Rocks, Pebbles and Sand

So I subscribe to a blog by a homesteader. She's got a lot of information about how to make preserves, gardening, keeping chickens, and lots of other useful skills I've been trying to develop. Last week she wrote a blog called "how I don't do it all". My first reaction was a bit puzzled, because this is the kind of lady that you look at and think, how does she do all that stuff? But, her blog was basically outlining how she prioritizes her life.

She used the rock, pebbles, and sand analogy that I personally was unfamiliar with. You take a jar, and you put a few big rocks in it. The big rocks are your highest priorities like family and friends, your health, or fulfilling hopes and dreams. Then you take pebbles and put as many of those as you can fit. Pebbles are the things that give you quality of life. Your job or career, your home, and your hobbies. And then you put sand into the jar which represents your lowest priorities like, watching TV or movies, reading, and spending time on social media. Depending on the person, these might not represent your rocks, pebbles and sand, but these are some examples.

Her biggest pointer was that the first thing you need to do is decide what your rocks are. What are your highest priorities? Then move onto the pebbles, and lastly the sand. So even though you might not get everything done in a day, you know you've taken care of the things that are the most important to you. Keeping those things in front of you, can help you to accept when you feel like you're falling behind in your "tasks" and just appreciate that all the things that really matter are done.

I think I really need to sit down, and look at my rocks. Maybe I'll take a couple big rocks and write on them to remind myself.

Family

I have found myself in the past week reflecting a lot on how fortunate I am. I have been blessed to have the amazing family that I do. Not only my parents and sister, but my aunts and uncles, cousins, and grandmas all played a part in making our wedding ceremony happen as smoothly as it did. I had friends come from Edinburgh and New York, former classmates from China, staying at the house and lending a hand. And of course some of my new family. My new in-laws helping us coordinate.  And cue our friends from Silent River. We had a fantastic lion dance, followed by people helping clean up dishes, and coordinate food and drinks.

It went perfectly. Better than I could have imagined. I just wanted to send out a big thank you to everyone that made our day so special.

Rest

I had a very interesting conversation the other day where we were discussing two very highly traded commodities. Crude oil being the obvious one, and coffee being the other. It was suggested that in our society today, we value fuel above all else. And the major mental state that we strive for is wakefulness and alertness.

Sleep is something that we tend to be resistant to. Spending all of our waking hours trying to accomplish so much, we've forgotten all of the important things accomplished while we sleep. People that are consistently sleep deprived are proven to have higher rates of Alzheimers. I read something written yesterday, by a pediatrician, that a high majority of kids he's treated diagnosed with ADHD are sleep deprived. Keep in mind, kids generally require more sleep than adults.

It's interesting that we live these lives filled with so many stimuli, that when we're exhausted at the end of the day and try to lay down, it's impossible to get any quality sleep. You wake up the next day in an already drained state, to conquer another day filled with tasks that need to be accomplished. Where do we find the time to rest? Where do we find the time to play?

For most of us, this is where our kung fu comes in. It provides a space for us to focus on our training, and become mindful of our bodies. It gets us out of our "rush mode." It's not a task that needs to be completed because it's never really complete. It has this infinity to it, that I have found over time, to be exactly what I need to balance my mind. It teaches me to be disciplined, so I'm not letting everything bog me down, but it's also something fun for me, done completely for pleasure. It teaches me to be compassionate, which again helps bring me back to the present moment so I can live moment to moment instead of list to list.

Externalizing the Internal

In black belt class we've been working on some concepts that I've found really frustrating. First we started talking about whether we're pushing or pulling while we're slide stepping backwards. I find because I don't have full feeling in my feet, the push is necessary so I can keep heavy contact with the ground. If I don't have a heavy enough foot, it's really hard for me to stay rooted. I don't want to be lifting out of my centre all the time.

So after I asked how to move forward with this concept, Sifu Brinker broke down how to externalize the internal. So I can work on physically manifesting what I'm trying to achieve with my energy while I'm slide stepping. That whole break down really helped me visualize how to move forward with this concept.

On Saturday at Tai Chi class I had one of those "a ha" moments. I realized that when we're practicing Tai Chi, we are practicing externalizing the internal. We work a lot on moving from our waist, turning through each movement and executing from our centre. Our hands are always moving together in circular motions and our feet are always placed before shifting our weight. Now we've talked about how when we move to combat scenarios, this all changes. Our movements become much more linear, and more application focused. But we're trying to use our energy to internalize the circular movements so we can maximize our effectiveness. Combining flowing circular techniques internally, with smaller more linear external techniques.

This breakthrough has really helped me find some ways to work through some of my frustrations.