I love traditional holiday meals. Not necessarily because of the traditions themselves, although they are meaningful, but because no one expects innovation. And no innovation means simple, because I've done it all before. As part of my move to deliberate living I have moved away from complex meals that stress me out to the point where I can't enjoy the holiday. So that means simplicity, repeatability and more enjoyment. With the American Thanksgiving and the winter holidays coming up, I thought I would share with you how I have simplified the big Thanksgiving dinner we have at our house.
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People can learn by rote, or being instructed. But those that retain the information the longest are the ones who can apply it to their own perspective. As a teacher the things I found students retained were the things that they could relate to or customize to their own. The same thing applies out of school. A reader recently contacted me to learn about my typical day so that she could see if anything I did could help her structure her own. Rather than send her an overly-long email, I decided to make it a post with the hopes it might help other people too.
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In writing, there are two types of people: planners and pantsers. Planners outline everything and have a plan, and pantsers fly by the seat of their pants. Both produce novels; however the pantsers end up having to go back and straighten out all of the little plot issues and character problems after the fact. It's like planning after you've already done the work.Personal life is also much like this: there are planners and there are pantsers. The difference with life and time, though, is that you can't go back and change what happened in a week if it exploded in your face. I have long thought that planning is the way to make sure that I'm not wasting precious time…
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One of the aspects of deliberate living I have struggled with is getting healthier. For a long time I gave in to the negative habits I fall back on when stressed, namely stress eating and reading as a means of escape. The end result of this, after years of this behavior, is that I am packing extra poundage and I'm not as strong as I once was. Deliberate living doesn't mean I get the easy choices. I am choosing instead to act in a way that will move me towards health, and that means weight loss. I've learned some lessons along the way, especially from our late dog.
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In programming, we have a term: GIGO. It stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out. It is particularly apt in my professional field because too often clients expect us to take mangled data and buff it into usable format, without any guidance or structure. GIGO. GIGO isn't just in data, though. I find it really does play a lot into the rest of my life.
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This is about a realization of how things can creep into our lives completely unaware...and affect us deeply. We can consume, unthinkingly, and end up completely off-track and unable to easily get back on.
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There was a time when I would stumble out of bed with just barely enough time to throw on clothes and get to work. The end result what that I would get to work already stressed out, feeling frantic. I began to implement a morning routine after I read The Miracle Morning and began to see my life change. But the five areas laid out in the book were soon not enough. I decided to expand on it.
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The weekly review of Getting Things Done is a way to set your week on track. It focuses on the things you need to do to make the start of your work week smooth. And, like the rest of GTD, the focus is on your work week. But what about the rest of your life? Today we will look at 6 things to do on Sunday to make the rest of your life's week run smoothly.
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Have you ever said yes when you wanted to say no? We've all done it, and it can lead to some far-reaching consequences.Saying yes when you want to say no can lead us to build resentments as well as take us away from the things we really want to do.Between visiting my parents, re-assessing commitments at church and some tumult with one of my music teachers, I have had to say no quite a bit lately.
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Sometimes the best laid plans go awry.As some of you know, I was summoned for a visit by my mother during this past week. I went, fully intending to be able to get the blog article done during that time away.
