Time, Mobility, Money (In That Order!)

I narrowed down to a list of 4 values with my Coach. I had to start by defining 30 values. I was stuck at 6. When I finally had a list of 30 and had to choose my 5 most important ones, I had trouble letting some of them go. Here are the 4 I chose and as I look at them now, they truly represent where I stand right now.

• Personal Power defined as strength, belief in myself, clarity.
  
• Authenticity defined as friendship, trust and being my authentic self.
  
• Continuous Learning defined as Knowledge, Achievement and Trying New Things.
  
• Freedom defined as Adventure, Choice and Variety.
  

Tim Ferriss of The 4-Hour Work Week defines the new goals of increasing time and mobility now rather than waiting for some vague retirement time which may not come. He discusses automating your cash flow so you can finance your mobility and use your free time to try new things. I like how he turns the old "Work until you can Retire" model on it's head. He makes me think differently and see possibilities in a model for life that I had never even considered. He shows you how to go now.

His principles align perfectly with my values. Sychronicity.

Two Things and Five Things

Two things I learned this week. Waiting is my way of procrastinating. If I am waiting for an answer from someone else, I am not responsible to act. By knowing this I can move past it. When I am about to make the most challenging step on a path to a goal, I tend to ask questions of others and then spend time waiting for the answers. It keeps me from having to take the big step.

The second thing I learned was to keep on trying when I was not getting the result I needed. (Hmmm that's new!) I reached a wall on a project that I was working on and I just kept calling to get another opinion until one person provided me with the lead I needed to move on to the next step. As a result, I made a huge leap toward the goal.

Just putting words onto these behaviors helps me to grow past them.

Jack Canfield says to do 5 things each day that move you towards your goal. I like that idea. 5 things a day for a year is more than 1800 things done to achieve your goals. Imagine contacting 5 PR sources for your business. Imagine contacting 5 people that can assist with production. Imagine meeting with a mentor each week to keep your momentum going. Do one thing to move you towards production of a prototype. Build your website. Have labels created. Have bar codes registered for your product. Contact 5 web sites that will carry your product. Contact 5 stores that might carry your product. 5 more things each day until one day you are looking back at what you have accomplished. Victorious retrospect.

A Series of Small Steps

When you have a big idea, it is exciting and motivating. Then you begin the actual execution of the tasks to make your idea become real. These are banal tasks that are seemingly unrelated to the exhiliaration of the goal. That makes them hard to do. Do them anyway. I have experienced this sequence before and it leads directly to the goal by completing one task and moving on to the next one. Some of the tasks are difficult and new. Some of them feel like showstoppers. Go around them. There is a new path just beyond.

I had dinner with a friend last night and she started a very successful business doing what she loves. She said when she is working she feels like this is exactly what she should be doing. She tried to think of her ideal life and what it would look like. And she says her ideal life and her real life are the same. What an achievement. We should all be that focussed.

Optimism

Nancy Davis wrote a book about optimism and MS. I ordered it immediately. I am frighteningly optimistic in thinking I can control this strange disease. I balk at the word disease as I type it. I refuse to think of it as a disease but rather just another thing that I can manage within my list of priorities. A little self deception? Maybe. Whatever gets you through the night. An attack could suddenly change my life. But I can also get hit unexpectedly by a bus. Could result in the same outcome. Yet....I do not worry about being hit by a bus. I will not worry about this as there is little affect that will have on my outcome.

Here is what the knowledge of a possible attack of MS should do. It should make me re-evaluate what I am doing with the precious minutes and days that I have available. Am I doing the things that I enjoy or am I doing the things that people my age do. I think it is the latter and I am making it the former. So....now armed with my list of things I want to do, I am carving out a new lifestyle for myself. “Every adversity and defeat carries the seed of an equivalent benefit, if we are ingenious enough to find it.”

This should not be an exercise related to an MS diagnosis but one which we should all do to create the life of our dreams. Ask yourself if you are you who you dreamed you would be when you were young? The answer to that will probably be "no". But the achievement of that is not beyond our reach. So how can we gradually change our lives to become who we had hoped to be. We all need to feel the momentum of new goals that we stretch towards and feel the victory of reaching new levels of ability in every area of our lives.

"The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is all in how you use them."

We all have precious time left and we want to be sure to do the things that make our hearts sing. Today, not someday.

No Space or Time

These are the kinds of things I think about when I am in the shower. Einstein said that the concept of space and time does not exist; that it is a human invention designed to organize our perceptions. It implies therefore that everything is happening in the present. I can put this in words but I cannot truly get my lovely adept human brain to comprehend this. Maybe it gets close to the reason why time seems to rush by faster as you get older. Maybe we become more able to deal with the concept and get closer to it's meaning by seeing time rush past. Maybe spirituality(not defined as religion) and science do meet on another plane at some point and we get closer to that as we get older. Maybe Einstein was a spiritually advanced human being as well as a mathematical genius. Is it possible that the two qualities emerged concurrently because they are related? I know that the time between getting ready to go in the morning and getting ready to go to bed at night seems to get shorter as I get older. Is this evidence of my emerging comprehension of the Einstein concept of space and time. Maybe evidence of spiritual growth. Maybe evidence of being too busy. A lot of Maybe's.

Big Idea! Starting Small!

Working on the big new idea. Breaking out of old patterns. I have spent my whole life as a great employee. Now those well honed talents can be used to achieve my new goals.

I am thinking that I do not want to be 70 and looking at the path not taken and wondering what if..... Boldness looks good on me. It puts an excitement into my step that I did not know was missing. When you are in love, love does that. It colours everything you do with a magical palette of intense colour. Finding your path can make you feel the same way. That explosion of colour also tells you that you are on the right path. Where am I going? I don't know but it certainly is fun getting there.

False Events Appearing Real (F.E.A.R.)

I have a plethora of great ideas for new businesses. Every time that I have an idea I write it into my notebook. Some ideas are discarded because it makes sooo much sense to discard them. Others I scope out in detail until....I figure out why I should not go forward. I seek reasons why each will not succeed. I magnify them in my mind until I am unwilling or unable to go forward. New honesty. It is called fear. Here is a wise thought.

"Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here is another. "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.... You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
Eleanor Roosevelt

I know these truths intellectually. It doesn't quell my fears. I do know that every time I have been afraid, but have gone forward (or been pushed forward), I have emerged stronger, wiser, and more enlightened. Knowing all these things does not change my fear. Yet if I keep doing what I have always done, I will get what I have always had. Old results. Not bad. I can see the new results waiting for me in the distance beyond my fear