SISTER WISDOM : build a better life

1. Stop talking all the time.

Really. We are obsessed with talking about everything: meetings, marriage counseling, phone calls, texting, discussions, emails, chatting, family counsels, therapy.
Some of that's great, some of it is needed, but 87% of the time, the solution is not talk but action. You only need that 13% of talk time to figure out what action to take. From there, talking is just that much more procrastination. [Yes, I made up the 87%. Seems like a good number though.]

2. Stop updating your online life every 20 seconds.

You're distracted, and you're creating a false sense of connection, community, and productivity, and it's adding to the clutter in your life without adding any real value.
Update maybe 3 or 5 times a day (if that) and then spend time in the real world creating real connections, adding to a real community, and doing some things that are really productive. Like maybe counting the times I used the word "really" in that sentence.

3. Stop with the pointless comparison.

In what areas of life do you find yourself continually tripping up, falling, failing? Proverbs tells us that the fear of man brings a snare, and asks "Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?" [Proverbs 27:4].
Those areas where you keep tripping and falling? Look for snare: the fear of man setting a standard that isn't right for you. And look for envy, which is guaranteed to make you fall. You can't stand in the face of it, so get it out of your heart.

4. Stop using your culture and your peer group as your only reference point.

Number #3 will be directly effected for the better. Get a new, bigger frame of reference. Study history. Read about different cultures. Read the Bible. Expand.

5. Stop feeling sorry for people.

Yourself, especially. Pity helps no one. It reinforces the self-defeating cycle of victimization. It enables addictions, narcissism, and poverty of the soul.
It justifies laziness, resentment, and fear. It makes you negative. Offer mercy. Have compassion. But in your mercy and compassion, always see and call people (including yourself, especially) to be their best, to live up to what God has made them to be.

6. Stop being snarky.

Sarcasm is not that great. I know, I know, there's a lot of it here. I'm working on it. Really, I am, because here's the bottom line: it's fun to be clever, and witty, and make people laugh. But at the end of the day, sincerity counts for a lot more than snarkiness.
When people need help, they will not turn to the wit of the group, they will turn to the one who will listen and answer sincerely. I want to help people. Do you? Don't turn them away by putting a witty one-liner at a higher value than someone's feelings.

7. Stop keeping stuff you don't need.

Old clothes. Old relationships. Grasp the "seasonal" concept and apply it to everything. Okay, there are limits! Marriage - keep that. Kids - keep them. Parents - hang on. Siblings - keep them too. Some relationships are meant to last a lifetime, but not all relationships are meant to last, and not all relationships can last at the same level.
If you're a loyal person (I am), it can be extremely difficult to realize this and take action accordingly. However, for the sake of the relationships in your life that do need to last, that do have a level of depth, you need to let go of others.

8. Stop with the feel-good friends.

Find some friends who make you a little nervous, uncomfortable, who ask questions you can't answer, who know more than you do about God, parenting, child-rearing, who challenge you, who inspire you, who call you to be (what was that we said earlier?) your best, to live up to what God has made you to be. Not convinced? Read Proverbs 27: 5, 6, 9.

9. Stop assuming people don't like you, don't get you, or don't care about you.

Sure, maybe for every 100 people you meet there will be 2 who don't get you, 1 who doesn't like you, and 1 who just doesn't care about you. But the other 96? They get you (on some level); they like you; they care about you (to some degree); and they like you.
All that is needed for more getting, liking, and caring is more time, and more of you getting, liking, and caring about them. So don't be paranoid. Risk it. People care, they really do. (P.S. I like you.)

10. Stop protecting yourself, your stuff, and your territory.

If you do just one thing from this list, make it this one. You want a better life? Really? Quit trying to control everything. Quit staking your claim in the world. Quit demanding that things go your way. Quit looking out for yourself.
Quit measuring, quit hoarding, quit defending. Open up. Give. Give more than you think you can. Flex. Go with the flow. Do things your husband's way. Ask your friend for her advice, then take it. Be generous with your whole life.
There is one that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is one that withholdeth more than is needed, but ends up in poverty. The liberal soul shall be made prosperous; and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.Proverbs 11:24-25

This guest post is written by Haley Montgomery. If you're interested in writing a guest post for Sister Wisdom, see the guidelines here.

When Annie approached me about participating in her Modern Homemaking REdefined series as a guest blogger, I was honored and excited, but also a little apprehensive. I loved the concept of finding the commonalities of women nurturing their homes and families in so many different walks of life. But, let's face it. My lifestyle is pretty "common" as seeking commonalities goes. I'm a mother of three preschoolers who sends her kids to daycare while she goes to work at an office. Judging by the waiting lists on the daycare centers in my neck of the woods, that's a pretty popular lifestyle choice.
So, as I was formulating thoughts about this essay and my approach to homemaking in 2010, all the same old ideas came to mind. Managing time, prioritizing schedules, getting dinner on the table, balancing work and the needs of children, getting to that 15th preschool party, figuring out what happens when the minivan needs to be serviced, determining exactly how many chicken nuggets can sustain one 5-year-old. Not necessarily ground-breaking and interesting stuff.

About ten minutes later, my boss of 16 years decided it was time to retire and close the advertising agency where I work. Yeah. Life has a way of making it interesting, doesn't it? Over the course of a weekend, a conversation with the Queen of my current company, and some soul searching, I decided to take a trip down entrepreneur lane and start my own graphic design business. Presto, small business owner and work-at-home-mom all in one fell swoop! Can I have a moment, please?

Work opportunities change. Kids change. Schedules change. Choices change. Grocery prices change. Diapers and pull-ups change (constantly). Life in transition. Now there's a commonality. As I started rethinking the new tenor of my life as a mom, designer, and homemaker as it crashes into the new title of business owner, this one fact began to rise to the surface. Change happens. It just does. We can resist it, but we can't stop it. We can bemoan it, but we can't squelch it. We can fear it, but we can't insulate ourselves from it.

As I look at my life in the five years I've had my precious gifts (5yo, 3.5yo and just shy of 2yo), I see an endlessly flowing river of change. And, I see that each new stage of development and each new endeavor has brought frustration or worry, perhaps, but also joy and growth and the satisfaction of having made it through. I'm realizing that for me, modern homemaking is about embracing that life in transition. It's about grabbing it and sucking the life from it, no matter how quickly it's traveling. And come to think of it, the idea really isn't all that modern. My grandmother did it and my mother did it through the constant changes of their times as well. Changing times and circumstances are certainly nothing new.

As mothers and homekeepers, however, it so often falls to us to make the most of those changes, those transitions that may be unique to our years and our families, but common among us nonetheless. I find myself striving in the midst of this inevitable change to create my own individual core consistencies-- those things I want to remain constant about myself, about my home, about the quality of my children's lives. In practicality, it's about setting in motion the habits and schedules and even shortcuts that make that consistency possible, and about putting to rest the guilt to conform to some other Mom's homemaking or parenting core requirements.

So what if Ore Ida or Tyson cuts my chicken and potatoes for me? At least I heard the continuing saga of rocket ships and sharks at the dinner table. So what if my kids find their way to bed some nights with sticky still on their cheeks. At least we found out how funny it is to drop your popsicle, pick it up again and pop it in your mouth, grit and all. So what if crumbs and dust bunnies live well and prosper under the couch? At least we know where all the spare Lincoln Logs and matchbox cars are stored. So what if all the lovely art objects have been relegated to the closet downstairs? At least we witnessed the coffee table tower-building feat of the century right up until the 2yo intervened. These are the core consistencies of what matters and what doesn't. Nothing brings those constants front and center quite like change.

How will I respond to this new transition? How will it affect my home? My schedule? My ability to take care of my family financially, physically, emotionally? It's easy to get lost or bogged down in this repeat-play in my mind. But, these are questions we all face--every day and with every shift in a thousand areas of life from jobs to marriages to gas prices to potty training.

For the past two years, I've chosen a posting "theme word" for the year that reflects something I want to pursue more carefully in my life. The 2010 theme word I determined back in December was "courage." How could I have known that the events of this year would so strongly challenge that pursuit? Modern homemaking and homekeeping requires courage, to be sure. Courage in the face of change. Courage to pull from that change all the growing and teaching it has to offer. Courage to demand from that change the ability to keep what is worth keeping and release what isn't. I hope that I can build from these transitions the courage to really live. To live in my own home, that place I've created. With my own benchmarks for success and my own set of constants. I hope we all can.

What do you need courage to let go of? What do you need courage to keep as part of your core?

Today's 2 Cents Courtesy of:

Haley Mongtomery is a designer by trade, a creative type at heart and a mother in joy. She is the author of EyeJunkie, her personal foray into the art of paying attention -- part mommy blog, part spiritual quest, part cultural record and part sarcastic word-play. When she's not chasing three preschoolers, she's usually writing sentence fragments or obsessing about life as the newly minted owner of Small Pond Graphics. You can follow her on Twitter: @itsasmallpond or @eyejunkie.

This guest post is by Julie McKamey. If you're interested in writing a guest post for Sister Wisdom, see the guidelines here.

Out of Boxes Me Is Living ~ Living In My Boxes Only

No matter how I flip the word around it still comes out LIMBO and that is where my life is right now along with my home! So that is the present…

The past… a home full of life, two rambunctious boys, working full time, running to and from team practices and games (never the same team but sometimes the same night across town from each other), laughter, love, messy house, cooking, grilled cheese sandwiches, drive thru meals on Tuesday nights (BK used to be dollar Tuesday night for kids meals), trips to the dock to see Daddo, grocery shopping, prayers, deep sea fishing, broken arm, running errands, boys fighting, more life, dog running around, stitches, backyard b’day parties, bird making noise, learning phases, home LIFE groups, pool cleaning, car washing, lawn mowing, swinging on the swing set, pool time, baby teeth falling out, “milk” please, ho does with mac and cheese, church, teen age boys, driving permits, high school, jobs, car keys, graduation, college, home for sale, moving out…

The future… empty nest, tears, occasional visits, new digs, prayers, new jobs, new business, college graduations, more tears, weddings, in laws, holidays, meeting new people, building a practice, quiet times, fishing, dock side picnics, grandkids, more tears, moving forward…

So what exactly should a home be? It should be whatever the homemaker wants it to be, whatever he or she envisions, it should be whatever they call “home”!

[Annie here]
Home's got to change with life. Are you willing to let go of the way home used to be - whether in your childhood or in your first years of marriage or pre-baby or before you downsized or just last month - and move forward into what your home needs to be now?

Today's 2 Cents Courtesy of:

Julie McKamey is the wife of two almost-all-grown-up boys, a new empty-nester, and is currently shuttling back and forth between getting their home in Missouri sold and helping her husband set up his chiropractice clinic in their hometown of Highlands, North Carolina. She is a positive, energetic, encouraging, and aims to live by these words: "When God aims us in a new direction, we have to let go of what we've known, be willing to embrace the unfamiliar, and trust He will sustain us on the journey."

Change always comes bearing gifts. (Price Pritchett)

New job. New house. New baby. New clothes, new hair cut, new schedule. Different city, different responsibilities, different lifestyle, different habits.

Change is often something good, anticipated, longed-for, but it's still difficult because, for a while, nothing is familiar. And we feel lost without familiar surroundings.

That Lost Feeling

I remember that same lost feeling for the first few months of marriage, maybe even the whole first year. Read the rest of this entry »

It's a funny thing about life, especially when you have kids involved: just when you start to figure things out, everything changes. If you're in the midst of babies, diapers, and frequent feedings, if you're juggling toddlers and finger foods, if you're trying to teach phonics and make dinner, if you spend more time in the car than at home...it doesn't matter where you are in the process of life, work, and mothering. Change comes.

We might welcome change, but it always causes a setback in terms of knowing how to deal with the new day-to-day. Sometimes the setback is small and you adjust without really thinking about it. Sometimes it takes a few weeks before you realize that what did work isn't working any longer. And sometimes it isn't easy to figure out what will work now - new routine? New schedule? Drop something? Add something? More restriction? More freedom?

Whatever the change you're dealing with, there's a way to start getting back in control instead of scurrying through your day confused and overwhelmed. This series will walk you through the 8 essential steps of dealing with your life, figuring out what works, and making it happen. Go through the steps one at a time; you may have the initial enthusiasm to take them all on, but that will quickly become overwhelm and fatigue. I'll give you recommended starting spots, and you can adjust to match your own priorities.

The articles will be appearing over the next week in the order listed below; once they're all live, however, feel free to choose the one that makes most sense for you. What area frustrates you the most right now? Pick the step that deals with that area and make that change first, give yourself a few days, and then tackle the next. You'll find as you go that you gain momentum, so though you may need a few days or even a week between steps 1 and 2, by steps 5 and 6 you will have gained more enthusiasm and energy, and you'll progress through each step faster.

The first article is a primer on how to apply these changes so they make a real difference; the last article is the final step - an overview of how to successfully establish a habit - as well as tips, ideas, and reminders to help you succeed in these changes you've just made.

• Getting Started: How to Make Changes that Stick
• Regaining Control with a Morning Routine
• Making Progress with Specific Work Goals
• Keeping House with a Daily Minimum
• Simplifying Food, Chores, and More with Repetition
• Getting Things Done with Designated Days
• Making Life Fun by Incorporating the Extras
• Ensuring Success with a Nightly Routine
• Following the Plan: Turning Steps Into Habits

Image courtesy of Crystian Cruz.

My husband is changing jobs after working at this one since he was 15. It's been his only job for his entire life. It's a family business, and he has loved it, but it's time. Change is moving in, people are moving on. It's the right thing, but that doesn't make it easier. Nothing is easy right now, because nothing is familiar.

That Lost Feeling

I remember that same lost feeling for the first few months of marriage, maybe even the whole first year. I was knocked-out in love with my husband (I still am) and I knew I wanted nothing else but to be with him. But it wasn't easy because it was all so different. No parents. No familiar routine. No Mom to run errands with. No old friends to call up for shopping or coffee. Everything was new and different, and because of that, it was difficult to accept.

Everything changed with one morning's strange epiphany during that first year. Joe was doing something - I don't even remember what - but it was different than what I was used to. I was just watching him, feeling that tightening, the offense at what was unfamiliar, when it came: the fact that it was different didn't make it wrong. It just made it different, and I could get used to different.

I Can Get Used to Different

That moment was the first in many steps upward, back to the comfortable glow of familiarity. When I reached that threshold of being comfortable in my new life, it wasn't because I had finally managed to make it the same as my old life. It was because I had accepted a new set of circumstances and behaviors and routines and surroundings as my own. I had put aside the prejudice against the unknown, allowed it to come close enough to me to become known, and had accepted it as something equally good to what I had before. In many ways, something much, much better.

The One That Stuck

I could have shortened that process had I learned a little something about acceptance before getting married. I think it was shorter than it might have been because I had been watching, a long time, and making those resolutions that single people love to make before marriage. A lot of them disappeared once I experienced marriage, but one stuck. Over and over I had seen my friends and family expend all their energy on changing their spouses. It seemed so obvious to me, the single and objective onlooker. You can't change somebody else, and you just frustrate each other when you try.

Create a New Right

I didn't understand the powerful motivation of wanting to accomplish that change until I entered marriage. It's not as simple and petty as I thought, not necessarily a power struggle, though it often turns into that. Mostly we start trying to change each other because we are trying to create a life that feels right. We have strong ideas about what right is. It takes a good bucketful of humility dumped on your head before you realize that sometimes "right" is merely a matter of preference, and fighting to the death over preference is just stupid. Create a new right, together, and you'll both be happier.

I think that's what acceptance is. It's letting go of comfort long enough to get close to the unfamiliar. It's letting go of assumptions long enough to see that the unfamiliar isn't so bad. It's letting go of control long enough to let someone else's preferences be just as important as yours. It's a difficult thing to do.

But we need to learn how to do it.

Some days I wake up and I don't feel comfortable with myself. Some days the whole world feels foreign. Some days the ability to accept is the only thing I've got going.

I get introspective and analytical when I get pregnant. I think it's the knowledge of the huge change to come, the huge change of a new life, new baby. It's a good change. It's miraculous that it happens by all these thousands of tiny changes inside my own body. Baby3 is the size of a lentil bean this week...

So the introspective part is the stuff that we all hit when things get wierd or overwhelming or just when we take time to think. Am I spending my time on the right stuff? Have I lost my priorities? Why do I feel hungry all the time? (Oh, wait, sorry, that's not introspective, that's just early pregnancy talking...).

You know? I start looking at my goals, the way I spend my time, the things I'm accomplishing, or not accomplishing. For the last five months or so I've been working on my freelance writing. I wish I had more to show for it, but it's a slow burn at first. I can feel several different things building momentum, though. It takes time to establish credibility in the freelance world, but once you do, doors open more quickly to jobs that offer more than $3/article. (Just an aside that $3/article is a barbaric amount of money to offer a living human being. Now $5/article...)

Okay. So I've been spending lots of time on writing and things related to writing. The household, and all that pertains to said household, has merely survived during this time. I've done no major projects. I've cooked just enough to keep us alive, and we've still eaten fast food more than I will ever admit. I've done the minimum cleaning and ignored the mildewy corners in the bathroom and the spiderwebs on the ceiling. And we've been okay, but I'm starting to get a little bit tired of "the minimum."

Yesterday morning I spend a couple of hours scrubbing the bathroom. Scrubbing. Hands and knees on the floor, scrubbing. I ran a tub of soapy water and washed the garbage cans, a potty chair, and a booster seat. I took down the shower curtain liner to wash it. I scraped around the faucet and shined the sink. Then I moved on to the kitchen.

And it felt good. I felt refreshed and energized. I'd gotten further behind in what I intended to do in writing that day, and today I worked in the yard instead of catching up. But all the pregnancy-prompted internalizing has led me to a simple conclusion: my life just needs a little more balance. I'd gotten pretty heavy on the "reading, writing, computer" side of the equation and pretty light on the "cleaning, physical, working outside, cooking, creative" side of the equation. As you can tell, I counteract the imbalance by swinging far to the other side for a bit. Now I will start work on making it even out on a regular basis, which probably means some days where I do nothing but sudsy scrubby cleany things and some days where I read and write and stare at the computer and eat fast food for dinner.

I love life. Change is not to be feared. It brings us to better versions of ourselves.

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What does it mean to counter the culture? Our friends at Wikipedia tell us that "it is a sociological word used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day,[1] the cultural equivalent of political opposition."

What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive? (Irv Kupcinet)

Our well-trained American minds immediately think of hippies smoking weed in the back of the VW, war protesters burning American flags... unproductive actions like that.

But what is culture? "All the values shared by a society" is the key phrase here. Our culture consists of those societal structures, traditions, and values which we accept as normal (thus, right) simply because they are. Everyone around us accepts them; they are familiar and comfortable. We do not question their rightness. Read the rest of this entry »

Challenge Update: I'm on a roll, feeling like this 5 am wake time is more habit than not habit. I think I am going to have to continue to think of it as a monthly challenge for another month, however, to really get the habit solidified. Those few days of sickness and "rest" threw off my rhythm. Getting up is rather habitual, but my body is trained well enough to stay awake yet. I can stay awake, and do, but it's a struggle. I need to get that pattern in place so my body clock adjusts. I also need to work on going to bed a wee bit earlier than, oh, midnight.

Improve Your Life: Bill Ford, in his book High Energy Habits, suggests making a list of all the little things that annoy you and then dedicating time to taking care of those things. Here's what he says:

We pick up a lot of drag in our lives; little things that slow us down, which we hardly notice and come to think of as just part of life - inevitable friction, like barnacles on a ship's hull. The good news is that we don't have to put up with them and life is different when we do something about them.

Ford suggests making this list and then choosing three of the easy items on the list and tackling them immediately. He suggests making time every day to deal with these annoyances. And yes, for the inevitable protest of no time, he has an answer:

We are so busy that these little things do not seem to justify a high priority. But it takes energy to ignore them. And that is the cost - the energy spent on ignoring is wasted and it adds up.

So take his advice. I'm working on it. Yesterday I got rid of a dead plant that had been sitting in my living room, annoying me, for months. Then I tried to fix the loose screw on our table. I say tried because once I got the screwdriver and got under the table, the only screws I could locate were tight. So this is an annoyance I will have to pass on to my husband, the resident fixer-improver-constructor-man.

Be Open-Minded: Take a moment and think of a person you spend a lot of time with, like your spouse, your children, your cubicle mate, your best friend. Identify one thing you do, habitually, almost unconsciously, that has the potential to annoy that person. (Just pick one!) Work on eliminating that habit, or replacing it with something that will uplift and energize rather than annoy. You'll find yourself more uplifted and energized as well.

By the way, you can buy Ford's book online at Amazon for as little as $1.99. It's a good framework for revamping some life habits that drain you and includes chapters and suggestions on using your strengths more often, clearing clutter, creating time to think, and more.