Touchstones:  On your desk, in your pocket, under your pillow at night.  $5 each, by Tammy Vitale

We are down to my final guest appearance from Molly Gordon.  The last question I asked is hardly the least.  In fact it’s the first because it’s the one I stuggle with the most:  how to fit everything in, in only 24 hours, allowing 8 hours for sleep (you do NOT want to be around me if I have not had my 8 hours), time for family, time for self, and time for business both making and selling (and delivering, and keeping an accounting, and ordering supplies….well, y’all know all about that so I’ll stop there).

 

 

Tammy: How do I do everything (business care, self care) and have any time at all left over? There is time with my kids and grandkids, time with husband, down time, time when I’m pouting and not moving. I cannot believe that anyone can keep moving forward all the time. How does one take all these recommendations and make a reasonable life?

Molly: Not only is it impossible to keep moving forward all the time, it’s not healthy.

In every aspect of life there are phases of activity and rest, and the same has to be true in the life and work of an Accidental Entrepreneur.

So the question is not how to do everything but, what will you do?

At the heart of every creative act, and this includes growing a business, is choice. And not just one choice, pristine and perfect, but a stream of choices that inform, conflict, shape, and shift with the passage of time. The harder we try to get this part right, the further we shall be from a peaceful productivity.

If trying harder doesn’t work, then how shall we make these choices?

Again, I go to the process of creating, where choice begins in listening. Listening to the materials, the circumstances, the purpose, the process, and to the vision in your own heart. This kind of listening is not particularly time consuming, though it is of such a different character than much of the received wisdom in the productivity world as to seem impractical.

But listening deeply is the most practical of all time management tools. From the moment we make the decision to listen, we have shifted out of clock time into wisdom time. In wisdom time, there is no battle between warring priorities. There is only the amazing dance of multiple life forms at play in our lives. We can pretend that the dance is a battle, but why?

When we sit in wisdom time, we know utterly that we do not have a problem. This can be hard to swallow if we have spent a day (or a week) wrestling with circumstances. Sometimes I know that I want to plant my feet and declare that someone or something is not fair and that I need more time, more money, more understanding or appreciation.

And that is fine. There’s time for us to have our hissy fits, too, and why not? Those days when, as you say, you are pouting and not moving are as sacred as any other day. Who knows what inspiration is born in those moments?

To borrow from Byron Katie, the only thing that can ruin a day is an unquestioned thought. That is not to make us bad for having bad days, but simply to remind us that those, too, are part of the dance. When we realize this, we realize that having time left over is neither possible nor desirable.

***

“Sometimes I know that I want to plant my feet and declare that someone or something is not fair and that I need more time, more money, more understanding or appreciation.”

Isn’t it great to know that other people feel just like you?  In my head I know I’m not the only one who stops and starts, and pouts and stamps, and has days of amazing glory (well, those I don’t pay much attention to because i like them – but really, they’re just days.  That’s the part I keep forgetting).

Thanks, Molly, for spending some time here with me and my readers, and for sharing your wisdom.  It’s been grand!

But you, dear reader, need not miss Molly just because she isn’t here anymore.  Check out the following resources for more Molly Gordon:

 

Visit Molly’s blog. 

thought for the day: …when you really annunciate what you want in the world you will always be greeted, in the first place, with some specis of silence.  It may be that the silence is there so that you can hear exactly what you have asked for, and hear it more clearly so that you can get it right.   David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea:  Work as a Pilgimage of Identity