Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Me, Myself and Everyone Else

So much to do.  So little time.  Twenty four hours a day just doesn't cut it.  Need to clone myself - cubed!  I am one of those people who are a magnet for multi-tasking.  But there is a yin to my yang.  I do love to have some free time to focus on only the things that I really feel like doing.  Not included on that list is: dusting, vacuuming, paying bills, ironing (if you fold it right from the dryer and put it away does it miraculously emerge from the closet wrinkle free?) washing dishes, grocery shopping and cooking.  Oh, and did I mention working outside of the house stuff like marketing, accounting, customer service, follow up calls, invoicing, etc., etc., etc.?  The list could go on, I choose to not.

Interestingly, a couple of ideas came to me via emails these past two days.  From one source that sells inspirational and motivational, reader friendly books, was the idea that the manner in which we conduct our personal lives and work might not be as effective as we might think. The example given was, in a ten second time frame draw as many triangles as you can on a piece of paper. I drew some twenty odd.  When I continued reading I was in for quite a surprise.  Suppose you drew connecting 'w's' on a paper and then a straight line at top and another at the bottom.  Do you think that you could draw more triangles than you did before in that same ten-second period?  You better believe it!  I more than doubled my count.

It gets you thinking about what could have been accomplished in the same amount of time if thought and organization precluded the act of  [insert whatever you would like to accomplish in here].

The other email that I received was for a dial-in, one-minute meditation at noon on Monday. I missed that time [not a big window of opportunity] but decided to persevere.  The woman who sent the email is an amazing yoga/meditation instructor and I really did want to experience a small break in my day.  I emailed her back that I wasn't always available during the set time and was there anything that she could do to help me out.  Wonderful woman that she is, she sent me a direct link to receive a free two-minute meditation that I could experience any time, and as often as I wanted and/or needed.  

That brief two minutes was exactly what the doctor ordered.  While we don't always feel that we have enough hours in the day to accomplish our important list of things to do, ignoring ourselves, initially putting ourselves on the back burner, is not necessarily the best way to handle it.

Years ago when I started studying Kabbalah, our teacher, Sarah, spoke about how important we, as parents, are.  She gave the very good example of aircraft safety.  When the oxygen masks fall from the ceiling compartments we are told to first affix our own mask and then our child's.  Why?  Well, if we pass out from lack of oxygen while we're trying to take care of our child[ren], we may all end up in dire straits.

In essence, if we take care of ourselves, we can take care of others.  Better management of our time, our physical and our spiritual beings, is what helps us and allows us to help others. Simple concept, yes, too often ignored.

Shakespeare expressed it best when he wrote    -      "Self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting."       In the classified ads of life, martyrs need not apply.


Light, Love & Lots of Energy