Sharpen your sword.
Today’s focus: Renewing yourself.
In this edition:
The Quote
Update
Motivate: '“Sharpening the saw,” the last habit.
Book Review: LOVE AND OTHER WORDS
New Onyx Podcast: The Evangelist
Final thoughts
“Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things…I am tempted to think…there are no little things.”
—Bruce Barton
Update:
Sadly, I have no agent news or news on THE FALSE FLAT, my women’s fiction novel. Patience is what I am honing right now.
My current work-in-progress is going well though. Nearing 30,000 words and still feeling pretty good about it.
Motivate:
We’ve made it to the last habit of highly effective people: Sharpening the saw, but I think the term we’re most familiar with these days is self-care, the habit that makes all the other habits possible. It’s all about making sure you are at your best, so that you are able to move on and take care of everything else in life.
I think it’s funny that he lists this habit last because it belongs in the beginning and the end. Sometimes it feels selfish to take time for ourselves. The most important investment you can make is investment in yourself.
So how do you care for yourself?
1. Take care of your body:
a. Eat right: healthy, energizing food (this is going to take research because what society tells us is healthy, isn’t always). Don’t wait until you’re falling apart. If you care for yourself before you have a problem, you save yourself time, energy, money, and loads of stress.
b. Exercise: Can you handle 30 min a day? Break it up into parts. (I’ll be honest, this one is the hardest for me to do.)
c. Sleep (aim for 7-9 hrs per night)
d. Rest/relaxation/recovery/refuel
2. Take care of your spirit:
a. If you see prayer and/or meditation and/or internal reflection as another task on your list, you’re doing it wrong. This is what is necessary to recharge your batteries, refuel, and restore you so that you can tackle that list. It should not be on your list. It is the thing you must do to complete your list. When you start the day in the right place, you can refer back to that peace you felt, pull from it all day, when the chaos tries to undo your peace and purpose.
b. Exploring your purpose. Your purpose may be large or small, but no matter the size, it’s all great. The surgeon may fix a person’s body (large), but the time (small) the scrub tech gives to the new trainee might change their day, their week, their life, which is a whole lot bigger. Or the corporate bosses at the mall might give the orders for operation (large), but how the employee responds to everyone around her (small) speaks volumes, every interaction she has is an opportunity to change a life (GREAT).
3. Take care of your head/your education.
Covey suggests that we regularly exercise our minds with continued “learning” or keeping up to date. He suggests avoiding mindless TV.
On one hand, everything you do influences who you are and what you become, and if you always fill your “down time” with television/social media scrolling, you are potentially using up time and space that could grow you as a person. It’s a temporary fix to your woes.
I see his point. But I enjoy TV, and when I read, it’s typically fiction, neither items are really “making me a better person” but they do make me happier, which makes me better indirectly. That’s my personal form of decompression, so I’m going to disagree with Covey a tad. However, I do think it’s about balance here.
Usually when I think I’m too tired to do anything else at night, I turn on the TV, but the other evening, when I thought I wanted to watch TV to “decompress,” I spent time talking to Stephen (my husband, not the author of this book) instead. I didn’t think I felt like talking, but we had a lovely conversation, and I was so glad I hadn’t given in to mindless TV time and missed out on interaction that rejuvenated me in a different way.
You only have so much time in this life. So reflect on how you’re spending your free/down time. And consider spending some of it (or possibly a good portion of it) “bettering” yourself instead of binge-watching or binge-scrolling. It’s worth a look at.
4. The social/emotional aspect.
Confidence and security comes from inside yourself. Your importance doesn’t come from what people think of you or how people treat you, how much you have or how impressive sounding your job title is. You might intellectually know that, but do you believe it in your core? With all your being? This topic deserves a whole newsletter or 2 on its own, so I’ll leave most of this topic for another time.
But in short, define what’s important to you. If you’re lacking in self-esteem or you do not find yourself worthy, start by shifting the focus off of yourself and start thinking about others. This is one way of showing you how important you are.
Define who you want to be, who you want to be seen as/remembered as, and start making moves toward those core values. (“being seen as” is tricky because remember, other people don’t define you. This is the outward display of the definition YOU have created.)
You are worthy. For me, we are each children of God. If God finds us worthy, then we are. But whether you believe in God or not, security comes from within, knowing your heart and mind, digging for the treasure you might have covered up.
You completely change your interaction with others (for the better) when you know yourself, have control over your emotions, and reflect what you’ve defined as being important inside.
If you are confident in self, then you leave room to better care for others. During interactions with others, you aren’t so focused on how the conversation/interaction is going for you, you’re worried about how it’s going for them, and that’s a whole new level in life.
Book review:
Love and Other Words
Category: Romance
I loved this book. Thoroughly enjoyed it. It was sweet, a combo of first love (past) and renewed love (present). I think this is a well-weaved story that has a lot of heart. If you like reading romance, I recommend this one.
Goodreads summary:
The story of the heart can never be unwritten.
Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away.
But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother...only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her.
Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.
New Onyx Podcast!
Written by James Roderick Burns
Narrated by Meredith Lyons
I love an interview with an author who has an accent! J.W. and I interview the author of this story on the podcast, but first, listen to the narration, performed by the talented actress, writer, and generally amazing human being, whom I’m thankful to call a friend, Meredith Lyons.
Summary:
Rose is itching to get home and let the pencil loose on the page, but a chance encounter with a street evangelist changes her trajectory. Will she get the chance to etch the contours of his skin, or does the universe have other plans? Afterward, we talk with James Roderick Burns about how everyday encounters become small moments of inspiration that wend their way into his stories. You’ll also hear Rod’s passion for New York history, and specifically Anthony Comstock, founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
Final thoughts:
Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed my personal presentation, representation, and analysis of Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Some of these topics I’ll continue to touch on because in the end, it’s about being the best person you can be, and that occurs with repetition of the thing you know/want to be.
I’ve enjoyed this because reflecting on these topics have grown me personally as a person.
I hope you tend to self-reflection and self-care this week, however that looks for you personally.
Onward to more topics like this one!
Have a great week!
Until next time, much glitter,
Melissa
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