All in Personal Development
A new year isn’t about resolutions or taking some kind of important leap off some precipice. It’s about taking stock and giving oneself a reset button. Without start and finish lines we can struggle to tread water much too long without making any kind of course correction.
Every claim I make here is backed by data. Every month a new study is released on how much social media makes us unhappy and sick. (7) And yet we don’t want to hear it. We don’t want to believe it. So many of the people I watch suffer are of the most scientifically minded people I know. The data is there. But you don’t want to see it.
Regardless of how out going or busy you are, we all need some personal space. I don't just mean a bubble around you that you'd prefer people didn't penetrate. I mean a location away from life's demands where you can breathe, regroup, and recuperate.
The biggest benefit to setting up the night before, is that you get to spend the first 2-3 hours of the morning being present. You will not be scanning your brain for what to do next, torturing yourself with deadlines and situations that are out of your control. Instead, the longer you can keep your mind on the present, the more focused your work will be and less stress you will feel, and you will actually get more done. As an added perk, you will be happier.
My “why” is to cheat death. Sparing you the explanation for why that is my “why,” fostering an animal who may not otherwise have had the chance for a new beginning, usually behavior cases, brings my “why” front and center. Saving lives is a joy and a privilege that I don’t take for granted.
We live in a reactive world. Instead of controlling our lives we leap from notification to notification. We stop for alerts and redirect our attention in their direction. We call ourselves multitaskers when really we are just giving less and less of our attention to a million voices until we are left going through the motions with no thoughts or creativity left to address the demands.
Who cares if this game is silly, weird, or crazy popular. Care about the fact it has reinvented gaming and provided us with much needed a vehicle for the human need for interaction and exercise. Be excited for the future of games and how they can continue to heal us and make us whole.
The depth of our being is equal to our resilience. The faster forward we travel the shallower we become. The thinner the commitments, the shallower the connections, till life turns transparent. And then when we fall it all comes shattering down like broken glass.
Few other people experience careers like we do. Our hearts ache with every heartbreaking case. We give everything to our jobs, from our free time, to our last drop of compassion and empathy. And then we are asked to give more. Similar to doctors, EMS, therapists, and disaster relief works, we are asked to do the impossible, usually with lives on the line, and we are expected to always be at our best. We also suffer the same side effects of doctors, EMS, therapists and relief workers, and it's killing us.
