A
patien
came to see me about the stress in herlife. She described
all the thing she had to do - one aws to make her bed from the moment she
woke up till she flew out the for work . I suggested she experriment by
not making her bed for two weeks. She was appalled, probably thinking I
' d been raised by wolve in a forest . However , she went along with my
idea .
Two weeks later she breezed into my office beaming . She had left her bed
unmade for the first time in 42 years - and nothing bad had happened .
" And you know what , '' she said , " I don 't dry my dishes any more ,
either . "
This woman had made two major breakthroughs . One was discovering that
she had choicesin her life that she had never seen before . The other was
giving herself permission to be less than perfect . It was a watershed
experience .
This story illustrates
an important principle about managing time : No one can do it all
. Each of us has to make choices and accept trade-offs . The problem is
that many people choose in ways that put themselves and their health last
. They take better care of their houses and cars than they do of themselves.
They put everyone eise 's need ahead of their own . That 's fine if it's
occasional . It would even be okay if there was a balance . But most people
living that way are wearing themselves out , feeling out of control
. Fortunetely , life doesn 't have to be like that.
One pharase can
be very helpful : It 's the name of a book by Sol Gordon , Life
is uncertain ....Eat Dessert First If the good stuff always gets
left until last , it usually doesn 't happen . Work before health and pleasure
soon becomes work instead of health and pleasure
And don 't kid
yourself : Fax machines and celluar phones don't save time but merely
speed up the alredy hectic pace of life . Trying to be more efficient isn
't the key , either . That 's just a ways of cramming more into less time
- when we really should be aiming to do less and enjoy it more.
( from canadian living )
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