A Rest Day (sort of)

My spirit guides told me to take the day off of work today, to stay home and work on a plan for moving forward. I can’t really say how they told me. The thought appeared in my mind and wouldn’t go away. Thinking about going to work made me feel anxious, thinking about not going to work made me feel peaceful, that everything would be taken care of. I suppose that’s how it works. I usually would have let my sense of responsibility hold trump; this time I decided to pay attention.

I have not been making any progress on the personal growth front lately, mostly because I feel completely overwhelmed. The topic is just too damn big. I can’t get a handle on it. I have thought repeatedly that if I could just get a day, a weekend, to sit and just think, without interruption…

…and as I type this, the Youngest walks in to tell me he’s scared and can’t sleep, so you see what a daydream that is…

Anyway, those were the thoughts I was journaling last night, feeling anxious about going to work, so I stayed home and closed myself in my office on the porch and came up with a plan. At first I just brainstormed into FreeMind: what are my big unknowns? What are the topics I want to explore? I reread Steve Pavlina’s The Courage To Live Consciously which triggered some additional ideas. Then I went through and pulled out a couple of actions to get me started. It all went much more quickly than I expected, probably just a bit more than an hour.

If it turns out well I’ll talk more about it later, but my list currently looks something like this:

• Make time. My biggest problem is that I never take the time to pursue what should be the most important thing I’ve got going. Figure out a schedule that allows me a little bit of time, maybe 15 minutes twice a day plus 30 minutes on the weekend, to lock myself away for some “quiet time”. I can knock something off my action list, or spend it reading and learning.

• Start writing down questions I want to explore, and the goals I want to reach. These will eventually turn into the to-do items to fill the time I set aside.

• Research the five year vision. I’ve read several places about imagining where you want to be 3-5 years out, and then building your list of goals from there. Quickly find and skim through those sources. What questions should I be asking myself during this exercise? How much detail should I go into? What are the important topics to hit? I want to make the most of my time.

• Do it. Lock myself away on the weekend, imagine that future, and write it all down. Later on I’ll worry about turning it into something useful.

The full list is a fair bit longer, but these are the most immediate topics I want to hit. So how did you get started?