A Great Tool for Peace of Mind

It dawned on me, when I received a call from the Vienna office that a lady from Germany is urgently trying to get a hold of me and I called her back in gear to help her with my services that she tried to sell me an ad in a journal and their deadline was approaching that neither I nor my office staff in Vienna had questioned who the urgency concerned and had simply taken it on as ours....

how often something similar had happened to me; or better, how often I had let it happen. Since then I am applying a simple but very effective tool to sort things out and return swiftly to my peace of mind:

I take a topic and ask myself in which one of the two main and resulting four categories it belongs:

URGENT/IMPORTANT
These two dimensions are to be determined of any topic. They can show one of four possible assessments:

Urgent YES/Important NO    (U+/I-)
Urgent No   /Important NO    (U-/I-)
Urgent YES/Important YES   (U+/I+)
Urgent No  / Important YES   (U-/I+)

This is a beautiful exercise for logical minds, but also very simple for others, especially for creative thinkers as well.

Let´s go through the options:

U+/I-
Something is urgent, but not important to us. This is the classic sales pitch, or anyone who is trying to involve us in their own drama that they created voluntarily and often are trying to bail on their own responsibility in it.

Often the urgency can be contagious, and we don´t even question if it is necessary for us to get involved and invest our time, energy or resources. It is easy to be pulled out of our own peace of mind, and we are in the middle of something that is not even important to ourselves. It takes some practice, but this is where a good ability to say a clear "no" is invaluable. If it is not coming easy to you yet, practice, practice, practice.

U-/I-
Not urgent and not important. This is the easiest category to shed. We might enter this section out of boredom or if our boundaries are very unclear. Sometimes it can be for recreational purposes, which is fine when sprinkled sparingly throughout our schedule.

U+/I+
Something is urgent as well as important. Clearly, we need to act. The only thing is, it won´t be very pleasant because of the urgency. We are in getting it done mode, maybe feeling a little panicked.

U-/I+
This is where the great stuff happens. Ultimately, we want to shift as much as possible of our life from U+/I+ to this category: taking care of important things, before they are urgent, adds to our life quality and creates tremendous peace of mind. Having mainly things of this category assures that we are moving forward and are having fun.

It is a great exercise to go through a whole day, deciding in which of these categories anything coming our way falls. It is simple to nix anything of the I- category and only keep things that are important to us. That will clear out any schedule up to 80 per cent, in my experience. All the things you can do....

I wish you great fun with this and let me know how it goes.

The Stability of Change

How to feel good and stable in an ever changing world? By finding stability in change itself...

I don´t like change per se, yet I like having changed or adapted to change that was brought into my life without my choice. "The only thing permanent is change," has been said. It is so true. To me that means, if we embrace change or at least learn how to cope with it well, we can have our stability back.

This approach has made it possible for myself, a stability-loving person, to leave the village I was born in and get a college education in Austria´s metropolis Vienna. Change was necessary again, when I moved to San Diego. Today I am happily married and get to follow my calling - helping people lead a fulfilled and meaningful life. Had I insisted on disliking change, none of this would have been possible. Here are some things that helped me adapt to change and - if not befriend it - at least get used to it and respect its potential.

Change takes time. Whenever I am stressed, I have little time, patience or energy for anything new. Efficiency is king. Unfortunately it takes time to get into something new, to make a new schedule, to learn how to use new products (e.g. cleaning products, computer software), to train a new employee. The time spent to upgrade is well worth it. I remember when I switched from a regular cell phone to a smart phone. At the beginning I was frustrated because making a plain call was less convenient; I did not want to be interrupted with my routine. Then I took some time just to play around with it and get acquainted with it. I had fun, learned a lot and I never looked back.

A good quality of life allows for new things, for unforeseen things, for time to "sit with it". The willingness to look at something with curiosity and to explore what that change means for us is a striking attitude that many successful, relaxed, level-headed people have embraced. We all can choose to be one of them. Some days it will work better than others, but ultimately it is our own choice what change means to us, not something from the outside. Because one thing is for sure, change will show up; over and over again. Now, I count on it! That´s where I find my beloved stability again.

Running Away From or Towards Something?

When the reflex to run kicks in, it is a real challenge to be honest with ourselves. Are we about to leave because we don´t want to deal with what is in front of us or is it because we are about to take a great opportunity in our life. One reason, why this is difficult to tell is that we often don´t know if what we are walking towards is going to pan out, if it is a true opportunity, or just wishful thinking. So how can we make the best choice about when to run (because we are on fire for something) or when to stay put (in order to once and for all deal with something)...

Three years after we bought our house, I began to get restless. It was the rhythm at which I would move in the past. I loved moving and realized I had to deal with this "wanderlust" now, since moving was not an option. Thinking about this subject, I had to admit that it was nice to stop moving on and that I could put that energy into my marriage and my business. In that respect, staying put was a blessing. But what about all the things I loved about moving? I learned to incorporate those characteristics in a different way into a more grounded life. I started to go through our home room by room and collected items for a garage sale. When moving, it would always come natural to leave things behind, to de-clutter. I also decided to investigate different neighborhoods in the city, just like I used to do when I would move to a new neighborhood. The thrill and fun were the same, plus I did not have to go home to a house full of boxes, wondering where my favorite book was that I wanted to re-read, or I  improvising making dinner because all my kitchen utensils were in place and ready to be used.

This experience taught me that being on the go is not always necessary. It also does take a toll on my energy level. But an even deeper insight was that my relationships were able to develop further, even with casual acquaintances, like neighbors, the dentist, grocery store staff and such. I found that part very satisfying and also somewhat scary, because it was new. 

Now, whenever faced with a decision whether to take a leap for something new, the question comes up that I got out of my experience about moving. "Am I running towards something great, or am I running away from something I just don´t want to deal with?" Because when moving every so often, I did not have to deal with certain things, knowing I was not going to be there for long. It is of highest benefit to find the answer to that question, before doing either. Whereas we want to grow in our life´s aspirations and goals, it is also important to free ourselves from patterns that keep catching up with us. 

One thing I learned throughout my several moves is that anything I hoped to leave behind, eventually showed up again in a new version. The challenge with a partying and up all night room mate from college reappeared as the noisy neighbors or the thundering omnipresent sounds from the close-by highway. Real freedom comes from figuring out how to take care of ourselves in such situations, like when noise is bothersome to us. There are tricks and processes to get to a happy place with it. Clearly, the goal cannot be to have zero noise from the environment. 

Honesty is the best approach when answering the question about running away or toward something. Also, pause is a powerful approach. When we sit still and ask ourselves what the running will get us, the answer will appear. The important aspect of that is that we are not looking for the ONE right answer. That would never be satisfying and a hopeless quest. We need to search for the answer that is the right one for US. We need to have strategies that we are backing up 100 per cent. Otherwise it is not the right thing to do. We will end up sabotaging ourselves, finding many excuses and only putting our energy in haphazardly, proofing our doubts and our reservations right. 

To summarize and answer the question am I running away or towards something:

Honesty - pause - our very OWN right answer - GO! Whatever direction that is, is the right one for you. May you always run excitedly towards something great or swiftly from something harmful.