Being in the Driver's Seat of My Life

As I contemplate this new year, I want to make sure that my heart and I are in the driver's seat.  I am not sure exactly how it happened, but in recent years the pace of my life has been accelerating such that I feel like I am exhaustingly busy...all the time...and yet at the same time, I have very little time for what is important to me.

Readers will recognize the "no-time-for-exercise" and "no-time-for-writing" laments.  Those are priorities in my life.  How did they get pushed to the margins?

Yesterday I read part of an article by a women who entered 2015 with a pledge to exercise every day. She too was very busy, so she knew that it would be important to bite off manageable exercise chunks.  Her goal for that year was "15 for '15." She would commit to exercising for 15 minutes every day.  It had to be hard exercise: she had to sweat and get her heart rate up.  She knew that no matter how busy she was, she could get in 15 minutes each day. When she wrote the article toward the end of '16 she had not only accomplished her goal for 2015, but was on track to do so again for the year just ended.*

I was inspired.  Even on the busiest of days, I can do 15 minutes of exercise.

As soon as I had that realization, I had another reckoning.  I could write 15 minutes every day.  Now that is certainly something I know in my heart is core to who I am.  Decades before most people begin to show visible signs of arthritis in their hands, two of my fingers bulge and one is bent.  These are the exaggerated manifestations of signs of the writer in me that I've carried since I was 10.  How could I not give writing 15 minutes a day?

These seem "no-brainers." Yet there have often been days in the last decade or two when I have hardly had time to go to the bathroom or take on nourishment.  At the same time, I did manage to attend a lot of useless meetings.  I met with people I didn't care to spend time with, out of a sense of obligation.  Just that quickly, my 15 minutes of writing and exercise evaporated.

Sometime ago, and I'm not sure when it was, I discovered that if I were to spend time with people I cared about I needed to schedule the time.  FOMO--fear of missing out--had grabbed hold of my calendar.  I relish the time that Amy Frost and I spend twice month, sharing our intentions for the spiritual journey.  When I had the opportunity to spend more than a day with my college roommate in October, I realized how much I miss her and how I value her presence in my life.  I am so excited that we've committed to walking and talking together, something we enjoy, but this time, thanks to the wireless world, by phone.  On bad weather days, we will Skype and drink tea (her) and coffee (me.) Another valued friend has reached out to schedule Skype with me.  I can't remember when we last had time together, but I cringe to think it was last winter or spring.

At the core of my spiritual knowing is that we are intended to listen to our guidance and follow it...when it is given.  I have great stories to tell about the magic that occurred when I did so, and equally disappointing tales of when I didn't follow or followed two or three years later.  Yet, whether the commitment is to lunch, to talk with a friend of a friend, or to finish teaching a course which I'd committed to teach until May when my guidance in February is to move out of state, those commitments get in the way of my followership.

I also believe that the very best things are the spontaneous ones.  I used to call another friend at the end of a work day, and we'd hatch a plan for a thrown-together dinner or a movie or just a walk around the Mall. Once we created a beautiful stool for my kitchen over a bottle of prosecco.  (She's the artist; I did the grunt painting. It was fun nonetheless.) As I have less and less spontaneous time, we've spent less and less time together, an incredible disappointment to me.

And, it isn't just people.  I've wanted to take some MOOCs--free massive online courses offered by prominent universities.  Just this morning I discovered an inspiring design class and a future-cities architecture class, both offered by the University of Zurich.  I can feel my heart racing even as I write about these two topics for which I have great interest.

I also found a health and wellness certification class for coaches, an endorsement for a topic for which has interested me since my grandmother first talked to me about vitamins and organic vegetables when I was 10. I've been enrolled in the class twice before and had to drop it. Some of these things have to be scheduled or I miss out.

As I stand on the cusp of an era in which I've pledged to be true to my heart, which do I do?  Do I schedule things so that I make sure the important things happen, or do I hold the space for the spontaneous, knowing I will miss much without it and also knowing that I will miss much without scheduling?  How to I remain true to both of these things? And, how do I make sure I still have time for the 15 minutes of exercise and writing.

As I write this, I am reminded that beginning from my childhood, I wanted to dance.  My mother didn't want me to dance.  As I got older, I was too busy to take lessons and didn't have an interested partner.  Then, in 1995 when my neck broke spontaneously, and I teetered on the cusp of quadriplegia or death, I knew beyond doubt that if I walked again, walk being the operative word, that I must dance.  I did walk. I did dance.  It brings me more pleasure than almost anything in my life...and I make time for it. I schedule a car, usually a week or two in advance.  And, yes, occasionally I don't feel like going, and I cancel the car.

I also make time for cooking, something I find I  much more enjoyable when it is spontaneous than when I plan an event to cook for.

When I worked more closely with leadership teams to increase their effectiveness, I  developed a meeting management concept that most found extremely valuable.  For a couple hours before their weekly meeting, they would submit two categories of agenda items.  First were things that were urgent and without a decision in the next week, there would be irreversible consequences. Then, they were to submit topics that were important to the future of their enterprise, but for which they never had time to talk.  At the start of the meeting, items were ordered.  Rarely were items of such urgency that dire consequences would occur if they weren't discussed. By giving thoughtful dialogue to one or two really important items, they did the important work of consciously choosing the path for their organization's future...and often resolving "urgent" items along the way.

Here I am on January 1 with no clear answers about what is the right approach for time in my life. I wonder if the right answer is that there are no right answers for every day. I just need to be fully present to my intentions, acting at the time instead of reacting to my calendar.  What comes to me is that if I take the learning from my meeting management approach, starting each day with what is urgent and what is important for that day, my spiritual priorities may just resolve themselves without any "right" path which works for every situation.



*Alyssa Shafer, "The Do-It-Daily" challenge, Dr. Oz The Good Life magazine, Jan/Feb 2017, P. 48.

Feelin' Alive

An odd thing happened about 8 p.m. last evening: I started to feel.  Not emotionally; I seem to do well with that.  What I started to feel was alive. 

I had pledged for months that, as soon as I was through Thanksgiving, I would begin to work "normal" hours.  Until that point, I was boxed into long-term commitments with clients.  For months, I had been very judicious about accepting new work so that I would continue to dig my hole deeper. 

Yesterday was one week since we went back to work after Thanksgiving.  Last week I did work shorter hours but I was in training two days, so I did attend to things before and after class.  Yesterday was the first "regular" work day since Thanksgiving and my first "regular" work day for over a year.  I actually worked the number of hours I am scheduled to work. 

What was even better is that I could work at a sane pace.  For months, I'd felt like I was juggling so many glass balls that I couldn't possibly keep them in the air, but also couldn't let any drop.  I could feel the tension mount in my shoulders even as I would be walking toward my office in the mornings.  Yesterday, I just took on one task after another and completed each, allowing myself to be totally absorbed in what I was doing--being present. 

I did stay 15-20 minutes late last night, time that I actually relished, because I was relaxed and just pulled a couple things off the stack on my desk that has been mounting for a year.  This morning I continued, sorting through a stack of rolled up chart pad pages that have been accumulating, and I was able to almost empty that corner of clutter of the room.  I am astounded at how relaxed I have been the last two days...and what a difference that has made in how I feel.

That brings me back to what I felt last evening.  I got home 2-1/2 hours earlier than usual.  I had a nice dinner that I could actually enjoy because I wasn't falling asleep in my soup.  Then I paid a few bills and balanced my checking account.  This may all sound pretty mundane, but I haven't had energy or focus to do anything that required thought for months.

All that, and it was still before the time I normally got home.  :-)  I almost didn't know what to do with myself, but that was the point when I realized what I was feeling.  The deep exhaustion that had worn on me for so long was gone.  I had energy.  My head was clear enough to concentrate, and I actually had time, energy, focus, and enthusiasm to plan a weekend trip with a friend.  None of this would have been possible even a week earlier. 

Today I began to feel glimmers of optimism.  I actually volunteered to help a colleague on something, and I'm contemplating assuming a responsibility that a different colleague has been urging me to take for some time.  I am doing so with a view not to overload myself again, but I delighted to have the option to choose to take on something else.  I've felt so buried for so long that I didn't have the choice.  Now I do.  Choice is a powerful intoxicant, and I am dizzy with joy for being back in the driver's seat in my life.

Now, one step at a time forward....