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May 2008 – This month’s article is a departure from my traditional practical advice on home organization. This article provides subjective statements, designed to provoke your own thought and judgment, examining; the best balance for you between work and fun; responsibility and vice, and what we should do vs. what we want or need. ‘Organizing life’ is a monumental title that deserves direct and honest opinion. Here is mine.
If we work hard we often play hard to balance our life. In my nearly 40 years of experience, I’ve learned that everything in life, that works, must be in balance. If you are a 60 hour per week worker – you need to search your being for what brings you joy and deliver the ‘equivalent’ each week to sustain your drive.
Whether we are building a corporate empire, caring for a family, or finding our own sense of accomplishment and any innumerable endeavors, balance is key to success.
Let’s face it – there are things we do because they are right. They may be hard, inconvenient and difficult to accomplish but we do them because we have a responsibility to other people in our lives to fulfill a specific role. Admirable and yet difficult.
Our vices may be socially unacceptable, economically inconvenient, or personally challenging but I am here to say; “we do not have to be perfect”. This is NOT meant to endorse illegal or immoral activity but to simply state that we are human beings and by definition, meant to falter and learn from our weaknesses.
Organized life is a balance, and if we need some personal vices to enable our ability to fulfill important responsibilities, that may be the price we pay.
Oh, the ever present internal battle. We often default to ‘should’ in an effort to please others and fulfill ‘our role’, but let us remember, we are important as individuals. As we grow and develop families of our own – ‘self’ becomes more that just our own selves and reprioritization is appropriate.
Visiting a parent each day may be what you feel you ‘should’ do but might not be the best thing for your own self or family. Break it down. Try to think rationally instead of emotionally or through your own sense of ‘should’. You made a series of choices in your life to organize your being as a single person or your own family – each with its own group roles that need to be fulfilled. Single people are no less free to fulfill tasks for parents than those of us with children.
Let us each remember that we all have 24 hours in each day, it is how we choose to use them that defines us.
I am a staunch believer in ‘your gut will tell you your truth’. I don’t know enough about your life to suggest what may be right for you. Your greatest challenge is to find your own answers and act on them. Dr. Wayne Dyer once said, “It takes 20 times of doing something a different way to change your behavior”. Challenge yourself. The universe will throw many things at you – it’s how you respond that determines the outcome.
If you have a storage or home maintenance challenge and need ideas to solve them, or if you have a comment about how some of my ideas have worked for you, email me.
Article by Sheri Gammon Dewling
Markham Organizing Maven
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