StockTake

It was advantageous for me t say that I will simply state what will make things better; my mistake. However, I will state what I will work at to make things better for me. By saying ‘better’ I am referring to living in a way that will meet my needs as a person operating in the world and allow for a rich spiritual life. Like most people I begin with suppositions, these will be worth noting.
1) Nothing will come to me easily; if I want to change and grow I have to work at it.
2) If I want to make significant achievements I must leave my comfort zone.
3) I will never have more time in my life than I do right now.
4) To have a fulfilled life I must learn to steward my time and the facets of my world within my control.
5) Not everything is within my control.
6) Failure is not a bad thing but simply a chance to grow further.
7) I have values that govern my life and living from those better will help make me feel more fulfilled.
8) I am not owed anything, if I want something I must earn it.

These are not my governing values, only what I start as the explicit suppositions of this blog. Further analysis over time will reveal these to be accurate or incomplete.
To assist with this I have chosen to take account of these areas of my life and write a brief a statement on each; these are managing my time, resources (health, finances and possessions), and relationships. With that I will seek to learn how I can manage these areas better and seek to improve them. In addition I will list my values as they stand and spend a month working on doing the same. Over time I intend that these reflections will reveal something of the values themselves or more about me. I think that my inability to predict how this task will end is because I begin not with a clear example of what will work, only a hypothesis. Tonight I will add my list of personal values.
For the moment I will write a section on each area and where I am at:

Managing my Time:
I have spent a great deal of time learning how I can manage my time better, but seem to constantly fall into a slump. I begin the term by diligently working out my time but by second semester I am living off of quickly written up to do lists. It seems hard at times to look ahead and keep focus on what is important and filter out the urgent stuff that swallows my days activity. I struggle to manage the tide of information that comes my way and I am swamped under conflicting dates and demands. It is around this time I fail to look after myself and often end up physically exhausted. This further diminishes my resolve to work hard at the tasks at hand.
To begin this week I will look at the different areas of my life and examine what are the most important and what needs to be done to make them ‘healthy’ for lack of a better word.

Managing my Resources:
Health is the easy one. I KNOW this is not where it should be and will be hard to combat. I have put on a significant amount of weight over the last year and feel very unhealthy. I have significantly reduced my sporting commitments due to lack of time and have faltered in maintaining an exercise routine. I intend to cheapskate my way through this by getting help from someone. I will keep you posted on this.
Money has always been an issue for me. I SUCK at saving. I have loans I need to pay off and tax that has not been done for three years. This will take both time and will power. I seem to always end up living week to week and I intend to turn this one around. This week i will take stock of what comes in and goes out. I will look at what I spend (big ticket items) in a year and try to develop a saving plan. None of this is rocket science, it just takes a commitment to make and follow through.
Managing my resources means looking after my environment in which I live and work. I intend to keep a clean room and clean office. I want space that is inviting to work and live this will take time and effort. (Notice how everything is sucking my time right now; even organising my time is sucking my time.)

Managing my Relationships:
It seems odd putting this third as it is one of my primary values. It seems easy to let this one slip but without healthy relationship I am a lesser man. But I don’t place this third because I value it less, I am just aware that I do try to manage this one a great deal and need to apply focus on the other two first.