Commit to taking one step.
In my first post I talked about my 4 year plan for a flip-flop retirement. When reviewing the last four years I can see that this was the beginning of living my life on “purpose”. This process has been gradual but is becoming a positive habit.
Most of my life adult life has been lived in a “reactive” mode. By this I mean something happens and I respond in reaction and that determines my next step. As a young girl I decided I wanted to be a nurse. That was a plan that I worked hard on and completed successfully. I met a man and got married. We got divorced, I went back to school and became an Anesthesist, that was mostly reactive, but that has worked out well. I remarried, didn’t plan that but it has worked. I had two children, which wasn’t really a plan and then I lived an EXTREMELY reactive life for the next 20 years! Only recently have I knowingly made choices that let me live a more purposeful lifestyle.
By now I’m sure that you understand what I mean by a “reactive” lifestyle. We plan time to do things that have meaning to 
us, things that are important to us. The phone rings, we check our inboxes and Facebook. Soon we realize that the time has disappeared and we have nothing to show for it. We beat ourselves up and lament “I just don’t have enough time.” We all tend to live our lives this way UNLESS we make a conscious decision NOT to.
Decisions feel good. It feels good to have a plan and to see that plan through to its end. It feels good to complete a plan, even a very small one. It’s good to experience that feeling. It fuels the next step and then the next. When we begin to plan changes we often think it is all or nothing. It isn’t. Completion of even the first step will provide fuel for the next step. One step at a time, step after step, until we reach our end result. Celebrate each step.
Decide on ONE thing right now! ONE thing that feels like you would be living life on “purpose”. ONE small decision and then another. Pretty soon you have a plan. Unplug, even for 15 minutes at a time, start living your life on “purpose.”
What is ONE thing that you can commit to right now? Please share it here. When we commit to something publically we are much more likely to follow through, and that’s a good thing.
Excellent post, Wendy, and very timely. One thing I will commit to right now – keeping content creation first, and only fooling around with tech tools (Facebook, WordPress, email, Mailchimp, etc – infamous time sucks) once the actual content is completed and ready to be shared, which is when the tools are actually necessary