April Review-Working with Resources

As we started April and our second quarter, I asked everyone to reconnect with their year long vision and check in with the first set of milestones.  I suggested that the places where people were consistently hitting their targets were related to how much they actually feel connected to the value of those targets.  Often we have a target in life that we think we want but don’t go after.  I think this is a function of not really emotionally understanding the value of reaching it.  Getting emotionally connected to the target means really knowing why I want to reach for it, personally.  What does it mean to me, specifically?

I asked the visioning question, “If you had unlimited time and money for a month, what would you do that you are currently not doing?”  The answer to this question can illuminate places where, because of a belief in scarcity, I have needs which are not being met.  Targets are a way of meeting needs, so how can I set targets that actually address my own personal needs more clearly?  For example, my answer to the visioning question is that I would travel.  What does travelling represent to me?  Adventure, learning, discovery, being out of my comfort zone.  So, how can I set targets here and now that will create those experiences for me?  Maybe I need to take on a bigger challenge, or take a new class, or go on a road trip to somewhere I’ve never been.

We then returned to our original working definition of leadership:  The ability to successfully integrate and maximize available resources within the internal and external environment for the attainment of goals.  We brainstormed all the different inner and outer resources we could think of.  Examples of inner resources were patience, clarity, courage, talents, determination, imagination, etc.  Outer resources included other people, institutions, technology, nature, etc.  We saw that resources are truly abundant, both within us and in our environment.

Money and time created an interesting question, since most of us tend to think of them as external.  In truth, it is our internal resource of consciousness that determines how we experience money and time.  Money is simply a way in which we determine value, and value is subjective.  (A dollar bill, in other words, has no value of its own independent of our experience of it.  It is just a piece of paper.  Its value comes from what I want to do with it.)   The mindset and consciousness that we have about money and also the skills with which we manage it are happening entirely within us.  Similarly, time is a function of our minds.  How we spend the resources of our time and money reveal more about what we personally value than anything about the nature of money and time themselves.

Time as a Resource

I suggested some concrete ways to begin to manage time as a resource:

  • Devote sufficient time to planning.  I cannot overstate the importance of this.  The extra time you spend planning prior to taking action will save you a bundle in the long run.
  • Take some sort of action, no matter how small, toward to completion of your goals and realization of your vision EVERY SINGLE DAY.  The investment of your time is cumulative.
  • Reduce your plans into small steps.
  • Coordinate your tasks to avoid duplicating your efforts.  Group like tasks together (all your email, all your phone calls, all your errands) rather than doing them sporadically.
  • Focus on doing one thing at a time.   MULTI-TASKING IS A MYTH.  Splitting your focus not only decreases your skill level at whatever you’re doing, it is a huge time gobbler.
  • Attend to the 80/20 principle, which states that 80% of your results are coming from 20% of your actions.  In other words, not all of your actions are producing equally beneficial results.  Focus your energy on actions that create rich results.
  • Complete whatever you begin.  If it’s a large project, have a clear sense of what “done for today” looks like, and focus on that.  Leaving things incomplete is exhausting.
  • Don’t procrastinate, but take action now.  The amount of energy it takes to put something off is always going to be more than the cost of just doing it.

All of this can be summarized in two practices:  getting better about prioritizing and choosing your targets, and getting better at hitting them.

Next I reminded everyone that, while summer is quickly approaching, winter is just 6 months away.   It’s important, as a good gardener, to plan 3, 6, 9 months in advance.  What kind of autumn do I want to have?  What kind of harvest do I want?  What sorts of resources will I need in the winter?  How can I use the summer months to set myself up for a good, rich, nourishing winter?  (In my experience of 15 years of teaching, I have seen many people become mindless in the summer, distracted by the season and its activities.  They invariably drag themselves into class in the fall exhausted, and end up having very depleted reserves for the winter.  This can be avoided by practicing  mindfulness and planning.)

I then broke down the flow chart describing the cycle of karma and where actions come from.  It may seem like all these exercises in targeting are just a kind of cool, fun activity that we’re doing, but in truth, every time I set a target that challenges me, I am put into a direct relationship with my habits.  For example,  I realized one day a few months ago that I had only had one glass of water the entire day.  This was a disturbing realization, because it meant that I had been so mindlessly out of my body as to not even realize I was dehydrated.  The mindlessness is what is disturbing and what needs correcting.  How do I do it?  By setting the 8 glasses a day target.

The flow chart looks like this:

Karma and Emotions

For a full explanation of this chart, please click here.

April 27, 2010   Posted in: 2010 Lessons

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