Real Life Wellness: Chewing gum and walking at the same time

By Bill Hemmer
Over the last few weeks I have been talking about how to make better decisions about your time. I have been describing how different times of the day work better for different activities and how you must make a priority list in order to be most effective. So how do you put all of these pieces together, so you can reach all of your wellness goals? Well it’s not easy!

I’ve been to countless seminars, have read 100’s of pages and listened to many recordings about making the best use of your time. What I have decided is that there is no right answer for everyone. I believe it comes back to your brain and how you get yourself motivated. For me, long term thinking combined with short term results gets my blood pumping. In other words, I create a huge project (like Real Life Wellness), then I begin to make many smaller projects out it (like these articles), and boom I get motivated.

But everyone is different. Some people need checklists to get jobs done. Others need to be held accountable to somebody else to get the job done. Still others need to analyze everything to death before they do something. You must figure out what kind of system you need to create for yourself, and then make it interesting and fun and then, chances are, you will be able to follow through and do it.

So, the whole point to this article is this; use your own unique talents to create your personalized time management system. You know what your priorities are. Write at least two priorities down in each of the 4 Real Life Wellness categories, Chemical (Diet), Structural (Fitness), Psychological (Stress Management), and Spiritual (Relationships and Energy). Then set that piece of paper next to your time log. How much time are you currently spending on each of these 4 areas? Do you need to make some adjustments? Are you really spending your time most efficiently to get close to what you really want to get done?

Once you answer these questions, then you can begin to walk and chew gum at the same time. What I mean by this is you can really start to live your life with purpose and joy and know that you are coming into better alignment with your real purpose of being on this Earth.

I have learned if you’re doing what is natural and good for you, it is much easier than you think to accomplish even difficult tasks. For example, when I first started writing these articles it took forever to write one. Now it has become one of the favorite parts of my early morning. Not because they have gotten any better, but because I can just sit down and let the article flow out of me. I don’t try to fight it nearly as much.

This same feeling can happen for you. Once you get into alignment with your own personal priorities, your days become productive components with purpose, your momentum will begin to build, and you will accomplish more than you ever thought you could. If you don’t believe me, just ask every English teacher I ever had. If they knew I was writing every week, they would probably fall over dead.

Next week I am going to talk about a very important topic…time off work. I believe quality time off of work is more important than what you do at work in many instances. More on that next week.