I am struggling this week with what to write. There are so many thoughts swirling around in my head and I am trying figure out what makes sense to post
This week, I finished up reading “Designing your life” and it has made a pretty big impact on me. For the first time in a very long while, I feel like there is hope that someday I will have a life fits me. I am on my way there now but I have big aspirations and they are going to take time to come to fruition. And I am not a patient person.
I still have to work through most of the exercises in the book and that will make the biggest impact, but I have done the first one and it was very telling for me.
The first exercise is to figure out where you are right now in four key areas of your life. The authors say that these four areas are key to energy and focus to keep your life running smoothly. They are Work, Play, Love, and Health. You use something like a gas gauge and rank each area from empty to full.
What really surprised me was that I wasn’t near full on any of them. Which does kind of explain why I have been feeling restless and overwhelmed lately. What I found funny was that the place in my life where I am most uncomfortable right now is Work but it is the one that was closest to full.
I don’t quite know what it all means yet but I do know that I am about to embark on a journey to work through this life design thing and will try to figure out how to make some other areas full. Especially the Health one. I really want to boost that one.
I am going to bring you all along on this journey as I expect it is going to really impact how I live my life. What I really like about this book and the philosophy behind it, is that it does not promote the idea of balance. It realizes that we will never be able to balance all four areas and re-frames the thought to be that you will choose what areas are most important to you at any given time and focus on those. I really like this thinking because I know that right now, I am focused on Work and Health, so maybe Love and Play will be a less important part. They will still be there but they don’t need to be balanced with Work and Health right now.
The other thing I loved about this book was that it dispels the notion that you need to have a purpose in your life to be happy. I have always struggled with the whole “purpose” thing and messages that don’t need me to have a purpose really resonate. It frames it more about being curious and trying new things to find what really lights you up. I have heard of this philosophy before but always had trouble putting it into practice. I think that I have some natural curiosity but it gets overrun by my need to be good at things. If I can’t get good quick, then I move on quick. Sometimes that isn’t the best approach. So, I will also be working on being curious.
I hope you all come along on this journey with me. This coming week, I am going to be curious about new ways to better my health. What are you going to be curious about this week?
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