Three Ways to Simplify Your Life



People often get overwhelmed in life. Have you tried to cut back to make life manageable? We get more and more things, then we need more money to maintain everything in our lives. We have become dependent upon electronics and smart phones.  We are in constant communication with everyone and life seems to get more complicated and confusing.

 

Isn't it time that we simplify our lives?

 

I think so...you can empower yourself by reexamining your life, strengthening the essentials, and eliminating the waste in your lives.

 

I am in a season of life where there are simply too many things that I would like to do, but don't have the time. So I have been thinking a lot lately about how I could simplify my life and be happier and feel better about my life.

 

There are three things that will make a person's life simpler and more fulfilling. Actually, I came up with a lot more than three, but realized that I could easily make things more complicated in an effort to simplify life. (Life is full of ironies like that.) I examined all of the things that I had listed and took the three things that I feel will make our lives more fulfilling and they all begin with a realistic examination of our lives.

 

We must honestly evaluate everything that we do and be willing to make the adjustments necessary to make our lives better. I recently saw a definition of discipline and have used this definition many times.

 

DISCIPLINE 

is

choosing between

what I want most

 &

what I want now.

 

I love this definition because it sums up our lives well. We may want washboard abs, but are we willing to diet and exercise to get them. I believe that we all have ability to be healthy and fit if we are willing to do what is necessary.

 

Three things that will help us to simplify our lives and become more satisfied:

 

1. Determine what thing or two is most essential for personal growth and do them every day.

 

If you are not developing personally or professionally, you are declining. Ask yourself what are the most important things that I should do everyday that will help me become the person that I want to be? Things like exercise, Bible reading, praying, mediation, listening to sermons or development experts, or blogging. Make these things a priority and do them daily.

 

"If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority."

 

2. List all of your daily activities, then label them as:

1. Essential
2. Useful
3. Enjoyable
4. Wasteful

Then focus on the essential and eliminate the wasteful.

 

Obviously, the things that essential and useful should be prioritized and strengthened. We should examine those things that are enjoyable--like watching TV for two hours every evening--and determine if we should exchange that activity for a more useful one.

 

But the thing here is to identify and eliminate those things that are wasteful in our lives.

 

3. Eliminate dead weight (i.e. things that hinder us).

 

We have all seen the movies where items were thrown out of a plane or over the side of a ship to lighten the load to prevent a horrible tragedy. Americans want to live outside of our means. I saw a movie years ago where a couple crash landed on a island. They had to walk to the other side of the island so that they could be saved. When the couple started out, the woman insisted that they carry her bags. By the time they reached the other side of the island, they had discarded all unnecessary weight. Her priorities had changed. Things that seemed important actually were hindrances.

 

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HOW TO BE MORE EFFECTIVE AND FULFILLED

 

 Do the little things in life keep you in the ruts?

 

Learning how to prioritize work or house tasks and accomplish them can help us be more effective and more fulfilled.

1. Prioritize the things you need to do.
 

Every task has a level of urgency and importance. There are four possible combinations. Understanding this will help us to prioritize the things we must get done.

 

• Not important, not urgent
• Not important, urgent
• Important, not urgent
• Important, urgent

2. Just start...do not procrastinate.

 

Sometimes the best thing to do is to just get started.

3. Learn the art of self-motivation.

 

Do not wait for your boss to motivate you into action; you may not like how it is done. If you are self-employed or do not have direct supervision, the ability to motivate yourself is a must. Give yourself rewards for accomplishing tasks. When facing decisions about what you need to do, ask yourself what will give you the greatest sense of satisfaction or relief when it is done--then do it.

4. Focus on what you are doing and stay on task.

 

Plan ahead to eliminate known distractions.

5. Don't be afraid to ask for help.

It is better to finish well with a little help than it is to not finish on you own.

 

6. Be accountable.

 

Individuals that can work well without someone to be accountable to are rare.

 

There are many more elements that help us get things done, but these six have helped me finish many projects.

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How to Live With No Regrets

The last thing that we want is to look back over our lives and regret the way that we lived our lives. Bucket lists have become very popular. There are many things that we all would love to do and places that we would like to see, but there never seems to be enough time or money. However, our lives are much more than a collection of experiences. A recent Hospice report lists the five most common regrets from people who are dying.

They are:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

We are told to dream big, set goals, and succeed in life and many of us (especially males) are driven to do this. What is not always realized-and what the dying know-is that we often lose sight of what is really important and exchange what we aspire to for what is expected.

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

This is one of the most common regrets among men hospice patients. I am sure that these individuals would not suggest that working hard is not important, but my interpretation of this is that we need to balance our work with other important aspects of life. Men too often sacrifice spending time with their family for the sake of work. Let us not make this mistake.

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

As I contemplate this regret, I am mindful of all of the people that have touched my life that probably don't know what they mean to me.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

The popularity of social media has made contacting friends and acquaintances from the past much easier; do not neglect this mean of staying in touch

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

I realized some time ago that happiness is a choice. Do not make the mistake of NOT choosing to be happy.

What is NOT listed is as revealing as what IS listed. Notice that specific places and experience do not seem as important to people coming close to the end of their lives.

It is often said that hind-site is 20/20. Looking back is always easier and clearer than looking forward and we cannot change our past, but we can influence our future.

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Git R Done

"Git R Done" is a saying made famous by Larry the Cable Guy (whose name is not actually Larry and who is not actually a cable guy). It is the redneck version of the Nike add "Just Do it." Whether you subscribe to the southern version or the Fortune 500 version, we all need to do something. Every organizations values those employees that get things done. People who can get jobs done well, timely, and on budget get promoted to higher positions. Here are six quick pointers that have helped me. If it was not for these six things, I would have never finished many projects.

1. Prioritize the things you need to do.

Every task has a level of urgency and importance. There are four possible combinations. Understanding this will help us to prioritize the things we must get done.

• Not important, not urgent
• Not important, urgent
• Important, not urgent
• Important, urgent

2. Just start...do not procrastinate. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just get started.

3. Learn the art of self-motivation. Do not wait for your boss to motivate you into action; you may not like how it is done. If you are self-employed or do not have direct supervision, the ability to motivate yourself is a must. Give yourself rewards for accomplishing tasks. When facing decisions about what you need to do, ask yourself what will give you the greatest sense of satisfaction or relief when it is done--then do it.

4. Focus on what you are doing and stay on task. Plan ahead to eliminate known distractions.

5. Don't be afraid to ask for help. It is better to finish well with a little help than it is to not finish on you own.

6. Be accountable. Individuals that can work well without someone to be accountable to are rare.

There are more elements that help us get things done, but these six have helped me finish many projects.

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Empower Somebody's Dream

I have hopes and dreams of what I want to accomplish in the next 10 years. 

Do you? 

I hope that you do. 

I spend a lot of time thinking and planning about future endeavors. A few years ago I was disappointed in a certain person because I felt that they did not give me enough support so that I could establish an after school program. I tried to get them to catch the vision, but ultimately I could not get the kind of support that I felt I needed to get the program started. Recently I was visiting the same person and realized that they had a dream also and that I was so wrapped up in my own dreams that I could not see theirs. I apologized to that person for not giving them more support for their dream. It saddens me to know that my support could have made the difference for them seeing their dream become reality.

This was a lesson learned and one that I am hoping to pass on to you. In our efforts to achieve our dreams, we should not neglect helping others realize theirs. I am not suggesting that we lay aside our own visions for the future, but in our effort we should not get so busy that we fail to see others visions and pass up opportunities to help them succeed. I love the word "synergy." It means the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sums of their separate effects. I love to see synergy in action. It basically says that we can accomplish more together than we can by ourselves. This is God's plan. God intended for us to help one another.

My doctoral work was on leadership empowerment. The greatest thing that I realized during my research is that every individual has untapped potential to empower others. There is not a human being, regardless of their circumstance, that does not need to be empowered. The wealthiest person and the poorest person need to be empowered. They need empowering in different ways and to different extents, but they both need to be empowered.

Besides helping get resources, we can empower each other to accomplish each other's dreams by:

1. Helping others to clarify their dream. Having someone to talk things over helps to clarify our dreams. We can help them by asking probing questions. Ask them to clarify, give examples, breakdown and/or expand their thoughts. Active listening is rephrasing their statements back to them to make sure that you are understanding their dream.

2. We can help them make their dream more concrete by getting them to articulate what they desire to accomplish. It is difficult to act upon dreams that remain abstract.

3. We can help them set goals that will accomplish their desired result. Realistic and meaningful milestones should be set. Goals should be broken town into smaller goals or milestones so that they are not overwhelmed by the magnitude of their dreams.

4. We can help them to take action. Every person is different. We tend to be doers or thinkers (see my blog "Be an Executioner"). Doers tend to jump out and do things without making good plans (#1-3 above help doers set goals). Thinkers like to plan. Sometimes they plan too much and have difficulty starting a project. We can help these thinkers initiate their action plans.

5. We can help them reflect and review their actin plans. A feedback loop is important for any project. This helps us adapt our strategies for current projects and to avoid pitfalls for future projects.

I am currently working on Empower 4 (see www.jimmybayes.org/empower4 and my blog titled "Empowering Others") for more information on empowerment.

Empower4 (E4) is an empowerment program that explains how everyone or organization can divinely, socially, structurally, and psychologically empower others. Stay tuned for more information regarding E4.

Share your dreams in the comments section below:

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