no opportunity wasted

“But why do only unimportant things?” asked Milo, who suddenly remembered how much time he spent each day doing them.

“Think of all the trouble it saves,” the man explained, and his face looked as if he’d be grinning an evil grin–if he could grin at all. “If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you’ll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won’t have the time. For there’s always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing, and if it weren’t for that dreadful magic staff, you’d never know how much time you were wasting.”
― Norton Juster

 

You have this moment in time to make a difference.   An opportunity is here.  What are you going to do with it?

Many people look at the opportunity and wonder is it real.   Others would look at the opportunity and say it is for someone else.   Others would just wait until the opportunity no longer existed.

Now is the time to take advantage of opportunity.   What opportunities do you have today that you will take advantage of?

create a stress free zone

“Stress level: extreme. It’s like she was a jar with the lid screwed on too tight, and inside the jar were pickles, angry pickles, and they were fermenting, and about to explode.”
― Fiona Wood

 

Wouldn’t be nice to have a stress free zone where none of the pressures of the world or of your own mind would invade the quiet?   There is without doubt more demands on people’s time than ever before.  Everything is rushed and hurried and that only serves to build stress.   People work more hours in the hopes of staying ahead of the tidal wave of work and they can’t keep up.

I know of people who are working so hard that they give up the only thing left in their day to give, sleep.   The lack of sleep only increases their stress and it boils over into relationships that start feeling the toxins of living in a time compressed week.  Only if there was a way out of the tension and pressures that each day grip us in a tightening vise.

With so much to do and little time to do all that needs to be done it doesn’t seem like there is any way to take time away to restore and revitalize your life.

There are ways to create small quiet zones and little bit of peace in a noisy day.

1. Go for a walk alone – it can be as short as 5 minutes.

2. Sit in your chair, close your eyes, relax and take in some deep breaths and exhale slowly.  Do that for 5 minutes – focus on letting the stress go.  You can say to yourself, “Let my stress go”, just repeat it as you breathe in and out.

3. Get away from electronic devices – phones, screens, texts.  Take a technology break and step away from what those devices say to you.

4. Take a piece of paper and draw or scribble – just do some freehand movement.   Think about your stress and draw it out – let it emerge from you without any direction or control.

The important thing is to take time out to get the stress out.  You might have a bad manager that creates stress for you and the best way to manage that is to “get away”.   Take some time to “get away” from it all.   Even a few minutes can have a powerful and lasting impact on the reduction of your stress.

OK.  Now go try it.  Find a stress free practice that helps you destroy stress in your day.

 

you have to be present to win

“It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.”
― George Harrison

In life you have to be “present” to win.    It’s like a raffle ticket, you have to be there to collect the prize.  It’s the same with our life, we have to be there to win and so often we are somewhere else and we miss the opportunity to win the prize.

For many people their career is the target of most of their energy.   Sometimes so much energy is put into the career that there is nothing left for other things in life.   Vacations get put on hold because the work load increases so quickly that a vacation only means doing more work when you get back.

Living in a world of distractions means that being present to enjoy the moment or participate more fully in life is often pushed to the side.

What does it take to be present?

1. Know who you are?

2. Know where you are?

3. Know what you are doing?

It looks simple doesn’t it?   Do you really know who you are?   Many people really don’t know “who” they are.  They usually know what they aren’t though.   Do you know where you are?   If you have a plan you must be somewhere on that path to achieving your life’s goal.  Do you know where you are?   And, do you know what you are doing?  Are you asking for help when you want help.   Perhaps you don’t want help until you need it and if you wait that long you might be in place you really don’t want to be.  Ask for help and seek it before you need it.

Go out and be present in all that you do.