Out of balance, already?

The mythical seagull out of balance (Photo credit: fisserman)

Wow!  We are over halfway through the first month of 2013.  I realized earlier this week that I had not yet themed the year.  Did you set the tone and theme for your 2013 yet?

In more recent years, I have known the theme long before midnight on New Year’s Eve.  Not this year.  In fact, I have considered several themes and have dismissed them as inadequate.

Today, I decided I would need a new way of thinking about it.  I decided that I would theme each month instead.  Since January is nearly over, it almost seems a bit moot to name it.  Except that I don’t think it is.  😉

I do know that I do not want February to look like January in many respects.  January’s bottom line will be taking a step back to evaluate and re-evaluate my commitments.

I am out of balance and tired.  Those two things make my pain levels worse and since I am still cooperating with my pain, I need to pay closer attention and make whatever changes I need to make.  Besides these things, February needs to include my book, and the process toward getting it published, and I need the time and energy to do that.

As of five minutes ago, January’s theme is re-evaluation.

How often do you take this step back to see whether things you are doing in your life are working?  I do it often enough, but this time feels different.  Everything I am doing for work right now, I am enjoying.  Everything outside of work that I am doing (which isn’t much because of pain) I am also enjoying doing.

My approach to re-evaluating also has to be different.  The questions I ask myself will have a slightly different feel to them as well.  Instead of simply asking whether an activity serves me or is healthy for me, I will now have to ask several questions.

1. Is this activity something I feel passionately about or is it an enjoyable activity?
2. Is this activity causing significant increase in my pain levels right now?
3. Is there an equal trade-off financially, emotionally, or otherwise to continuing this activity in the short-term, no matter what the answers to the first two questions are?

Something else that is different about this evaluative process is that whatever I decide to change will be flexible.  I will revisit whatever decision I arrive at again in a month to see if anything is different (pain, for example).

I am curious about what other questions you think I should ask myself as I re-evaluate my time commitments.  Are there specific things you ask yourself when you do it?