Lent 2012

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten Season.  What I love about Lent is it's just like New Year's without all the champagne and post-Christmas to-dos.  Christmas and Valentine's are over, so our schedule is more flexible without all the shopping lists and preparations.  You get to make New Year's resolutions without it even being the New Year.  You can try on the resolutions for the season and if they don't work, they become a habit for Lent, but if they do, you get to bring them into the rhythms of your daily life.

Here are my resolutions for this Lenten season:

1.  Focus on what's important, not what's urgent.
I got this from the book Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider.  She talks about how in our fast-paced world, we often can't see what's important because we're distracted by what's urgent.  I practiced this on Monday while playing baseball with Paul, who was pretending to be a meerkat.  (If you want to know how meerkats play baseball, just ask.)  My cell phone rang, and it was a call that needed to be attended to.  I didn't answer it.  As hard as it was for me not to stop playing and go answer the phone and take care of what was needed (work stuff), I let it go to voice mail and then kept playing baseball.  So I didn't let the phone (urgent) interrupt what was important (meerkat baseball.)
Doing this is going to be hard for me because I am a multi-tasker by trade and often pause and then get back to what I am doing. 

I also recently read the book The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs.  Hilarious and I highly recommend it.  One of the topics in the book is multi-tasking.  A.J. tries for a month to uni-task.  According to Jacobs, there is no multi-tasking, there is actually switch-tasking.  This is also counter productive because it takes longer for our brains to switch focuses than it does to focus on one item to completion.

So this Lent I will focus on what is important and not what is urgent.

2.  Setting limits
Several parts of my life have the potential to be the main focus for my life.  Like my love of reading.  I would be happy reading all day every day and just breaking for food and sleep.  Or my job.  There is always something happening at church so therefore always something that needs to be communicated or photos to be scheduled or website to be updated.  Or house cleaning.  I could clean house all day every day, and if you've ever seen my house, you know that's not exactly my focus, although it could be.  Or playing with kids, or hanging with friends, or running errands, or a million other activities I do.

This Lent I am going to pay attention to what I am doing and set limits.  Yes, the house always needs cleaning, but how much longer will the kids ask me to snuggle and read a book?  Yes, there is always room for improvement with my job, but it's not supposed to be full-time.  Yes, this book is really fascinating, but there are actual humans around that I can interact with! 

3.  Advocating for myself
I am a nurturer.  I enjoy taking care of others.  However, I'm not so good at taking care of myself.  This Lent I am going to try to speak up for myself and communicate my needs to others.  This one is also hard for me because I am a helper and people pleaser by nature, so if you ask me to do something and it is physically possible for me to do it, I will.  I don't often say no and I don't often express any need for myself.  I will try add myself to the list of people and things I take care of.

Whew!  That's enough deep thoughts for the day.  Now I will stop blogging (urgent) to go take care of what's important (getting everyone out of bed).