I was talking last week with someone who asked about why life goes from one challenge to another… My pat answer was that without challenge there is no growth. Their reply was to ask why growth was so important anyway??? I had no answer to that. Without change there is only death. A rut is a grave without a stone. I’m sure we are familiar with these and other proverbs that encourage us to keep growing as people.

Like the tree in my picture – taken high in the mountains where there was only mist and rain to be seen – there are times you feel that you are first fighting through rock to breathe, and then have a never-ending battle with gravity and natural laws to keep growing. I think all of life is about growing, however the challenge is to make the best of the experiences that force us to grow.

So, how do we manage the growth cycle? I know from watching my garden there are a few things we can learn from nature:
1) When its time to grow, stretch everything, push through the rocks and reach for the sun.
2) After you have had a big growth spurt, rest a while, take time to settle into the new space you occupy.
3) When you know a new season is coming, take some time to prune back, don’t be in a hurry to grow until you have adequately shed that which is no longer healthy.
4) Too much of a good thing is bad, over-fertilize and you will burn the plants. Anything in excess can burn you.
5) Water is good, but if you overdo it then you end up with no nutrients. Keep a balance so that you don’t dry out but don’t flood away good either.
6) Growing past the toughest things like rock will only serve to make you strong, don’t try and hold back when the going gets tough.

Growth happens, how it happens – whether it will be good, healthy and positive; or negative, unhealthy and horrible – is up to you. Manage your growth and your life will be healthy and joy with satisfy you.

I have been gone a couple of months (you may have noticed), not because I was travelling or having a grand adventure, but because I was recovering. I went through the loss of a relationship last year, and towards the end of the year I needed some time to be quiet and reflect on life. What I find interesting is the number of people I speak to who do not go through recovering after some loss forced upon them, and are surprised that they are not coping with life at full speed.

What is it about our society that tells people they should just keep going full steam ahead? Why is it not OK to stop, grieve, reflect and recover when tragedy has struck? It seems that as a whole we expect people to go on as if nothing had happened, as if loss of relationships (of any sort – partners, friendships, family members) are simply a mere bump in the road, rather than a heartbreaking experience. We need to learn to stop.

Taking time to recover means stopping the busyness and slowing down. It means asking questions about the why and how, being able to allow doubt to cause you to re-evaluate your values and beliefs, and coming to a place that you are able to accept and be at peace with the loss. You simply cannot do this when you are going at a hundred miles an hour, it must be done in a place of rest and peace.

If you have never taken some time out to recover, then I suggest you may need to do it now. I know its the beginning of the year and there are goals to achieve and all that. I also know that in order to live your best life, you need to reconcile the losses of yesteryear. Whether they be recent or some time ago, perhaps now is a good time for you to recover before heading into 2012 all guns blazing? Stop, consider, recover.

I am ready for a new year with new challenges, I am at peace with the world. What about you?

Last week I started talking about managing our “to do” lists. Unlike famous blogger Leo Babuto, I am not a fan of ditching lists because I find them helpful. It clears my head to write lists, it helps me prioritize once I see things in writing, and makes my decisions easier.

So, write down the things you need to do – no need to sort the lists out, just keep track of the list really. This is known as “capturing” in most productivity systems. So, once you have it down, then you keep track of whether or not you have done it – simple, if I crossed it out, I did it. If not, its still there to do.

Feedback comes in the form of not having done something. We then need to figure out if it was part of a bigger goal, are we going to prioritize it next week or not? If not, are we adjusting the goal or simply leaving it be?

Having time to reflect on whether or not we have achieved our goals is important. Build time into your week to THINK. This might be the most valuable thing you do in your week! Just sitting there thinking about your life, your goals, your day-to-day activities is important. It will give you invaluable information about what your values are, what your priorities are and how you are managing life.

If you decide that you are not pleased with what you learn from reflecting on life, then it is time to make some decisions. You might need to start setting goals, or start using the goals you have set to more directly influence your “to do” list…. or you might need to start a tracking system that is going to give you feedback.

Questions? Comments? Please post them here!

Next week the Commonwealth countries of the world descend on Perth for a series of meetings. All of a sudden there are closed roads, changes in holidays and police all over the place. From my perspective, it just means more on the list of things to do, because now I have to check I can access the places I meant to go, check the shops will be open, etc. Like I didn’t have enough on the list!

Someone mentioned the other day that it was 10 1/2 weeks until Christmas, imagine that?! I know it has been coming for the previous 365 days, but I still feel a little taken by surprise. Why? Because I seem to have a never-ending list of things to do that take my attention from the goals and future to the now, the immediate, the urgent. So, what do we do to manage better???

Step one for me is making sure I keep my goals in mind. I read through my annual goals every few weeks to remind myself what I had decided would be important to me this year (I wrote about this at here). Focus on the future.

Step two is that as I travel through life week-to-week I make sure that my “to do” list is about linking back to the goals I set. Some things are part of life (see the mundane blog) and we just need to get them done, but also then we have choices about what we focus on…and making sure the to do list is about the goals we set is a key.

Step three is reflection and evaluation, which is often about writing things down. By tracking what we do, we have feedback that tells us how we are doing with the goals. Its not always fun, e.g. if we said we are going to save $20 a week and then track our money and find that we have saved $20 a month, that sets a challenge… the question is what we do with that challenge…

I will follow up with what we do with feedback to keep managing the “to do” list next week…

There is that old saying “stop and smell the roses” which encourages us to slow down our lives and remember that beauty is all around us. Taking a minute or three to stop and appreciate the world is wonderful! However, if you are like me, then you find yourself living at a pace that means you are rushing through life, slowing only for the sharp corners. When you realise this, you suddenly want to yell “stop the planet, I want to get off!!”

The question is how we build a balance into our lives so that we can do the things we need to, but also have time to enjoy nature. I suggest that it is possible, but it requires us to make deliberate choices daily, weekly, monthly and annually. I suggest the following steps all are a move in the right direction:
1) Be clear about your vision. Know what it is you are living for, and if you are not sure then take some time to work on this.
2) Once you are clear about your vision, set good goals that will help you get to the vision step-by-step. I set goals annually, however some of those are sub-goals to a larger goal that might take several years to complete. However, I know that I am working towards something I want in my life.
3) Review your goals regularly and allow them to guide your decisions about where you spend your time, energy and money daily. If you have 20 things to do this week, then make sure that most of them are contributing to a goal you have set.
4) Organize your time to work with the goals, making your “things to do” lists part of the overall plan.
5) Track yourself and review how you are going on a regular basis. I suggest quarterly because it is easy to be reminded when the seasons change.

This is not “foolproof” as a way of living more deliberately, but it will take you a good way down the road to being more in control of your own life, and enable you to resist the pull to busyness… so that you can stop and smell the roses

I have just returned from spending time in two third world countries. I love travel, and meeting friends (old and new) was wonderful. However the reality check hits when you get home from such a trip. We have SO MUCH STUFF!

Living simply is something we as individuals determine, there is no standard that one person can set for another. But, certainly for those of us who have so much and are blessed with abundance, it is good to be reminded that we live in a wide world where we should think about others. If you want to know where you fit (particularly those in Australia!) then check out http://www.globalrichlist.com/

If you are like me, then you have just been surprised to find out how well off you are. Time to reconsider how much more “stuff” you need in the house? Time to think about whether you should sponsor a child through an NGO? Time to give not only money, but your time and talent to an organization in your community? Probably!

Before buying more to fill your life with, check that you need it. Before adding to the pile of non-consumables in your home, decide where your priorities are…can I ask you to please:
Live simply so others can simply live

Ever felt that you wanted a fresh start? Ever felt that life was overwhelming and your mistakes too many? In my experience, we have all been there. Mistakes, bad choices, unanticipated consequences…these all make us want to start over. Just as when we write in the sand at the sea and the ocean washes it away, we can have a fresh start tomorrow.

Life doesn’t give us the kind of new start that eliminates these things. BUT life does give us the chance to start fresh ourselves. You can choose to be different, to do different, to move forward… you can get up out of the dirt and dust yourself off and keep running the race. In fact, if you are ever going to finish, this is what you must do. How?

Step one, forgiveness. I know its hard to forgive others, even harder to forgive yourself. We are only human and mostly doing the best we can. In order to move forward, you must let go of the past. Recognise the lessons, learn them well…then let go of recrimination and guilt.

Step two, love. Surround yourself with people that love you – they are there, it might just feel like you have to look hard. Find them, connect with them, let their love fill your heart and mend the broken pieces. Love others, love with reckless abandon! Don’t punish those who do love you for the mistakes of those who never did.

Step three, focus. Don’t sit and think about what is gone, don’t ruminate over what could have been “if only”. Remember, you let it go in step 1. So, now it is time to dream, time to focus on the future. You are now in the place where you get to create tomorrow… it can be a tomorrow based on the mistakes of the past, drowned in shadows of condemnation… or it can be a tomorrow based on what you learned and have decided to do, based on choice.

These things will take an enormous effort of your will. Want a “do over”? Forgive, love and focus!

In times of reflection lately, it occurs to me that a great deal of life is lived in the mundane. Most of our time is spent doing the cooking, cleaning, laundry, travel to and from (work, school, etc.). It seems far too easy to lose sight of the adventure that this life is when the mundane colours in most of our day. How do we keep perspective?

I think there are a few things we can do to keep focused on the adventure that this life is.
1) Never take for granted loving someone. Express how you feel, let them know how special they are!

2) In the midst of the mundane create moments of adventure and passion everyday. This may be stopping to really smell the roses, taking time to laugh with someone, refreshing your screensaver with a photo from your last holiday, sending a letter to encourage someone… We have time everyday to experience moments of life’s adventure.

3) Take time to be thankful. Say your prayers before a meal, write a gratitude journal for a month, tell the bank teller thanks for their service. Everyday, be thankful.

4) Inspire others. As you travel through the mundane, you will run into people who have lost their way, lost their passion, or are overwhelmed by the mundane. Live an inspirational life! Encourage them to dig out their passion, chase their dreams, find their magical moments in the middle of the mundane.

Yes, most of life is lived in the mundane…and every mundane moment allows the adventure of life to shine ever more colourfully and glow ever more brightly… I encourage you to engage in the adventure that life is… live, love, laugh!

In just a few weeks I will be offline again, off to a country born in division, torn by strife and bathed in the blood of the innocent… and in preparation for being in “the most dangerous country in the world” I have worked on my will, thought about what I would like to leave people in terms of memories, and generally wondered about how one approaches the idea of death. That is when I had the Jerry Maguire moment… “the things we think and do not say” because I realised that we live emotionally like we under the communist might of a military regime.

Sound extreme? When is the last time that we really told people what we thought of them? When is the last time that we were plain honest about how important, valued or precious someone is in our lives? Usually seldom! In my experience most people don’t say these things because they are afraid of being hurt, afraid that the other person won’t love them back, afraid of feeling rejected….

So we live emotionally restricted lives, where we say few things to select numbers of people. We lavish praise on events but not people, we appear to value productivity and not producers, we spend our energy pursuing goods and not relationships. Yes, I agree, it is a dangerous way to live to be emotionally honest. It is in some ways a crazy thing to do to tell someone you love them or value them, not being sure about how they feel. But, what would the world look like if we all banned the military from our emotional lives and said what we felt about people? How wonderful would it be to hear that you are loved, valued, important to someone?

Perhaps we can start a new movement? A movement where we say what we feel about people and don’t hide in case of hurt, where we accept the risk of pain in order to allow the other to know love! Want to join me?

This post could have been titled “the power of role modelling”, because ultimately we learn what we learn from others. A tale for reflection…

Once upon a time (like all good tales start) lived a little girl in an apartment with her daddy. At the age of five she began school, waking up early, getting dressed and heading off…sometimes dressed with the correct socks and shoes, sometimes not. Since there was no one to role model, she simply wore what seemed right. Breakfast, hair brushing, teeth brushing and suchlike were not part of life, indeed she just headed out whenever. One day she made friends with another little girl down the road and they started going to school together, then she started getting to that friend’s house earlier and found out about breakfast! A new concept… role modelled by the kind mother of the friend. After school the little girl would take whatever money had been left around for her to buy food, she took herself to the shops and then bought whatever a child given a free reign would buy… biscuits, cakes and icecreams. The foodstuff of heaven… and in her world entirely normal. Life went on thus, and eventually the little girl grew up and knew lots about being normal from watching temporary role models through TV, movies and the lives of friends. Unfortunately, the most important things in life are not role modelled in this way…

And there lies the moral of the story, that we need to think about what we role model for others because often we can major on the manners at the table, when the person we are working with doesn’t even know how to engage in a healthy conversation! May kindness and compassion enlighten us as we walk through life and encounter those who do not know “normal”! Not everyone has the privilege of family, home, warmth and good role models…Don’t presume to judge the actions of others until you know their story…and then may compassion and mercy be your response.