Yesterday, my good friend and colleague Cheryl reminded me of spiritual exercise to which I was introduced years ago. Although various people use a slightly different exercise, the essence is the same. Cheryl had first heard it from a nun who was helping to teach caregivers about dealing with end of life issues. I first learned it from a trainer in California as an exercise we could all use on a regular basis to help bring us back to what is most important.
If you, the reader, are similar to me and many others that I know, it is easy to get busy with life and act as if the least important tasks or issues on which we spend our limited supply of energy are the most important. I call this getting off center. This human can easily get off center.
No matter which model of the exercise one is using, the basic exercise is to list the ten issues or tasks, which are most important to you. My list might look like the following:
Friendship
Parenting
Learning
Writing
Overall health care
Music
Art
Travel
Reading
Food – eating, planning meals and preparation
The next step of the exercise might be to reduce the list to five. My list is now:
Relationships – I have combined parenting and friendships.
Overall Health care
Writing
Learning
Music
Next, reduce the list to three. Now, for me, it looks like:
Relationships
Overall Health Care
Learning
Finally one has to reduce it to one item. For me this is:
Relationships
Relationships for me include relationship with self, God/higher power/universe and other people. My thinking is that if I do not take care of myself emotionally, spiritually, and physically I will not be present with other people and will, thus, not be a good listener, which, to me, is the primary component of any relationships. Listening might mean listening to their words, the en energy in general, their body language and any other way that they are letting me know what is going on with them. Notice I did not say listening and giving them advice or listening and relating what they are saying to my experience. I also did not say I defended myself or apologized profusely for hurting the other person’s feelings. Of course, there might be times when I need to apologize. The point I am attempting to make is that it is important be bear witness- being an enlightened witness (see recent blog by that title).
In the long run I would like to learn how to be a good friend, father, son, other people with whom I have a long or short-term relationships.
As I approach my 75th birthday I am again reminded that life is very short. Just ten minutes ago I was 25 and a few minutes prior to that I was a six year old. In another second or two I will end this life journey. It does not matter whether, as we measure time, it is a day or 25 years, the time will pass very quickly. 98% of the tasks on which I spent time and energy are not important. Whether I leave my condo perfectly clean, write an erudite blog, have money in the bank or ready those 100 books sitting on my Ipad or on one of the many surfaces on which one finds books waiting to be read or leave my car clean will not matter. No one will remember any of those. People will remember whether I was ever there; whether I neglected to put down the newspaper when they were talking or whether I allowed something or someone else to distract me while I was physically with them.
Another part of this exercise that I have often used with myself is to attempt to honestly estimate the percentage of my life that I spend on each of the items on my list. Even though work or making money was not even on my list, historically a significant percentage of my time was spent on work. Sometimes at work the task was more important and sometimes being with a person was more important. If relationship was more important then I was okay with that even though it was in the context of work. On the other hand if I had time for clients and never time for my family and close friends then I was not spending my time in a way, which was consistent with my stated values. Many of us will find that our “real list” is the one, which reflects how we spend our time and energy. No mater what I say my stated values are, the truth is how I generally spend my time and energy reflects my actual values. For them I have to look at patterns and not just one hour or one day.
Once I compare how I am spending my time and energy with my stated values I have the following choices:
1. Do nothing because how I spend my time and energy matches my stated values. (My partner, children, and close friends would agree with my assessment?)
2. Quit lying to myself and accept that my values are different from what I have been saying that they are.
3. Find another way to make the lists more compatible. Cut back on work; downsize one home and other material possession; make new decisions about educational choices for the children; get rid of some of the toys; quit loaning money, which makes one look like a rich big shot.
This can also be done as a family exercise. Remember that the goal is not to scold, shame or criticize in any way. The goal is to have the courage to be honest and to find a way to make changes, which allows one’s energy and time output to more nearly match one’s values.
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