The Elf Blog

Happy Samhain

To those who follow the Old Path, Happy Samhain.  May the turning of the seasons bring you light, prosperity, and peace.

Bright Blessings!

Happy New Year!

To all who celebrate, l'shana tova!  May your new year be sweet and your name s be written in the Book of Life.

May the Days of Awe be times of fellowship, reflection, and renewal.

Planning for Rosh Hashanah

Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset next Friday.  If you celebrate, now is the time to make your final plans:

• Invite your guests to celebrate the new year.  If you will be a guest, pick up a host/hostess gift.
• Since you are likely to be in services for much of the evening and, since Rosh Hashanah is a sabbath this year, it makes sense to order your meal from a favorite restaurant.  that way, you won't have to deal with the difficulties if preparation.  If you decide to order, place your order no later than Sunday.
• Rosh Hashanh begins the Days of Awe.  Block out significant blocks of time on your schedule for reflection and quiet.  The best parties in the world won't bring the awe to these days.  The awe is present.  Give yourself the space to find it.

Resources

So, now you have priorities and tasks to help you achieve your goals this year.  Next you need to apportion your resources.

Your most important resource is time.  Guard it carefully.  Look at each task and decide how much time you are willing to devote to each task.  Then take a look at your schedule.  As a rule, if you are planning to use more than 5-8 hours a week on these tasks,you're not going to keep it up.  Try to keep it toward the lower end of that scale.  As you make progress, you may be able to increase, but start slowly.  Also, be aware of times that are especially busy for you.  Schedule less in those weeks.

Money is another important resource.  You don't want to create priorities that will result in lots of new expenses. Buying all new pots to cook healthy gourmet meals AND joining a gym AND signing up for language lessons may not be the best financial choice.  Be realistic about how much you have to spend.

The third critical resource you should apportion is your effort.  You can't give 100% of yourself to everything.  And to tell the truth, not everything deserves 100%.  Some things allow for multi-tasking or for being tucked into little free spaces in your day.  As you look at your list of tasks, make sure you identify which is which.

Now, there's just one thing left:  ACT!

Task Planning

Once you have identified a limited number of priorities, you can take the next planning step.  You've imagined what your world will be like if you reach this priority. Now, you can begin to decide what tasks you need to undertake in order to create this new world.  Break it down as much as possible and be very specific.

For example, if one of your priorities is to develop a healthier lifestyle, you tasks might include joining a gym or breaking out your execrise DVDs, getting a checkup, planning some healthy menus, switching from the elevator to the steps, or the like.

If your priority is to save more money, the tasks might be to create a budget, to track all your spending for a month, to start an automatic savings plan, to take advantage of your work's retirement plans, or cutting unnecessary expenses.

Once you have a list of tasks for each priority, you can schedule them.  You can't do everything at once, so plan a few for each month.  You'll make progress, but you won't feel overwhelmed.

Priorities

Now that you have the appropriate attitude of stewardship and gratitude, you can begin setting your priorities.

It is a basic fact of life that if you try to do everything at once, you are most likely to do none of them well.  In the process, you'll exhaust and frustrate yourself.  Just because you pass on a priority right now doesn't mean you've abandoned it forever.  The whole point of prioritizing is deciding how you will allot your limited resources in a specific time -- what you'll do first.

Start by making a list of everything you want to be a priority. Don't limit yourself.  Write everything down.  Then start cutting.  You can do this by color coding.  Shade the "not nows" green and the "absolutely nows" orange.  If you have more than three orange items, rewrite them and do it again.  You really can't attend to more than three or four priorities at a time -- not and deal with the basic essential tasks like feeding yourself and doing your job.

Once you are down to a manageable list of priorities, start thinking about what you want to achieve through this priority. If you accomplished what you want with this priority, what would your life be like?  The more you can imagine the results that you want, the easier your next step will be.  But we'll look at task planning tomorrow.

Stewardship

I decided to start with stewardship rather than finish with it since an attitude of stewardship should really underlie your efforts to create the life you want.

Stewardship starts by recognizing that most of the good things in your life came to you without any effort on your part.  Certainly, you can take action that helps to develop these gufts -- or you can do nothing. 

You can take care of yourself by eating well, not smoking, getting enough exercise and sleep, but you can't control your health entirely.  You can develop athletic or artistic skills with practice and coaching, but not everyone will have the vision or hand-eye coordination needed.  Not everyone will have the benefit of a great start in life.

Start by recognizing that most of the good things you have are gift.  With these gifts come two responsibilities -- to develop the gifts to the best of your ability and to share the fruits of these gifts.

This week, take an honest inventory of the gifts you have, how you have developed them, and how you share them.  You may be surprised at what you find.

Opportunity

One of the enticing things about the new year is the sense of opportunity it brings.  The newness makes you feel like anything is possible.  It inspires you to make the changes you hope for and to start becoming the person you want to be.

Over the next several days, we will look at steps you can take to get to the place you want to go.  How do you decide what to do and when? 

The rest of this week we'll look at priorities, resources, task planning, and stewardship.  next week, we'll look at some tools you might find helpful.

Happy New Year

May 2009 be filled with happiness for you and yours.  May it bring you one step closer to your dreams. And, through our efforts, may the world be a little bit better place this time next year.

It's Resolution Time

Since today is the 366th and last day of 2008, try to take a few moments to reflect on the year past and to imagine what you want your new year to be.  What sort of person do you want to be? How do you want to spend your time? What skills do you want to develop?  How will you realign your priorities?

Write down some concrete steps you can take to make your vision a reality.  Put the paper in a place where you can find it easily during the course of the year so that you can remind yourself to stay on track.

I'll be honest, I didn't do very well with my resolutions in 2008.  The year ends with too many of them unfulfilled.  So I'll take some time to think about what went wrong and recommit myself with new purpose to my goals for 2009. (Of course, I'll be doing this aboard a ship bound for Antarctica.)