Set Your Priorities
By Dave Zerfoss
“Stress is a choice. A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a very large and empty pickle jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls
He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “yes.”
The professor then produced two glasses of chocolate milk from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
“Now,” said the professor, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things…your family, your children, your health, your friends, your favorite passions. Things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.”
“The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your home, your car.”
“The sand is everything else…The small stuff. If you put the sand into the jar first, there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are critical to your happiness.”
“Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house or fix the disposal.”
“Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities, the rest is just sand.”
Destiny
According to Guy Finley, our character is our destiny. This is a different teaching than I have heard about before. Usually most teachers tell us that we are born with a destiny that we are supposed to fulfill. So we spend time searching for this magical thing that we that were born to do.
If this is true, then it means that we can make our destiny be anything, because we can change our character in whatever way is needed to live out that destiny.
When we have children we try to instill certain qualities so that they have a good character. This past weekend my niece with her two children came to visit, and we had an excellent example of this as my two granddaughters were so excited to play with their cousin that they shut out the neighbor girl that they play with every day. I don’t believe they meant to be cruel, but the results were the same. We had some tears as we explained that we should never treat anyone like they were not wanted as that is very cruel, and how would they feel if they were her?
In today’s world we often see that some of the qualities that resonant with good character are in short supply. Many in the efforts to provide for their family might feel pressured at work to cut corners and so damage their integrity. It always starts with a small thing, but those small things seem to grow into larger and larger things until we realize one day that we have ruined our good character.
Taking this back to destiny – we can take any dream that we have and it can become our destiny – the key to living a fulfilling life
1) We can transform our character to have the qualities needed to fulfill that destiny;
2) We can use these good character traits to help us go beyond any perceived limitations to fulfill that chosen destiny;
3) We can take all of life’s lessons experienced so far and use them to bring us forward in our development of ourselves to fulfill this dream/destiny.
Live With Intention
According to Mary Anne’s Radmacher everyone postpones one grand thing or a collection of mighty hopes and dreams. I can attest to the trueness of this. I even used the same excuses and they may sound familiar to you too – “when the kids are grown”, “when things slow down”, “when i get that job, raise or promotion”, and now “when I retire”. Any of those sound familiar to you?
Why do we postpone our lives? What life have we been accidentially living? Why not embrace your dreams and instead begin living with intention? Below is an excerpt from her poem about living with intention:
Walk to the edge.
Listen hard. Laugh. Play with abandon.
Practice wellness.
Continue to learn.
Choose with no regret.
Appreciate your friends.
Lead or follow a leader.
Do what you love.
Live as if this is all there is.
If you would dream it – BEGIN it.
If you have an idea – OPEN it.
If there is a longing – ACKNOWLEDGE it
If there is a mission – COMMIT it.
If there is a daring – DO it.
If there is a love – SPEAK it.
If there is a resource – USE it.
If there is abundance – SHARE it.
Self Correction
Guy Finley had a great article on the difference between self improvement and self correction.
None of us want to be wrong. When we find ourselves having any kind of personal problem the natural inclination is to hide from the issue. But when we hide from the problem, we are also hiding from the solution. Real change can only take place outside of the shadow of pride. Since all personal difficulty is born out of a lack of understanding, what we must do is gain knowledge of the situation.
This is where the article was interesting. Remember how none of us ever want to be wrong? Yet at the same time we wish to grow and develop into a better person by solving our personal problem(s). This is where self improvement seems to fall short, because we have incongruent minds. Since we didn’t want to be wrong, we simply “add” in new knowledge, behaviors and beliefs, while retaining the old ones. Sort of like trying to get a pail of muddy water clean by adding clean water. We are just diluting the original problem, because what we really needed to do was remove the muddy water and then fill it up with clean water.
With self correction we add a step in which we remove what we had been taught incorrectly, letting go of the incorrect thinking or behavior and then we have real growth happens.
I really appreciated the distinction, because as I look back I can see where I have just added new knowledge and I am still carrying around old patterns because of it. A great clarification for me personally!
Habit
I am your constant companion.
I am your greatest asset or heaviest burden.
I will push you up to success or down to disappointment.
I am at your command.
Half the things you do might just as well be turned over to me.
For I can do them quickly, correctly, and profitably.
I am easily managed: just be firm with me.
Those who are great, I have made great.
Those who are failures, I have made failures.
I am not a machine, though I work with the precision of a machine and the intelligence of a person.
You can run me for profit, or you can run me for ruin.
Show me how you want it done. Educate me. Train me.
Lead me. Reward me.
And I will then…do it automatically.
I am your servant.
Who am I?
I am a habit.
from the book, The Essence of Leadership
Become
This is so true. The only thing that can define me is what I choose to let define me. It is not my job to make everyone love me, my job is to be true to who I am. There will be critics and judges and that is ok. Some things they say will be true and that is ok too. I am not a blank canvas but a masterpiece in progress.
Perspective
There is a story that is told about 3 men who were working on a project. Each was asked what they were doing. One said that he was hauling rocks; another that he was building a wall and the last man said that he was building a cathedral.
Each man was working on the same thing, building a cathedral, yet each had a totally different perspective and attitude about his job or employment. The first man who was hauling rocks had a job that paid the bills, that was his whole interest and attitude about it. The 2nd man had a job putting up with things, and the last man was the only one who had a real objective to which he was working – he was building a cathedral. He may have hauled rocks and built walls, but he knew his real objective.
What is your perspective about your career, your family – what is your real objective? Are you a slave working to cover the bills or are you improving someone else’s life and making the world a better place?
No-Limit Thinking
Out of the box thinking means that we look at something with a beginners mind. There is a proverb that says “In the beginner’s mind that are many possibilites. In the expert’s mind there are few.”
There is also a story about a young man in college that was late for class and so when he did the math homework he didn’t know that the extra credit problem was one that no one had been able to solve, and because he didn’t know he couldn’t, he did it.
So approach the challenges in your life with a beginners mind and write down all of the possible solutions on a piece of paper – write down everything that enters into you head, no matter how silly. This is called “no limit thinking” and it gets the creative juices flowing. It’s amazing how many good ideas come from the beginners mind – you might just solve your unsolvable problems!
Circle of 5
Your circle of 5 – the 5 people that you associate with the most have a powerful and subtle influence over you. Your associations don’t shove you in a direction, but rather like floating in an inner tube in the ocean, you drift towards the same behaviors they have. This group determines as much as 95% of your sucess or failure in life according to Dr. David McClelland of Harvard. They end up determining what we say, how we think, our attitudes, even how we dress – and for most of us we aren’t even aware of it happening. That being said, what are the attitudes, health, and behaviors of the 5 people that you associate most with? Then ask yourself is this who I want to be? Your relationships can nuture you or keep you stuck. Evaluate and shift your life starting today.
Possibilities
Choose to look at the possibilities. Life should be about the next open door, not the one closing behind us. We choose our joys and sorrows by the attitude that we bring to our experiences.
Clutter
To experience a simplified life, we first have to learn to slow down long enough to see through all the clutter. The clutter is everything that we fill up our lives with sometimes by choice and sometimes by default which is also a choice – your job, the appointments you make in your life, your email, FB, TV, errands, work, school…, look at all of it. The busyness of our lives that causes us to say that we don’t have enough time to do it all. Our choices created this chaos and our choices can change the chaos. So slow down – examine what is truly important and simply your life – use your choices to pluck out the time wasters, so that you have time for what is truly important.
I Choose
This is going on my bulletin board to remind me every day I have the choice to create my life and not to settle or discount what I want as unimportant.
