partial listing: Organized a dinner party for a group of great friends Thought of a way to have my extended family and immediate family together Came up with another newsletter idea Arrived early to a …
A couple of weeks ago, I asked you to say “yes” to creating space on your calendar. It was to be a 20 minute appointment on your calendar with nothing filling in the blank for what you are going to do. I encouraged you to leave your office, go for a walk, read, get out of the usual and into a space less crowded. What did you learn? Too busy to take twenty minutes away? Really? …
Last week I wrote about creating space. Let me tell you, I have quite a bit of it right now. To visit my horse on the weekend is a 1 hour 40 minute drive, one way. Occasionally, a friend will travel with me, but most times, it is just me and my thoughts and some vocalization practice with my iPod or satellite radio. I generally start off the Saturday morning drive listening to something educational. My …
I’ve written quite a bit over the past several weeks about cleaning out and letting go of the past. We would probably all prefer not to go through these steps. What fun is cleaning out the garage on a Saturday? Or committing Friday afternoon to clearing your desk and organizing your files? More challenging is dealing with a relationship or old thought pattern that no longer serves you. It is harder to see this type …
While I may never appear in an Olympic Games event, I have had an Olympic moment. In the early 90’s before Ed and I married, I coerced him to ride with me in the MS 150, a fundraising bike ride for Multiple Sclerosis that traverses the countryside between Houston to Austin, over two days. We both regularly work out, yet riding for two days and covering approximately 180 miles requires more fitness than just hopping …
Isn’t it grand? The Olympic Games that is! A full two weeks of television coverage. There is finally something worth watching in the evening, and during the day and well, seemingly almost anytime. The feats of these athletes are truly amazing. Some of my favorite events have already been shown – gymnastics and beach volleyball. Gymnastics was never an option for me growing up. At some point in my life I was not the tallest …
Have you noticed? There haven’t been too many stories of the horse in recent months. Regular readers have come to know my horse Usache and the life lessons I learn in my attempts to become a better rider and horse owner. For Usache and me to continue our progress up the levels of dressage, we needed some instruction beyond just dressage. Much like our lives, if we are too focused on one element, the rest …
A recent message dealt with letting go of the past and a sentimental tie to a pitcher we had received as a wedding gift and had never used. We faced a much greater obstacle when resolving what to do with the baby grand piano that occupied a significant portion of our living area. Not only was the obstacle physically large, it had significant family ties. Could we let go of it? The piano had been …
So you are ready to make some changes in your life and move on to bigger and better things? You want to realize the potential that you know you have. Congratulations! To make room for these improvements, you’ve got to make space and clear the clutter from your life, just as we had to do to renovate our kitchen to make improvements. Having a clear area to make improvements encompasses two aspects: physical clutter and …
As mentioned previously, we recently completed some renovations to our home. In the course of undertaking something such as this, you must clear out the space where the work is to be done in order to make room for the improvements. For us, this meant cleaning out the entire kitchen and laundry room. We started ambitiously, throwing away, recycling or donating things that we did not need or use. As the day wore on and …
An actionable idea on deleting a toleration may be choosing to do nothing about it. Does that surprise you? Just because we are putting up with something does not mean that we have to take action. Awareness and acknowledgement of the toleration may be all that is needed for its influence to diminish. Other tolerations are simply a fact of life, so while we may be limited in the action we can take, we do …
So how many tolerations did you end up with on your list? 5, 10, 50, 100 or more? When I first began the work of identifying my tolerations, the list was short…only 4. I wasn’t used to looking for tolerations and I had a difficult time seeing them. I lacked awareness and had an attitude that I did not put up with much. Me, tolerate something? Never! I deal with things and move on. Yes, …
A more elegant word for the focus of last week’s newsletter, What Are You Putting Up With? is “tolerations”. A toleration is a condition that is allowed to exist even though it drains our energy. Think about the things that you put up with: a wardrobe that doesn’t fit or complement; children who do not pick up toys or clothes; a spouse who insults or ignores you; a job you hate. Put up with these …
Last week’s newsletter addressed the face of change and how the pace of it can be much more gradual than reality TV portrays. The same applies to our realization that something in our lives needs to change. At times, it is a “slap in the face”; a wake-up call that something has got to change and change now. At other times, it is like the frog placed in a pot of warm water that is …