Life is for living

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, focus, opportunity, procrastination, selection, time management

Richard Bach - OneI have just been reading another wonderful little book by Richard Bach called “One”. I first came across Richard’s books when I was introduced to Jonathan Livingston Seagull over 30 years ago. JLS can take you half an hour to read or a lifetime; it can be a simple story about a Seagull are a complex parable about learning. For many years I never left the house without a seagull on a chain around my neck, until the day that I realised the seagull had flown away when the chain broke,  never to be seen by me again.

Anyway, back to this latest book “One”. He posits a situation and an exercise that I challenge you to take on yourself. Somehow or other  he meets himself in the future and that future self  knows, for certain, that he only has six months to live. Let me give you the exercise by quoting from the book:

“I think we ought to take this napkin here”, she reached into her purse, “and this pencil, and we ought to list what we want to do most and make this the best six months, the best time in our lives. What would we do if there were no doctors with their dos and don’ts? They can’t cure you, so who are they to tell others what to do with whatever time we have left? I think we ought to make this list and then go ahead and do what we want.”

I don’t know whether the subject of this piece was lucky or not that he knew for sure that he had another six months to live. I don’t know whether or not I will be alive when you read this entry-there is no reason why I shouldn’t be but who knows what happens on the roads or in that complex biochemistry that keeps is running every day?

So my challenge to you is to do the exercise, to figure out what it is that you want to do (not need to do – that’s usually someone else’s agenda), to make a list and to get out there and do it. Oh, there will be challenges, but isn’t a life full of those anyway? Yes, you might upset a few people but you are living your life and you probably only have one of them so you might as well get the most out of it.

And some people will tell you that it’s impossible, selfish, not affordable, etc  – those are their hangups. So let them deal with them rather than dump them on you. I urge you do this exercise , after all you might only have six months to live.

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No regrets

Geoff Roberts change

When I am coaching face-to-face I often finish with a story – they are intended to be metaphorical and designed so that the subject can make their own sense of them. However, every now and again, one story sticks with me personally – this piece, usually accredited to Nadine Stair aged 85, is one:

If I had my life over…

I’d dare to make more mistakes next time

I’d relax, I’d limber up

I would be sillier than I have been this trip

I would take fewer things seriously

I would take more chances

I would take more trips

I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers

I would eat more ice cream and less beans

I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I’d have fewer imaginary ones

You see I am one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day

Oh, I’ve had my moments and if I had to do it over again I would have more of them,

in fact I’d try to have nothing else – just moments.

One after another instead of living so many years ahead of each day

I’ve been one of those people who never go anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute

If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter next time

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall

I would go to more dances

I would ride more merry go rounds

I would pick more daisies.

Ms Stair’s tale reminds us that it is not the things we have done that we will regret but the things we have not done.

So here’s the challenge, to have a quick think about how many days have gone past with you (me) regretting what you have not done? Then take action. What is there that you want to do but have yet to fulfil? Make a plan. Go and do it.

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What is cluttering up your brain?

Geoff Roberts change

Just how much mess is cluttering up your brain?

Perhaps what I really want to explore is the effect of all those little unfinished jobs that are running around in your brain and occasionally pop out at unexpected, and maybe even unwelcome, moments. You know – that little voice inside your head that says “You never sent Auntie Ethel a birthday card” or “Whatever happened to that memorial bench you were going to buy for your dad?”. Those little things to which you committed yourself at some time, yet somehow never seem to have got done – let’s call them Incompletes.

Here’s an exercise – make a list of them. Get out a sheet of paper and a writewith – start writing, one per line, all those little promises, committment, ideas… that you have still to deliver. NB I do not mean the big stuff – “Redecorate the house” or “Build a garage” – but the smaller, realtively easily done stuff as in my earlier examples. Keep writing, most people (me included!) make a rather long list – when you think you have finished, go for a cup of tea and come back and add whatever it is you have remembered whilst making the tea; maybe you can put the list on the fridge or somewhere else handy so that you can add to it as you remember things.

My guess, indeed my experience, is that you will start completing them now you have written them down – and more so if you put them where they are easily visible.

Every one of these tasks has been cluttering up your brain, and stopping it from being as effective as it/you might be. It is as if each little Incomplete was occupying a bit of grey matter, the more incompletes you have, the more grey matter is tied up in unproductive effort. Once you actually do the action, the grey cell is free to concentrate on more pressing (and important?) matters.

So, whatever it was cluttering up your brain, this is a simple little exercise to start to clear the decks for action. Let me know how it goes for you….

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