Rethinking Me

As I’m sure you remember from 8th-grade grammar, the English future perfect tense is characterized by the use of  the phrase “will have.” For example, by this time next year I will have learned to live more simply and shed unnecessary distractions from my life.

This grammatical phrase also serves as a pretty good description of where I stand in my life right now. I want my future to be more perfect because right now I’m too damn tense. All (alleged) humor aside, perfection is a tough goal to reach. Striving for perfection with an improper mindset can actually increase your stress. I have more work to do and more obligations to satisfy at home so I have to sleep less and do more to make everyone happy. I’ve tried that approach for going on three years now, and the only thing it accomplishes is the accelerated graying of my hair.

When the quest for perfection fails, the only thing left is steady, continuous improvement. At almost 38 years old, I have so many areas to improve, but I can address most with the following six activities.

• Sleep regularly
• Eat better
• Exercise often
• Write more
• Spend more time with my family and friends
• Simplify wherever possible

Nothing on this list seems all that difficult to accomplish, and yet I find myself sleep-deprived, out-of-shape, junk-food-fueled, overworked, undersocialized and generally stressed about the complexity of my life.

Work spills into home life often at the expense of regular sleep. Staying up late with my wife after the kids go to bed and waking up late because I’m not well-rested the next day keeps me too tired to exercise. Who really wants to eat better when there’s tasty restaurant food and snacks and desserts and drinks to be had at home and the office? I haven’t seen many of my closest friends in months. School, work and weekend activities work in concert to steal away the daysweeksyears we had planned for backyard barbecues and weekend football watch parties.

During times of great stress, I wonder just how I’ll affect something with this much momentum. It’s too big, too much and too overwhelming for me to fix.

The biggest revolution and the tiniest kindness all happen in exactly the same way — one step at a time. My path should be no different.

posted: 10 August 4
under: Rethinking