Seeing is Believing; Believing is Achieving

The essential question is not, “How busy are you?” but “What are you busy at?”  “Are you doing what fulfills you?” — Oprah Winfrey

Rarely do we have only one issue or challenge to deal with.  There are usually several, all of varying and competing important.  So just what needs to be done and when?

Currently, this is the method that I’m using to decide that.  I’m writing this post in hopes that detailing the process will help someone else tackle both the day to day and long term goals.

After identifying them all I can list the areas of life that I’m working on in two ways — by order of importance and in order of time dependence (urgency).  When I do this, I often find that the things that are most important often aren’t the ones that are most urgent.   They truly are important; they just don’t need to be done right now.

This happens with many things:  exercise, meditations, writing my book(s), finding time for research, spending enough time doing enjoyable things with my children, working on my business ventures…

These are all activities that involve long term goals or practices that don’t necessarily create an immediate benefit.  These are quiet patience tasks that beckon to me gently and soothingly.  They murmur promises of great benefit if I will be devote my time and attention to their care.
Meanwhile, other tasks scream and clamor for my attention.  All demand to be attended to right now, right this second, don’t delay!  Each makes sure I’m aware of the benefit they can offer right now, and how important that is.  Examples of such noisy tasks are homework, studying, cooking, cleaning, immediate income needs, illness, sleep, and a moment to relax.

Now, the more I pay attention, or better put, the more I learn how to pay attention, the more I begin to see the “pay attention to me!” activities as tantalizing will-o-wisps who exist to distract me from what really matters.

Of course knowing is only half the battle;  the vital part is putting the knowledge to good use.

To bring my immediate tasks into better alignment with my goals and what I consider truly important, I have to correlate one with the other. I have to work on the long term while I deal with the right now or I’ll find myself without anything  I want achieved even years from now.

So how is that done?

The process I’m settling into now is to work on the long term in short bursts along with the immediate task its related to.  Both meditation and exercise help with getting my homework done, studying and staying healthy.  So as well as naming exercise & mediation and prayer as tasks in their own right, I’m including them as part of tasks they help with.

This means studying and homework sessions are interspersed with meditations on God, what is means to be a child of God, and what is means to be connected to both every living thing and the Divine.  It means I take short breaks to play a set of Pump it Up or spend ten minutes jumping rope or doing jumping jacks.

It is true that some things just need to have more, dedicated time made for them and one way to make that time is to combine things which don’t require much thought or resources.  To that end, I’m looking into a digital recorder which will allow me to create a transcript of the recording, so that my mind can be on writing, business or research while I’m cooking or cleaning or traveling without constantly thinking I’ll write that down later, or remember it.

I also abandoned my books to watch an episode of Inuyasha (our favorite cartoon) with the kids before hustling them off to bed, and I look forward to taking them to play pool and Pump it Up with me on Friday night — a combination of being able to relax and doing more enjoyable things with my children.

Diligent care and attention is needed when our goals don’t line up with our current realities but it is necessary to decide just what we believe is really important and tend to that in some way everyday.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Creating Your Own Reality, Life, Success, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.