G.R.A.C.E.

G.R.A.C.E:
Grounded - push from center through legs to ground
Relaxed - assess all tension, tense and let it go
Aware - Focus on breathing, you are here, right now and moving forward.
Centered - My center 2 fingers below my belly button, this is where I am , this is who I am, this is where all movement starts.
Energy - I am aware of energy throughout my body, is it balanced, how do I feel moving around being aware of this energy.

My Purpose - Updated

I live my life prayerfully, mindfully, thankfully, and joyfully, trying my best not to make mistakes, but accepting that I am human and God is the one that is truly in control and he is always good.

I work to document the beauty and meaning in the world around me.

I help to lead to a world where diseases are cured and people work to help their fellow man.

I honor those that have given me love and remember those that I have loved that are gone.

I live a balanced and healthy life style.

Every day I thank God for what I have, what I have done, who I have, and what will happen good and bad.

I am grateful for the air in my lungs

This may seem kind of obvious because without out it I wouldn't be alive but I am stating it to bring awareness of how amazing breath is. By being aware of my breath I calm and regulate my system, warm or cool it as needed and pull myself more into the moment. It is truly a way to embrace life and I am grateful to God who created this complex mechanism which nourishes, refreshes, sustains, centers, calms, energizes, warms, cools, and frees us.

My Prayer:
Dear Lord,
Thank you for the wonderful and amazing gift of breath. Thank you for your divine wisdom in this unfathomable thing called life that you have given us.
Amen.

I am grateful for Resistance

I have found myself resistant to my journals, my Iaido practice, bicycling, journaling, and blogging. I have been unfocused, undisciplined, and not wanting to enter my practice. This has lasted a few months and has been tough, but you know what? Right now I am grateful for it. I am grateful for being off kilter at times; if I didn't get this way I wouldn't push myself to do better, to be better, and to learn more. I am actually grateful for resistance. That is a weird one; what makes me say it. Well if I got my daily practice done perfectly all the time I would stagnate, I wouldn't improve, it would just be the same posts every day; by mixing resistance in I push harder and want to do better.
This is weird logic and I can imagine it being hard to read so I will use an analogy:
Resistance in life is like a sharpening stone, it grinds away dullness, nicks, scratches, and hones the blade to a straight line. Likewise as I push on resistance, lean in to it, relax into it, it hones me, straightening me in the direction where I will be most effective. So, know that I have resistance in my life I can to use it as a tool to straighten my path, polish my skills, and focus my resources towards God's will.

My Prayer:
Thank you Lord for putting the sharpening stone of resistance into my life, please help me to recognize it and all other tools you give me to put them to use to align my path towards your will, please fill me with your holy spirit and take me in the right direction.
Amen.

My GTD practice for 2010

I have been practicing GTD since 2004 and my system has evolved much over the ears. I have decided that my GTD practice for 2010 is all about attention - paying attention to what has my attention and responding appropriately.

I have spent a lot of time in discussion with my GTD practicing friends in person and on the boards about the right way to do GTD; when and how often to do weekly reviews, when and how often to look at higher levels, what contexts to have, which lists to process first, should due dates be tracked, how do you use a tickler?, how do you prioritize?, how to capture? and many more statements and questions about the right way to practice.

I find myself brought back to David Allen's statement, "If you don’t pay attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves".

I have been finding more and more that GTD is about responding appropriately to what has your attention, not keeping everything perfectly orderly all the time (unless clutter is what has your attention), not reviewing lists on a strict schedule (which I have found can be counterproductive if there are things on the mind distracting focus), not doing it the right way because there is no right way since everyone's attention is attracted to do different things.

What is going to change in my system? not much, I am still going to use Outlook for list management at work and Remember the milk at home, I am still going to be capturing on paper and using an inbox for processing, and I am still going to be using my calendar and someday/maybe list as a tickler; so what am I changing? I am changing the way I think about GTD.

My big change for 2010 is taking it back to basics. I will be paying more attention to what has my attention, this will determine how often I review the different aspects of my system and what I am looking at when I review them.

Flustered and off kilter

It's the holiday season and I sometimes find myself flustered and off kilter like I am driving towards an imprtant appointment and I find myself on a service road, lost, not knowing how to get back on the freeway and time is slowly running out.I am making myself anxious.
What should I do? Should I try and fix it and get myself back into a sane state? I could try but it could just worse as a little off center and unsteady could tuirn into full blow anxiety.
Instead I stop and take a breath, I remember who and where I am and start simply noticing how I feel, not how stressed I am and how to fix it bit noite how I feel. Don't analyse, juist notice and breathe, this is the way to find center and find the real path.
Brian Darnell
darnellster@gmail.com
http://12hourhalfday.blogspot.com
http://www.unvoicedvisions.com
follow me on twitter - http://www.twitter.com/12hourhalfday

What is my frog?

A while back I watched the Eat That Frog movie (if you haven't seen it watch it here) It talks about picking your highest resistance item and doing it first in order to increase energy and carry you through the day. This practice goes along well with any practice that uses resistance as a guide to decide priority.
When I have a lot of priority 1 items and have trouble picking one of them to work on I make a list on paper and gauge the amount of resistance I have for each one. The one that makes me cringe the most, I circle and that is the one I focus on first. Lately I have gotten a little geeky with this form and started drawing a picture of a frog on it and titling it with "What is my Frog?". I don't know why but this usually engages me a little more with the list and helps motivate me to work on that hard item.
This morning I took the next step and threw a little form together, feel free to download it if you like it.