More Life in My Day

What's that dead weight you're carrying around? Things just seem to unknowingly latch on to us while we live our lives. It could be that sitcom we can't get up from binge watching. Maybe it's a relationship that doesn't seem to have boundaries. If we actually take a real close look at the flow of our week, I'll bet we could identify a few things that are dead weight and need to be pruned. Reasons to prune plants include deadwood removal, shaping (by controlling or redirecting growth), improving or sustaining health. - Wikipedia | Pruning There may even be a few things that are important enough not to stop doing, but maybe we can manage them better or realign them? A good coach will ask the question, "what are you tolerating?" Take a second to think about that. What in the world are you tolerating that needs to be eliminated, minimized, managed or realigned? We want to be able to manage a harmonious journey for the things that are in our c...

Thinking. When do we really get a chance to slow our mind, sit and soak in our own thoughts? We go from moment to moment, reacting to input that doesn't seem to stop or even slow down. It has the making of an I Love Lucy , episode of comedy and tragedy, that goes something like this:  Lucy and Ethel wrap chocolates! Masters of Time If we can't think, we can't be ourselves and since we are moving from task to task all week it doesn't leave us with much time to actually think. We become expert at simply responding and diminished in creativity, patience and an additional long list of other virtues that get neglected. Time is what it is. So, we have to make it serve our needs. It is a courageous and proactive step to block out and guard our time to give our mind a chance to work for us rather than always giving it over to everyone and everything else. It may seem as if we need to get away from the noise because the noise is bad or evil. It's not! The nois...

Love has a way of being tricky to identify. If we want to step back and evaluate who and what we love, we can take a look at who and what we serve. Where do we spend our time? Who gets our attention? Who are we thinking about? Serving and Fulfillment Where you put your effort is where you love. Now, we generally only have these discussion about romantic love, but that's not what we are talking about here. Romantic love has a way of taking care of itself. What we are talking about is our core values and how we are committed to them. Unfortunately, our values are not always reflected in our lives, the way we wished they were. We love many people in our lives. We love God, our spouse, our parents, our children, our friends and others. A good measure of how much we love someone is revealed in how we serve them. Where we serve has a big impact on our fulfillment. If we say we love our family but we don't serve them well, we will ultimately get down the road and be unfu...

Time is inelastic. It's flow is unobstructed and we cannot get more. With any resource that is non-renewable, we must show it the ultimate respect. Unfortunately, it is something that we ignore but always want more of. Yet, we don't really spend a lot of time thinking about how best to use it. John C. Maxwell , author, speaker, and pastor who has written many books, primarily focusing on leadership, makes the point that we don't actually manage time. We manage ourselves! That's exactly right. We can't change or slow the time continuum so that just leaves us with what we can manage. So, then, how do we manage ourselves? A great way to wrap your mind around the importance of making the most of your time, is to ask a few seasoned citizens how they feel about how they spent their time. "Do you wish you had more time?" "What else would you have liked to have done?"  "What does it feel like to have the real sense that time is short?...