The Result of My Experiment

I decided to try the experiment of "losing my life in order to gain it" for a couple weeks. It's been an interesting experiment. It hasn't been easy - it's been rather painful. The painful part of it has been setting aside my own to-do list for the interests of my husband and children. But what I've discovered is that I'm all about doing and not about being.

I don't want to be all about doing. A little bit of doing is ok, but not when it gets in the way of being.

"Being" means that you don't have to accomplish x, y, z on your list in order to live a fulfilled life.

"Being" means that your stress level doesn't rise 100% and your ears don't turn red when someone interferes with your to-do list execution.

"Being" means that you can enjoy being with your children just because you are with them - not because you are training them for Major League Soccer, or the 2020 Miss America pageant.

I've always had a million things on my to-do list. Here's my current to-do list:
1. Full time job and its million to-dos.
2. Get passport photo. Apply for passport.
3. Strip wallpaper in daugter's room. Paint and redecorate before she returns from trip with grandparents.
4. Order new items for gift shop at coffee house. Inventory new items. Bar code, price and display new items.
5. Create online shopping web site for coffee house.
6. Create web site for CRAVE and for band.
7. Create newsletter for CRAVE.

And those are just the things I want to get done this week.

Nowhere on my to-do list is reading to my children, going for a walk with my family and watching the sunset. I try to squeeze those intangible goals in between the lines of my very tangible to-do list. What sense does that make?

Sometimes we have to do what we have to do. Many of us, myself included, have to work. So when I work, I try to do it with my whole self and work diligently. Yet, most of the items on my above task list are voluntarily. They are there because I have some internal voice in my head saying, "If you don't accomplish something important, what good are you?" Of course, rationally I know that everyone has worth regardless of accomplishment. But my irrational self still motivates my rational self to take on tasks in order to feed its irrational need for self-identity through accomplishment.

I am still somewhere embracing the lie that my life needs to read as a Who's Who in order to have made it. But the Wise Man who told me to lose my life in order to gain it said that precisely because He knew that lie existed.

So my experiment is still going on. The lie is exposed and I'm attempting to internalize the truth.
My first step is to trash my cursed to-do list.