12 Steps for Busy People

It finally happened. Yesterday was the busiest day of my entire life. Suffice it to say that the day involved editing a 40-page newsletter, 2 meetings, training a new employee, technical difficulties, and projectile cat vomit.

I’ve been waiting for this day for quite some time. Rock bottom is when drug addicts check into rehab. So, I figured rock-bottom time poverty is when I’d check into the present moment. I’m the only person there so far, so I had to make my own plan of recovery:

1. We admitted we were powerless over our dysfunctional schedules—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that the present moment could guide us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to surrender our responsibilities and our schedules over to the care of something larger than ourselves.
4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of our daily habits and stress triggers.
5. Admitted to ourselves and the blogosphere the underlying causes of those behaviors, including need for approval via accomplishment, inflated self-importance, inability to ask for help, and unwillingness to see our lives as they really are.
6. Were entirely ready to work to adopt a new way of being.
7. Overhauled our schedules and our mindsets to help replace our dysfunctional patterns.
8. Made a list of all people and goals to which we had over-committed, and became willing to make adjustments to them all.
9. Relinquished responsibility to such people and goals whenever possible, except when to do so would injure ourselves or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory of our time and our mindsets and when we over-committed, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through yoga and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the present moment.
12. Having freed ourselves from time poverty as a result of these steps, we tried to model this way of being for others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

My name is Melissa, and I am a busy person in recovery. Will you join me?