In John Steinbeck's, The Pearl, the main character, Kino, a poor fisherman, finds the largest pearl in the world; consequently, his life, his family's life, and the life of the village is forever altered. Ostensibly, the novel delivers a spiritual message that our perceptions may not reflect reality. Yet another "pearl" of wisdom comes from realizing that the discovery of the pearl launched a pivotal moment for everyone associated with it. The discovery provided the alchemical moment creating the reference point to which everyone would measure future stories and experiences. There would be life before the pearl and life since the pearl, so the pearl's discovery became the exclamation point, or stopping point, from which new thoughts, actions and feelings would emerge.
Similarly, our own life's timeline has exclamation points. Events and circumstances, whether we chose them or they happened to us, have forever changed the course of our life journey. Although we often judge these exclamation points, the possibility remains that a better path opened to us as a result.
At this time, we can consciously ponder the types of exclamation points we wish for our future timeline. What type of pearl do you wish to discover so that your life journey can take an incredible, adventurous path? This question usually requires a little soul searching. If time, money, and obstacles were not present, what would be the most audacious thing to do or have in your life? Often, our minds create obstacles that impede our ability to dream, like children, about what our future could be like. For example, "when I grow up I want to be an astronaut; a ballerina; a doctor..." In these audacious answers we dare to dream and the journey takes an incredible, exhilarating path of its own.
Initially, most of us will not know the answer to the audacious questions because we have conditioned ourselves to be practical: "I can't quit my job because I have bills to pay; I don't have time for myself because of my other responsibilities." Therefore, the process of unraveling our self-imposed limitations to rediscover our inner longings should at least be fun along the way!
For the next several weeks (and borrowing a term from Julia Cameron's, The Artist's Way), make an "artist date" with yourself. For those who have not yet read/completed this fun and worthwhile book, an artist date is a creativity and play date you make with and for yourself every week. You get to do something fun for YOU. By spending a few weeks in creativity and also trying new creative projects you have always wanted to try, you will unravel years of practicality and start to dream again. Here is a suggestion to open the dreaming channels:
1. Collect some old magazines which you normally would read or would like to read.
2. Spend time thumbing through and looking at the pictures or words and cut out any picture that appeals to you in any way. Just cut them out and stick them in a giant folder or box for a few weeks.
3. After about a month, acquire a giant posterboard, some glue and scheduled uninterrupted time for yourself. [two to three hours would be best].
4. On the given day, casually go through these cutouts and trim, organize, and then arrange them on your posterboard in a collage.
5. Glue them in place.
6.Put the poster away for a week or so; on your next artist date, take out the poster and spend some time looking at it.
- What is the theme?
- What do the photos have in common?
- What does it reveal about you?
- What does it show you are looking for at this point?
- Finish this statement: I want ___________________. [just keep writing, uninterrupted for about ten to fifteen minutes].
8. For added dream fun with this, take one thing you want to create in your life and write it on a piece of paper; find a small, espresso cup or some container of a similar size, and place the paper, folded, in the cup. Whenever you are out and you find a penny on the ground, pick it up and put it in your cup. Each time you put the money in there remember your wish. When your cup is full, read the paper and discover the pearl of wisdom in your life! !!
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As I grow older I find, even in hindsight, that my life-long battle with procrastination was not at all necessary. As I look back at those things that I most procrastinated on I now realize that they were also the most needless and unnecessary tasks in the larger scheme of things. Most of us never procrastinate with the things that we like doing most. So I concentrate on the things I like doing and for those things I don’t like to do: well, I either don’t do them or I put them in a context where I can enjoy the process of doing them. And if that doesn’t work I have someone else do them for me. And if someone thinks I am procrastinating they should reassess, it is my way of saying that I am not going to do it because if I was going to do it…it would already be done.
I hate paying bills, balancing the accounts, filing the paperwork. So, I moved everything to the computer. I use Quicken and on-line banking and get all my bills via e-mail and direct billing to my bank. All the copies are saved electronically (no more paper bills) and I now truly enjoy and stay up-to-date on a chore that used to be the biggest burden of the month and now sans the paperwork. Taxes too! I would wait until the night before to get out all my stuff and sort and sort and sort some more, looking for the elusive gas receipt for $15.00 or a parking stub for $2.50. No more! Never again! I now pay an accountant, I give her my print-out and she does my taxes. The receipts that aren’t in digital format are in a box that I sort through once a year on a dreary rainy Saturday while watching old movies like “Key Largo” and “The Maltese Falcon”. And if a stub or receipt winds up missing…no one will miss it. So I solved my biggest procrastination problems by just changing how I do whatever it is I have to do and hiring someone to do those things that I just don’t like doing. Can’t afford it? Can’t afford not to!
I take care of my yard once a week. It only takes me about an hour of being outside in the sun drinking a soda while I talk with my friend the gardener. It’s a great relationship because without my friend the gardener my lawn would get mowed about as often as I get a haircut. Getting haircuts is still something I procrastinate about until my wife begins to threaten my peaceful existence.
We live our lives bombarded by advice and directions from all sorts of efficiency experts and self-proclaimed geniuses who propose to tell us how to do everything from stacking our papers to filing our fingernails. Myself, I always file them under "C" for "clippings". Our culture has somehow created this sense that we must be efficient in all we do. We must make every moment count, and have purpose behind all that we do and, of course, we must have goals and roadmaps on how we are going to reach these goals and then we have to do 10% better next year. I think it is an insidious form of brainwashing.
I don’t believe for one minute that we should be so preoccupied with always outdoing last year or that we must all be perfectionists in all we do. Many times mediocre is all it takes and any effort beyond that is a waste of time and effort and only cuts into the other joys of life. The trick is to learn to read the world and your circumstances so you know where and when to make the decisions of how much effort you are going to put into a task. We must learn to be just as comfortable with “just” doing something and doing it “perfectly”. There is a truly a time and place for everything. It is often the pressure of perfection that creates the problem of procrastination.
Everything doesn’t have to be done. The idea that one must respond or react or process everything they encounter is another social ploy to load us with guilt and condemn us to another session of procrastination. Here too, whether in your job or personal life, you must learn to recognize those things that can be forgone without repercussions or negative consequences. There is never enough time to do everything and any attempt to do it all will relegate you to a life of procrastination and less time to enjoy life. Learn to say “No” and mean it. Delegation is always a great method of ridding yourself of things you don’t like to do. Let someone else fret over it. And to make it even worse for the poor victim of your buck passing you might as well ask for it by Monday Morning. Maybe this insane pressure will help them to learn the same lessons that I have learned the very hard way.
And for those who have a hard time with my brash attitude towards the responsibilities of life I suggest that you get a poster of the Earth, taken from the moon or even a satellite and hang it in plain view of where you spend most of your decision making time and use it to determine how important something is. Will it leave a mark on that ball of water and dirt in the poster? If not, it may not be that important. And if that doesn’t convince you then get a poster of our little galaxy and place a colored pin in the approximate location of where the Earth is. Now try it again. Will, what you think is so important make any change to this image. We often do big things for small reasons. I propose we start doing a lot of the smaller things for the very big reasons such as the quality of life, the joy of nature and the peace of mind.
It is in the understanding of the consequences of what you do or don’t do that will lead you down that wonderful path of enjoying and becoming successful in life.
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