Designing your life

Designing Your Life 9.23.13 I usually have a list of things that I need to do everyday. The list is the usual “to-do” list: go to the cleaners, drop off the library books, call someone, buy something, make appointments, etc. But, it occurs to me that life should really be more than a list of things to do among and between the routines of our lives. If we are lucky enough to be able to build a home, or even remodel a room in our home, there is a plan, a blueprint that we follow in order to make the end result fit our projected use and what we had in mind for it to look like. We do all the preliminary work, the shopping, the comparing, the prep, with the end result in mind. And if we think of the things that we do on a day to day basis as individual projects, we do the same, whether it is making a party, or planting a garden or making dinner. We know what we want the end result to look like, and then we do what is necessary to hire the people, or buy the ingredients, or create the ambience to make the end result as close to what we had in mind as possible. I have been thinking about what a difference it would make if we approached designing our lives in the same way. How much of life is done on an ad hoc basis? Sure when the baby spills his milk, it may not fit into your designed life to have to clean it up, and when you are dressed and ready to leave for the theater, and your child suddenly comes down with the flu, or the baby sitter cancels, designed life be damned. But over all, I wonder if it is possible to have an overarching purpose that you mentally check in with every day to see if you are fulfilling it? It is so easy to get bogged down in the minutiae of days and weeks, in the needs of the moment, that we forget to check in with ourselves. If your soul is getting short shrift, if you are starving for meaning, if you are rushing around and never arriving at a destination that feels satisfying, then take a moment to stop and think about imposing a blueprint, thinking about the eventual outcome and seeing whether what you are engaged in matches the end result you had in mind. A colleague of mine posted the following on Facebook recently, and it made me think about this very subject, and whether I am feeding my soul or just marking days off the calendar. Perhaps it will make you wonder as well. Be good to you Be yourself, truthfully Accept yourself, gratefully Value yourself, joyfully Forgive yourself, completely Treat yourself, generously Balance yourself, harmoniously Bless yourself, abundantly Trust yourself, confidently Love yourself, wholeheartedly Empower yourself, immediately Give yourself, enthusiastically Express yourself, radiantly