Category: Essays

It’s that time of year again. Time to clear out the mental clutter of our plans, re-establish our priorities, and plan out our goals for the new year accordingly. Doing this will renew/re-establish our focus in life.

This process is best done in the following steps:

 

1) Clear the mind

I don’t care how. But everyone has (or should have) a method of purging their thoughts of all stresses, worries, cares, tasks, and appointments. Some people meditate, some do Yoga, some just rest in silence, and others just listen to some soothing music. Whatever the preferred method, take the time to DO IT.

 

2) List our priorities

Literally …… list them. A thought is just a thought until it’s written down. Once it is written down, then it is a potential reality. It forces us to acknowledge it. It also serves as a constant reminder so we can stay focused. Keep this list somewhere easily accessible. Truthfully this list should be short; 7~10 items tops (and even that is a lot). There are only 24 hours in a day and 1/3 of that is sleeping and maintenance. Look at the last few things on the list and seriously consider if those even belong in the category of “priority.”………. cross them out.

 

3) Consider how we want to grow.

With our priorities in mind, think of all the ways we want to improve and/or grow as people. Ideas I have heard are: “Spend more time with my children”, “Lose 20 lbs”, “Reach more people”, “re-unite with my family”, “Re-kindle the fire in my marriage”, and “Overcome my fears” just to give some examples of what I am talking about here.

 

4) Set goals accordingly

Set them, and write them down. Why write them? See #2. List these goals in either time order or priority order. Keep this list even more accessible than the priority one. One should not have to open a drawer for this list. It needs to be on our desktop, our whiteboard, our cork-board; anywhere we can see it everyday without getting it. These needs to be there to constantly remind us.

Make the goals realistic. What can we reasonably accomplish in one year? This doesn’t mean we cannot have a much greater long term goal, but even the baby steps for getting there are goals in themselves. Are they not? Write down these lesser goal/s. I once had a physics teacher that said: “You can eat an entire elephant! ……..one bite at a time.”

Also, the same as with priorities, this list should be short.

 

5) First Steps

DO IT. Get the gears moving. At the very least, in this first “sit down”, do some research, make some inquiries. Start the process, and keep that momentum going.

 

6) Minimize

Remove from our lives all the clutter, the obligations, the stresses, the possessions, the thoughts that do not serve our priorities, our goals. This may mean filling up a few of the 50 gallon trash bags. This may mean making a few disappointing phone calls to friends and family. This may mean giving up old rituals. No one said de-cluttering was easy.

 

THIS is the best way that I have found to approach a new year.

There are only 24 hours in a day, and 7~8 of them are spent sleeping, 8+ of them are spent working, and the remainder have to be spent divided between eating, maintenance, growth, recreation, and socialization (not necessarily mutually exclusive). This layout is a bit different from lifestyle to lifestyle granted, but the point remains the same. That being, we don’t have a great amount of time left over for things like recreation and socialization.

Even if we have chosen minimal lifestyles where the upkeep/maintenance is low,  and we eat only to live (instead of the other way around), and our passions (our growth) have a very prominent social component to them (like most do), It’s still leaves little time to build strong relationships. This is just a natural part of life. Part of becoming an adult.

It is the reason why as we become adults we have fewer and fewer friends. It is the reason why when we become parents we retain even fewer friends still. A parents “Growth” and “Socialization” time gets almost fully devoted to their children. It’s the reason why we begin to combine these different needs together to save time, or just omit some altogether. Eating time becomes entertainment/recreation (the beginning of health problems), maintenance is skipped altogether (again health problems), and taking on any personal projects for growth is often tossed aside.

With all this going on, it is impossible to maintain a large social circle; impossible to keep in contact with a large group of friends and family. These relationships can’t be maintained and grow. I have only one thing to say about that:

 

It’s OK

 

really

 

If we have too much in our lives that we can’t devote time and energy to some people that we are close to, don’t sweat it. THAT’S LIFE. Many relationships will come and go. And if those relationships were strong in the first place, they may be strong enough to pick back up in another phase in life. Trying to devote what little time we have to a large circle of friends means not devoting enough time to any one of them to have any growth with any of them. This is just wasted time. What would we rather have, 15 acquaintances, or 5 close friends?

The only thing I DO suggest, is that we keep and maintain a very small circle. About 3, 4, or 5 close friends/family that we connect with regularly. This way we can devote enough time to each of them to have some level of growth in those relationships. It is important to our own mental stability that we do this. Likelihood is that once we have “weeded” all of the toxic people and those we are not compatible with, we will be down to 3 or 4 friends anyway. These relationships are necessary toward our growth; they keep us stable, focused. They also provide an outlet for our angst and doubt.

At some point in mankind’s history it was decided that the acquisition of wealth would be a driving factor in our lives. Over time, slowly but surely, this became THE driving factor in many of our lives as influenced by the very principal of capitalism. This doesn’t bother me so much. If climbing the corporate ladder is what makes one passionate, then go for it. Seems like a pretty empty existence to me, but to each their own.

What does bother me is the fact that they do this by standing on the shoulders of the middle class (us) by influencing us to keep, grow, stay in, and maintain our “personal bubble.” That is, they influence us to consume. To continue to constantly acquire material goods. To even expand the space in which we live so that way we can continue to grow our hoard. To influence a sense of “pride of ownership” so we intentionally keep others away from our hoard, our space, our bubble.  They have us believing that expanding our personal bubble is what makes us successful, that this is what happiness is.

Not only is this NOT happiness, it is detracting us away from the riches life has to offer. By focusing on our property, our bubble, we are losing our sense of community; we are not establishing and maintaining strong connections with our neighbors. We are disconnected from actual people. As a result there is mass discontent in the world as the many small factions of people don’t understand each other. And how could they, as they were all too busy focusing on expanding their personal bubbles. Real connections were never made so real communication was never had; we know only what the media has influenced us to believe.

This is exactly what the upper class want. Because not only do the rich depend on our continuous consumption of things we don’t need for their profit, but they also depend on us not communicating with each other. Because if we DID communicate with each other, we would establish working relationships with each other, then we would learn that we do not need them.

 

 

I imagine a world of perfect communication with all people. This would lead to perfect kindness and care. Everyone is each others keeper. The idea of “private property” doesn’t exist. All resources are shared. We work only to do our part in contributing to our community, and to better ourselves. Don’t need a lock on the front door. Everyone is welcome everywhere. Since there is no such thing as personal property, “theft” has no meaning. If someone goes into my home and takes a 55″ TV, they are welcome to it; obviously they need it more than I do. Imagine this world I speak of. With shared resources there would be no rich fat cats making money off us. In fact, there would be no separation of the classes to even get to the existence of rich “fat cats.”