Ways to live in the moment: Have Patience with All Things, Especially with You

 

Here is a great quote: “Have Patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them – every day begin the task anew”. Saint Fracis de Sales

Honestly something I try to remind myself about every time I can is that the most important lessons in life are learning to really be patient and kind with your own self. We all make mistakes, learning from those is important, and learning that we can always find ways to overcome those is the most valuable tool to be successful, but it is the most complex.  In fact, as a coach at work I always encourage my clients to their very best. But when it comes to me sometimes I forget that I should do the same with highest conviction, and that patient is important to change what I need to change or modify anything that I need to. I should try it more often! In fact as I tell people… I will be surprised what the power of being positive thinking can do and how that can shape my feelings and what I can do about myself.

Here is a great story where I can apply what I just said: “I just had a wonderful baby girl and I’m having the most wonderful time of my life with my little bundle of joy as a new mom. She completes me as a person, she makes me very proud of who I am, and she is my girl, just 8 weeks old, so loved... And when I look at the pregnancy weight I have to lose to get back into my shape, it is very hard. That is causing me a lot of stress and sometimes frustration with myself.  However, I’m doing my best, but not my very best to just change my attitude, be patient and just enjoy this new part of my life as a new mom, and every step I’m taking to get to my weight goal.  Be patient with all the changes I'm facing, they are a lot... Of course, when I think of my little girl, magic happens and I forget… But I can do better!

What is your story…?

Enjoy!

Ways to live in the moment: The Time Mistery

"Do not say you do not have enough time. You have the exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to people like Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein". – H Jackson Brow.

 

 

I just read this quote and got me thinking… How many times we said in a day "I wish I can have more hours to do all the things I need to do", "I do not have time?" etc… If we are like the majority of people, this is something we just thought about it at least once a day. It seems like our lives continue to be busier but time does not stretch with that fact. However, when I read this quote it reminded me that great things can be done and have been done without stretching or increasing time. So let’s stop complaining about it, and do something.

Action Item:

What would you do with your time today, tomorrow?

What can you do to stop complaning and do something?

 

Enjoy!

 

Ways to Live in Moment: Priorities and Perspectives

Don't be a time manager, be a priority manager. Cut your major goals into bite-sized pieces. Each small priority or requirement on the way to ultimate goal become a mini goal in itself.” -  Denis Waitley

During many of my coaching sessions and conversations with peers, friends and family; a subject that always comes up is the matter of not having time to do things, not having enough energy to focus on priorities, or having too much to do with too little time… It is ashamed, I have felt the same many times, and at a point in my life it became an overwhelming feeling. However, I decided to take action, and learn how to manage that feeling by learning better ways of looking at competing priorities: work, home, and life to balance myself and my inner peace.  So inspired by many of my coworkers, friends and people I coach, here are my lessons learned:

1.       Time Skills: To get the best out of life, apply some basic time management skills. These boils down to two key principles: finding balance of personal priorities and responsibilities; and preserving our “own time” from unwanted distractions. Time is squander but also too precious to squeeze. It is a discipline but like any other skill, taking on step at a time will help to master the final outcome to have that balance.  I like to approach: Urgent Vs. Important by Steven Covey in his book the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits)

2.       Know what matters: No one should devote their life entirely to a single priority: that could result in extreme asceticism or unbroken concentration upon, say, parenting, work or art. Any time we devote to ourselves is time we’re not giving to another; any time we spend on beauty is time not spent on compassion. Such exclusions are inevitable. If we know what matters, we’ll be able to adjudicate between conflicting demands when they occur.

3.       Re-Think: Do a major time management audit at least every 4 months. Consider which routine activities are intruding into our quality of life, and whether we could shed any of them. How is our life-work balance treating us? Where are the stresses in our week, and how could they be eased? This is the time, too, to think about whether major changes might be desirable – for example: moving into a new house, or planning a different kind of vacation. Make sure that we come out of our audit with at least three concrete decisions for change, however modest.

4.       Checking the Boxes:  Write a list of prioritized tasks in a notebook each day to focus our mind, with a little square box alongside each one. Check the box once we’ve completed the task – a simple but effective way to keep on top of crowed and evolving to-do list. It takes practice to get that habit into our system; it is one step at time with the purpose in mind to become more organized, that will be helpful.  “I really learned to do this, and it gave me a safe place to know where to start and finish my day”.

5.       Today’s Work: The word procrastination derives from the Latin word “crastinus”, meaning “belonging to tomorrow.” Do not fall into the trap of believing that we’ll have more time to tackle a tricky task or project tomorrow than today – the reality is, we’ll probably find ourselves as pressed for time then as now.

Adpated from 1,001 Ways to Live in the Moment – by Barbara Anna Kipfer

Action Item:

·         What can we do NOW to empower ourselves to manage our priorities in a savvy way?

·         What can we do differently to be more driven and proactive for our time management?

Enjoy!