Becoming more with less

I use my time differently than a few short months ago.

 I have found more moments of deep breath- a sign that I cam content with my world.

 I have more moments of pause to smell the roses. 

I have more moments that I can say, I should get up to do that, I feel pretty good. 

I have more patience

I find more things funny

So what is my less? How am I doing more with less?

Less hours given to a job that doesn't care or give back. 

Less time away from my family

Less frustration almost tears moments. 

Less crappy comments that hurt.

I am doing so much more with less in my life.

I am more a child of God and who I am meant to be.

To what extent are men a condition for God to give his message to mankind

Today I had the pleasure of listening a former student play in church.

 I clearly remember how he battled English class as a freshman, but his was such a gift that my class only needed to be a stepping stone to his calling. I didn't understand that then. I didn't get how he didn't need English the same way that I was trained by BYU/NAU to think he did.

 He had a very wise mother as his champion when he could have gotten sucked into the mundane expectations of society.

 It was from her that I was taught in my first of many experience that not all have to learn on the same path in the same way.

  It was the first time I saw him today since then.

 I couldn't recognize the young man I taught, but I could see how he grew into his part to be a conduit to send Gods message of peace, love, the atonement to as many as would accept it.

The unstuffed brain of youth vs the middle aged paunch of disappointment

When we are teenagers our  lives are ahead of us, a clean slate, undefined personalities.  The world is our oyster.

It's sounds wonderful from a middle aged stand point to have an fresh book of possibilities where mistakes, habits and events haven't molded our life. A do over.

What we have forgotten is that we struggled with identity.

 That fresh page has also a disturbing lack of substance. Shakespeare seemed a master of remembering the human condition at all ages of all genders in all levels of society.In Romeo and Juliet his older wise character Friar Laurence meet with an impulsive young man, Romeo, out of the norm early one morning.

 Friar surmised that either Romeo has not gone to bed the night before for youth are never bothered with so many worries that they are up all night thinking for their heads are "unstuffed" with anything of real worry or he was  or nutty

Young son, it argues a distempered head

So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed.

Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,

And where care lodges, sleep will never lie;

But where unbruised youth with unstuff’d brain

Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.

Therefore thy earliness doth me assure

Thou art up-rous’d with some distemp’rature;

Or if not so, then here I hit it right—

Our Romeo hath not been in bed tonight.

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My point in all this is to say we don't know who we are and by the time we have a clue, our habits sadly control us much more than we control them.

 We try then to control ourselves with expert level punishment and extreme sacrificing only to fail and have lower and lower self esteem reach time until we accept the weight or the skill level of a middle aged reject

What I have recently heard about is extreme progressiveness. It fits in with my whole goal of finding balance and getting out of my head about not accomplishing anything in life that is memorable. 

Extreme progressiveness cuts out one habit that is minor that you can also live without for-ev-er. 

Line upon line, 

 precept upon precept,

 you would build upon that until you reach where you want to be. This method takes months or years to accomplish, but is more successful than doing a full reversal of behavior. Within time, you are saying to yourself and those around you "I don't" instead of "I can't" because that is not who I am. 

You define yourself bit by bit.

If you want to stop sugars you start with something you can live without that had sugar in it.  As the weeks pass, you add other items until you aren't eating refined sugar.

Isn't slow and steady the goal of the life any way?

 If you're perfect at defining you and your direction in the first few years of life, what would be the point of the rest of the time here on Earth? 

Joy in the journey with extreme progressiveness-another way I have seen how important finding balance is in my life.