YOUR AGE IS A GIFT - 3 Ways Time is on Your Side

How cool that at some point we get to be at every age?

There are such unique milestones and benefits to every season of life. I hope I get to enjoy each one. But more importantly I hope I really enjoy the age I am right now.

Each age has its rewards, privileges, burden and joys. Think about it, 

When you’re young, you can make risky bold moves, wear ridiculous clothes, and talk a little more confidently and ask obvious questions. People give you grace.

Since I'm 29, half of my friends look like this.

When you’re middle aged (what is that now 30-50s?), you can dress like you’re important, get at all the jokes on TV because they're written by your generation, and miss important meetings or events because you're ‘busy.' It's cool - people give you grace.

The other half look like this. It's good right? A nice mix.

When you’re old, you can advise, ask more direct, poignant questions and give help to someone without their asking — and it is received. If they don’t like it, again, they give you grace.

I need more friends like her.

3 ways grasping the brevity of time can help you 

1. You are more motivated (to not waste your age)

2. You realize the unique privileges that you only hold for a short time

3. You live with thankfulness for today

It’s a bit melancholy to realize you can’t go back to a step you’ve passed (I still grieve my teens sometimes), but it is exciting to know each future year holds new blessings and privileges.

So now, do me a favor. For investigative purposes only, of course ;) Answer the question for yourself (in the comments below):  What are 3 things your current age offers you personally, socially or professionally?

Consider writing them down, put them on a post-it note. And take a moment each day to be grateful for your age. Thankful you're still alive. Remember this one:

You're as old as you've ever been. And as young as you'll ever be. So rejoice in your youth! And rejoice in your wisdom! It's a beautiful life.

5 Habits that Stretch your Time and Instantly Give You More Happiness

My husband has a special gift. I think actually think half of the people in the world may have it: He can stretch time. 

For me, time is very rigid. It comes in hour and minute blocks. There is only so much time, and activities take presumptuously the same amount every time. Eating: 10-20 minutes. Brushing teeth, 2 minutes. Showering and getting ready 25-35 minutes. 

But somehow for Ryan, time is abundant. There’s always enough time. We always seem to arrive with “perfect timing!” even if we’re ten minutes late. Because actually, “perfect timing!” means that we arrived at the same time our friend showed up, or right as the food got there, or right when we could help someone bring in their luggage. 

I think, that’s what relativity is, if I were to ask Einstein.

But in my mentality of there's-only-24-hours-in-a-day, I’ve found that there are several activities that truly expand my time. And so here they are: for my half of the population. :)

WORKING OUT
Exchange 20 minutes, Get 2 hours

Some kind of cardio exercise for 20 minutes to an hour gives you energy, enthusiasm, mental clarity that outlasts your time five times over. Here’s how:

1. My sleep becomes deeper. So I wake up more immediate and vibrant. While it may take a week or two to adjust to tougher workout schedules, once the routine hits, you’ll find you won’t have to sleep as long or be tired throughout the day.

2. My mind is clearer. The mental and emotional cleansing that comes from exercise is, almost supernatural, meaning I can’t explain it but it’s so real you can’t deny it. The process of shaking up your body shakes up the junk in your mind and releases it. You sort through relational problems, work challenges, and whatever else often in the short amount of time. When I need some creativity for work, I go for a walk or jog. Saves me time and energy sitting on my couch!

REVIEWING YOUR UPCOMING WEEK
Exchange 15 minutes, Get at least one evening extra

Okay, it does not matter if you are a minute-to-minute planner or a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants operator. Sitting down for 15 minutes on Sunday to look at your upcoming week’s events will seriously transform your life. Whether you need to get a gift for a party, prep for a work deadline, or give extra love to a relationship: all of your inner-desires can come true during this Sunday forecast time with your iCal.

Some may just review dates and write down goals or tasks. Others may get out the three different calendars, sit with the family and align priorities.

Whatever extent it is, it’s worth your time.

I’ve spent 1-2 hours before, making my schedule crystal clear, because I knew I was to enter a hectic week, and I knew how to avoid all the panic, worry, and frustration ahead. Peace of mind for a whole week is almost priceless. And believe me, you'll find a few extra hours you didn't know you have if not whole evenings!

PRAYING
Exchange 10 minutes, Get at least 45 minutes

Not all prayer is stretchable, but there is a kind that can get you your minutes (and hours back). First of all, it’s not about rehearsed words or mumbling something before dinner. I find the best is going into a room without any distractions and getting quiet. Then actually using your mouth to share all the things on your mind or heart, all the worried concerns over your stability or happiness, all the wishes you’re working for, and any pain about others. 

Getting it all out is only the first part. The second part is sitting and listening, being quiet, loving yourself, and listening for an answer. Sometime you hear it, sometimes you don’t. But either way, the practice of lifting your burdens is so powerful. Why?

Because it helps you to assume solutions. It also helps you stop what you are doing. Realize the doors you are pushing (shoving) that are not opening. And start paying attention to the open windows. 

Post quiet time, you can usually have a quieter mind, a new solution to try out, and a positive outlook on life that gives you more joy and productivity.

GIVING THANKS
Exchange 30 seconds regularly, Get open doors

This one is crazy because it’s hard to measure in time. But it's like the seeds you plant in spring that pop up in abundance in harvest. The more you do it, in every activity and opportunity you have, the more you'll see bend back toward you. 

Don't wait til you need something to say thanks. It's too late then. Try 30 seconds every hour throughout the day. 

To be honest, you don't even need to speak it aloud.  Try coming into your office and say silently, ‘Thank you for providing me with a place to use my skills’ - it changes your mind and perspective on everything. When you look at your relationships and tell them ‘Thank you for being there for me.’  Over time, your job fulfills you more (even if it doesn’t seem like it should be very fulfilling), and you’ll find your relationships do even more of what you love.

It not only helps your perspective become rosy and open, but opportunities themselves will come to you. So, I don’t know how to measure it, but it’s a time saver over time!

WRITING YOUR THOUGHTS
Exchange 10 minutes, Get 2 hours back. 

The craziest thing happened last year when I made a habit to write in my journal every day, even if it was just one sentence. When I had nothing to say I'd decide I'd just write out my schedule for the day. I didn’t think I had any worries or concerns, but as soon as I saw what I wrote, I could read through the lines, and I saw what was holding me back, what I was avoiding. 

The power of journaling is that as soon as your thought are outside yourself, you can give advice like a good friend. You don’t get wrapped up as much in the issue itself. Honestly it became so much of a routine, when I missed it, I felt like I was missing time with an old friend. 

Now when I find my mind getting fuzzy, I reach for the journal. It helps me get out the blocks stuffing up my mind. And allows me to reprioritize my thinking - which has saved me almost whole days of work. Sometimes I find the one thing I was working on for the day was unnecessary. I realized I needed to od something totally different. Lifesaver!

——

So try one of these out this week! See if you can adopt a new stretchable time habit. And see what the outcome is. 

Do you have another stretchable habit that gives you more time and happiness? Please share!

Leaving a Quarter Life Crisis

Back in college, a student two doors down in my dorm was an amazing painter. Somehow he wasn't assigned a roommate, so he turned it into a paint studio. Under the loft of his bed he had his easel with his most current project.

His work was masterful. And every other day I'd peak in to watch the progress. He was trained in the ways of the classics, so he had multiple steps to make it come alive.

First he'd spend hours drawing out in pencil the characters, Leonardo Da Vinci style.

Then he'd be painting the work, except only in neutral colors, so the whole painting was perfect, except it looked like a 1940s photograph. He said that it was a part of the process – to get the contrasting, the vibrancy of life, correct.

Then (what seemed like weeks later) he'd begin oil painting with the true, rich colors. 

I personally felt like an artist of sorts with my graphic design and photography classes, but this was astounding to me. The diligence, the perfection, and the time (just to 'dry' before the next coat) ... if there was a scale to measure art, to me, this was the real stuff. 

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This memory hit me like a ton of bricks, while laying on my couch in angst in my mid-twenties. I have always been a strong believer in 'envision your life, and then go do it', but I was frustrated in trying to picture my life.

Of course I wanted it to be cool, fresh, fun, vibrant, exciting, just like the people I read about in books, on online videos and on Facebook. I wanted awesome.

Plus, I knew I could make my life exciting, interesting, watch-able to others. But something didn't fit right.

While I was couch-ing, this new thought arrived in my head – one I don't think my millennial brain had ever, in its life, considered:

What if my life is like a masterpiece painting?  
And what if I'm just in the middle of it?

I realized my social-media-centered picture of myself made me feel like awesome had to exist at all times right now in my life. But if that were so, it would be a series of polaroid pictures developing. New trips, clever jobs, little adventures of cool. 

Where as a masterpiece is hard. It takes time to study the human body and eye wrinkles. To sketch the hand and actually. look. like. a. hand. 

And then the tedious use of only neutrals, when the masterpiece is still undercover. Underground! No one should even be looking at it yet! And at the same time, it's perfecting, maturing, coming to life. 

I can live a life of continuous blips of awesome, wondering at all times what my life "looks like" to others, and styling it accordingly . . .

Or

My greatest reward can be when I'm 'all grown up' . . . when I look back and observe how magical, how masterful my life has developed.

Knowing that it was one that took time to study, sketch and purpose itself.

One that didn't mind perfecting the bland stuff before it took on the color.

One that knew that the vibrancy of the color paintings were only the final touches of a much richer undertaking.

No, I think I definitely want to be a masterpiece. I think I'm ready to take on the work, the boring, the waiting, and the perfecting to see something deeply amazing. 

And just so you know, when you drop by my dorm room to spy on it, I'll let you in to observe. Please comment on what you see, but you must know, I'm a masterpiece in the making. And I may not be done yet.

Multiplication

I've been thinking recently about how anything multiplied by 0 is, inevitably zero. And how anything multiplied by 1, always stays the same. 

So even if I have brilliant ideas, if I take zero action, I get nothing. And if I move forward on brilliance and yet never engage anyone (to see it or adopt it), it simply remains stagnant. 

Think about how powerful then when someone takes only a little bit of effort and shares it with another person. Immediately it's doubled. A tangible idea (one made into something) becomes, instantly, bigger than itself.

I think about how such little advances in society are like this. Like bottled water. Or sliced bread. Someone moved the needle forward just a little bit. It wasn't the brilliance of the idea. It was the multiplication of it. It was the mobilizing others to follow suit, to buy into it, to want to do more. And just one little idea became huge, because then it was in the realm of multiplication. 

But the concept becomes more basic when you realize that even if you have 1000s of people to share with, if you have nothing to show them, nothing to engage them with, you have still have 0. Zero advancement, zero progress. 

And so, the call, I realized, is to produce. Not maniacally or even excessively, because even just 1, shared with twenty, multiplies to 20. And we all have the power, in our little brains to make one. To do one thing. To produce one idea - further one concept into a tangible thing. Because we must realize that 0 never advances.

Zero never advances. Making nothing never advances into something. 

So today, I'll start by producing one. And maybe, if I'm ready to begin the multiplication process, I'll share it with another. We'll see what comes of it.

Two hands, ten fingertips

This amazing moment happened today.

I've been putting myself through a fast course of piano, music theory and voice instruction. Music was a part of my history growing up, but not a part of my present – and I wanted to change that.

Growing up I learned the intricacies of music through clarinet and saxophone, which can only play one note at a time. And now, I can interweave chords and melodies, like an orchestra of two hands. It's simply amazing.

I've been learning only very elementary songs and rhythms, however I wanted to learn a song I loved that was more difficult. I was in the intro, starting with my right hand to play octaves (the same note - just one high and one low - played with the thumb and pinky of the same hand). I spent two or three days just trying to get the hang of the right hand's rhythm of chord progressions.

Then I worked on the left hand. It was chords, but in rhythms of threes. One-two-three. One-two-three. One-two-three. One-two-three. Each line a different chord set. 

All of my week's practices were leading up to the day when I would mix the two hands, the two rhythms:

Here we go.

I ran through the right hand. Okay.

I played out the left hand with relative ease. I took a breath. Okay let's do it.

My eyes, my fingers, my mind pittered back and forth almost scientifically. Meanwhile, the the first chords interlaced, the common notes became rich, ornate harmonies. And almost immediately, I was breathless.

It was so beautiful.

The two 'ideas', the two lines of melody, were gracious individually. But together it was not addition. It wasn't even multiplication. It was exponential. 

Wow – the power of two. In piano, it's two hands. In life, two brilliant beautiful people. Exponential.

As I repeated it, I realized I was addicted to the sound of togetherness. I didn't want to go back to practicing one hand at a time. I couldn't. As the right hand, I had to let the left hand bring in majesty.

---

You know, for a large portion of our life we are practicing our one part – understanding our melody, searching out its nuances, mastering the rhythm of life, and finding joy in our single resonances. 

As I learned as a child, music must be practiced. It must be repetitiously driven into the fingers, the mind, the soul until we get it. After mastering a solo, my teacher once said, 'Great. Now memorize it.'  It doesn't start as passion. It starts as work. Precision. Paying attention to the details.

I could say the same for life. We understand it, hone it, develop it, work it till we can master ourselves.

But the work of self mastery is for a greater purpose. It prepares us to interweave our melodies with another.  

---

At the piano, after playing both parts together, I desperately didn't want to play them separately ever again. I thought, I'll master it by continuing to play it together over and over again.

Then I stopped. Because it doesn't work that way. 

Intuitively I had to practice the right hand by itself, tweaking the details and re-mastering it. But the powerful thing was, as I played, my mind heard the other hand as well, which made the right hand play more graciously, with feeling, as if in response to its silent partner. 

So I did the left hand alone again, and it came alive all its own.

Amazing.  

And then I realized the fullness of the truth. 

Even though we may be exponentially more powerful together, the finding isn't the end.

It's in hearing our voices together, that I now know how to sharpen mine. Now that I feel your rhythm, I know how to enrich mine.

And after a brief experience with you, your life continues to add to mine without even being in it.

It's in our distance a part - whether for hours or months - that I am commissioned to improve myself.

Because I can't get out of my head our song, played together. 

Wondering a peanut

“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour if we will only tune in.” George Washington Carver

The story goes that George Washington Carver asked God to show him the secrets of the universe. And in response, he got "I'll show you what I can do with with a peanut." 

Learning over 300 plus uses later, he tried it again on the sweet potato, the soybean, and the pecan. 

What about electricity? It always existed, but never harnessed. Mr Benjamin Franklin took the initiative in our childhood storybook lesson with the kite and key, to begin to discover how to harness the electric energy that's in the air around us.

What else is around us - inherent in the air we breathe, the soil we plant in, the water we swim in - that could revolutionize our world. Someone took oil, coal, electricity and revolutionized an entire civilization.

I started thinking about this after I ran a half marathon and realized my little body had way more strength, endurance, and joy inside of it than I could have imagined.

I just needed to allow my body to show me what it had. I had to give it a chance. 

Then I thought about my brain.

My heart.

My compassion.

My intuition.

What if I allowed these faculties to express themselves in their fullest. 

What's inside a peanut? What's inherent in the environment around us? What's stuck inside us?