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“The Dog” Journal

Welcome to the Dog Journal, a blog where I periodically share my best finds for taming those puppies that gnaw at your planner.

Could be a quick time management tip, a smell-the-flowers moment, a comment overheard on the elevator. Whatever the inspiration, I hope you’ll blog right along with me by commenting and sharing your tips and stories for taming an overbooked life.

Learning from Jars

I’ve had an aha!

It’s only a small leap from finding enough time to do it all – a lifelong challenge for me – to finding creative ways to rightsize my stuff!  No wonder I’m intrigued with rightsizing!

I’ve always loved the metaphor Stephen Covey offers (7 Habits of Highly Effective People) on doing the big things first.  You know the one.  Put the big rocks in the jar first, then fit the pebbles and sand around them.

I was gob-smacked yesterday by another jar story – this one from a meditation in Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic. This one, called “You Can’t Always (Be) Get(ting) What You Want,” played off wisdom from the Stoic phiosopher Epictetus. He’d observed that children get their hands stuck in narrow goody jars when they grab too many treats at once.  To get unstuck, they needed to let go of a few.

It seems I have a lot to learn from jars.  Let go of doing too much, holding on to too much!  Time and space aren’t so different.

Newsletter Techni-Venture

I’m happy to report that the February newsletter, Unpacking Your Stories, finally went out this week –  while it was still February!  The newsletter folks, MailerLite, announced that the domain name had to be “authenticated” before anything could set sail.  It sounded simple enough, but anything involving coding is complicated for me.  Miraculously, I was able singlehandedly to get some code from MailerLite, but figuring out where and how to insert it – at GoDaddy or Hostgator – was beyond me.

I wisely turned the task over to my web person, Ellie Nowels of Centipede Graphics, who began a weeks-long email exchange with MailerLite, involving screenshots of code that weren’t being accepted.  Finally – ta-dah! – the code went in and MailerLite declared me “authenticated.”  Then, just before I hit “send,” I remembered that I was supposed to have added an additional “quick link” to my new book.

I couldn’t figure out how.  But thanks to a Fiverr contractor named Kisilda in Albania, the new link made it into the newsletter, and it finally sailed out to subscribers.  If you’re not one and would like to take a look, here ‘tis.   Whew!!!  It’s a very special issue since it contains the first story written by one of my Unpacking Your Life workshop participants, Cindy May. Just hit subscribe on this web page, and future issues of my now-authenticated newsletter will appear in your inbox each month. Whew!!

Technology requires A LOT of assistance.  But now on to the part I like best:  not technology but stories!!

Six-Word Mantra

It’s become a tradition in our family for my daughter Sarah to fill my Christmas stocking.  It’s always a treat to see what she’s chosen in addition to the always welcome dark chocolate.

This year, she scored with something very special:  a set of wooden pencils emblazoned in gold with the advice:  Be Curious. Make Mistakes. Keep Going.

What an important mantra for those of us who (did she notice?) can let perfection get in the way of moving forward. It is only through trial and error that we can keep going.  It is the scientific method of living!

The pencils were an especially important message for me as I shift into the uncharted territory of Unpacking Our Stories and encourage rightsizers to find the story behind the stuff they want to keep or discard.

Onward!  (And it’s really OK to use the erasers.)

 

Rightsizing? Or Downsizing?

As I think about this process of unpacking our lives, it’s tempting to use the words rightsizing and downsizing interchangeably.  Whether we move to a smaller space or simply minimize the amount of “stuff” we want to have in our current space, we are actually doing both.

We are sizing our “stuff” down, and we’re also trying to make sure we take the right stuff that’s meaningful and reminds us of the stories that have informed our best lives.

Since our theme as we unpack our lives will be to uncover our life stories, I’m inclined to use the term “rightsizing” rather than “downsizing” since the effect will not be to make our lives smaller but to help us live large, true to our values, with the right stuff in view.

On to rightsizing our lives!

 

 

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Ready to Unpack?

Periodically (but never more than once a month), I’ll send subscribers a free electronic newsletter, “Unpacking,” designed for those whose lives are thrown out of balance as they prepare to move to smaller quarters. You’ll learn how sifting through your “stuff” can help you discover YOUR important stories and decide which ones to make space for in your next phase. I’ll even call out for YOUR stories to share with others. Just enter your email address below to receive the newsletter by email.

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Contact Pat

For workshop bookings and to share stories of your own downsizing experience, use the contact form to get in touch.

“Balancing Tips” Newsletter Archives

Pat has issued a number of newsletters with tips and resources for getting your overbooked life back in balance. Click here for copies of past issues that you might find helpful.