How's life treating you? Crazy busy? Stressed? Falling off the Simple Life wagon? Oh, sorry, that one is me...
I have put myself in the 'pickle jar of overload' and my teeth are on edge from the bitter taste it leaves in my mouth. It's all my fault, no one to blame but myself. Don't you just hate it when there is no one else to blame? LOL
Living the Simple Life means ridding our homes, habits and activities of the non-essentials so we have time, energy and interest in the things are most important to us. In overload mode, it often feels that everything has PRIORITY stamped all over it. We become hypersensitive to demands on our time, real and imagined. Life feels like it is moving in fast forward mode and we are not keeping pace.
I've allowed 'busyness' to overtake me. I created most of it for myself. The particulars are not important, they just sound like excuses anyway. The question is, what am I gonna do about it?
I'm going to slow down and do less even though I feel I'm not doing enough already. That false sense of inadequacy is a byproduct of overload and excess. As my good friend, Cheryl, says...I'm going to 'follow the peace.' I need balance in my life or I get wacky. No one functions well in tilt mode!
I started putting my plan in action yesterday by spending some time with my friend, Helen. That was a good start. I also chunked the PRIORITY stamp out the window. Doing a self-diagnostic reality check helped, too. I was being hard on myself in the name of 'brutally honest'. What's up with that? Trust me, it was more brutal than honest! I am painfully aware of my shortcomings and blast myself daily for the standards I do not meet. I would not treat anyone else like that but sure come down hard an myself. Going to take some diligent monitoring to cut that out.
A quick visit with another friend, Pat, brought that to my attention. I saw and heard in her what I was doing to myself. I commented that I wished I could say my kitchen was as clean and looked as good as hers and she started protesting and complaining that it was filthy and she couldn't stand it. FILTHY?! There wasn't even clutter to be seen. It looked great to me, but she couldn't see all that was done and the beauty of it. I pointed out again how nice it was and she still would not hear it. Couldn't even make eye contact with me while we talked about it. I told her if that was filthy to her, she was banned from ever coming to my house again! Egad, what would she think here??
It hit me as I drove home, that's the same way I act about what I do and accomplish. No matter how much I do while I work, I only see what I didn't do. I place more importance on emails left unread, chapters not yet edited, and a long list of 'should have done's' than I do on the good work of the day. I never allow myself to appreciate my accomplishments for more than two seconds before I start zeroing in on all that needs my attention. This can paralyze you into inactivity! I am cheating myself and rolling in the dust when I fall off the Simple Life wagon. Life is far too short and unpredictable for that. So this is me, picking myself up, dusting myself off, and focusing my eyes, once more, on living the Simple Life on Hacienda Hill...What would your mid-holiday check up reveal?
Showing posts with label Sabotage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sabotage. Show all posts
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Can We Do it? Yes, We Can!
Most routine things we need to take care of do not take as long as we like to think they do. We like to think it will take too long to validate our procrastination. I heard Joyce Meyer speak about how she got so angry once because she went into the bathroom and the toilet paper roll needed to be changed. That can be irksome. However, she was livid, justifying her anger by the fact she had a full-time housekeeper so she thought there was no reason she should ever have to change the toilet paper. In the middle of her rage, God popped in to inquire about her anger explosion. This got her attention. She decided to time how long it actually took to change out the empty roll for a new one. 15 seconds! That's how long it took, 15 seconds. She was throwing a temper fit over a task that took 15 seconds to perform. She was stepping outside God's will for her behavior over a 15 second task. Her spiritual fruit was being squeezed into juice over 15 seconds. We know there is more to that mentality than the task but that's not our topic for today.
Her story made an impact on me and I've made a point to be more aware of how long it actually takes to do things. Even when my kitchen looks like it exploded, it doesn't really take that long to get it back into shape. Earlier, I put my cold cup of coffee in the microwave for 1 minute 10 seconds to reheat. While all that was going on, I fed the tribe of cats on the front deck and still had 10 seconds to spare. I surveyed my meds divider while I waited. Tick tock, tick tock...finally the coffee was hot.
Hanging the clothes on the line takes 5-8 minutes depending on what I'm hanging. Taking them down and folding takes about the same time. Yet, it seems like doing the outdoor laundry thing would take longer. It does not. Making my bed, 8-12 seconds, depending on how restless the night.
My point is that we make life less "Simple" by our mentalities more than the tasks we must do. If we decide up front we do not have time, then we won't. We will make sure we don't. Sometimes by not even trying or starting. If we decide we will do all we can do in an allotted time slot, then we will make progress. Progress is defined by the effort, not the results. If it takes three days of assigning 15 minutes a day to accomplish a task, say cleaning out a dresser, then you're still one dresser drawer closer each day than you are if you don't do anything because you don't have time to do it all at once.
Getting order and de-cluttering our lives is a process, it takes time. We need to give ourselves permission to enjoy the process rather than beating ourselves up because we haven't done everything. Doing a piece of a task is far better than doing none of the task. Enough pieces make a whole, like a jigsaw puzzle. I find that on the days I dust the living room, I'm less likely to leave things in there at the end of the day. I do not want my efforts thwarted, so I take 2 minutes to gather up and distribute things back where they belong. One short task begets another..and so on and so one.
As I said earlier, it is our mentalities that need shaking more than our rugs. We get locked into thinking about and looking at habits, rituals, ways of doing things that may have worked for us at one time but could be outdated and worn out for our life today. Just because we've always done something one way doesn't mean we can't look for a new, refreshing way to do it. Procrastination can bind us up when we focus on what we can't do rather than what we can accomplish. For every reason/excuse our mind says, "No way!" we need to list three reasons that say, "Oh, yes we can!" They're out there...the reasons we can...we just have to think about how to get to them rather than sitting on our "no way" bottoms - which, my Friends, is our biggest stumbling block on our way to living a more satisfying and simple life!
Her story made an impact on me and I've made a point to be more aware of how long it actually takes to do things. Even when my kitchen looks like it exploded, it doesn't really take that long to get it back into shape. Earlier, I put my cold cup of coffee in the microwave for 1 minute 10 seconds to reheat. While all that was going on, I fed the tribe of cats on the front deck and still had 10 seconds to spare. I surveyed my meds divider while I waited. Tick tock, tick tock...finally the coffee was hot.
Hanging the clothes on the line takes 5-8 minutes depending on what I'm hanging. Taking them down and folding takes about the same time. Yet, it seems like doing the outdoor laundry thing would take longer. It does not. Making my bed, 8-12 seconds, depending on how restless the night.
My point is that we make life less "Simple" by our mentalities more than the tasks we must do. If we decide up front we do not have time, then we won't. We will make sure we don't. Sometimes by not even trying or starting. If we decide we will do all we can do in an allotted time slot, then we will make progress. Progress is defined by the effort, not the results. If it takes three days of assigning 15 minutes a day to accomplish a task, say cleaning out a dresser, then you're still one dresser drawer closer each day than you are if you don't do anything because you don't have time to do it all at once.
Getting order and de-cluttering our lives is a process, it takes time. We need to give ourselves permission to enjoy the process rather than beating ourselves up because we haven't done everything. Doing a piece of a task is far better than doing none of the task. Enough pieces make a whole, like a jigsaw puzzle. I find that on the days I dust the living room, I'm less likely to leave things in there at the end of the day. I do not want my efforts thwarted, so I take 2 minutes to gather up and distribute things back where they belong. One short task begets another..and so on and so one.
As I said earlier, it is our mentalities that need shaking more than our rugs. We get locked into thinking about and looking at habits, rituals, ways of doing things that may have worked for us at one time but could be outdated and worn out for our life today. Just because we've always done something one way doesn't mean we can't look for a new, refreshing way to do it. Procrastination can bind us up when we focus on what we can't do rather than what we can accomplish. For every reason/excuse our mind says, "No way!" we need to list three reasons that say, "Oh, yes we can!" They're out there...the reasons we can...we just have to think about how to get to them rather than sitting on our "no way" bottoms - which, my Friends, is our biggest stumbling block on our way to living a more satisfying and simple life!
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Help! I've Found the Enemy and It's Me!
I have a confession to make...I am sabotaging myself today in my efforts to live a simple life! Here is how this came to be: our kids, some of them anyway, are coming out tomorrow for lunch. I invited them. I am excited they are coming. The old "pre-simple life me" would have gone to great lengths to prepare a large meal because... well, I'm a cook and that's what I do. Due to my resolve for that simple life, I decided to make a simple meal, no fuss, no muss. I'd rather spend the little time with my family visiting...not cooking, serving, cleaning, etc. "Simple it is!" says I. Crispy tacos, Spanish rice and Borracho Beans for lunch with Key Lime pie for dessert....yummy and SOOOO simple.
Old habits are hard to break, OCD decidedly one of them, Perfectionism another...admittedly, I spent a stupid amount of time in finding the perfect bell pepper - one bell pepper - for the simple Spanish rice I am making. It seems my perfectionism raises its ugly head most often in the produce department...don't me why. Anyway, perfect in size, color, etc bell pepper located and purchased! This morning, as I am preparing the food for tomorrow, I am taking my own sweet, stress-free time and enjoying the process....at least, I was until I could not locate my bell pepper when I needed to add it to the rice. At this point in time, I have searched and researched my fridge, emptied the grocery bags of 'paper stuff', cups, etc, checked the pantry because one cannot be too careful in one's dotage and even called my Honey at work to see if I might have left it in the trunk when I got home from the grocery. I am a mess and have no one to blame but myself. I continued to cook the rice because I was too far into the process to stop. It's ok, only ok...needs a stinkin' bell pepper!
Let me say it is not an easy transition to move to a simple life when one goes about making life harder than it has to be. Did I mention I started slow roasting 10 pounds of meat at 5:30am (today) for tacos tomorrow? **SIGH**
Old habits are hard to break, OCD decidedly one of them, Perfectionism another...admittedly, I spent a stupid amount of time in finding the perfect bell pepper - one bell pepper - for the simple Spanish rice I am making. It seems my perfectionism raises its ugly head most often in the produce department...don't me why. Anyway, perfect in size, color, etc bell pepper located and purchased! This morning, as I am preparing the food for tomorrow, I am taking my own sweet, stress-free time and enjoying the process....at least, I was until I could not locate my bell pepper when I needed to add it to the rice. At this point in time, I have searched and researched my fridge, emptied the grocery bags of 'paper stuff', cups, etc, checked the pantry because one cannot be too careful in one's dotage and even called my Honey at work to see if I might have left it in the trunk when I got home from the grocery. I am a mess and have no one to blame but myself. I continued to cook the rice because I was too far into the process to stop. It's ok, only ok...needs a stinkin' bell pepper!
Let me say it is not an easy transition to move to a simple life when one goes about making life harder than it has to be. Did I mention I started slow roasting 10 pounds of meat at 5:30am (today) for tacos tomorrow? **SIGH**
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