Some Life Lessons

I thought I would write down some general life lessons that I have learned to help others.  These are things I have learned over life are good to know.

Balance - There is a book that I read along my studies years ago that was called "choosing to cheat" by Andy Stanley, I believe.  Despite the name, I think it was written by a pastor.  It's not about having an affair.  It's about the choices we make with our interests in our lives.  As an example, you could work 24 hours a day and succeed a lot in work, but you would have no family or connections.  You could spend all of your time with your family and be poor, because you didn't earn money.  You have to choose to cheat yourself from what you COULD do in some of those interests to satisfy other interests, and some interests will get a greater amount of your time, because they are a higher priority.  You will always have things pulling you in different directions.  Life is meant to be lived in balance.

Time Management - A part of being able to do balance is learning to manage your time.  I will plan weeks or months in advance for some things.  I will look at the amount of time that I have, the amount of time that something will take, and plan based on how important things are to be done in comparison to other things.  It's the same skill I use in financial budgeting, only this is budgeting of your time.

Priorities - If something is important to you, you will make sure it get done.  That is a working definition of what priorities are.  The same is true for people.  If they are important to you, you will set aside time for them and do things for them to make them happy.  Jesus puts it like this in Matt 6:21: "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  What you value will get your attention and time.

Work - Work isn't fun, and it isn't meant to be.  That's why they pay you, and often they will pay you more for things they don't want to do more.  If it were something everyone wanted to do, they wouldn't need to pay much to do it.  However, work is necessary for progress.  If you want to pay your bills or save for things, you need to work to achieve them.  All of this is also true for any other kind of work that leads to progress... exercise, romance, hobbies, making connections with others. All of this requires you to do things that you don't want to do to get what you want.  It requires you to push outside of your boundaries, because staying inside of the comfort zone and only doing what you like will result in you being alone, overweight, poor, and depressed at not achieving things for which you did not work.