Tilting My View of the World

Have you ever made a change that seemed so simple, yet altered everything? A month ago, just that very thing happened to me.

For over a year, I’d been struggling with how to control the mess that was my domain at work. I was constantly overwhelmed, incessantly trying to remember what I had to do and recreating the same processes over and over. It came to me one day that my desk was basically a project and I was basically a project manager, trying to keep all the balls in the air and get to the finish line on time.

So, I endeavored to find a project management program that would work for me. Nothing quite fit the bill, so I started playing with an Excel spreadsheet. Previously, I had attempted to reign in my tasks with an Excel spreadsheet, but it was laid out horizontally. There were several repetitive tasks that looked the same horizontally, but most didn’t. So, I turned the task list to a vertical list. A very simple change in perspective, difficult to describe in detail here, but earth-shattering in its ability to change my work environment.

I essentially created a to-do list with the ability to create templates for a number of the things I had previously tried to keep in my head. For instance, instead of simply listing “make bread” as a to-do, I would now list every step of bread-making, checking each step off as it was accomplished. Next time I wanted to make bread, I’d simply take that template and paste it into the list of all the others things I had to do, so that I could make bread, do the laundry (again broken down into all the little steps), vacuum the living room, etc. weaving all the tiny tasks together so that I was essentially doing it all at the same time, making the most of the time in between the dough raising and the load of clothes drying for a half hour.

I also went from printing this list, checking things off and adding to the list manually to keeping the Excel spreadsheet open all day, as a living document. Now, the first thing I do each workday is open the spreadsheet. Then I work it all day long, adding new tasks or projects, removing the ones I’ve completed. I also cut and paste the completed tasks to another sheet on the workbook so that anytime I want I can go back and see when something was done.

About two weeks after creating the spreadsheet I which I now call Kathy’s Desk, I went on vacation. Instead of the two-day chore of writing down what needs to be done while I’m gone, as I usually do, I simply emailed Kathy’s Desk to a co-worker and went on my merry way. There, for anyone to see, was a completely up-to-date record of what needed to be done and what had already been done.

The biggest benefit to finally corralling the daily, weekly and monthly responsibilities of my work life is the ability to go home at night and forget all about it. For the first time, in years frankly, I don’t wake up worrying about if I did something or not. It’s all there on my sheet when I get into the office in the morning. At last, there’s nothing to worry about.

This minuscule change from horizontal to vertical has opened up my mind and freed my creativity. It has made me much more effective at work and far less stressed. It is a pleasure to go to work now, rather than a race against time and error. All because I suddenly tilted the way I looked at something, quite by mistake.

I’m now looking askance at many things in my life. What am I blocking from myself by not truly examining some aspect of the world around me with a new perspective?

Tilting the world on its axis could get to be a habit with me!

Holding Onto Our Stories

I first heard the concept of holding on to our stories almost nine years ago. Although I was able to recognize what was meant by this and the tendency of others to do it, I couldn’t see the same pattern in myself. Today I can and I think it’s such a vital thing to have an awareness of that I’m hoping writing this might help someone else.

The behavior is when someone is so rigidly attached to their life story as they perceive it or some portion of it that they end up telling it to as many as will listen. It also becomes their definition of themselves and often the world around them.

I remember the first person in whom I recognized this was a woman I became close to partly out of concern for her situation. Her story. She had been brutally divorced by a man who took her life away in her early forties. She had been fairly well-off and now she was struggling to pay her bills. The husband had hired a very good attorney – according to her tale – and left her and her children with little.

The longer I knew this lady, the more I heard the story. Everyone I introduced her to would eventually hear it, if they spent more than a few minutes with her. I got to the point where I could tell it as well as she. Okay, I thought one day, now it’s time to stop telling this story.

Why? Because she had trapped herself, her children and all of their futures inside the web of the story. She was destined to be and remain a victim. Powerless. Pitiful.

My own story is a little different, but has still frozen me in time. I lost my beloved Pete twelve years ago. He was the love of my life and an extremely good man. This is a true story, but the problem is that although I’ve dated several men, some seriously, they have all been compared to “the love of my life.” Nothing could ever happen to change my story, because I loved the object of it so much that allowing my heart to open meant giving up my Pete story.

So, I’ve recognized the legend I’ve created for what it is. However, I find I’m still not ready to give it up. I’m not sure how harmful sticking to your story is if you know that’s what you’re doing. Maybe I’ll have to look at this again in a year or so and figure that out. But for now, I know that I have trapped myself in the amber of a lost love.

Just that consciousness is enough for now.