I'm reading a very interesting book right now, called The Power of Full Engagement.  I'm not in very far, about 5 chapters I'd say.  The main premise is that our lives are made up of 4 basic "pillars" if you will:  Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual, and that we need to feed all four areas.  (reminiscent of Steven Covey, yes?)  If any of these four areas is neglected, the whole person suffers.  This tends to bring on detachment and illness, both spiritual and physical.  Things like depression, diabetes, gastric issues, even death.  As I said, I'm not in very far, but enough to know that this is what has been ailing me all these years.  I've let my physical and spiritual lives go just trying to keep our heads above water financially ever since the divorce.

Its time to become a whole person again.  I'll keep you posted.

A Whole New Me?

So, if you’re trying to change your life and turn around, where do you start?  I guess a list of what you want to change would be first, right?  What if the answer to that is “Everything”? After stewing for a couple of weeks, I finally just brainstormed a list of what the “Ideal Me” would look like.  Over the course of a few weeks I refined it to a mission statement and 4 initial goals.  During the process, I went to the Franklin Covey website (http://www.franklincovey.com) and used their Mission Statement Builder (go to the Resources and Tools tab and then it’s the first thing listed under Tools) to get a jump-start.  It really did help. After that, I used the results to identify three major goals of my life:

1.     I will travel the world doing family history research, writing books about it, enjoying all of the cultural and artistic venues the world has to offer.  Learn everything I can about the history of the places I visit, maybe write novels, but definitely write histories of the people whose lives I’ve been researching. I don’t really care if any of them get published, I’m in it for the family.

2.    I admire these characteristics in others and want to incorporate them into my own life.

a.    Acceptance.  I will accept and respect others for who they are:  Children of God, and the divine potential they have as such.

b.    Leadership. Lead by example; inspire others to do their best.

c.    Perseverance.  You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it. Never give up.  Never, never, never give up! (Winston Churchill)

3.    Constantly renew myself by focusing on the four dimension of my life.  I will start with the following:

a.    Physical:  Lose weight and get the diabetes under control

b.    Spiritual:  Commune daily with God by reading my scriptures and praying daily.

c.    Mental: Keep learning new things.  Start with the history of the Smoky Mountains

d.    Social/Emotional: 

                                          i.    Get my house in order so it stops stressing me out.

                                         ii.    Make some friends

                                        iii.    Make time for creativity.

From there, I condensed it into a short, numbered list of what my life is about and then wrote that list out into the following mission statement:

I will strive every day to fulfill my potential as a royal daughter of God. I will do this by learning everything I can and use that knowledge to help and inspire others. This help could take shape not only through coaching others, but through writing and/or other artistic methods.

That may seem to be a generalization of the goals, but really, isn’t that what a mission statement is?  A high-level, birds-eye view of your life.   

About a week ago, I was thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my life and found a website called bucketlist.org and subtitled 1000 things to do before you die.  This was great.  I used the list to spur thoughts of the things I would like to be able to do.  It amounted to about 7 pages and 227 items.  That should keep me busy for whatever time I have left. (I’m in my late 50s; who knows how much longer that’s going to be?)

So these are the things we’ll be focusing on in this blog.  Come on along!

Its a Beautiful Morning!

It snowed last night.  Can you believe it?  Its March, for Heaven's sakes!  We have had such a mild winter, and now it finally decides to be cold and snowy.  I hope this doesn't mean late freezes and the like. 

Its 7 in the morning and I've got to get myself to work.  I just wanted to set down a few goals for the day.  At work I've got to finish my purchasing card report and get it turned in to Accounting and complete my budget tracking report for February.  At home, I'm trying to go through all my boxes of books and get rid of some (ok, more than some).  I have things in boxes that haven't seen the light of day for years.  I also need to find the kitchen sink--I don't know how the dirty dishes get stacked up so fast, with only two of us in the house!

And, finally, I need to check up on the iPad announcement that is supposed to take place today!  At work, we have bonuses coming next week.  I'm planning to buy an iPad as soon as I get mine.  The only thing still to decide is whether I get a 2 or a 3 (or whatever they're going to call the new one).  If the price of the two goes down considerably, I may get the 2 instead.  However, if the price of the new one is comparable and it does include the SIRI feature, I may go for the 3.  Well, its 20 after; I've got to scoot.

Have a good day!

Mission Statement?

Ok, I'm not really a housewife, not anymore anyway.  I'm a single, working mom, who like a lot of other moms, single or not, can't keep up.  I've been so depressed the last few years that I haven't really cared about anything and the place looks it.  My house looks like Dorothy's tornado ripped right through it.  My life is in shambles.  However, thanks to my doctor and an alert friend, things are getting better.  I've started to realize that I don't have to be perfect, although I have to admit that this is a hard one to let go of. 

My plan for this blog is to chronicle my journey back to happiness.  I'm not sure if I will open it to outsider yet; I don't want my posts to be colored by how other people might view it.  But I do want to get things written down.  Being able to just dump the thoughts out of my head is not only a relief, but helps me see how I really feel and think about things.

So, off we go; lets see where this journey takes us.