Spreading Ourselves too Thin

You wake up and go to make breakfast.  As your toast is cooking in the toaster, you cue up the tassimo for some nice coffee.  Your toast just finishes cooking and rush to spread the butter on the toast so it melts nicely but the unthinkable happens, there is not enough butter.  You try to "make it out" scraping every last scrap of butter onto your bread, but it just isn't enough. 

Has this every happened to you?  In the end you eat that piece of toast but it is never that satisfying. 

This post isn't intended to be about bread and toast but rather something that happens much to often in our lives; spreading ourselves too thin.  We are guilty of at some point taking on way more than we can handle.  This usually result in one of three things:
-something falls through the cracks
-we become unhappy with how we are stretched so thin
-the things we can get done aren't to our potential

I am as guilty as the next person for this.  In fact, since the new year began I am realizing just how thinly stretched I made myself for the final 4 months of last year.  As I reflected on it I realized just how impactful it had been on my life; and not in a good way.

I realized that always having to be go-go-go with no downtime for personal enjoyment can really wear a person down (whether in cancer recovery or living our day to day lives).  Even though life has started to return to a semblance of normalcy, I find myself wanting to just to do nothing in an attempt to counter balance the months of being so busy.

During that time I didn't get to do as much photography as I am used to.  As many of you know, photography is more to me than just taking photos.  It is a chance to challenge my brain, see things in a different light, and just a great oppurtunity to get outside in the fresh air.  Since the new year has started I have noticed it is much harder to get back into this hobby, but without it I realized how unhappy I was becoming.  So I have taken steps to infuse photography back into my life.

The other thing that has fallen through the cracks is updating here on the blog.  It is not for lack of posting ideas, I have plenty.  It more comes down to not feeling up to writing a post, opting to just relax instead.  But it isn't just that, I have plenty of ideas to talk about but they range vastly in topics.  Originally I had created multiple websites, which turned out to be a nightmare to maintain and resulted in it being so overwhelming none got maintained.  While lying in bed trying to fall asleep I had an epiphany, this blog is for my thoughts and reflections regardless of the topic.  And so I have decided to streamline everything into this blog.  Not only will it be easier to maintain but will allow for many different topics and will keep the content much fresher. 

I am also trying to get back into the habit and routine of doing a couple posts a week again.  I have found that the best posting habit is usually a tues, thurs, and maybe saturday routine.  Everyday is just too much work to write, and too many posts for you to read :) 

This was kind of a rambling post but there is a moral to this.  Be careful you don't stretch yourself too thin.  Inevitibly it will happen and you will be forced to deal with it.  Take time to step back and look at your life's "pie" (that we discussed two weeks ago), access where you are spending all your time and eliminate the waste.  Just remember to not eliminate the things that make you happy like I did.  Not only are they difficult to get bad started up again, not having them makes for a very unhappy life.

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Reflect then Resolve

I wrote recently about how we are often not successful in our New Year's Resolutions because we come at it from the wrong angle.  Instead of just randomly picking resolutions we should take the time to analyze our life's pie and what's important to us. 

Before any resolutions can be made there is something that must be done first; reflecting on the year that has passed.  This is such an important step that so many people often ignore or forget at the beginning of each year.  In your reflections take time to look at:
  - what worked for you in the past year and what didn't
  - was your time allocated to the slices of your life that you wanted most
  - did you achieve your goals for the year
  - what would you like to change going forward

All these reflections give us insight and set the blueprint for the goals for our upcoming year.  Without them our resolutions won't hold the same strength and be much harder to achieve.

Even though I use it from time to time, I don't like the term resolution.  To me it is whimsical and fluffy often made with little to no thought minutes before midnight on New Years Eve.  I propose instead of making resolutions we should be making goals or objectives for our New Year. 

The first step to goal setting is reflecting, as I stated above.  Because lets face it, how are you going to set goals that set in motion change in your life if you don't know what it is you are going to change?  After that follow the SMART principles of goal setting and you shall be fine.
  S - Specific
  M - Measurable
  A  - Attainable
  R  - Realistic
  T  - Time Bound 

Instead of setting a resolution like "I want to be healthier" or "I want to lose weight" the SMART principles will help you set a goal with a plan in place.  Make your goal more specific with something that can be measured.  For instance, "I want to lose weight by working out 3 times a week".  

When setting this goal make sure it is not only attainable but realistic.  If you can barely remember the last time you worked out, setting a goal of working out everyday is not very realistic or attainable.  Setting goals like this are only setting ourselves up for failure. 

Finally, no one says your goal needs to be a year long endeavour.  Something that is much achievable is make it a 3 or 4 month goal.  This shorter timeline is no only much less daunting, but it allows you to build momentum throughout your year. 

Even though it is almost 2 weeks into the New Year, take some time and set yourself up for success; reflect then resolve.  No one said your resolutions had to start on January 1st ;)

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Rebalancing Life's Pie

With the beginning of a New Year, come New Year resolutions for many people  Unfortunately, now that is is a couple of days into the New Year most people have already failed at keeping some of their resolutions.
-Why are resolutions so hard to achieve?
-Are we setting the wrong resolutions?
-Are we looking at it from completely wrong perspective? 

I personally think most of us are taking the wrong perspective.  In order for our resolutions to succeed I think they all have to have a very specific purpose.  We have to look at our daily lives as a pie.  Each thing that is important to us, are pieces of the pie. The longer we spend on something, the bigger the slice of the pie it takes, therefore shrinking the other slices of pie in our lives. 

Instead of spending all of our time building random resolutions, I think we should instead spend time analyzing our pie. 
-What slices are most important to us?
-Are we allocating the proper amount of time to each of these slices? 

Obviously this isn't a perfect science, as life will always pull on us and make other slices get larger.  But we need to actively make sure we are re-allocating our time to the things most important to us.  This is the key to setting our resolutions.  They should be aligned with creating the our "perfect" pie.

When our resolutions are focused like this we will be much more successful in achieving them.  And by achieving them, we will create a happier lifestyle. 

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