There are two primary ways of looking at your life. Actually, either you look at your life or you don’t look at your life. Everyone does each of these some time. A few people examine their lives all the time. A few people never examine their lives.

But almost all of us are in the middle. We spend most of our time only thinking about our lives a little bit. Then from time to time we go through a stage of thinking about our lives obsessively. In other words, 80% of the time we think about our lives 20% of the time. And 20% of the time we think about our lives 80% of the time.

I have had two incidents recently that brought this into focus for me.

First, I have a great life coach named Jenifer Landers (see Fully Expressed Coaching). One of her constant themes is to leave an opening for something to happen. Leave an opening for someone to enter your life. Leave an opening for good things to occur. Leave an opening, leave an opening, leave an opening.

Then I hired two people in my business who have the profiles of really great leaders. And it didn’t take long before they were volunteering to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I heard lines like “Well, I can do that tonight. I have time available between 11 o’clock and midnight.”

The first thought that pops into my mind is . . . If you don’t leave an opening in your life for a personal life to show up, then it never will.

There is an assumption among many people that your personal life is the time that is left over after all the business and commitments are taken care of. But if you really want to have a personal life, you need to set aside time for it to happen. Whether it’s playing a sport, collecting something, or going out into the woods to have a good time, you need to put it on your schedule!

There are certain things in this world that expand to take up all the space available. Work can be like that if you don’t set boundaries around it. I try to leave work at 5:00 PM every day. I’m rarely there at 5:30. There is enough work to do. I could stay until midnight every night, work seven days a week, and never catch up.

And what would be the point of that? What would I have at the end of every day except another day just like the one completed? When I hear people say “I have no personal life” all I can think of is how they put themselves in that position. If you don’t make time for a personal life it certainly won’t show up on it’s own. Even if you don’t know what to do with yourself, that’s okay. Set aside the time and see what you want to do!

Workaholism kills.

Besides, you’re a much more interesting person when you have more than one dimension.

:-)

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By Karl W. Palachuk, author of the book Relax Focus Succeed. Please visit the RFS web site at www.relaxfocussucceed.com and sign up for our free newsletter.

Palachuk relax focus succeed

Mo attends to a revival and listens to the sermon. After a while, the pastor asks anyone with needs to come forward and be prayed over. Mo gets in line and, when it’s his turn the pastor asks, “Mo, what do you want me to pray about?” Mo says, “Pastor, I need you to pray for my hearing.” So the pastor puts one finger in Mo’s ear and the other hand on top of his head and prays for a while. He removes his hands and says, “Mo how’s your hearing now?” Mo says, “I don’t know pastor, it’s not until next Monday.

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I loved my father. And one of the things I loved the most was his sense of humor.

One time we were driving across country from our old home in North Dakota to our new home in Washington State. Alongside the freeway were telephone poles. Mile after mile. Hundreds of miles after hundreds of miles.

Whenever we drove alongside railroad tracks, there were short telephone poles. I don’t know if they were telegraph lines (this was the 1960’s) or whether the train companies just used short telephone poles because they didn’t have to deal with buildings.

It didn’t matter. My father had a great explanation. I asked why the telephone polls were short and my father immediately explained: “They’re for when children make phone calls.”

Even at the time I realized how very funny that is. In addition to being a great explanation, close enough to believable to get a kid thinking, it was also a fast answer. I appreciated my father’s quick wit.

And more than 40 years later I still think that’s funny.

We travelled 1100 miles. And I remember one joke plus coloring books in the back of a station wagon.

After all these years, the interesting conclusion is very unexpected. The conclusion is that you never really understand a transition until after it’s complete.

I have a few memories of visiting North Dakota, but no strong memories of when I lived there. Once we moved to Washington State I remember a lot — even a lot about our first year there. Somehow that trip was a big enough event that it became a transition from “too young to remember” to a series of memories I savor many years later.

How can you understand the road you’re travelling without reflection? The truth is, you can’t. At the same time, there isn’t any other road. You can’t stop being on “this” road and begin being on a different road. The most you can hope for is that you build the road in front of you and create your own detour.

You can be on any road you want. But you have to start from where you are today.

The good news is that you build your road every day and you can be lazy (going nowhere) or purposeful (heading where you want). In terms of meaning, it’s hard to force meaning into your daily journey. You can try, and you should try, but evaluation of such things always involves looking backward.

When I consider all the great memories of my father, I didn’t know at the time that those moments would be the moments I would keep forever. Looking back, just less than half of my life’s journey involved travelling the road of life with my father. And now they’re powerful snippets filled with meaning for me.

Changes can be hard. Transitions can be hard. Building a detour you didn’t want to build can be hard.

But every day you can look at where you are and where you want to go and head in that direction. Life goes on. Memories are powerful motivators. At the same time, you need to be vigilant. You never know which tiny thing you experience today will become a lasting memory you’ll have forever.

It helps to sit quietly and let you life’s experiences sort themselves out in your mind. For that I recommend daily reflection, or a walk/jog without headphones. Spend time being alone with yourself without an outside source of distraction.

:-)

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A newsboy was standing on the corner with a stack of papers, yelling, “Read all about it; Fifty people swindled!” Fifty people swindled!

Curious, a man walked over, bought a paper, and said, “Hey kid, this is an old paper, where’s the story about the big swindle?”

The newsboy ignored him and went on calling out, “Read all about it; Fifty-one people swindled!”

:-)

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