Life is strange. For weeks I just “knew” that I had to take a certain route because it was what I wanted.

The other day I realized it really wasn’t what I “wanted”. It simply seemed less formidable than the alternative.

One way I skipped a major intersection and although it was still a bit hairy to cut through the mall’s parking lot, it seemed so much easier to my subconscious – and “what I wanted” to my conscious mind.

Then last week as I was about a half a mile from the intersection I decided to go that way so I could reach a different section that added both miles and hills – things I desperately need for my training.

I took a deep breath and continued on. As I reached this mass of cars speeding by in all directions, my heart beat faster and not because of physical exertion. I was scared, I was feeling anxious, I was feeling overwhelmed. But fortunately I realized that this was just a stress reaction and that I couldn’t make any type of informed decision while all these stress chemicals were circulating in my body.

After a few deep breaths I was able to look at this intersection much differently. It was just several sections that needed to be crossed one at a time. You can’t cross the whole intersection at one time. For one thing, the lights aren’t sync’d that way. For another, it’s all too overwhelming. I smiled and told myself “ok, Terrie, you just have to get across this street”. I didn’t even really think about the next one. My goal at that point was to wait for the light right in front of me to turn and then, making sure I was still looking in all directions, I put one foot in front of the other to get across this short piece of road.

When I got across that section, I repeated the process for the next.

Next thing I knew I was headed down the route I had really wanted to go on for a couple of weeks. I had missed out because I was too overwhelmed.

Life is like that. If we take this gigantic overwhelming group of events as a whole, we can feel defeated before we even start. We have to master one skill – that’s all. Chunk it down! Break each situation or group of situations into small chunks. Cross the intersection of life street by street. See it on a smaller scale, not the “big picture”.

Take writing a book for example. I have screwed around with this one idea for over a year now and have gotten a lot written but nothing in a coherent manner. I have this idea and that idea and on and on so I have a massive list of things I want to add and then I have several ways I want to approach it from.

There was just one problem. I wasn’t getting anything really done,

Then this past weekend, I decided to just do the basic concept I had had in the beginning and started the organization in a “chunked down” fashion. Then it all seemed to fall into place. But it wasn’t done. That was just the first crossroad. Now I have to cross the road that has to do with actually writing and coming up with the “sidebars” that will really make it. Then there are so many other chunks to writing that instead of worrying about them right now when they aren’t even pertinent, I will worry about that “intersection” when I get closer. You know what? I can see the light without all the fog that was surrounding it now that it’s in little pieces.

If you have a circumstance or situation in your life right now see if you can use this method to help you make your way through it. The red light will eventually turn to green!

Have a great weekend!

Terrie

I think I should have posted this before I put up the one on what can you discard. Why? (ha ha) because as I said, the list you’re using to figure out what to keep, discard and add are flexible and not forever. They will change as your “why” changes.

Someone put in the comments for that (my paraphrase) – he said it was too complicated and that’s why he retired so he could just do what he wants. I am so grateful that he put that because it made me think about it. My reply was that that was what I had been doing for the last 11.5 months (hard to believe I retired almost a year ago). But now I want to expand my knowledge, do the reading I’ve wanted to do and get my book out. All of this on top of 6-8 hour walks for the next 2 months in order to train for (and do) the race in Tennessee.

The race is important to me and training is very time consuming especially since you really do lose time when you’re older. So, here are my options:
1) I could just wait until after the race to try to expand my knowledge and reading, or
2) I can adjust my current schedule and eliminate some things I don’t need and work on them both right now.

I chose #2 because I have neglected my brain for the longest time now. When I was working I had to focus most of my time and energy on work related “stuff” – see, that’s part of the problem – what the heck is “stuff”? That’s hy listing all my activities helped me see how much time I was spending on non-productive things like games on my phone. Of course there are times when that type of activity is ok – for instance last night i was wiped out from a 7 hour walk so i did my “required 20 pages a day” reading and then relaxed while listening to the Yankees no-hitter. And I played a few computer games. I needed that time to relax. But to do it mindlessly every day is not something i “need” to be doing whenever I have idle hands and that was what I was doing.

So, you can see that the “why” of what you are doing is key. Not only the BIG why but the little whys are what I think we often ignore just becuase they are little. Example i just used – I had to examine what my little why was when I play the games. Am I just playing to keep busy because i can’t figure out what else to do or am I doing it to relax for a bit? And am I ok with with whatever answer I come up with. I haven’t been “ok” with the just playing to pass time for quite awhile but didn’t have the momentum to do anything about it. Now I do.

And my little whys are all based on my bigger why. In my case I have a few bigger whys:
1) Be able to finish the race in Tennessee (in July)
2) Finish at least one of my books by the end of July (you have to put a time frame on them for them to really mean anything)
3) Read at least one book a week
4) Spend my time learning not vegetating – this is vague but it includes things like listening to non-fiction audiobooks instead of fiction, listening to podcasts, ignoring stuff in my inbox that even if i read it won’t add to my life, limiting time on Facebook

I’ll probably write more on this because I’m sure for many I already wrote too much but this is important for you to figure out what’s important in your life and trying to achieve it with the minimum amount of stress.

Have a happy day – life is all about happiness even in the little things.