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Archive for the ‘attitude’

Getting crazy in 2009…

January 12, 2009 By: Brook Noel Category: all, attitude, goals and dreams, happiness 1 Comment →

  • “One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.”—Alice in Wonderland

    Good Morning! The tales of Lewis Carroll have always intrigued me, because many universal truths lie within their pages. Many of us are like Alice in Alice in Wonderland: we struggle with which path to take instead of struggling with the more important question: where is it we want to go? As the Cheshire cat says, if we have no specific destination, then any road will get us there.

    Many of us have difficulty articulating our “wants.” We might be used to expressing our needs, but we do not give much thought to what we truly want from life. We think about getting from this day to the next, or about improving our immediate future, but we lose sight of a bigger vision that rejuvenates and inspires us. Let’s do something fun to break out of this mold—let’s make a crazy list.

    I stumbled onto the idea of a crazy list early last year. I had just finished telling someone why I couldn’t do something. I can’t remember the exact thing to which I was referring but the sentence was, “I don’t have enough time to ______________” (and frankly, it was a lousy excuse—it even sounded lousy when I was saying it.) However, since many of us are so talented at making excuses, it can be easy for us to actually begin to believe them.

    Later that night, something within me stirred and said, “Wait a second…why can’t you do that?” Whenever I find myself engaging in a negative pattern, I challenge it as quickly as I can. In this case, within minutes I was creating a crazy list of all the things I would like to do before I die. The list contained many things—get my pilot’s license, climb Mount Hood, go on a safari, paint a series, run a marathon, ski in Colorado, skydive, learn calligraphy, spend New Year’s Eve in Times Square, start a self-esteem group for girls, on and on and on the list went—some of the list items more challenging than others. As I created this list, I found it easier to begin articulating the “wants” of my life.

    These lists had no limitations. Money was not an object. Time was not an object. Location was not an object. These were indeed Crazy Lists.

    I didn’t stop and ask, “Is this realistic?” because something had started to occur to me during this process: I think many things become unrealistic simply because we deem them to be unrealistic. For example, I might say, “I don’t have an hour a day to devote to that….It is unrealistic.” The truth is, I actually could find an hour, and I just choose not to find it. I choose to make it unrealistic.

    Our minds have great power. We must be careful with what we deem to be realistic versus unrealistic.

    Your Turn:
    Start a Crazy List for the year. Spend at least ten minutes this week brainstorming ideas for the year. Tuck this list inside your daily calendar.

    Today’s Affirmation:

    I make time to reach my goals—even the crazy ones.

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