Rules #5 & 6 Take Inventory/Ask for Help

Step #5 Take Inventory (The Comfort Zone is Not Our Home)

          Anyone who's ever run a business knows you’re only as good as your ability to manage your inventory. Personally, I suck at it. But that’s not a pass. If you don’t resonate to inventory management, find someone who does because you can’t properly run a business without it, nor can you properly run your life.

           As for business, so for life. By life inventory I mean the assessment of just where you spend your time, where you lose your time, what consumes your time and the quality of  time spent when you spend it. How much time do I throw away? How much time is lost in mindless activities that serve as junk food substitutes for the creative energies spend contemplating dreams or more meaningful things like relationships, your health, your dreams? How much time do I invest in the bigger picture of what I love, what makes me tick, who I am vs. time lost to mindless television, non-productive Facebook clips or other time consuming, mind numbing activities?

            A dear friend recently divorced. New to the job market, new to her first home alone, new to a lot of things, she finds herself overwhelmed, now at all new unfamiliar levels so we often share books and inspirational things. Recently I shared an exercise I'd run across in one of the greatest books to ever be written on finding the perfect job (titled "Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow" by Marsha Sinetar--a must read if you aren't doing work you love)...in which you write out of what a perfect day would look like, and better yet FEEL like. (Sounds easy, but done right, could consume an entire day or more. Challenge is to redirect your thinking when old habits start in with "Yeah... wishful thinking BUT..." The exercise is designed to override the "buts"and focus on the things that make you, YOU, after which, you align your energies toward work and livelihood with these gifts in mind...It will make you uncomfortable at first, which is good as that's a sign you're doing it right.)

At the end of the day, I reminded her: comfort zones are not our home. The discontent you're feeling now is a good thing. It means something's about to change, and if you're mindful about it...for the better. The soul abhors a comfort zone. Sure your body loves its couch, but your soul is wired to soar.  The stimulating things in life don’t happen in your comfort zone, and here’s why:

Comfort zones by definition consist of all that is familiar in your life, and when you’re surrounded by familiar, where things are nice and consistently comfy, you're not stretching or growing. Sure we all require rest. And it's good to come home at the end of the day and unwind, but if you never came out of this zone, you'd die of boredom before too long as comfort zones are hardly stimulating. Matter of fact, they're the opposite of stimulating. (It’s why marriages so often go dull after the initial honeymoon period.) It’s easy to groove yourself into a rut if you're not careful because life is about change and change means different…unfamiliar…all new territory. Changing anything takes some getting used to. Would I RATHER flip on the TV and zone out when I need to be hauling something out the door or reading something uplifting? Lots of times, yes. But until I pace myself to curtail just how long (and of what quality) I allow myself to subsist in this zone, I’m gonna be teetering on the rim of the comfort black hole, where it's dangerously easy to fall in. It’s just too dang easy to fall back into old patterns. 

But to assist you while you attempt this new endeavor...you are allowed, even encouraged to...

#6 ASK FOR HELP

             Help comes in a number of ways. Sure you can reach out to friends. Reach out to professionals. I’m big on reaching out for books when broaching something new just to brace for the newness of the learning curve. When I spot an area in need of help (be it de-cluttering a room or launching a new business) there are a bunch of “crawl before you walk” opportunities to get you going. Googling alone is a good starting point, but eventually, my passive intake of information needs to be replaced with active initiative. But before diving into new waters, sometimes it helps to wade. My favorite wading places include used book stores, libraries, telephone directories...heck, even my own book shelves. 

              I'm currently re-listening to Steve Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Successful People (easily done while tossing a box or scrubbing goat bowls). Simple decision. Even simpler little gesture. Nothing earth shattering here. But this one small decision to input constructive vs the depressing news I had  allowed to set my day's mood is palpable. A simple decision to better my mental diet, was all that was required of me. As with nutrition, you feel it when you start to eat better, if for no other reason than you made a healthy decision. What's good for the body is even better for the mind. The things we listen to, read or allow in-- even in the smallest of doses-- can and will affect the outcome. Like the rudder that steers the ship, the smallest effort turns the largest craft.  “Small moves El” ( from the movie Contact) serves to remind that change doesn’t have to be dramatic. It can be as simple as tossing 3 things a day to ingesting 10 minutes of something helpful. It's like WD-40 for the mind. Want to clear out the sludge between the cogs that’ve been slowing down your engines? A little squirt will do. You needn't be dramatic. You need only to be MINDFUL.

                 Big oaks come from tiny acorns. Some days it pays to be a nut!