Tyranny of the Urgent

Hi everyone, and welcome to Friday :-). It's been a busy week on the home front as I've been focused on catching up after being gone last week as well as trying to get into a new and healthier routine. I'm pretty happy to report that I've gotten up early every morning this week and started my day by spending time reading my Bible and praying - preparing myself spiritually for the rest of my day. Following my morning devotions, I've exercised for at least an hour (good news is that I'm not feeling so sore now - yeah!!).

It's amazing how putting some structure into the start of my day has positively impacted the rest of my day, and I've realized all over again how much I need structure in my life. Getting exercise in has given me more energy throughout the rest of my day, making me wonder why this ever dropped off my schedule.

When things get busy, the things that we most need to do - the things that make such a difference in the rest of our day - are often the first things that get dropped. Busy day? There goes exercise. Packed schedule? Healthy eating is out the window.

Why do we make taking care of ourselves such a low priority? I'm talking to myself here :-). What's really ironic is that when things are the busiest, that's when we most need to take care of ourselves. When we're really busy and under stress, eating healthy and getting regular exercise (and enough sleep) will help to strengthen our immune systems and help us to stay healthy and have the energy we need to keep up the busy schedule. Instead, we tend to run on empty, then wonder why we are dragging and feel crummy.

Several years ago, I read a booklet entitled, "The Tyranny of the Urgent." The booklet talked about how often the urgent things get in the way of us doing the things that are really important. The problem is that there is almost always something urgent to attend to, and it can be next to impossible to get past the urgent things so we can focus on what's really important.

That is one of the reasons why it's important to know WHY we want to lose weight and get healthy. We have to have a big WHY, and we need to keep that in our sights at all times. Our work week is filled with urgent things, and we often go into a weekend jam-packed with an entire different list of urgent things begging for attention.

As you finish up this work week, and as you get ready for another summer weekend, my encouragement to you is to take a good, long look at your big WHY, then organize your schedule to make sure that what's important to you doesn't get pushed aside by all of the urgent stuff. It's not always easy, but it's worth it!

Who's committed to an on-plan day today?