We all do it. We know what we want, yet we make excuses (uh-hmmm, reasons) for postponing smart choices in our lives.
Author Marc Chernoff offers “practical tips for productive living” at his website Marc and Angel Hack Life at lists 30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself.
Choose the five items that resonate for you, today.
Choose five today, knowing you can revisit the article to look at others. Life is fluid. Our circumstances change. Our experiences change. And our needs change, leading us to focus on different aspects of our lives.
Which of the following 30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself resonate for you right now? To get you started, I’ll share which ones resonate for me, right now. [TCV Update 8/4/2018: Link above now redirected to cached version of page on the web archive.]
I’m focusing on these five items.
Items 1, 4, a little bit of 6, 20, and 25.
1. Stop spending time with the wrong people.
I am guilty, but not for the reason the author states. I need to spend less (no?) time with people I find toxic and draining. These are people who, despite life’s bounties, complain endlessly and are ungrateful.
4. Stop putting your own needs on the back burner.
I was a bit judgmental in “Where’s my shoes?” My Father’s Walk through Alzheimer’s when I wrote that my father placed conditions on doing things in his life. He spoke in “IF… then… ” statements. IF he finished organizing his paperwork (never happened), THEN he’d travel to the countries he had longed to visit (never happened). As dementia gripped his mind, I helped organize his papers. He felt such a peace of mind, he agreed to visit us. I bought a one-way plane ticket from Wisconsin to California, where my husband and I cared for him.
Recently, I faced the humbling truth that I also set conditions in my life.
For the past six years, I’ve wanted to spend a couple nights in an over-the-water bungalow off a tropical island. Despite how much I talk about it, I’ve yet to take this trip. Of course, a recent devastating economic crisis gouged my savings… there I go, making excuses (uh-hmmm, citing reasons).
How often are caregivers guilty of setting conditions?
How fair are you being to yourself and your care recipient, if you continue ignoring your needs? If you are to survive caregiving, you need to place YOUR NEEDS on the front burner; otherwise, they’ll simmer on the back burner until they lose steam and die or the opposite, boil over with bitterness.
6. Stop trying to hold onto the past.
I deal with this partially. I tend NOT to remember negative experiences; however, I hold onto paperwork. With the release of STUFFology 101: Get Your Mind Out of the Clutter, I’m eager to make an even greater dent in my own paperwork. But it takes time to review and oftentimes, I move slower while reflecting on and learning from mistakes I’ve made years earlier.
20. Stop wasting time explaining yourself to others.
Okay, although, it makes me a bit uncomfortable, I’ll start right now. 😉
25. Stop acting like everything is fine if it isn’t.
My dealing with this issue is a bit different from the author’s explanation.
If someone behaved badly toward me, I often ignored it. Privately, I’d expend a lot of effort analyzing the behavior and trying to understand why. I’d even ask others who were present, but most people would say, “Let it go.”
As I’ve grown older (wiser?), I’ve discovered that even though I can’t do much about others’ bad behavior, that I must speak up. Otherwise, bad behavior ripples outward, affecting others in multiple ways.
Life is a process of learning. As I get better at stopping these five practices, I’ll review others that may become issues in my life.
Now, it’s your turn.
To improve your own life, don’t stop with passively reading these words. In the comments section below, write at least one item that resonates for you, as you read this. Add a comment. Taking this step now, will help you design a better life for yourself.
#30 Stop explaining yourself to others [TCV Ed. Correction: Reference to Item #20]
This one resonates with me because when my mom was discharged from the rehab hospital my four siblings pushed her out of their lives and wanted nothing to do with her. As the child who truly cared, I’ve taken on the guardian and caregiver roles while working and raising my own children. My spouse died of cancer four years earlier.
Although I wrote to my siblings asking for help, they refused. They couldn’t understand or imagine why I needed help to care for mom. I was very specific in my requests and gave reasons. After sending out my annual update letter this year my brother wrote back that he was disappointed in the way I handled mom’s finances. I feel a need to explain myself or at least to produce a financial report of where her money went as well as mine. You see, I retired as a Director of Financial Aid where my responsibility was the stewardship of several million dollars. It hurts, that my family should think of me as less than trustworthy with mom’s financials.
Frances, what you write is SO UNFAIR.
Why is it that our siblings (mine included) want to stand back and judge instead of help?
My father’s attorney was so incensed by their negligence, he said to me, something to the effect of “Just give me the word, Brenda, and I’ll call your siblings and tell them that I don’t know what happened but your sister took off with your dad, his money… last I heard they were in Rio de Janeiro.”
As one who has walked this road before and one who is careful to dot the i’s and cross the “t’s, just do what is right. When your mother passes you will be left with your memories, while they’ll be juggling regrets.
Unfortunately, as your mother’s guardian, you need to share this information with your siblings; otherwise you may have to deal with this after she’s gone. For this reason, I took it a step further and sought a voluntary conservatorship.
Boy Brenda you have the most interesting items. I go along with you on all the items you picked above. 4, 6 20 and 25 are describing me in teh 10 years of a caregiver. Numbef 6 especially. I kept trying to hold onto the past even thought I knew it was slipping away from me. Number 4, I always put myself on the back burner. I often would not leave the house because I always made Marie first. Number 25 was me. I tried to make it sound like it was ok, we were moving ahead even though I knew down deep 5 yeats ago that the days were numbered. I have now lost my Marie whom I adored and loved so very much. Our love was very deep. When they gave me the diagnosis of LBD, I did everything I could to make her comfortable and loved. She often told me she did not understand why it had to be her to have this terrible disease. It broke my heart. I tried to make the last yars of her life happy but in the end there was no happiness. She was so sad. I cry myself to sleep some night yet after 3 months of having lost her. I plan on being in a caregving position as soon as I can.
Thank YOU, Don for taking time to share. And despite all your suffering and pain of losing your beloved, are you really feeling the need to serve as a caregiver once more? That says a LOT about your character and cements further why you were selected as our Caregiver of the Month.