I can make your day 15 minutes longer - or more! Don't believe me? Read on.....

I'm a big fan of yoga (fun), walking with my dog (see photo) and yard work (not so much, but it gets me sweating).  

But who doesn't dream of making time for all that lovely exercise that our bodies crave, by lengthening the day?  Oh, please, please, please, great spirits of the astronomical, can't you slow down the Earth's rotation and give us a longer day?  

Not possible, thank goodness, or we'd all die for celestial mechanical reasons I'd be glad to bore you with [just ask], but isn't it a great fantasy??

Fortunately, we don't have to.  We don't really need more time, and in our saner moments we do know that.  What we need to clearer priorities and the strength to stick to them.  Kids and spouses can do more, if we are willing to draw on our ancestral courage and make that shift happen, and not be distracted by the hooting and hollering and "I hate you"s.  Many things just don't need to happen at all, which means courage again to face up to peers, family and the parental voices in our heads.  Courage is more valuable to your life than diamonds, or hours more in the day, and you know that, too, at the wise core of your soul, down below all the noise and rumpus of emotions and fears.

Priorities....

I like to try out new exercise options and so I picked up the Women's Health Big Book of 15 Minute Workouts.  Some of them are strictly for the 20-something crowd, but many of them look interesting, done straight or modified for my aged and decrepit body.  Before the workouts, the book features a list of time-wasters that you could eliminate, to get more time for your workouts - and for Reiki, meditation, tapping, art and the rest of the stress-elimination protocols I teach my clients.  

Here are my favorites:
* Turn off Facebook.  Set a timer, give yourself 10 minutes a day and then TURN IT OFF.

*  Say NO to what is not on your priority list.  If everything is critical, then your decision-making is seriously askew (a stress symptom), or you need additional help from your probably-not helpless family members.

*  Do one thing at a time.  Scientific studies have proven over and over again that you can rapidly-switch your attention from one thing to another if we are talking about mindless chores - laundry or vacuuming, or with my cooking style, cooking - but if you are doing something substantive, give it your undivided attention!  You actually spend less total time if you do something with all your attention and then move on to the next thing.  If you don't believe it, test it out - fairly - and see what happens, for three days minimum. 

*  Make cleanliness and order a priority, so you don't waste time trying to find things.  Put things in the same place all the time.  Put up a key hook and always put the keys there.  Put your glasses in the same place.  Keep your office or bill-paying area organized.  Do your bookkeeping and filing every month.  Clean the house once/month.

I have my fridge organized, and used to go ballistic if hubby puts things on the wrong shelf. Then I decided to do a test.  He did his usual higgledy-piggledy and got 3 seconds to glance in the fridge and list what was there.  I got an organized fridge and the same 3 seconds.  Then we switched.  He saw that HE was faster with an organized fridge too.  His cooking improved because he could tell at a glance what raw materials he had available. That's why he puts food on the right shelf just like I do.  Right, honey?  Honey?  

But don't be a neatnik.  Understand that too much cleanliness is like too much dieting - a desperate attempt to control SOMEthing.  Channel those urges into art or journaling.  Take one of my classes and get super-good at identifying your real needs before you start vacuuming under the bed.  [I put my beds directly on the floor.  Nothing to vacuum, whoopie!]

* Spend less time on cheap, unimportant purchases and decisions.  Some people are naturally decisive (Myers-Briggs J types).  My first husband and I went to purchase a new washer one day.  I scanned all the options, narrowed it down to two, then one, slapped my hand down and summoned a sales rep with a "This one."  While hubby was still thinking about the first model he came across.  I had a clear idea of my criteria before we got there, then I laser-focused on the criteria list, and done.  12.5 minutes, according to former hubby.  And that included the time spent asking "Where are the washers?"  Myers-Briggs P types need to consider this tip.  Some decisions are important enough to deserve protracted decision-making.  Darling hubby #2 and I spent two years meticulously researching and finding our ideal future retirement location.  For a P, making a commitment to one course of action, and leaving all the rest behind, is less than comfortable.  Practice zipping through unimportant decisions.  Become the cheetah, who focuses exclusively on the impalas, then one impala in particular, with laser intensity.  Enjoy the sunset some other time.

*  Put it in your calendar.  This is a gotta-have for anyone who wants to accomplish anything.  Your priorities are in your calendar.  If they aren't there, they don't really matter to you - whatever you say. 

*  Use that timer for other black holes, those astronomical phenomena that suck in every bit of matter and energy that comes close to them.  You know what you waste time on.  Use that time to rest!  Or exercise, which gives you more energy and burns up the cortisol that makes you feel tired.

*  Set out your exercise clothes, or always keep them in the same place, near the front door.  You set out your next-day clothes before you go to sleep, right?  I actually have two set of clothes - the stuff I'm going to sweat in and the stuff I am going to meet clients in.  No decisions to make the next day, just jump into one and then the other.  Or keep them in the dining room, like one of my clients does, because she works at home and seeing them during breakfast reminds her of her commitment to her health, her family, her income and everything else that first and foremost depends on her health.

Doesn't that all sound eminently logical?? Sure it does.  Now pick ONE item on that list and do it every day, every single day, for a week.  Then add another one.....

Contact Victoria Leo for a FREE Getting Unstuck session at victoria@soaringdragon.biz, or visit www.soaringdragon.biz. 

It's a good year. No, it's a bad year. No, it's.....

We so blithely talk about having a “good” or “bad” year.  What we mean is a time in which we got what we wanted out of life - we had health, a good marriage, a nice income, low stress – or we had a time that presented many challenges, sometimes intense challenge on one front – exceptional health challenges or frustrating unemployment .  My “bad” years frequently feature being nibbled to death by ducks – dozens of mild to moderate problems, but constant and relentless  - that lead your psyche to believe that the Lords of Creation have it in for you (as a Christian client referred to it) or that life is just a constant struggle with one stumbling block after another.

2015 was a difficult year for me.  2016 is shaping up to have lots of challenges as well.  I lost 5 weeks of my life to a serious bronchitis attack and now my beloved sister is riddled with cancer and breathing through her last weeks, the latter hitting with almost no warning.   Why did my goddess, angel and animal spirit cards, not to mention my Akashic consults, all tell me that this was going to be a “good” year?  Are they wrong – or nuts?

Maybe the latter is closest to the truth.

I think the disconnect can be explained by a story from one of the Buddhist scriptures, which I will paraphrase and shorten.  A farmer had a young son who was an excellent helper.  That’s good, his neighbors told him.  Then the boy broke his leg and it set poorly; he would always have a limp.  That’s bad, his neighbors said.  Years pass and the nation is at war.  All the young men are conscripted for military service.  All the fathers lose their young male labor and have to work hard in the fields.  Except our farmer.  Because the boy limps, he is excused from military service.  That’s good, the neighbors say. The young man does not die in the war and remains to help work on the farm, albeit at a reduced capacity.

This constant mental categorizing event outcome as “good” or “bad” is the major cause of our life’s dissatisfaction.  If things aren’t good or bad, but just are, we can move on to maximizing the value of what we have, like the farmer.  His emotions weren’t up and down, fluctuating with the “story” that his mind created about reality, like his neighbors were doing.  Some people read the story and think that the moral is that you have to wait to decide if something is good or bad, because of course the story ends up “good” – the young man does not die.  But the real meaning is much more profound.

So what about me?  Maybe I can be very sad, weep and journal and be hugged, but my sister’s untimely death isn’t “bad,” per se, just very, very sad.  Maybe it just is.  Maybe the bronchitis just is.  [Compare this with “the bronchitis is actually good because it got me to cut back on the number of overseas trips I was planning for 2016, which were exhausting to think about, much less do” which is the psych cognitive-behavioral approach, and a very good one it is, too, in getting us to see another possibe interpretation of the available facts.  But with all its virtues, it is only turning bad into good, not walking away from bad and good as categories, period.]

So I don’t think all those cards and Akashic messages were wrong.  It was my interpretation of them that was off-base.  They didn’t say I would have a “good” year.  They said that many blessings were coming to me.  It was I who mistranslated that into “nothing sad is going to happen.”   When I take a more balanced look at the year, the blessings – so many more than in 2015 – stand out in stark relief.   My gosh, what a shower of blessings, in business, in health and in new friendships and spiritual relationships.   Not nothing but blessings of course.  But blessings there are.  And all of it – without being labeled good, bad or both/neither – just is.

If you ask me how the year is going, I may make you comfortable by saying, “Many blessings,” because small-talk doesn’t require philosophy or truth.  But know that I know what kind of year I’m having.  I’m having a year in which I am alive, and all of it just is.