Archive for Books
Break Time Books
Posted by: | CommentsI have a little basket near my work area with small books for break time like Office Yoga, 365 Ways to Energize Mind, Body & Soul, and Interludes. Each of these books have quick break ideas like feed the birds, do a certain yoga pose they show or have a noise fast.
I ran across notes on a seminar I went to with Interludes author Linda Anderson, entitled “Hurry Up, Slow Down.” She was going full steam ahead and neglecting her health and relationships when she was struck with cancer. She said she felt so relieved when she had an excuse to X out all those committments on her calendar she no longer would be able to do. After 3 years of getting through the disease she was taught to slow down, whether she wanted to or not. In slowing down, she realized how much of life she was missing when she was racing through it.
She says she gets the comment often, “I just can’t slow down.” Linda counters saying most of what we do is our choice. We chose this job, we can choose another for less money and more time. We choose to stay busy because we love how it sounds when we talk to other people. “Oh yes, I am just so busy doing …..” Busy comes to mean important. We choose to neglect our health by making other things more important. Sometimes, like when a family member is ill, we don’t choose. But, these instances are more short term.
Things shouldn’t be more important than our health and other people. We have so many possessions we don’t need and we rush to get more instead of enjoying what we have.
In her book, Interludes, she writes, “We expertly dodge or perpetually postpone rest and balance, choosing instead the accumulation of things or titles or others’ approval. Many times this is unintentional, but often it is simply the way we choose to live. As a result, many women are now feeling the pinch of the trap and are beginning to make courageous and often misunderstood choices to really live. To embrace time for rest, for play, for art, for love, for God. Life, as designed by our culture, has imploded on some, and they are rebelling.” She warns we will be going against our culture and it may be difficult, but it is worth it.
Finding Simplicity by Creating a Purpose
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I’ve been reading the book Life on Purpose: Six Passages to an Inspired Life by Dr. Brad Swift. The first time through I read through the book, fascinated with the new ideas on a purposeful life. The next time I did the exercises on creating a life purpose, taking care of the blocks to creating your purpose and now I am playing with the tools of life purpose.
I was able to interview Brad for the his Blog Book Tour (You can read more insights on purpose, see reviews of the book and visit other interesting blogs at the Book Tour Link).
Beth: When I coach, I often help clients simplify their lives to make room for helping them find meaning and purpose. In your book you mention that simplicity is a by product of finding your purpose. How do you use life purpose for simplifying?
Brad: Great question, Beth. I do find that there’s a synergistic effect that exists between purpose and simplicity. As you point out, for many people it’s important to first simplify their life to give them enough time for the quiet reflection that’s so important in becoming clear about their purpose.
Once they begin to gain that clarity of purpose, then that purpose can then be used to further simplify one’s life since it serves as a guiding light directing the person to what matters most. So, with clarity of purpose, we can determine what opportunities that are presented to us are most ‘in the beam’ of our life purpose, and which are ‘out of the beam.’
Of course, there’s a bit of a paradox here — a purposeful paradox. Pretty much anything and everything we do can be poured into the context of our life purpose, and thus be shaped by that purpose, but it does seem to me that people are naturally drawn to certain ways of expressing their life purpose — those ‘in the beam’ activities. And so, our lives become naturally more simple in design as we choose that which is most consistent with our life purpose and let go of the rest. This can include relationships that fall away, to later be replaced by new relationships that are more consistent with who we truly are.
This simplification process doesn’t have to be forced. If we allow it, it will happen naturally over time, especially if we’ll trust the process.
Beth: Right, simplifying from purpose is a deeper process than just decluttering and reorganizing your time. It’s about what you allow in your life and that usually takes trial and error. Evaluating what is working and what isn’t. And often that changes as you change.
I love how you wrote that your life purpose isn’t about doing, jobs, or your roles. How is your definition different than many definitions of life purpose?
Brad: In many ways, I see this rethinking and redefining about life purpose as foundational to the Life On Purpose Process that is outlined in my book, Life On Purpose: Six Passages to an Inspired Life.
So many people take the view that a life purpose is what we’re meant to do while alive. When we operate from this “cultural perspective” it can lead to a life filled with “doingness” sometimes to the point of overwhelm, but often what is still missing is a deep sense of satisfaction and fulfillment.
I believe it’s time for us to redefine how we view what a life purpose is to a more holistic perspective, what I term the Life On Purpose Perspective, that states that a life purpose is the context, vessel, or container into which we pour our lives. This vessel, being composed of our core values, our vision for what’s possible and the very essence of who we are as spiritual beings, all of which is bound together with Universal Love or our spiritual nature, has the power to then shape ALL of our life, including all that we do.
Said another way, our life purpose is who we are as spiritual beings and what we came here to be and to experience. Radical thinking perhaps. Certainly a way of thinking that can transform our lives.
Beth: Definitely!
We hear of “searching” for our life purpose, instead you suggest creating your life purpose. What is the drawback of searching for your purpose?
Brad: Another good point you bring to light. So many of us can get caught up in the “endless search mode” trying to find our life purpose out there in the world somewhere, that we spend most of our life searching for it in all the wrong places, and miss the joy of living our life purpose.
Or, we can also fall into a similar trap of searching for our life purpose within ourselves. We’re closer to the mark here, but once again, we can spend a lot of time searching and searching. But I believe we have all been given the freedom of choice, the ability to choose and to create our lives, including creating the context that will shape our lives.
Of course, this can be pretty daunting to many people, especially if you don’t consider yourself a creative person, which is why in the 4th Passage of the Life On Purpose Process, we have the Prime Your Passion Exercise that will guide people through this creating process.
Beth: I found that exercise excellent and encouraging.
Brad: I’ve been so blessed to be able to offer the Life On Purpose Process to the world, and I thank you for your questions and for the opportunity for me to express my own life purpose by sharing this possibility with your readers.
***
I am really excited to share this as well. I don’t want people stuck searching and searching for a life purpose, thinking, “Maybe something is wrong with me”, and “Maybe I really don’t have a purpose,” or “What if I pick the wrong purpose?”
We can create our purpose (Brad has some helpful questions and exercises in the book) – a purpose more about being than doing. And we can change, tweak, and polish our purpose as we learn and grow.
Until you create your purpose, it will be easy to fall into the too busy, too much stuff and not enough of a fulfilling life.
The book: Life on Purpose: Six Passages to an Inspired Life by Dr. Brad Swift.
Comfort Queen ~ Chapter 29 Intentions
Posted by: | CommentsIn Chapter 29 of Comfort Secrets for Busy Women , Jennifer Louden defines the 3rd of the Crooked Path Finders. Intention is “an aim that guides action.” So from Insights you discover your Yearnings, then you get into action through intentions.
One of the ways intention works is by bringing hope to the present. Intention works by showing the feelings behind your dreams. Instead of just visualizing what you want, you focus on how you want to feel.
Jennifer has an exercise for us – look through your insight and yearnings lists. Now ask, “How will I feel living this dream?” Intention helps keep you centered and less controlling. You don’t need to picture every detail of how you want your life to look. Instead keep how you want to feel as the focus of your intention.
Comfort Queen – cpt 28 Desires
Posted by: | CommentsIn Chapter 28 of Comfort Secrets for Busy Women , Jennifer Louden talks more about desire.ﾂ When you ask questions like,ﾂ “What do I want?” or “What do I yearn for?”ﾂ Jennifer says the answers that go in the direction giving you the feeling of genuine freedom are often the answers to follow.
The opposite is true. If a direction feels stifling, it’s probably someone else’s expectation, not yours. And where you feel a lack of freedom in your life, you are probably feeling dissatisfied.
I am re-reading the book, What Happy People Know by Dan Baker and one of the 12 qualities of happiness is the feeling of freedom. Happy people know they have choices. Unhappy people think life happens to them and they have very little choice.
Most of us have many more choices than we think. I read about people choosing lives of meaning instead of money. Or going skydiving at age 70. Or giving hugs at a mall. You just need to make sure you can live with the consequences.
You can make the choice to work less, change jobs, spend your evenings painting instead of watching TV, run less errands,orﾂ buy less.
Where in your life do you feel stifled?
What do you desire? What gives you the feeling of freedom?
It’s all too much
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Peter Walsh, the organizer from Clean Sweep, has a new book out called It’s All Too Much. I think it is the best book on decluttering I have ever read, and I’ve read a lot!
He makes it easier to get rid of your things, because he takes you to what it costs and helps you uncover the psychological reasons you are holding on to your things. Plus he knocks out your excuses to why you can’t declutter.
He says, “Decide here and now that you no longer want your stuff to overrun your life. Do you value you your stuff more than your relationships, dreams and vision?” Are you letting clutter steal your life?
Starting with your vision of how you want your home and life to be, Peter helps you decide what contributes to that vision and what hinders it.
Time to declutter!
Comfort Queen cpt 27: More Yearnings
Posted by: | CommentsIn Chapter 27 of Comfort Secrets for Busy Women , Jennifer Louden helps us decide how to narrow down our yearnings list. Most of us can’t do all our yearnings at once, due to time and energy constraints.
We can test our yearnings by asking some questions of each of our yearnings.
1. Will it make you feel alive and engaged?
2. Are you hoping your life will be changed or fixed by this yearning?
3. What are you willing to give up to make the time and energy for it?
4. Think of how this yearning will effect your relationships.
5. Decide which 3 yearnings you don’t want to live without.
Now Jennifer suggests putting your top 3 yearnings as how can I questions.
Like for my yearnings I would put, “How can I give others hope?” “How can I feel healthy and energetic?” and “How can I teach my kids life skills?”
Then play around with answering the question. See what comes up. Or don’t. Write it on an index card and post it. Let it seep into your mind. See what happens.
How to organize bookshelves
Posted by: | CommentsLike with like. I’ve heard this organizational idea quite often. Keep like things together. I thought I had been following it, until I did a bit of reorganizing last weekend.
First I worked on my bookshelves. I have one in my office, one in the bedroom and one in the living room. All three had various categories of books. And my office had three extra stacks of books that I started last year, but lost interest in.
The stacks of books taunted me and drained my energy. While the kids and my husband were gone, I took all my books and piled them into stacks according to category. Home, Creativity, Novels, Reference, Family, Personal Development, etc. Then I decided which category would go into which bookshelf. One category per shelf for the most part. The books that overfilled their shelf were first in line to be decluttered. And other shelves have room to grow. I labeled the shelves feeling rather organized.
I found some books that I may want to read this year that I never finished, so I listed them in a notebook. I didn’t want them to be forgotten. Once I read my current books I can check my notebook for what to read next. No more “to read” piles.
My library books are on my file cabinet. And finally, I have my stack of 5 books I am reading. I got the idea from Mark Forster’s blog post. I rarely read just one book at a time and this system allows me to flow through several books until they are completed. If another book catches my interest or I buy a new book, I can write them in my notebook and shelve them in their proper place until it is time to read them.
Has your life stopped at a pity party?
Posted by: | Comments“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” – William James
It could’ve seen like a bad day yesterday. Among other things I sent out a newsletter to all my subscribers with links leading to nothing. Because of all the activity the autoresponder made on my web host they made my site go down. No warning. One minute I sent out a newsletter. The next I am checking the site and nothing.
I thought it may have to do with a credit card that got a new expiration date this month. So after support sent me to billing, I put in my new card information. Later I got a note saying I was paid till next August.
That’s when they told me about the autoresponder situation. By this time I had quite a bit of email wondering why the links I sent them didn’t work.
I said I was moving systems anyway, which I am. They told me as long as I disabled the autoresponder they would put my site back up.
I emailed back letting them know I couldn’t disable the autoresponder because my site wasn’t up and I couldn’t get access to my control panel.
Finally hours later my site was up.
If I had spent my time whining about my site being down, wallowing in frustration or deciding it was too hard to deal withﾃつ my site would probably still be down.
However, as David Allen says in his book, “Ready for Anything” when you find yourself faced with challenges you need to do one thing, “Determine the next move.” This is for small crises like a site being down or big setbacks like a bad health diagnosis or a job loss.
“How do you want to be feeling about your situation and what action will bring you closer to that reality?” If we fall into the trap of why me and life stinks we move no closer to where we want to be. Life is what it is and complaining about our fate doesn’t help us.
Where in your life have you allowed self-pity and panic bring your life to a stand still? What is the next small action you can take to move your life in the direction you want it to go?
Comfort Queen Cpt. 26: Yearnings
Posted by: | CommentsIn Chapterﾃつ 26 of Comfort Secrets for Busy Women , Jennifer Loudenﾃつ discusses the role of the Crooked Path Finder, Yearnings, “Her role is to help us find what we desire but may be afraid or unaware of wanting, or unable to want.”
Some of my yearnings right now:
- Teaching life skills to my kids
- Taking a vacation in Montana with the family
- Making connections with new people, and deepening current connections
- Enrolling inﾃつ a drawing class
- Giving people hope
- Doing more fun things during the evenings
- Feeling heathier and more energetic
- Committing to early rising and creating that as a habit
- Feeling lighter in spirit
To discover your own yearnings, Jennifer says to ask your body what it’s saying. Write down what you like and dislike about your days. In what ways can you share pleasure with others. What do you want to be in the coming days? Where are you unhappy or stuck? What kind of information are you clipping or saving? What do you never seem to have time for? What types of things did you used to enjoy doing? Ask yourself what you want. Do you see any patterns emerging?
What can you give up for at least aﾃつ week to make more time to discover your yearnings or to do something about your yearnings?
Back Log
Posted by: | CommentsAfter a bout with food poisoning I got a little behindﾃつ on things like paperwork and email.ﾃつ I read in Mark Forster’s book Do It Tomorrowﾃつ that he puts all the backlogged papers in a file folder. All the email except for today’s goes into an email folder called back log.
He says it’s very hard to catch up if we are always doing the things that should have been done before. So I made sure today’s email and paperﾃつ was done (actually yesterday’s).
And then we think of the backlog as a project and make time to do it for a little while each day.
So last night I put my papers into a BackLog file folder and my email into a BackLog folder. Then I worked on my papers, email and task backlog this morning.
While I was in my email, I unsubscribed to various things so it is less likely I will have a backlog in the future. I took some of my tasks off my task list. And most of the papers I was able to throw out.
I have 181 messages to go through yet tomorrow, but I started with 500. So I should have no problem finishing up email tomorrow. I got about a third of the way through the mail/paper pile. So that will probably take a few more days.
But, I am feelingﾃつ more freeﾃつ already.
