My post yesterday hit quite the nerve. It appears more of you need to turn into dragons and guard the finite, yet infinitely valuable treasure of your time. Only give your time away to those activities and people that/who are inspiring and rewarding to you. Take this weekend to carefully consider if you have been carelessly, thoughtlessly, and perhaps even “self-harmingly” giving away too much of the greatest treasure of your own precious time. No one will be your dragon, but you. Be that dragon and respect other dragons. In the Asian Zodiac, people with the dragon element are “charismatic, intelligent, confident, powerful and they are naturally lucky and gifted.” (credit: depts.washington.edu) Own and cultivate your inner dragon. Deep down, your dragon is within you. Go to your depths to discover your beautiful, ferocious, protective inner dragon.
Happy Friday, my fellow dragons!! Thank you for spending your valuable time here at the blog. I hope that you find it to be time well spent. Writing this blog every morning is one of my all-time favorite ways to spend my time. Every Friday (which is my favorite day of the week), I focus on favorites – usually tactile, material favorites, such as real gold coins. I love gold. I consider gold to be a favorite. However, today’s favorite is liquid gold. It is the best stain remover that I have come across yet. The other day I was wearing a new cream colored shirt that depicts all four of my children’s shared university. I love this shirt, and it was only the second or third time that I had ever worn it. It appears that I splashed spaghetti sauce on it, but I was negligently unaware of that fact, and so I washed the cream colored shirt and I dried it, only to discover the ugly orange sauce spots after pulling the shirt out of the dryer. (I’m taking a pause to breathe some fire here.) However, I soon breathed a sigh of relief, because I knew that I had a bottle of Incredible! stain remover (you can get this on Amazon, of course) in my cabinet. Incredible! lives up to its name and it can be used on so much more than clothing. Buy yourself a bottle of Incredible! in order to house a little bit of peace of mind, in a bottle, in your cabinet.
Have a wonderful weekend spending the most valuable treasure of your own time wisely! See you tomorrow!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
We have had a fair amount of death and dying and serious illnesses in our extended family in the last year or so. There is nothing that makes you reflect on your own life and how you live it, like someone else’s death. Yesterday, I wrote about going through my old daily journals from this past decade. I also went through my prayer box. (When I tell you that I love to write, I’m not lying. I am always looking for excuses to write more stuff down.) Yesterday, I opened up all of the little papers in my prayer box, and I can honestly tell you that already 90 percent of my prayers in my prayer box have been answered, and these answered desires exist in my life today. (Time for me to get crackin’ on some more desires, wishes and prayers.) Gratitude is living the life that you prayed for, and being in awe of the miraculous process of how it all comes into being. Gratitude is taking the pause to say thanks and to feel that thankfulness from your deepest depths.
Another thing that I have been deeply pondering lately is the worth of my time. Recently I got back in touch with a good friend from my past, whom I have always felt an instant kinship to, any time that we meet. The last time that we reconnected with each other was in this past December and I hadn’t seen nor spoken to her in over ten years before then, and yet it was like I had just seen her yesterday. Don’t you just love relationships like these? We both raised our kids in the old-fashioned traditional way, where our husbands were the main breadwinners and we were the family managers, mostly staying at home, with just odd part-time jobs here or there. (She has three kids. I have four.) Earlier this week, I texted her to see if we could connect today on a call, and I asked if she would be available around 11 a.m. She wryly replied that she would pencil me in. I got a kick out of her reaction. (We’ve always laughed together a lot.) Still, it made me realize how much more protective of my own time I’ve become, especially lately as my kids have grown, and they have left the nest.
My morning process of reading and writing and meditating and being alone with my thoughts is extremely valuable to me. I don’t get paid to do it, but it is my vocation. It feels like it is a big part of my purpose in life, and it is a deeply meaningful part of my everyday life. How my morning goes, often has a lot to do with how the rest of my day goes afterwards. So honestly, unless it is urgent or dire, I don’t allow anything to creep into my mornings. I do my best to not have any morning appointments with anybody. I treat MY TIME every bit as importantly as if I were a CEO with a tight schedule. Why should someone’s time only be considered important and uninterruptible if they are getting paid to do whatever fits into that time slot? I am the CEO of my own life, after all.
For years in raising my family, everybody else’s schedule was the priority. If something needed to be dropped, it was usually some activity of mine. And that’s okay. I signed up for the job of family manager and I did what I needed to do to make things run smoothly and effectively, as well as I could. But my family is grown now, and I am prioritizing myself more. Interestingly, I’ve noticed surprised reactions from my friends and my family when I keep my boundaries around scheduling phone calls and visits. I believe that planning ahead for calls shows respect for my time, and also for theirs. Time is everyone’s greatest treasure. If anything death has shown me in this last year, is that our time on Earth is not replenishable. I value my time, and I value your time. Every minute that we give to actions, and to others, is a little chunk of treasure from our own unreplenishable treasure chests, filled with little chunks of our time to live. Shouldn’t we be clear and conscious of who and what we are giving our treasure to, every single day of our lives? When I volunteered for different things throughout the years, I noticed that people were thankful and respectful of my time that I was volunteering to give. I didn’t get paid for that time either, but people didn’t take that time of mine for granted. Maybe that is why so many of us get fulfillment from volunteering. There are little expectations and great appreciation when you are willing to give your time away to a cause.
If we look at every minute of our days as little chunks of gold from the one treasure chest that we get in this lifetime (and mysteriously, none of us know until the very end, how many of these little chunks are actually in our individual treasure chests of time), we get a whole lot more careful about where we give it away. Our time is more valuable than our money, than our possessions, than even our relationships, because without our time, we don’t exist. Spend your time consciously, wisely and gratefully. Treasure your time. It is your most valuable possession.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
There are so many things vying for our attention and energy these days. And we give it away so freely and easily, as if we have endless stores of it (even though we don’t). We forget to harness our energy. We forget that it is “us” that has the wheel. Your still, small voice inside of you – your perfectly attuned, highly perceptible, built-in GPS system will never scream out for your attention. It won’t try to compete with, nor enforce control, as to where you put your attention and energy (and thus your precious time). But if you listen to your body and to your emotions, you will understand if where you have been putting your attention, your focus and your energy, is really the best place for you to spend it. What increases your energy? What depletes it? What restores and renews your energy? What flames and burns your energy out quickly? Where are your energy leaks – slowly and secretly draining out your energy stores, little bits at at time? Do you need to bank your energy somewhere else? Have you built appropriate boundaries around your energy stores?
Spend some of your time, energy, and attention on these questions today. The insights which you get from this exercise will be incredibly valuable. (Remember, as the post by Think Smarter states: “Our energy IS our true currency.”)
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Today, I am going to list the quotes which I have collected for my own thought museum, these past couple of weeks. These quotes all speak for themselves, and do not require commentary from me. Food for thought is delicious, nutritious and calorie-free. Devour!
“Most of us spend our lives as if we had another one in the bank.” – Ben Irwin
“Admire someone else’s beauty without questioning your own.”
“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind, there are few.” – Suzuki Roshi
“Hope springs from realizing we are loved, can love and are love with skin on. Then we are unstoppable.” – Anne Lamott
“Focus on being productive, not busy.”
“True forgiveness is when you can say, “Thank you for that experience.” – Oprah Winfrey
“The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies.” – Think Smarter (Twitter)
“If you can’t find joy in a cup of coffee, you won’t find it in a Lamborghini.” – SeekMastery
“No one should have the power to ruin your day.” -Valencia (Twitter)
Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Lately I have noticed that I am a little obsessed with time. I feel like I am always buying more clocks. I own dozens of watches. For my husband’s last birthday, I bought him not one watch, but actually two watches. I recently purchased a nice little desk clock for our spare bedroom and I am pondering buying another, exact same one, for the little alcove desk right outside of that bedroom. On my desk right now, I have two clocks. One works and the other is just an antique clock that looks pretty. I am also currently wearing a watch and both our home phone and my cell phone are in an arm’s reach, with the first thing showing on their faces, of course, is the time of day.
I’m not sure if I have always been so time conscious or if this is a sign of aging. Time is precious. Time is so easily wasted. Time is of the essence . . . . tick tock. tick tock. tick tock.
I understand the theory that time isn’t real, in the sense that we understand it. Technically, we are always in the present moment. We are always in the Now. Still, I think it is good that we came up with a unit to measure our present, precious moments, if for nothing else, than to truly understand the fleeting nature of our lives.
