Tag Archives: big rocks

Struggling With Consistency

January 9, 2019 By in projects, Streaks Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

I can’t seem to get any traction going. I can’t seem to get consistency on my big rocks. 

My scorecard this week: 

Writing 7/7, 

Meditation 5/7, 

Yoga 3/7. 

I blogged last week, so Blog 1/1 

The writing is the easiest. The blogging is the hardest, but since the blogging is only once a week, I managed, at least for the first week, to gut it out.

I credit Nanowrimo for getting me in shape to write 1K a Day. After having to hit that 1667 word-a-day benchmark every day in November, a thousand words a day is puh. 

As for the meditation, even though I haven’t been consistent, I really like the new meditation app I’ve been using. It’s Sam Harris’s Waking Up Course. There are daily, ten-minute guided meditations.  And even though they are talkier than I would normally be able to tolerate, I find, at this stage in my meditation practice, I kinda welcome his intellectual guidance. Having spent decades on the cushion doing zazen, and other techniques, and not quite understanding what the hell I was  doing, Sam’s guidance is causing some of the the mist to dissipate. 

My greatest resistance is to my 30 minute daily personal yoga practice.

Is it that I just don’t want to confront how inflexible I’ve become? How physically weak? 

Could be. 

I haven’t come up with a good time-slot for it, either, and that is a stumbling block. Plus, I have this thing about changing my clothes. I hate changing clothes. It takes everything I have to get out of my pajamas into day clothes. And then when it’s time to teach,  I resist getting out of day clothes into yoga clothes. It’s a ridiculous struggle. 

I was talking to a fellow yoga teacher friend and she practices first thing, in her pajamas.  But I don’t like yoga first thing. I like yoga, like third thing, after writing, and meditation. But then the puppy needs a walk, and then the day often derails.

The solution would be to take a regular yoga class. Plop down a lot of money and commit. I’m an Obliger. I need accountability. But there is no regular class or teacher around here. Mine are the regular classes. I am the teacher. 

This needs to be figured out. 

Setting Priorities

December 14, 2009 By in inspiring ideas Tags: , 2 Comments

(forgive me if you’ve already heard this.)

For a lesson in time management, a professor places a 3-foot  Plexiglas cylinder on the desk and explains that the space inside the cylinder represents the time available to us on any given day.

He proceeds to fill it with large rocks.  When it’s filled, he asks the students: Is the glass filled?

Some say yes, some say no.

He then proceeds to add coarse gravel, which fills the space between the rocks.

“Now is it filled?”

Most of the students say, “Yes.”

He then takes fine sand and pours that in, and the sand filters in between the gravel and the rocks.

“NOW is it filled?”

The students, suspecting a trick, do not answer.

The professor then takes a pitcher of water and pours it into the cylinder.

“Now is it filled?”

The universal agreement is that, yes, now the cylinder is filled.

So then the professor then asks, “What’s the lesson to be learned here?”

One student says, “That even when you believe you have no time left in your day, you can always fit in one more thing.”

“Wrong,” says the professor. “The lesson is: put your big rocks in first.”

What are your big rocks?  What are those things you must do every day in order to achieve your biggest, most important, most critical-to-your-happiness, dreams?

What do you have to do every day in order to run a marathon, or write a novel, or lose 25 pounds, or play a Beethoven sonata? Those are your “big rock” activities.  They have to be priority one.

For me, my big rocks are my mediation practice, my 6 pages of scribble in my paper journal, my exercise/yoga practice and this blog.

The gravel comes next.  For me, it’s reading books (feeding the muse), taking care of my business, my animals, and my home.

The sand and the water are the fun and the “fluff” of movies, TV, the Internet, parties and all essential wackadoo stuff that gives my life sparkle.

I can’t do without any of it, but the big rocks have to go in first.