“Set Ambitious Goals (But Learn to Accept What You Achieve)” plus 1 more

Set Ambitious Goals (But Learn to Accept What You Achieve)

Posted: 04 Jul 2011 06:00 AM PDT

The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you’ve gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?”
— Zhuangzi – 300 BC

Success begins in the mind. You need to set your mind to do something if you want to achieve anything. You need to set a fish trap to catch fish.

Modern motivational gurus tell us to dream big, and to have a “can do” attitude. In The Secret Rhonda Byrne tells us that everything is possible.

We are told that we need to set ambitious long term goals, and clear short term targets. Just as the greyhound runs faster when chasing the mechanical rabbit, people are more motivated when pursuing identifiable targets.

If we achieve these goals we feel good about ourselves. Few things make us as happy as performing a difficult task well, and doing something useful.

What is more, making up our minds to do something makes us healthier and happier, regardless of our age, according to Harvard psychologist Ellen J. Langer, in her recent interesting book Mindfulness.

Langer warns about the dangers of limiting our opportunities by adhering to preconceived conceptions. She refers to the “destructive state of mindlessness.”

But reality has a habit of putting obstacles in the way of our dreams. We are not going to win every race. We may travel a long way down a road, only to find that we cannot quite achieve our original objective. If we only focus on the final goal, we can become uptight. Not only may this affect our chances of success, it makes us less likely to enjoy our journey.

In fact relaxed mindlessness has its benefits. Familiar thoughts and habits help us cope with the new experiences that we face in life. It is not practical to judge every new situation from scratch. Preconceived ideas are comforting, and useful.

Whether at work, or playing sports, or learning a language, we cannot constantly second-guess ourselves. We need to trust our “instincts”, which are mostly not instincts at all, but habits, the result of repetition and experience.

Life is not a short dog race, but a long journey with many detours. if we are too focused on chasing the mechanical rabbit and worried about short term outcomes, we may miss the enjoyment of every rich moment in our lives. If we relax, we are more likely to continue in our projects and acquire experience, knowledge and important life skills.

We should not allow ourselves to become disappointed if our achievements do not match our dreams. We should seek to enjoy what we are experiencing and achieving. This does not mean overstating the level of our achievements in some kind of empty assertion of our own self-esteem. It just means being satisfied with what are and what we have.

If need to combine the mindfulness of the motivational gurus with an effortless appreciation of life, every single day.

The Sage is occupied with the unspoken
and acts without effort.
Teaching without verbosity,
producing without possessing,
creating without regard to result,
claiming nothing,
the Sage has nothing to lose.

Dao de jing – 600 BC

Simplify Family Life With A Communication Station

Posted: 03 Jul 2011 09:00 PM PDT

Keeping a busy family on track can take the skills of a juggler, the planning of a master strategist and the organization skills of an army supply corps officer. But a simple family communication station can make keeping track of who needs to be where much easier.

A family communication station is the one place where all the information lives. It has information on schedules, shopping lists and events, as well as a place to check and leave phone messages.

Choosing A Location

The communication station should be located in a central place where everyone in the family will see it every day. It is also very helpful to have the station within sight of the main phone so that messages can be left easily, and schedules checked while on the phone.

The kitchen is a good candidate for this. We keep our station on the back of the main door. If you don’t want the information out in plain sight, you can always put it inside a cupboard door.

Putting Together the Station

The Calendar

The main portion of the communication station is the calendar. While some families with older children can use a completely electronic schedule, families with small children or those who don’t live and breathe technology will benefit from a central paper calendar.

The calendar will have a place for each person to record their events and commitments. You will want to select a calendar with lots of room in each box, or perhaps one with a column for each family member. Some people will color code the events for each person, making it easy to see at a glance who has commitments on a given day.

A calendar that runs from September through the following year can be useful for those with school-aged children. That way you can enter dates at the beginning of the school year and not have to think about it at the end of the calendar year.

Each family member, if old enough, should place their commitments on the calendar. I have heard some people tell their older children, “If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not happening.” Meaning no rides, transportation or other support for non-listed events. One missed practice or birthday party and the kids will start keeping up their calendar.

A Place For Documents

Another component to the scheduling aspect of the family center is the place to keep related documents. These would be the lists of dates sent home at the beginning of a sport season, the school calendar, or party invitations. This gives these important papers a place to live, and where you will be able to find them.

My calendar has a pocket at the back to keep these items, but a simple manilla envelope would do as well.

A Cork Board

A cork board, with plenty of push pins, is useful for handling information you need to refer to for a short time. Receipts, party invitations and reading lists live on mine. The cork board is also a good place to leave phone messages, although I cannot speak to that, since my family doesn’t do messages.

A White Board Shopping List

Having a running shopping list where everyone can see it is a good way to keep track of things that need to be purchased…before it becomes a critical matter Ask your family to add things to these lists when they are needed.

Warning: leaving a shopping list out where children can get to it may result in junk food being added to the shopping list in a chance to bypass parental approval.

A List of Commonly-Used Phone Numbers

Even though the most-used phone numbers will be committed to memory (yours or your phone’s), it is still good to have numbers available should you need them. This list of numbers should contain the home phone number, parent’s work phone numbers, school numbers and the numbers of trusted neighbors and friends.

After putting together our family communication station, we stopped forgetting to purchase needed items and our schedules became more manageable. Do you have any way to make family communication easier? Share below!