Happy Monday everyone. Hope you had a great weekend. I actually worked Saturday at my “real job” – yes, I’m a career employee at a large company.
This whole five daily blogs thing is like a hobby, like growing a garden or something. And as any avid gardener will tell you, “It’s a labor of love.”
Quite literally, a labor of love – for a child.
Anyway, back to the updates:
1. Erika Liodice’s Mid Life Celebration Guest Blogger post yesterday was a first here. Please check out her site, Beyond The Gray, if you want a midlife perspective from a not yet 30-year old. Erika gave me “my first big break” as a Guest Blogger.
2. The numbers thing the other day. (gulp) Well, that was sort of like a time capsule to look back on later.
3. February is about Peace. Peace to me means – tranquility, balance, solace, contentment, harmony, simplicity, acceptance.
As we get older, life, it seems, becomes increasingly filled with commitments and responsibilities. Most days I find myself running from one task to the next: eating lunch in my car as I frantically run errands over my lunch break, squeezing in phone calls to family and friends during my ten minute drive to work, and agonizing over work assignments and deadlines while I sleep. My car is my virtual office, my Facebook page is my only connection to my loved ones and I tend to think of life in key strokes, wishing I could CTRL + Z (undo) my error in judgement the other night when I added too much detergent to the laundry and found myself swimming in a sea of bubbles. Sometimes it feels like my mind and body never truly rest. And I’m not even 30.
Former CEO of Coca Cola Enterprises, Brian G. Dyson, describes it best, “Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends and spirit – and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.”
So how can we all do a better job of maintaining balance in our lives? Here are a five simple rules I try to live by:
Decide what’s most important in your life and don’t take those things for granted.
Learn the beauty and the power of the word “no.”
Respect your time; don’t waste it on things that don’t matter to you.
Do your best and learn to accept when that’s just not enough.
Some simple numbers to show the possibilities when giving up isn’t an option, and neither is dreaming small dreams.
30,000+: Number of Monthly Visits
Five: Number of Daily blogs written
200: jeffnoelmidlife You Tubes uploaded, in past 8 months
Hundreds of thousands of Monthly Page Views
First: Google Page display for all five blogs
Last: Where I want to be (humble, least, meek)
Raising enough money to find a cure for an incurable disease.
Impossible is nothing.
Thank you for your visits. There are enormous plans for Mid Life Celebration. This is just the beginning. Together, we can and will help shape the world in a way that teaches young children personal responsibility, beginning in elementary schools.
