Our local business chamber had its annual awards dinner last night. My company was a finalist in two categories, and I was invited to attend. Of course that meant shopping to find an outfit, cuz it was a formal affair with all the guys in a tux. It was fun dressing up and took my mind off work for a while.It's been full on and I'm finding less time for myself again. I'm tired of the cycle, really, so I think it was the right time for me to stumble upon Zen Habits while visiting my friend Carla's blog. The headline, "How to Focus on What Truly Matters," sure caught my eye. I'll share a few here.
Step 1 was: What does my life look like ten years from now? where you project yourself 10 years into the future and visualize where you want to be. Knowing what you want from life 10 years into the future will help you focus on what you need to do now in order to get there. That sounds like a good idea, I'll have to give that some deep thought.
Step 2 was: What is my purpose? and help was offered on finding out what that is in another post called The Key to Dying Happy. This article asks you to consider how you'd want to be remembered after you're gone. What do you want people to say about the kind of person you were? Things like, 'he was a great dad' or whatever. Focus on being whatever that is.
Step 4 was: What can I let slide? -- there's never enough time to do all the things you want to do, but there is enough time to do the things that mater most to you. Do them first, then use the rest of the day for what's left.
And to make time for the things that matter most? The top suggestion caught my eye: Do it First.
I did better when I was getting up early in the morning and getting my work out in before anything else. Once winter came I shifted that, but it's quite nice out in the mornings now. I just haven't made myself get up earlier, telling myself I'd walk after work. But I end up working late, or some crisis comes up or it rains, or whatever -- I don't always get it in. I will set the alarm an hour earlier Monday and get that out of the way first thing.
Hubby and I have just come back from lunch and now we're enjoying a lovely Saturday afternoon of doing laundry, playing pinball and playing with the dogs. I love Saturday. Carla, if you can find Dharma in the Dishes, maybe for me it's Dharma in the Laundry. I love my Saturday laundry ritual. The dogs follow me outside with each load and run around chasing lizards while I take my time carefully hanging the wash and enjoying the sunshine. Then they grab a toy and run and play with me for a bit before trotting happily back inside with me to see what hubby is up to. It's just us and our dogs hanging out -- no other obligations, just whatever we feel like doing. So Saturday is my favorite day of the week, and laundry time the best part of the day. I guess that qualifies as 'me time' -- now I just need to find a bit more of that.
Oh, and an addendum to my last post about being good at Ms. Pac Man - I was right. He took no time in mastering the game and I'm back to only beating him in one video game - Bomb Jack. Ah well.










