How much time do we really have?

I want to talk a little about time and how we use it. There are 24 hours in each day. Many people spend roughly 7 - 8 hours sleeping so that leaves about 16 hours each day for work, leisure and anything else we need or want to do. It’s true, we can never have more than 24 hours each day. Time is constantly ticking away and each moment that passes is a moment that we can never have back again. Successful people have the same amount of time as unsuccessful people. Stressed out people have the exact same amount of time as relaxed people. We all have the same amount of time to use or waste each day no matter who we are or where we live.

Time is a gift and what we do with the time we are given is entirely up to us. We choose how we spend our time each day and we are rewarded accordingly. Some people choose to spend hours each day watching TV, surfing the Internet or playing video games and then complain about never having enough hours in a day. Well it’s really about choice isn’t it? I know there are people out there who watch one show on TV and record a second show on another channel at the exact same time so they don’t miss anything. Some record many shows during the day and spend their evenings catching up on all the shows they missed.

There is also video and computer games that take hours of time from some people’s lives. Online gaming can be especially addictive when you’re interacting with other people on the Internet and many hours can be spent each day in these types of leisurely activities. Surfing the Internet can be an incredible time eater. There is so much information out there it is impossible for anyone to view and absorb it all. And much of what’s on the Internet is not worth our time anyway.

Information is added to the web each day at an astronomical rate. And not all the information on the web is valuable. It takes so much time to sift through the garbage on the Internet to find information that is valuable it’s no wonder so many of us get sucked into the web and lose track of time. The Internet is also a great way to escape reality for a time and many lives are spent wasting away in front of the computer screen in an attempt to escape the responsibilities of real life. Real life, real time, spent in pursing escape and pleasure which is really nothing more than short term happiness.

So, how much time do we really have? The answer never changes. We have 24 hours each day to use for our benefit or waste away. It’s not so much about how much time we have. We are all given the same amount each day. Rather, it’s how we USE the time we’ve been given. So what are you going to do today with the time you’ve been given? Could you set aside a little time today to make a goal for yourself that you can work toward achieving?

How about taking a look at how you really spend your time today? Keep a log of everything you do today and be honest. Perhaps you can even keep a timer handy or watch the clock a little more carefully today as you fill in your log. After you finish and before you go to bed review your days activities and how much time you spent for each. Are you happy with how you spent your time, your precious life? If you are, wonderful! If not, I suspect there’s room for improvement.

Think about what you want in life and how you can use your time to get where you want to be. Keep a time log for a week to get an even more realistic picture of how your life is being spent. Start this simple task and something wonderful can happen. You can take control of your time and not let it waste away leaving you wondering where it all went. Life is short enough, don’t let time slip through your fingers. Embrace the time you’ve been given and create the life of your dreams!

The 21 Day Challenge (Part 1)

I've been thinking a lot about how easy it is to get overwhelmed with all the things that need to be done day in and day out. There are so many areas in my life that I feel need improving, but I almost always fall short of the expectations I have for myself. I think one of my major struggles is having too many things I want to improve all at once. I have to keep telling myself..."small steps, small steps."

I make routines, I set goals, I try to stick to them and I inevitably fall short. I think routines and goals are very important and the idea of running on auto-pilot each morning and evening is very appealing to me. More than routines and goals though I also want to talk a little bit about forming habits.

Sticking to routines and setting goals are excellent ways of forming new habits, however, having a solidly formed habit makes sticking to routines and accomplishing goals so much easier. It's interesting how all three things compliment one another so well. I believe having a routine that includes a long list of things to be accomplished can be counter productive unless most of the items in the routine are already habits.

For example, if I had a morning routine that I did first thing each morning after waking up and it included "showering, eating breakfast and brushing my teeth" I might do alright if I were already accustomed to brushing my teeth, showering and eating breakfast on a fairly regular basis. But, lets say I was feeling ambitious and I added to my morning routine "exercise 30 minutes, take vitamins, water plants, wash the dishes, make the bed, scrub the toilet, sweep the porch" and any other number of things that I was NOT in the habit of doing at all. More likely than not, I am setting myself up for failure by having an unrealistic list of expectations for myself to accomplish each morning.

A much better way of approaching my routine would be to keep the things I am already accustomed to doing and only add one thing (perhaps two depending on the difficulty of the new items). Then I could focus on the new item and set a goal to make the new item into a habit. Intense focus is what it takes to form a new habit. When trying to form too many new habits all at once, it is impossible to give every new habit the intense focus it needs to be nurtured into a regular habit that takes little effort to maintain.

Many self-help gurus agree that it takes around 21 days to form a new habit. It takes consistency, dedication and patience to do this, but the rewards of having a new habit that improves the quality of your life are well worth the efforts. To learn a new habit, first, you must decide on what habit you would like to have in your life. Second, make a plan that helps you follow through with your new habit each day. And third, focus your energies on accomplishing your habit each day and use positive affirmations to enforce your efforts.

Dangers of a cluttered house...

I grew up in a large family. My home growing up was a disaster zone. With Dad, Mom and eight children (me being one of the younger ones), it's no wonder the house was constantly in disarray. When I was young, maybe 6 or 7, I remember the bedroom I was in being so messy I honestly couldn't tell you the color of the rug. There were toys and clothes and all sorts of things strewn about the room completely covering it.

One day while playing with my younger brother in my room, I decided to walk over to the door so I could close it. On my way there, walking on top of bits of clothes and random toys, I felt a sharp pain in my little toe. I looked down and to my surprise, my toe was completely covered in blood. I didn't scream or yell or cry. I think I was more in shock than anything else.

I limped on my heal, keeping my toe off the ground, out the door and down the hall to my parent's room. I knocked on their door and told them I hurt my toe. They told me I'd be OK. I knocked again and told them it was bleeding. They told me to get one of my sisters to get me a band aid. I knocked a third time and told them it was bleeding pretty bad and I wanted them too take a look. At that, my dad finally opened the door, looked at my foot and picked me up in one great swoosh, rushing to the bathroom and plopping me down on the bathroom sink. He put my foot under the running tap water to wash away the blood and see how bad the cut was.

I had remained pretty calm up to this point. My dad's face turned pale and he yelled for my brothers and sisters. I told him what happened and he shouted at the siblings that had come to go look for a piece of my toe in the bedroom. I looked at my dad, probably turning pale myself. "Do I have to go to the hospital?" I asked. "Probably" he said, trying to keep me calm as I began panicking. I begged and pleaded with him not to take me to the hospital. I had never had stitches before and the thought of them petrified me. A moment later one of my sisters came into the bathroom holding my lost little toe piece.

To make a long story short, I was rushed to the ER and had my toe stitched back together. Later I found out what the cause of the accident was. Apparently, a glass jar had somehow broken on my bedroom floor and with all the toy and clothes and clutter I couldn't see it and had stepped right onto it.

Clutter in our homes can be dangerous. Think of the fire hazard a cluttered hall can be. How many toes have been stubbed and how many people have tripped over piles of stuff in their own homes. I tripped over a backpack while rushing down the stairs on my way to school one morning as a teenager. I fractured my foot and got out of gym class for 2 months as a result.

One good reason to take a look around and start picking up those piles is for our own health and safety. Speaking of which, I think I'd better go upstairs and start picking up a few piles myself. Maybe you can find something in your home to pick up as well. How about picking up your bedroom floor or any floor that you walk on. If your house gets as bad as mine, it can't all be done in a day. Small steps to success! God bless!

Welcome to Calming Chaos!

I am new to blogging and I want to thank everyone who takes the time to read what I write, give me lots of good feedback and share part in the journey I'm on to calm the chaos in my life. It amazes me that no matter how hard I try to maintain my home, I feel like I'm in a never ending battle with clutter and chaos all around me. It is true that as soon as they could crawl, my sweet children learned how to pull things out and spread them about the whole house at a feverishly insane pace. Which makes it nearly impossible for me to keep my house respectable for company let alone show quality. Now, don't get me wrong...I don't blame my kids, I mean after all they're exploring their world, in this case our house, and doing what most kids do. It's just so hard to keep up with them! If I followed them around all day long and picked up everything they dropped, sure my house may look like a model home, but that's no life for me and all my children would learn is that Mommy is really good at picking up "my" mess! Hurray for Mommy, the 24 hour a day maid!

Well I am not a full-time maid in my own home and my children should just learn to pick up after themselves, right? That's a great idea in theory, but learning life skills, even ones as simple as picking up after yourself take time to learn. I mean, hey, I'm still working on that one! So maybe a compromise needs to be made. Not so much a compromise with the kids as a compromise with myself. It's okay for the house to have some mess during the day. I mean we do live in our home and there is a lot more to living then sitting down on the couch and not touching anything. However, children do need to take some responsibility for their mess. Now I said "some" because remember life skills take time to become habits. I don't expect my 11 month old to pick up after herself at all because she's too young to even know what a mess really is. If I asked her to clean up her own mess, she'd probably smile and laugh at me completely oblivious to what I was asking of her. My three and four year old on the other hand can "help" clean things up. They can put aways toys or games they take out and wipe up messes they make with supervision and sometimes a little help. They sometimes even ask for help cleaning some things up and depending on what needs to be cleaned up and how busy I am I may step in and help.

I suppose the thing I struggle with is actually following up on what the kids are doing and enforcing certain rules in our home. If I don't teach my children to put things back after they are done playing with them, who will? It's up to me to follow up with my children and make sure they put things back where they belong. By the way, any parent can tell you, just because a child knows they should put something away when they're done using it doesn't always mean they actually will. Ah, laziness and distractions do make that difficult for children and adults alike. Like I said earlier, I even have a hard time picking up after myself sometimes. I have good intentions to be sure, but honestly when the house starts getting messy and cluttered I don't even notice if I've left anything out among the piles. It all sort of blends together like a chameleon blending into it surroundings. New clutter and old clutter seem to become one and I can no longer tell the difference between old messes and new ones. So here I am on my journey and I invite you to come along. I'm working on forming new habits everyday that will help me calm the chaos in my life. Thank you again and enjoy!