a new beginning...

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Simplify, focus & trust

These 3 words stuck with me some time ago. They were spoken during a homily given by the priest at my church. "Take something with you, a word or phrase" he'd say and sure enough these 3 came home with me. So as not to forget, I even had to swipe a piece of my daughter's' coloring pad to write them down before we left. Direct and to the point (in any aspect of your life - whether you are a religious person or not). Keep it simple, stay focused and trust that what you doing is right (or trust in a higher power).

Currently, I've set these words to scroll as my screen saver on my laptop. A co-worker noticed it recently and said "If that were mine, it would say 'complexity, chaos and dishonesty'." We had a chuckle and he went on his way (I swear this guy has adult A.D.D.). Later that night I got to thinking about his comment and realized that what he said (while it was meant to be funny) was sort of sad.

It was not an indictment of him, rather of me.

How many times have I not kept it simple? For example - the other day I had to write a card to someone for their birthday. Instead of just getting out the address book and writing the address on the envelope (oh no, that would be far too easy) I had to open MS word and use my Access DB of addresses as a source to create a mail merge to print ONE SINGLE LABEL. WTF???

How often have I lost focus (or even failed to gain it)? Another example - I take the bus back and forth to Manhattan daily. Up until recently my bag has been constantly overflowing with multiple magazines, books, web print-outs, etc. Do I really think I can read all this crap in one 40 minute bus ride? Why not just PICK ONE? Read it. Tear out the pages that seem interesting and toss it. Done deal.

What about trust? I'll leave that to the wordsmith Billy Joel
(lyrics to 'A Matter of Trust'):

You can't go the distance
With too much resistance
I know you have doubts
But for God's sake don't shut me out

This time you've got nothing to lose
You can take it, you can leave it
Whatever you choose
I won't hold back anything
And I'll walk a way a fool or a king


I'll choose royalty over being the court jester any day of the week.

3 comments:

Kristen said...

Too funny about the address label. Sounds like something I would have done.

swankywanker said...

Those three words are good ones. Simple concepts, though hard to put into action. I'm sure you'll put them onto action with more grace than most.

Marcol said...

Thanks for the inspiring blog post today.