SISTER WISDOM : build a better life

In Emperor's New Groove, Kronk is, of course, my favorite character. I don't really know how you could have another favorite character.

Kronk has a shoulder angel and a shoulder demon and carries on a few bits of dialogue with them in the movie. At one point, he ends up dismissing them: “Eh, you guys are confusing me, so, uh, begone or whatever it is I have to say.” “That'll do,” they say, and disappear.

Kronk, You, and What's On Your Shoulder

What I'm not going to say here is that if you just listened to the voice of God all the time, you wouldn't have any problems. First, that's far too simplistic, kind of obvious, and also depends on what you mean by problems.

Some fine people who seemed to have it together as far as listening to God's voice continued to encounter what I'd define as problems. Lion's den, anyone?

What I am going to say is that you do deal with voices. Loud ones, quiet ones, all kinds of 'em, all the time. Yours, your past's, your culture's, and everyone else's. Blah, blah, blah. Know how I talk about how we talk too much? I think we do that, sometimes, just to cover us the voices blabbing away in our brains. We don't know how to turn them off, so we talk louder to cover them up. That helps, a bit. But there's a better way.

Get to the One Thing Already

So – big surprise – the one thing holding you back, my friend, is that you're listening to, and then acting upon, the wrong voices. But here's where it gets tricky, because it's not quite as simple as a shoulder angel and a shoulder demon.

Would that it were. And maybe, deep down, it is, but the problem is that on the surface level – the level on which we hear the voices – things get muddled. Sometimes the shoulder demon dresses up like the shoulder angel. Sometimes the shoulder angel sounds, well, stupid. Sometimes it's a regular carnival and everybody's in costume.

Vibes. Get the Good Ones.

The reason we listen to the voices – any of them – is that they appeal to some part of us. But it's subtle. It's manipulative. It's not always easy to identify, and oh-so-easy to justify. Here's a simple way to differentiate:

The good voices move you forward from positive motivation.
The bad voices move you backward, in circles, or not at all from negative motivation.

And right now, let's just go ahead and identify the absolute Queen of all negative motivation, at least as far as women are concerned.

Guilt, the Reigning Potentate of Bad Voices

Guilt is the Queen because she seems so right, so accurate. She'll talk to whatever matters to you. She'll phrase it in such spiritual terms, such self-sacrificial words, that saying no to her will seem like the worst sin ever.

But let me be the one to clarify something for us all right here, right now.

God does not motivate us through guilt. God motivates us through specific conviction (something is wrong in what you're doing, and this is it) and then equally specific encouragement (here is forgiveness, here is how to change). God pulls us onward, forward, by showing us what could be better in specific terms, not what might get worse in vague fear-shaped visions.

Queen Guilt, on the other hand: Vague. Subtle. Manipulative. General. Incessant. Overbearing. Fearful. Anxious. Keeps you running in circles. Keeps you from moving forward. Keeps you from letting go. Offers you no forgiveness. Offers you no hope. Commands you to change but offers you no way to do it.

Annie, 1: Queen Guilt, 0. Ha.

A couple of nights ago I had a list of things that I needed to get done for work.

Now, listen so you know where I'm coming from: I grew up with a stay-at-home Mom. I always thought what I'd be is a stay-at-home Mom. And I am. I'm also, however, a freelance writer. I get to work from home. I do this because, to my surprise, I discovered that I go stir-crazy if I'm not doing something in addition to being a Mommy. That's just me.

On this evening, I had a backlog and we were in between Internet services at home (don't even get me started), which meant that I needed to escape to wifi-land for a few hours. Which meant that I needed to leave my Baby and my babies. At home. On the weekend. Without me.

I didn't have a nice dinner made. I did have a backlog of laundry, a house dirty from our crazy weekend, and a husband who can handle all that stuff, all the kids, and all my paranoias just fine, thank you very much.

But guess what I still felt as I pulled out of the driveway? Yep. Guuuuuilty. No matter that I was going to work, not to have a manicure. Didn't matter. Queen Guilt was on the scene and just chatting me up like her BFF.

And I let it go on, all the way to the parking lot, before I finally realized I wasn't talking to myself. I was being talked to. I was being told what to feel, couched in a whole bunch of vaguely spiritual “good wife-good mom” terms that just punched my buttons.

But that's when I realized this: if God had wanted me to stay at home that night, this is NOT how He would be telling me.

At that point, I punched a few buttons myself, ejected Queen Guilt from the sidecar, went in and got my work done and got back home. End of story, until the next time...

What's Your Next Time?

We've all got hot buttons. You know you do, and chances are those might be areas in which God is calling you to change. But don't confuse the voice of God for the voice of guilt. Guilt will keep you spinning in the same cobwebs. God will set you free.

Remember: it's not a question of which voice is loudest. It's a question of which one you listen to, which one you hear, which one gets your attention. And that part is up to you.

Here's a recap:

Bad voices will appeal to your insecurity, pride, ego, flesh, fear, stress, mistakes, past, comfort, ease, desire for security, need to be right, need to be needed, need to fit in, need to be liked, fear of man, religious sensibilities.
Good voices will appeal to your morals, dreams, courage, humility, understanding, true confidence, sense of adventure, sense of risk, sense of purpose, deeper vision, long-term goals, sacrificial love, wisdom.

Bad voices will be urgent: do it now, do it now, do it now or else.
Good voices will be direct, specific, and consistent: this is the way, walk in it.

Who are you listening to?

Ready? Let's go.

Step 1: Ask a New Question

All those books out there talking about how to improve your life, meet your goals, and be your best self seem to have one thing in common (okay, really, more than one thing but that's not the point here): they all direct you to spend some time thinking about what you really want out of life. You're supposed to list goals and dreams and passions, find out what your purpose is, discover your calling, the thing that makes you tick.

I have a different proposal.

Quit asking, "What do I want?" and start asking, "What do I have?"
What's right in front of you? Gazing at the horizon for opportunities? Try looking a little closer to home.
Wisdom is before him that hath understanding; but the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth. Proverbs 17:24

Step 2: Change One Thing

Quick quiz: what's the one way not to change anything? Answer: try to change everything. Lots of people have great intentions and great ideas, but they spread themselves so thin that they can't actually accomplish or change anything.

The few who do change are those who focus deliberately on success in one area at a time. Find one thing you need to change in your life and focus on that one single thing.

Step 3: Work in 3D

The 3 qualities that will make you outstanding in whatever you attempt? Simple. Easy. Anyone could be this way.

• Be diligent.
• Work daily.
• Fight off distraction.

That's it. Really.

Step 4: Start Listening

Empathy is the ability to feel what other people are feeling. You want to be a good wife, a good mom, a good sister, daughter, friend, neighbor, church member. The problem is that all too often we get the needs, demands, requests of others through the filter of our own priorities and emotions. Instead of hearing the actual need, we hear our interpretation, so we then offer the right solution for that interpretation.

Example: Husband is frustrated at work. We think, "Oh, he's just stressed from that fight he had with his boss, he's not letting it out." We offer: "Honey, you want to talk about....?" How often do we miss the real problem because we are busy offering a solution for our interpretation of the problem?

Be different. Be beyond status quo. Start listening to what people say and what they mean. Focus on their words, their emotions, the heart coming through. Open your eyes and ears. You will see the real problem and, God willing, you will be able to offer real help.

Step 5: Beat the Slog

Many, many people have great ideas. Sincere hearts. Motivation. Inspiration. Grand intentions. Good plans.

They even get off to a good start.
They stay consistent with their kids for 1, 2, 3 days at a time.
They quit arguing with their husbands for a week. Maybe even two.
They do great and then... they hit the slog.

First there's the rush. It's fueled by enthusiasm and emotion. You've worked yourself up into an energetic state about something, you're motivated, and you take off running. Then, things don't quite work out. It takes longer. You get tired. You question your motives. You question your plan. You feel like you are wading knee-deep in mud. You are in the slog.

If you keep going through the slog, you will be ahead of 99.9% of the people out there. The slog is where we separate "the ones who really mean it" from "the ones who don't really care." You mean it. I know you do. It's in your heart. You care. Press on, one slow, gloppy step after another. You will get through the slog and you will find yourself further along than you anticipated.

Sharing what you have is more important than what you have. - Albert M Wells Jr.

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.

Alternate Title: When I Was Your Age, I Had to Get Up at 4 a.m. to Milk the Cows

"Children are thoroughly human and if all their needs are provided for, with little effort on their parts they fall into habits of inertia and moral flabbiness as surely as their elders do under similar conditions. What we parents need to realize is that ordinary modern conditions more and more tend to put children in a passive, receptive mental attitude, and not in an active and masterful one; and further that we can not better this condition without taking a great deal of very intelligent thought" (1).

A lovely woman by the name of Dorothy Canfield Fisher wrote that back in 1916, which I personally didn't realize was such a time of modern convenience. Comparative, I guess, to 1816 or thereabouts, I guess things had gotten significantly easier.
Wonder what she would have thought about video games? Talk about a passive, receptive mental attitude. Read the rest of this entry »

in even the laziest creature among us
a wisdom no knowledge can kill is astir--
now dull eyes are keen and now keen eyes are keener
(for young is the year,for young is the year)
--let's touch the sky:
with a great(and a gay
and a steep)deep rush through amazing day

Pete and Repeat Were Sittin' on a Fence

The thing that kills me about housework is the repetition. No, that's not it. The thing that kills me about housework is the thought of all those other things I could be doing instead of housework. Repetition is just part of life, after all.

We shower every day (or thereabouts, hopefully), we say hello and goodbye and I love you, we eat three meals (or thereabouts), we sleep, we work. So on. Life is full of repetition, and that isn't always bad despite the occasional plunge into boredom. There are ways to avoid the boredom. Read the rest of this entry »

Revelations or Epiphanies or Something

I had a couple of "mini-revelations" yesterday. I love those. I won't call them epiphanies, exactly, but they're big for me.
One is this: There is no perfect writing topic/subject/job for me. I just like to write, period. I like to write about almost anything. The key is (and this is the second mini-revelation) that
In order to be inspired I need to be immersed.
I need input, and lots of it, to create a continual flow of output. Otherwise I just kind of run dry.

The Input for Inspiration

For me, that best input comes in three forms.
The first is the written word.
I need books, articles, thoughtful and inspiring blogs, poems that shake my heart up, novels that wrap me up in another world, how-tos and tutorials and ideas and magazines and newspapers and quotes and lists and letters and journals. I love to learn and I learn best from the written word. When I learn, I get excited about sharing; my brain takes the new information and races off with it in a hundred directions. I can't move my pen fast enough to jot down my thoughts.

The second is nature. Outside. Outdoors. Walking, hiking, throwing down a blanket and playing with Zeke in the sunshine. Tromping the trails with Mara and Robbie, showing them the first daffodil, the silent, faithful, soft green moss, the flattened, sweet-smelling grass where the deer sleep. Something about - no, everything about - the real, beautiful, fresh and muddy world is refreshing to my soul and my brain. Being outdoors is when all those words start percolating in my mind, start mixing with my dreams and hopes and values, start bubbling up into new ideas and thoughts and hopes that just need to be shared.

The third is conversation. Talking with my husband, my best friends, or strangers gives me windows into how other people process and think. My husband will come up with completely different spins on what I hear and read. I share a little idea with him, and together we toss it around, critique it, expand it, change it, name it, morph it like a ball of Silly Putty.
Conversations with dear friends are the same way; they expand my thinking, my perspective, my whole world. And strangers! Don't get me started on this. I love talking to strangers. I think I scare them sometimes. But I'm fascinated by how people think and live, by what they do and feel and how they view the world. When I start talking to strangers, I walk away with ideas for articles and books just popping out of my head. (This may be why people run away from me in the parking lot. Hm.)

No Waiting on the Muse

The result of these mini-revelations is one big thought: I control my own inspiration. This is huge, as a writer. I don't have to wait to "be inspired" from some mysterious force. I have identified what inspires me most, and most consistently. I just need to grab that stuff when I'm feeling dry. I need to make sure that those sources of inspiration are a huge part of my life.

So what's your inspiration? What's your source? What gets you ticking? And how can you make room for more of it in your life?

-

This post is part of the 30-Minute Blogging Challenge at SteadyMom. (25 minutes.)
Image courtesy of markbarky.

There Is No Perfect

...at least not here on earth. In the meantime, here on earth, imperfect earth, there are only two options (neither is perfection): reality and fantasy. The things you actually do enter reality and you benefit from them, even if they're mediocre or imperfect. Some benefit is better than none. Small steps are better than standing still. But when you ignore, delay, procrastinate... nothing is real. Nothing becomes real.

The Myth of Failure

All the possibilities stay in the realm of fantasy, and you're stuck there, a prisoner to all the things that might happen. The fantasy of failure and the fantasy of success are equally unproductive and equally unlikely as long as you sit.
But if you take small steps, tiny steps, make daily efforts toward success? Even when you mess up, you're still bringing some measure of success into reality. And that's when you start seeing failure as it is: a myth.
The only real failure is the failure to move, to try, to risk, to work.

Quit Setting Ho-Hum Goals

If your goals were such that you knew you could reach immediate and perfect success in them, they wouldn't be very inspiring, would they?
Big goals inspire us to take on big challenges, face big fears, do more, be more than we knew we could. But you don't get that sitting still. Sit still on anything and you'll stay the same, while things around you slowly, surely deteriorate.
Something you'll accomplish immediately and perfectly isn't worthy of being called a goal. It's an item on our to-do list. Do it and then find something bigger, scarier, riskier, more exciting, more rewarding for a real goal. "You must do the thing you think you cannot do," said Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt.

You Have No Idea What You're Capable Of

The truth is, you have no idea what you're capable of and almost every one of us estimates far, far too low. We were made in the image of God! The dreams and goals we have - both the ones we cherish and the ones forced upon us by circumstances - are God's way of waking us up to our own potential. It's like His hand is on your shoulder, shaking you awake, saying, "Come on, this will be fun! You can do this! I wouldn't ask you to if you couldn't."
And you can either jump up and follow Him and try and see yourself succeed, or you can clench your eyes shut, hide under the covers, and rot.

Your call.

"Oh, hmm, well, I guess I'll take the rotting option. Yeah. That sounds peachy."
Okay... have fun with that, really. Me? I'm getting out of bed. I'm awake, I'm interested, I'm ready. My motto: "Find something I can't do. I DARE you."

You Can't... Unless You Want To

Are there things I can't do? Sure! Lots of them. And I'll find them, but for every one thing I find that I can't, I'll find a hundred that I can.
I've gotten a lot of "You can't" messages in life. We all do, because the world is looking for the lowest common denominator. It's a way of making every lazy, fearful person feel better about sticking their heads under a pillow instead of living. We measure ourselves by each other (even though that's a silly thing to do).
You can listen to the messages of a society which has obviously and repeatedly proved its own lack of intelligence. If that's where you go for your guide to life... well, you'll have a socially acceptable, ho-hum-boring life. You won't be a mover and a shaker, a trend-setter, a record-breaker. You won't inspire or enlighten or challenge. You'll be just another individual in the mass of individuals who want nothing more than to hide their individuality. Enjoy.
You might want to invest in a better mattress because you'll be spending a lot of time in it.

Or.

Or. That's the best two-letter word in the English language, don't you think?
Or.
Or you can take all the "you-can't" lines you've been given and throw them out the window.
"You can't have a happy marriage." (But I do!)
"You can't have a baby at home." (But I did, three of them, in fact.)
"You can't survive on one income." (But we are!)
"You can't make it without health insurance." (But here we are, healthy.)
"You can't find time to write while you're a Mom."
"You can't get out of debt."
"You can't be happy."
"You can't be faithful to your spouse."
"You can't find good friends."
"You can't accomplish big things without money."
"You can't own a business."
"You can't finish school."
"You can't make a decision."
"You can't succeed."
"You can't write a book."
"You can't change."
"You can't make money at the work you love."
"You can't, you can't, you can't...".
What are the "you-can'ts" in your world? I have one final sentence for you, the only "you-can't" worth using:
"You can't tell me what to do."

They're Just Little Obstacles

Most of the reasons that "you can't" do not actually touch the reason why you should. They're not really reasons for failure. They're just excuses for other people who are scared. They're just little obstacles to your inevitable success. Step over them. Step around them. Build a bridge. Keep moving!

Refuse to be the lowest common denominator. Refuse to be anything but the full breadth of your potential.
-
Image courtesy of notsogoodphotography.

Focus is key in getting things done. Be diligent at what you're good at and see what happens. Let other things go, unimportant things.
Distraction is the enemy of focus. Planning becomes procrastination and procrastination is the enemy of action.
What distracts us? Read the rest of this entry »

In all labor there is profit...

"In the entrepreneurial environment..there's a lot to be said for showing up on time, ready to work. ...The meeting of deadlines and commitments alone causes a person to stand out from the crowd like an alien space ship parked in an Iowa cornfield. The ability to get things done and done right the first time will magnetically attract incredible contacts, opportunities, and resources to you. All of this is a matter of self-discipline." {Dan Kennedy, No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs}

"Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but you never know if it's Read the rest of this entry »